The creative act of being

The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself

is the quote I picked, by Deepak Chopra. It is the cumulative fifteenth day of Kerry Nicholls Dance’s Performance Mentorship Programme at HereEast and the sixteen of us are told to stand by one of the ten laminated quotes lying on the floor; one that we feel best represents where we are, and with which we want to move forward. During the three weeks that we spent so intimately together, brilliant minds and leaders were brought in to provoke us to find truth and authenticity within ourselves; informing our practices in performance. I'm now left rattling with inspiration, curiosity, and- I am utterly puzzled about the idea of truth. Yes, truth. What, is truth? What is it to be true? I wrote about my idea of chameleonism in my last post, and now I'm wondering about truth in the chameleon. Do we, with our ever-shifting identities based on chosen illusions, have a truth? What is this essence that stays seemingly constant, when we are literally aging and changing by the second? 

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes

said Mark Twain. The idea of a truth seems to imply that there is a factual sameness residing in each individual, oscillating on some kind of repetitive existence. The dictionary describes something true to be something in accordance with fact or reality. Well, facts are unmoving, static, and forever-being - which humans are not; and reality is based on individual perception. So I wonder, is it that our truths are evolving by the second? That while there might be some pure form of truth found in every present moment, that like an atom, it is always shifting ever so slightly; often rhyming with the past, but never replicating. Perhaps, the act of finding one's "truth" is an evolutionary process that has no end. That to know oneself is simply to be present with oneself. I think that while we all have an essence to ourselves that looks a lot like the same one we had as toddlers, there is something to be said about the choices we make in creating ourselves - and about creating our own truths. The act of sifting and delayering ourselves; ridding our insecurities and unwanted learned behaviours is a process that is unveiling, but is also of real-time creation. We are uncovering something that is already there, but also making decisions about what we want to move forward with. 

Whether or not you have a honed skillset in the arts, I think that any human being could be considered an artist. An artist, to me (at this specifically truthful moment), is someone who creates; who believes that there are infinite facets and possibilities about any one thing, and considers it with a continual curiosity. We know it isn't about how high you can kick your leg, what kind of strings you can pluck, or how many brushstrokes you know. It is about digging, deciding, shifting, questioning, and framing; all from the within. The most creative act that you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself. I'm not talking about the creation, the end product, itself (we can talk about that when I'm in my grave). I'm talking about process and about everyday being, imagining, and decision-making. If we're made up of habits and practices, right now I choose to practice the creative act of being. 

Kerry Nicholls, the brilliant woman she is, left us with this quote from Buckminster Fuller's I Seem to be a Verb as she leads us into the next three months of one-on-one mentoring with her-

I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing, a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process, an integral function of the universe.

When a chameleon arrives

"What's the word for when a thing can change into anything it wants?" asks the twelve-year-old Kazakh student in my English class. I search for the endless words that could possibly encase this broad description / she continues eagerly with active gestures: "You know, something that stands in front of a wall and changes colours; like the ugly one in Monsters Inc!" 

My new noun: chameleonism. The ability to adapt, and change according to one's surroundings. To carry oneself as a whole, yet be able to disassemble and integrate wherever one goes. To belong with all, but also with none at all. To migrate as a lone independent, whilst using external stimuli to define one's shifting identity. There is also this element of invisibility - the inability to capture one's shape when there's not an environment to hold it. 

Our reality solely depends on the way we perceive the world and its happenings; on the illusion that we build. We seek feedback from our surroundings in order to sift out our own reflections. We use our situations, physical space, and people around us in order to realize - or choose - our own identities. 

chameleon /kəˈmiːliən/ (noun) a person who changes their opinions or behaviour according to their situation.

When I embarked on my solo travels last year I would hop from place to place where nobody would know the existence of me. Every time I moved, I had the opportunity to tell someone again, who I am. It wasn't assumed that I was a dancer or artist; it wasn't assumed that I wanted to join a salaried dance company; there were no expectations and there was not a clear measure of success and failure. I was a nobody, a blank canvas; but that also meant I could be anybody I wanted to be. Every new environment began a new journey and I felt like I was changing on the daily - my beliefs, my desires, my needs, my dreams, my non-dreams. I was inconsistent. However, out of this inconsistency surfaced a more apparent denominator of who "I" am. The more external change there was, the more space there was to actually observe my truths. 

Five months ago I moved to London. And it is here, that I wonder about the concept of arrival. To arrive somewhere seems to imply a completed, static place, if only just for a moment. It is a point that both ends something and begins something. Meaning, there is movement before and after. But making nest in this very point of arrival is perhaps when we stop dynamically changing, learning and growing. This is the first time in the last couple of years that I've decided to "settle" somewhere. That is, open a bank account, own a phone number, sign a lease, personally import my favourite yellow planter from Vancouver, and put it up on my wall. I bought a bicycle, I have a routine, and I actually feel like I have a home. I'm noticing consistencies, and the comfort and security I'm starting to feel by having them. It's lovely. But it's also terrifying. I spent 2016 trying to challenge my ability to embrace the eternally changing, the unknown; insecurity. But now, I'm reacquainting myself with safety and developing attachments to this safety.  

So how does one arrive somewhere, and stay a chameleon? Or, how does one never quite arrive? To remain interested in the space that one sees every single day, for a long time? How do we continue to change and observe change when the external doesn't seem to? Perhaps we seek. We question. We fight to notice, and we vow to appreciate. We find the movement in the stillness. It is an effort and it is a meditation.