Colleen Leonardi

Bubble Thoughts no. 14 - 17

14. What if instead of the show ‘So You Think You Can Dance?’ there was a show called ‘So You Think You Can’t Dance?’ I bet you’d discover some pretty awesome dancers.

15. Why is it when I think of making a new dance I think of making the biggest, bestest dance I’ve ever made? Why can’t I just make something ordinary?

16. ‘…the true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining. That is why you must write freely and recklessly make new mistakes—in writing or in life—and do not fret about them but pass on and write more. Active evil is so much better than passive good…’—Brenda Ueland

17. Here is something orange for a good friend who loves the color orange.

If You Want to Create...

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So I finished If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. On the last page she sums up her points with a list. I decided this list - called the 'If you want to write' list - could easily serve as a good reminder for all those who want to create. So here goes it. I've changed the word write to create but every other word is Brenda's...the If You Want to Create list:

1. Know that you have talent, are original and have something important to say.

2. Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

3. Create freely, recklessly, in the first draft.

4. Tackle anything you want to---novels, plays, anything. Only remember Blake's admonition: "Better to strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."

5. Don't be afraid of creating bad things. To discover what is wrong with a thing create two new ones and then go back to it.

6. Don't fret or be ashamed of what you have created in the past. How I always suffered from this! How I would regurgitate out of my memory (and still do) some nauseous little lumps of things I had created! But don't do this. Go on to the next. And fight against this tendency which is much of it due not to splendid modesty, but a lack of self-respect. We are too ready (women especially) not to stand by what we have said or done. Often it is a way of forestalling criticism, saying hurriedly: "I know it is awful!" before anyone else does. Very bad and cowardly. It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one's mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.

7. Try to discover your true, honest, untheoretical self.

8. Don't think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers. Remember how wonderful you are, what a miracle! Think if Tiffany's made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!

9. If you are never satisfied with what you create, that is a good sign. It means that your vision can see so far that it is hard to come up to it. Again I say, the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work. To them, the ocean is only knee-deep.

10. When discouraged, remember what Van Gogh said: "If you hear a voice within saying: You are no painter, then paint by all means, lad, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working."

11. Don't be afraid of yourself when you create. Don't check-rein yourself. If you are afraid of being sentimental, say, for heaven's sake be as sentimental as you can or feel like being! Then you will probably pass through to the other side and slough off sentimentality because you understand it at last and really don't care about it.

12. Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other creators. "I will not Reason & Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.

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While I generally don't prefer a list telling one what to do and what not to do to make things and be more creative {it's so black and white...binary}, I think Brenda is on to something with her strident commands and charming conviction that each and every one of us is creative. Hear hear.

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Photos of the wonderful Goddess Leonie's Goddess Guidebook from 2011

Map Me, Choreography | Part III

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Have you ever experienced an old work in an entirely new, present-moment context? What I’m trying to say is — have you ever felt like something you created years ago was all of the sudden intensely relevant and vital to something you need to make now, make next?

I had an artist date with my friend and colleague Lily Skove this past week. We haven’t had the pleasure of meeting all summer, so there was a lot to catch up on. While our conversation rambled back and back, back and forth like our dancing together, and making together, and road trips over the summer and dreams, we landed at the very end of the conversation on the topic of what we’re working on next.

Lily has this grand idea and I’ve very excited about it. But as she told me about it certain themes embedded in the idea reminded me of themes in an old short story of mine I’d written for my senior thesis at Benningon College, Legs of Rain and Other Short Stories.

The more she talked, the more the parallels grew. Upon departing, I swore I’d find this old story and send it to her. I was full of memories driving home—‘That old story. Wow. So long ago. I remember writing that and working on it….’. The door had been opened.

I came home, prepared food for dinner and while my husband was grilling, I wandered into the basement. Dusty and packed, my trunk was buried under old hard drives, buckets and blankets. I dug through it and couldn’t find the manuscript. Where could it be? Am I going to have to contact Bennington and have them dig up my thesis?! Oh my god!! Panic set in.

Eating dinner calmed me down and I wondered some more. It occurred to me I’d been keeping the manuscript much closer to my daily efforts than I thought. I had buried the story in my mind, so it made sense that I thought it was still buried in the basement. The whole manuscript was neatly filed in my cabinet next to my desk where I work all day!!

Curled into our couch, I tore through that story, Legs of Rain. Each word and sentence so familiar, like a part of my body. The parallels were rampant between what Lily is imagining for a project and what Legs of Rain was and is. And in finding the story I found my voice as a writer again. I’ve been writing more lately and loving it. Reading one of my first stories was profoundly locating. ‘Here you are. You are right here,’ it kept saying to me.

What does this have to do with choreography? Lily’s idea is choreographic in its design, and what we’ll engage in will be choreography. But how this piece of writing lends itself to the potential development of that—how this language I spun out into a story years ago is still of my body and has kinesthetic, choreographic relevance—is even more locating.

How do you locate your artistry?

Let your artistry locate you.