I was up earlier than normal this morning. A deadline with the foundry is looming and my brain was wanting to organize my work tasks in order to move on to thinking about what might also be accomplished in the four extra hours I was planning to take off to 'art'. Yesterday a coworker asked how I managed to find the time, the focus for my art? I gave my usual answer, "because I am a better person for it."
My first clean-up task of the morning was to catch up on email. The only feed I have set to automatically come into my reader is This I Believe. The series airs on Mondays on public radio's All Things Considered. I have a link to it on this website. The essays by people from all walks of life always give me pause to think.
Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, wrote this week’s essay on To Thine Own Self Be True. Jamison started her essay with her belief statement - "I believe that there is sanctity in the fact that we are only on this earth for a short period of time. And I believe that with that time, we’d better be doing something good." She went on to explain that honesty comes with goodness, describing that connection from her experience as a dancer and choreographer.
"As dancers, we need to bring our life experiences to the stage. We don't just want to thrill an audience with how many turns we can do or how high we can jump or raise our legs. Plenty of people can do that with practice. We need to share our truth. When a performance stands out, it's not just the arms and legs that stay in your mind. What you remember is the feeling you get from the performance, and that feeling comes from the dancers' expression of self.
A good performance on stage should take the audience on a journey where they learn something about themselves. It's about all of us. It's about reaching for perfection, and, most of all, it's about honesty."
That is why I squeeze extra hours from my day to art. It is a need to search for honesty, to spend part of my day thinking and working hard for true understanding of one small chunk of life, knowing that if I am honest and good enough the resulting piece will have the power to nudge others along their own paths of self discovery to find their own truth, honesty and goodness.
