Surprise! I'm alive!
I'm enormously busy. Closed two shows on Saturday. Opening two shows on Thursday. Executed the most technically complex sound design I've done to date. Costume designing, and I'm humbled by how much I learned on the first day of tech about how to work with and interact with people. Mindboggling. Dramaturging. Trying desperately to rehearse for my own show throughout all of this. Overwhelmed. Overworked. Underfed. Anatevka. Here's what I've been thinking:
We label ourselves by our professions. At least here in America, we are caught up on the idea of a career and the idea that we are what we do. I've been horribly guilty of this, particularly in high school and early college where I screamed, "I'm a director I'm a director I'm a director!" What this does a lot is shuts me off to other things that can help me with what I'm interested in expressing. I remember writing after my first year of college that the only label I would accept was "artist".
I feel like a lot of us are grappling with these labels again this year. One of my classes was specifically about how to take up the title of director. And there is something to be said for the validity of labels... used less as labels and more as titles. It's about accepting and embracing the responsibility that comes along with it. This point in this semester, for me, is the point where I desperately run and hide from all "professional" labels. It's generally because I start to think all my work is crap and it's very hard for me to face bad work with a label that assumes some kind of expertise and quality. (In truth, my work ISN'T all bad, and somewhere I know this, but it's just how my artistic brain panics.)
In my current bout of running away, I have considered what title to run towards. Because there is a way that titles can help you order your life into what you want it to be.
I'm at that transitional point in life where more and more responsibility for my well-being is being transferred to myself. Beyond the basic level of being at college and away from parents who take care of you when you're sick, I'm at the point where the focus is starting to turn towards what I'll be doing after college. My roommate and I just started the "...should we move into a real apartment?" conversation. It's beginning the last laps of having the educational support system... which means I truly need to start building my own support system for when I don't have access to, say, NYU's Student Health Center anymore. There are far fewer people checking in with me physically and emotionally than when I was younger, and there will be even fewer in May 2011. I say this, but I'm fully aware that I'm in a program that offers a LOT of support to its students. Several of my classes are devoted to giving us a place to voice problems and receive support. I'm enormously spoiled. But even within this system, it is up to us to actually bring up those issues. We could stay silent and not receive the help we need, so it's starting to encourage us to knit together our support system.
In a conversation with one of my teachers lately, actually about my health, we briefly discussed a major relationship change in my life. This shift happened in May, actually, and I think I mentioned it briefly on this blog this summer. Seems a long ways away, but for how huge the shift was, it's actually not at all. And one of the things he mentioned that has stuck with me in the past few days was about how there's a kind of nurturing that once was there that's not anymore and that actually has a major effect that we often don't want to acknowledge, but need to. It got me thinking a lot about what it is to care for a person. To actually be a care-giver for another person. I think we need that a lot more than we like to acknowledge. At least for me, naturally introverted, proud, attempting to be iron-skinned and independent for as long as I can remember. Some of us (me) work painstakingly to hide it, some wear it on their sleeves, but I think somewhere in everyone there is the part that needs someone to care for them. It goes back even to the Trinity. To the idea that we are created to be in relationship with each other. We cannot live fully without the care of others. And similarly, I believe we are at our best when we are caring for others.
I've been having health problems. All semester, really, but they've come to a pretty horrible point in the past couple of weeks, and I've had to truly start to face them and come to terms with what they are. It's going to be a process to figure out because it involves some major lifestyle changes. Without going into the details, it involves overstimulation and my brain/body's response. (So if you know anything about neurology, endocrinology, nutrition, sensory overload, meditation, Alexander Technique, or artists who've had strange aliments and how they've coped with them, we should have a conversation.) This is something that would take a highly specialized doctor that I do not have the money for if medical help would even make sense to seek, which I'm not sure it does (it's not something that's been highly studied, which makes me wary).
What kept me from panicking in the process of coming to terms with why I've been so ill this semester was the fact that I knew several people I could contact immediately who would be willing to talk with me about this and would have smart thoughts about things I could do. I am blessed to be dealing with this now, while I'm here with these people. I'm currently in conversation with four of my teachers about these issues, all of whom have not only offered their time and thoughts, but their continued, active support. I met with one of my teachers on Friday, then ran into him on Monday and we chatted briefly about theater (as we tend to do), and the conversation turned to these health issues and he said, "I've been thinking a lot about our conversation and I think that what's happening is..." There are people emailing around for me. I have MULTIPLE places to try that offer free guided meditation. I'm getting tea tomorrow with one of my teachers to discuss things more in-depth.
Having been here for a while now, and having established relationships with these people (one of these teachers I've met for the first time this semester, but this is my third semester with two of them, and my fifth semester with another), I know that I can very easily set up meetings or email correspondence with them, that they're beautiful people who are more than willing to take the time out of their busy schedules to meet with me. What is not surprising, but is still unexpected, is their continued commitment to helping me work through this. Hearing, "Would you let me know if it gets any worse?" "Keep me updated," and "I'll keep thinking," floors me. I can logically see why people would offer this support, but it's still somehow surprising to me. But the surprise is a joyous surprise, not a surprise coming from low self-esteem or self-deprecation. I've had people suggest that being surprised or confused is not worth my time or energy as an emotion, but I disagree. Being surprised, confused, baffled, as long as it's not coming from a place of huge fear and low self-worth, can actually keep life rather exciting and full of discovery, gratefulness, and joy.
And honestly, it is easier for me to start to tackle reconfiguring my life as I need to do for this because I know there are these people who are behind me. While none of them are acting as "primary caregiver"/doctor or anything like that, just getting rid of the isolation factor does good things for me. (And a lot of their advice has worked to eliminate that feeling of isolation even more.) I know it is also nice for me (and my parents) to know that should anything truly horrendous happen, something that would require hospitalization, there are people in the city who have some idea of what's going on. (I seriously doubt I'll be hospitalized. I'm taking steps to ensure that doesn't happen. But with what's going on, it's not out of the picture.)
Outside of the realm of health, I feel very well taken care of by my set designer. My brain doesn't think in sets at all and I've been having a lot of trouble with the visual world of Tongues, and I feel lost and jumbled until I meet with her and she works some magic where she translates what I'm saying into something in the space and suddenly everything's tangible and I can actually articulate something again. Then there's a huge load of stress taken off of me.
The act of caregiving is something enormously necessary, which I've learned as I've started to accept the care that others have offered me. And filling that need in someone is beautiful. I try to do that when I'm in tech... because tensions are running high and everyone feels like their artistic lives are on the line. I made the conscious choice my first year when I had my crew assignment that I was going to be happy during tech week, because that fresh air was something I could offer. I've worked to make that a priority during every tech week since. (And I think I'm in my... 12th or 13th since then?) I work to have the energy that will care for everyone involved, and it makes it a great time for me.
It even works in indirect communication. Trans-Siberian Orchestra just came out with a new album, Night Castle, and there are some songs on there that I can release and breathe into, and I feel like those songs actually take care of me.
I'm not sure God calls people to professions. Because then it becomes all about the professions. I don't feel called to be a "director" or a "designer". What God calls us to is deeper. The titles God gives are things like, "servant", "disciple", and "caregiver". I can be a servant through directing. I can be a caregiver through design. While, yes, I think God shapes how we rise to our titles in the gifts He has given us and the places He has placed us, I don't think God calls us to externals, but rather to the direct essence of what we are to do, and how we are to approach the world.
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