At a July InterPlay Arts + Social Change training in Oakland, CA -- a 2 week training for "Millenial Leaders under 35" -- we trainees were asked to play with our life purpose as poetry. As you might sense already, the framing of "play" and the invitation for poetic license invites a little more freedom than the typical "So.....what are you going to DO with _____(fill in the blank practice, methodology) !?!!?". Our co-leader Cynthia, in her way of flipping boundaries inside out and approaching BIG questions with a PLAYFUL spirit, suggested that listening to our "call" may not mean meting out a "mission statement" with a hammer and a hard focus, but instead may unfold a bit more like poetry. I think poetry trickles in at the nexus of complexity and simplicity. Poetry, Cynthia mused, is typically something more easily remembered and held, alive in the bosom and belly.
So much happened in the 11 days our cohort shared to apprentice in InterPlay: a practice of creativity, rest, and play. A form of carving out collective and individual space for ease by linking movement/dance, story, voice, stillness, and improvisation. Among other things, InterPlay brings spontaneity and interactivity to hefty social and political issues. To places in our bodies and societies that are long-term stuck, and to practices or habits that are short-term icky. InterPlay allows fun (what!? as adults, or patients, or addicts or researchers, we're allowed?) and spirituality (the container through which many substances flow) to shift us into new ways of listening, seeing, and exploring. Thank you to our teachers (Cynthia, Phil, Soyinka, Agnotti, and more in the Oakland arts + social change community) for the chance to be in Big Breath. Thank you to my 12 fellow participants and dear friends, from all over the world (India, Australia, Canada, across the US), for the chance to be soulful and embodied companions, looking over a widened vista, with widened arms.
InterPlay Arts + Social Change Training
The performers, teachers, facilitators, leaders in the 2014 InterPlay Arts + Social Change training were asked the following question by Cynthia Winton-Henry and Phil Porter (cofounders of the now 25-year-old practice called InterPlay): What IS your artist's call? The scary-good kind....
"Scary-good", as far as I can tell, means engaging the gifts you actually *like* to use -- versus those you or others are simply in the habit of asking you to employ. Your purpose is probably not something you've already completely mastered. Cynthia suggested our life-purpose may be something that will make you a bit nervous -- because life is neither meant to be pure glassy surface to skim atop nor pure struggle to rough-house through. Instead, life is a chance, a series of mountains and valleys, a beautiful initiation.
So, this -- the poetry of purpose -- will be the topic of my very first bog post .... ! (BIG DEAL, SMALL DEAL ;) ). I write it with the hope that some of you may want to write yours, too.....
Art at Redux Studio, Cynthia Winton-Henry, cynthiawinton-henry.com
I feel broken open by this whole process. I did at the time it spilled forth, with a bit of abandon, and then showed up again in what InterPlay calls a "Big Body Story" .... no limits to how you use your full physicality and the spatial surroundings you're inhabiting. BIG BODY STORIES allow you to be surprised and, in a way, let the story tell you. No limits.... so I thought! This workshop piece, and the below writing, inspired an improvisation in our "art shares" (15 minute performances from each person in a "circle walkabout" around your seated, inward facing audience, which is thus freed to look or listen however they please).
My unexpected story brought me through an arc of gratitude and grief (and political renderings of health injustices in my state of NC, where my mom's brief lapse in insurance meant cancer spread, and where thousands will die and half a million will be without health insurance due to politicians' block of free Medicaid expansion. ....SO THOSE ARE BIG THINGS).
...And in one of the larger jumps which became a part of the performance I did, this arc of gratitude and grief landed me on my ankle all wrong (a few torn ligaments etc). Something big to be released. Cracked open. (Certainly being hurt teaches you is how to accept help and generosity from others: self-image check!). One of those big things is being real -- in a way that does not pretend or portend answers or ultimate "truth" -- about the ways that Spirit with a BIG S just keeps on keeping on, moving through my life. I want to be brave and give it thanks in ways that allow others to do the same.
So here's to being broken open. And learning that rest (yes, I said REST!) is a HUGE part of what Cynthia names the trifecta of "creativity, rest, play" vital to all beings. In the lens InterPlay frames, my "body data, body knowledge, and body wisdom" (all three!) told me that, too. Thank you very much :). The body and the divine move together -- it's not that there are "no limits" but rather, that we sometimes in this human form get to touch places where limits and limitlessness have their waltz. What a blessed boundary to traverse.
Poetry of Purpose (July 23)
Try # 1. I a(i)m to be
a listener, lover of people,
of elders in all ages, forms,
of the very chance to soak up
learning
-
being with other ways of seeing
part of a moving body
dancing the fluidity
of tradition and innovation,
allowing intuition
to build poetry
new metaphor through
ancient wisdom
I am (who me!?)
called to be with African and diasporic roots, the wisest communal-modes and flows of knowing, sensing, praying, growing
to manifest cross-cultural connection and curious respect among continents
-
Try #2.
{ gasp: my purpose on this planet is }
helping — self (with more ease), others (with clarity) — set sail on big oceans
knowing the wind
the Big wind
will blow breath through
our words, fingertips, souls,
an inner-flame will be our guide and fuel
reminding, hint-learning
to vessel-be, conduit-see
to envision, respect, affirm dignity
———-
Try #3. how / what? (we may not know why….)
…… by dancing fullest body, THE moving body, OUR moving, movement-body (which is sometimes still)
trying to be good at what I, and you, do not yet know (and to listen to what we do)
to build opportunity, challenge, resiliency, creative trust, to surrender to God-Be
..... to Be Unafraid to Be Unafraid
To invite the discipline of ease
to accept the play and work and play of brotherhood and sisterhood, beinghood
the magic in the every-single-moment
....To follow the miracles that will unfold, and already do
....To unbelieve dis-belief
to be with and break down, break down
the color boundary and continental hierarchy (that keeps showing up in divisions of ethnicity, gender, sex, and economy)
to Liberate Consciousness through Peace = Body = Soul
and Unabashed Ancestor Comradery
Try #4.
..... It's my "job" (whoops) ....privilege to write things down
in body scripts
and paper scrolls
so that the toll
of injustice will not
continue to be marked across our skin
(nefariously sneaking in
to sew up hearts that are meant to burst - wide - open)
we shall not bleed internally.
let's pump life force:
find,
touch,
share
source,
Unafraid to Be Unafraid.
- marie garlock, interplay 2014
