The Doorstep core team works in thirds, because there are three of us. Today we are two-thirds busy. Meg is off leading Little Doorstep sessions this morning and Jade is getting ready for auditions for the next Juicy Theatre show, which is a Sherlock-Holmes-inspired devised piece called Mind Palace. (Auditions on 20 June, by the way.)
I’m sitting still and staring into space.
This is sometimes what it takes to incubate ideas toward a show and that’s what I’m giving it.
I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently about artists stretching themselves too thin and people being too busy, and it all resonates, every last twangy morsel of it. We’re all too busy – all of us – and yet it’s necessary vital work. I certainly felt it this week, racing from meeting to meeting, trying to fit it all in, trying to make sure all the plates are spinning at the right speed.
But sometimes in the midst of the madness, it helps to create our own eye in the hurricane – to actively still. I know that sounds like a funny sentence, but I mean it. To actively choose to still ourselves and let the creative juices have some space.
There is a great quote somewhere about how boredom is a good thing for kids – how it provokes creative solutions and forces them to be imaginative. I say this at home a lot, but my kid doesn’t think it’s funny. She just rolls her eyes now when she hears it.
I think for me, as an adult, stillness only happens when I force it to happen. And that stillness is necessary for any creative bubbling to occur. If we’re all 70-miles-per-hour all the time, there is no breathing space for the mystery or the magic or the deep mossy forest thinking that is needed to make a new piece of work.
So today, my third of the Doorstep team is being still. Holding still and waiting for the bubbling.
Impatiently tapping my finger on the table. Holding the stillness, impatiently.
It’s an imperfect solution, but it’s mine.
Post written by: Erin Walcon