autumn update - and helpful graffiti
“free your mind and your body will follow”
Found spraypainted on a wall a few days ago
… As the leaves fall and we move deeply into Autumn, I’ve only just become confident enough to share my aims and plans for the next year, which have been a year or so in the making. It seems I’m leaving behind a career as a London based professional musician with the slightly eccentric but determined aim of entering into full time professional training at circus school in 2011. I say “it seems” because although it’s something that I’m working hard for and holding in mind with determination, it’s not something that “I decided to do”, so much as something that has decided to do me…which is quite hard to explain. Here’s the background to how it happened…
Last year in May I returned from three weeks in India and a week in the Sahara desert, which was pretty intense, beautiful, difficult, painful, and by the end a revelatory and visionary time. I didn’t consciously ask for any of those adjectives, but they combined to give me the slightly scary realisation on return that London wasn’t where I wanted to be, and my work as a musician wasn’t really what was closest to my heart. I felt for a while like the rug had been quite aggressively pulled out from underneath my feet… So I resolved to work hard so I could get away from London for a while and explore my other passion - object manipulation, fire dancing, and other related things.
Last January I left London for two months in India, two in Mexico and two in Bali Indonesia, followed by brief journeys to Finland, The Netherlands and Portugal. In India a few quite important things happened - not least of which my relationship ended and I sat my first vipassana meditation retreat. India seems to have a knack for facilitating intense experiences and again came up with the goods - you might have thought I would have been expecting it…Will I never learn?! Then in Mexico I lived, trained and taught in a small experimental community based in a completely wacky jungle-house built by an 80 year-old retired Mexican army general with a passion for esoteric philosophy. That was probably one of the more normal aspects of my two months there. Then I went to Bali to help facilitate the Playpoi poi and yoga retreat, which was a formative and inspiring learning experience as both student and teacher. I loved it.
The thread that linked all my travels and experiences was working with the body in creative and expressive ways. In Finland while at the European Juggling Convention I met a girl who had trained for a while at a circus school in China, and had come back with the physical skills of a ninja. “Hmm”…I thought. That unassuming mind-seed was bedded and watered by meeting a few other highly dedicated peeps before and after, and when I got back to London I decided to spend my time doing what I was really inspired to do - train and work to explore what is possible with body and mind while I am still relatively close to the age of peak physical conditioning.
I still worry on a daily basis about how sensible it is to be doing what I’m doing, but those worries aren’t nearly as strong as the trust I have that working hard for what I am most passionate about is really what matters the most. Letting go of ideas of “who I am” and “what I do” has been challenging, disorientating and has prompted times of feeling deeply lost and unsure of where on earth I am going. But the flipside of this process is way more profound. These constructed aspects of identity, ideas of who we are that we assume so solid, slowly become less important to me with regards to myself and others. The letting go of a profession I’ve worked for since the age of 15 scares me…but it’s also exhilarating, a risk, and something I feel I’ve just gotta do. I’m just hugely grateful that I’m privileged enough to live in a society that allows these explorations.
None of us are nearly as fixed as think we are…if you want to do something, just go for it. Trust yourself…there’s really nothing to fear. :-)
