Exhaustion and Miracles

You probably know that I queue up these blog posts a day ahead. I used to get up very early and write them, but that is far in the past. I still want to post them early, though, so that if people want to read first thing, they’re able to.

So, all day long I had the thing in my mind that I wanted to write. I’ve been accumulating links and I’ve thought about it and I will get to it, but not today. You see, it’s hit me. I don’t know precisely what “it” is, unless you want to call it “everything.”

Perhaps you know the feeling.

Let’s call it exhaustion.

I was writing, yes actually writing something, so that was good, when I plucked one of my favourite books off the book caddy on my desk. (That sounds fancy, doesn’t it?) It’s Anne Bogart’s What’s the Story, which I have quoted from many times in this space.

She talks about a production by Robert Wilson that she goes to see, “ready to reject his work.” She has drinks after the performance, which she finds wonderful, with one of the actors, and asks, “how did that miracle happen?” And apparently it came together over time with Wilson flying in and out from various locales, “and he was usually exhausted. The actors pushed him. He pushed back.” But in the end the production, she feels, is something from the next century, that forward thinking. Her world, she says, is rocked. And then this:

“Until then I had assumed that when you reach a state of exhaustion, you must take a break until the creative life and force returns.” She goes on, “Wilson’s example showed me that through exhaustion it is possible to be catapulted into the next octave, to catch the next wave.”

And then:

“…when my guard is down, when I am no longer able to control the events around me with my own assumptions and preconceptions, things start to happen that are larger than the perimeters that I have predetermined. Within the exhaustion I have to be patient and to get out of my own way. And despite the exhaustion I have to stand vigilant to my preconceptions and assumptions and be ready to let them go. I have to make careful plans, create a schedule and then just “show up.” Show up and be present. Tell the truth. Do not hold on to expectations of the outcome. Stuff happens. I just have to be patient, stay present and remain open to the unexpected.”

I found this useful. Show up. Get out of the way. Stay present.

Who knows what might happen. Miracles? Maybe. Maybe not. But we’re sitting around here anyway, so let’s see what goes down, shall we?