I’ve been thinking about impulse and freefall a lot lately. I’ve come around to wondering if maybe the last three to five years of my life have in some ways been about learning how to fall.
I mean, I fall all the time. I trip, I sprawl, I stumble, I careen – one of the epiphanies I had in movement class at the beginning of the year was that almost all of my movement “problems” have something to do with a sense of being continually off-balance. I can’t maintain stillness because I’m always swaying just a little, trying to correct for tiny falls to the front and the back, leans from side to side. I trip about one in every ten steps. I can’t walk a truly straight line to save my life, because somewhere in the middle, one of my ankles will turn or a foot will splay out a little or a hip will somehow come round not exactly where it’s supposed to be.
In short, I am always falling. Every movement I make is either a fall or a correction from a fall. I’m not sure exactly why this is so, but it is. The thing that I realized finally, though, this autumn (I want to say Fall, but it would confuse the issue), is that instead of fighting that, I need to make my peace with it.
Okay, I’m always falling. How can I use that? The fact is that I careen through life slightly off-kilter – so that’s how I need to realize I will approach everything. I’m always going to lurch across the stage just a little, but if I’m aware of that, suddenly the lurch becomes a choice that I control, instead of a problem that controls me.
And, I’m coming to realize, the rest of my life operates that way as well. In some ways, life is a series of freefalls, of hold-your-breath leaps into the unknown or barely-known, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m a big one for getting my ducks in a row, gathering my evidence, considering my choices; but though I can arrange my limbs and tense my muscles all I want – until I get frozen that way, in fact – in the end, I’m still going to have to take a deep breath and just fall.
Which, to tell the truth, is a more exciting and happier way to live. I like myself better when I take risks. I am not an insatiable risk-taker – a gambler or an extreme sportsperson or a no-helmet-flying-down-the-highway-at-a-hundred motorcycle rider – but I am not completely risk-averse, either, and the way I enjoy my life the best is when I don’t let myself indulge in too much preparation and just leap.
I mean, there’s certainly such a thing as taking it too far – and over the past two years, at least, some of the risks I’ve taken have a definite flavor of the self-destructive. It’s like that bit from The Unbearable Lightness of Being I put up a few days ago, about vertigo – the thrilling thing about standing somewhere way up high is that part of you desperately wants to just leap off.
And that’s there too. Freefall is exciting, but it’s also dangerous – and the key, of course, is to somehow spread yourself out so as to balance the two.
But one way to do that, I know, is to just let myself have the small slips and lurches and careens. If something catches my interest, I should detour to look at it. If I have an impulsive desire, often, instead of considering too much whether it’s wise, I should try for it and see what happens.
I mean, it’s common sense, what I’m saying, in a lot of ways, but then in other ways it isn’t. It doesn’t necessarily make intuitive sense to me that the times I’m happiest with myself and happiest in my life are the times when I’m nearly falling, because a lot of my instinct says to beware of those times.
Of course, I’ve always known that the most exciting work I do comes from the most difficult places and situations – I used to talk about it as “working in your break,” and I still believe that. That part of the idea – that what is the most difficult is also always the most fruitful – isn’t new to me.
But I guess it’s a bit of an epiphany that that sort of thing applies to the most mundane life-decisions, as well as to intellectual or artistic work. It’s so simple. but it took me a while to figure it out: if I’m interested in what they do in that office, and I don’t know, life will be more exciting if I just go up and ask; If I want to see a town and I’ve never been, I likely won’t regret just picking up and going.
Anyway, there it is. A goal for me: embrace the fall. Easier said than done, obviously, but it’s something to have said it. And known it. I may stumble, weave, and careen – but all that’s a more interesting path than a straight line, anyway.
I mean, I fall all the time. I trip, I sprawl, I stumble, I careen – one of the epiphanies I had in movement class at the beginning of the year was that almost all of my movement “problems” have something to do with a sense of being continually off-balance. I can’t maintain stillness because I’m always swaying just a little, trying to correct for tiny falls to the front and the back, leans from side to side. I trip about one in every ten steps. I can’t walk a truly straight line to save my life, because somewhere in the middle, one of my ankles will turn or a foot will splay out a little or a hip will somehow come round not exactly where it’s supposed to be.
In short, I am always falling. Every movement I make is either a fall or a correction from a fall. I’m not sure exactly why this is so, but it is. The thing that I realized finally, though, this autumn (I want to say Fall, but it would confuse the issue), is that instead of fighting that, I need to make my peace with it.
Okay, I’m always falling. How can I use that? The fact is that I careen through life slightly off-kilter – so that’s how I need to realize I will approach everything. I’m always going to lurch across the stage just a little, but if I’m aware of that, suddenly the lurch becomes a choice that I control, instead of a problem that controls me.
And, I’m coming to realize, the rest of my life operates that way as well. In some ways, life is a series of freefalls, of hold-your-breath leaps into the unknown or barely-known, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m a big one for getting my ducks in a row, gathering my evidence, considering my choices; but though I can arrange my limbs and tense my muscles all I want – until I get frozen that way, in fact – in the end, I’m still going to have to take a deep breath and just fall.
Which, to tell the truth, is a more exciting and happier way to live. I like myself better when I take risks. I am not an insatiable risk-taker – a gambler or an extreme sportsperson or a no-helmet-flying-down-the-highway-at-a-hundred motorcycle rider – but I am not completely risk-averse, either, and the way I enjoy my life the best is when I don’t let myself indulge in too much preparation and just leap.
I mean, there’s certainly such a thing as taking it too far – and over the past two years, at least, some of the risks I’ve taken have a definite flavor of the self-destructive. It’s like that bit from The Unbearable Lightness of Being I put up a few days ago, about vertigo – the thrilling thing about standing somewhere way up high is that part of you desperately wants to just leap off.
And that’s there too. Freefall is exciting, but it’s also dangerous – and the key, of course, is to somehow spread yourself out so as to balance the two.
But one way to do that, I know, is to just let myself have the small slips and lurches and careens. If something catches my interest, I should detour to look at it. If I have an impulsive desire, often, instead of considering too much whether it’s wise, I should try for it and see what happens.
I mean, it’s common sense, what I’m saying, in a lot of ways, but then in other ways it isn’t. It doesn’t necessarily make intuitive sense to me that the times I’m happiest with myself and happiest in my life are the times when I’m nearly falling, because a lot of my instinct says to beware of those times.
Of course, I’ve always known that the most exciting work I do comes from the most difficult places and situations – I used to talk about it as “working in your break,” and I still believe that. That part of the idea – that what is the most difficult is also always the most fruitful – isn’t new to me.
But I guess it’s a bit of an epiphany that that sort of thing applies to the most mundane life-decisions, as well as to intellectual or artistic work. It’s so simple. but it took me a while to figure it out: if I’m interested in what they do in that office, and I don’t know, life will be more exciting if I just go up and ask; If I want to see a town and I’ve never been, I likely won’t regret just picking up and going.
Anyway, there it is. A goal for me: embrace the fall. Easier said than done, obviously, but it’s something to have said it. And known it. I may stumble, weave, and careen – but all that’s a more interesting path than a straight line, anyway.
Labels: identity, performance, theatre
0 Responses to “freefall”
Post a Comment