003. Getting delusional about the power of a 11' x 12' windowless room

The other week, I paid for a self-help-y sort of webinar. Embarrassing!

I took Yumi Sakugawa's 3 (4?) hour long Discipline is Pleasure class. I've never paid for something like this before. Actually, I forgot that I did this at all until several weeks later when a got a sparse email with a Zoom link: "See you all in an hour!"

I was pretty reluctant to go to this. I guess I wasn't feeling as desperate as I was when I bought it. But I did pay real money for this, so I forced my own hand and logged on.

Once we got started, it was a lot slower and a lot more woo-woo than I imagined. Hardly any of it was something I hadn't heard before in my lifelong search for productivity hacks and ways to bootstrap and fix my very flawed human self. I just wasn't in the mood for guided meditations and advice, ok?

BUT!

I think something here actually clicked. And I think it happened at a very good moment for me...

There were a few things from the webinar that stuck with me:

Asking myself: "What am I afraid might happen if I let myself truly dedicate time to my creative process?"

Practicing the actual meditative act of creating a 'sacred, creative container': a period of time for creativity without outside expectations, a period of deep focus (and discipline!)

I think this was so valuable and effective for me because of my organic position:

I have already trained to hollow out these sacred focused times in college when I first got into mediation

I have been intellectually thinking about how hard it is for me to assert "ME" time and make the "ME" show happen.

I was about to embark on moving to MY NEW ROOM.

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Context on #1:

In college, somewhere around finals season, my anxiety got so bad that I was finally forced to adapt and find some good way out of it. I was only mildly aware that I was operating in a state of constant panic for the past N years. Every day, it felt like the bottom part of my chest was caving out into my stomach. I couldn't confront people, emails, classes, homework, anything. The things I did to escape or numb my feelings were really the only actions I had the capacity to take. Those things were a bit funny: that's why I walked an absurd amount of the city and took the train everywhere through the nights, went to a lot of DIY shows, and got pretty good at the Smash Bros on the Wii U.

I did finally find something a bit more practical, though. During my days and nights in the lab, I would step outside into the hallway, sit on a chair, and give myself 10 minutes where I just simply wasn't allowed to think about work, or what I'm going to eat for lunch, or my deadlines, or my crushes, or my parents, or anything. I sat there and counted my breaths sometimes, or thought about nothing otherwise.

For my whole life until this point, I had never known you were ever actually "allowed" to take a break from thinking. I was a pistol-whipped chihuahua type of child.

I couldn't even bring myself to do that unless I scheduled everything in my life (including walking to and from things, meals, etc.) down to 10 minute increments so I knew I wouldn't forget anything.

But it did really, really help.

Anyway, with this new room, I want to host these creative containers of time. I want to have a safe place that's only mine, that no one else is dictating. I want to be able to have privacy when I want it, and it's been hard to get that. I've found this is one of the real tradeoffs of this city. I mean, I definitely have not historically been able to afford a studio, let alone a 1BR.

I want to investigate my secret shyness: I want to be able to be creative when no one's looking or judging. I want to meditate, I want to be free, I want to be silly, or weird. Oh yes, I want to be cringe. I want to practice strange movements, or voice, or music, or art. And I don't have to show it to anyone: I also don't have to show the process to anyone. I can just show the outcome. This can be sacred, and for me.

I'm someone who's very porous. I can hear other people's desires very loudly. Or, their expectations, or their taste, or their biases, or their emotions. For the record, I'm not an empath or anything. I hear what I intuit other people are feeling, and this is sometimes accurate, sometimes not. Sometimes it's true, but the severity is miscalibrated... or something else is off. Sometimes I project. You know.

The more of these voices there is in my life, the harder it is to hear my own self: which is more like the sound of grass rustling.

And, to be honest, the obvious thing is true: hyperconnected life mediated through technology makes this hard in certain ways. AND I don't think being in NY(C) really helps with this at all. That being said, I'm glad I don't live in the gossipy small world of like, Our Town. So it's not all bad.

SO: Could I create a physical space that really helps me out here? Here was my plan:

Minimize my shit and junk into compact vertical storage. REMOVE a LOT. More than ever. Go through all my paper, my archives, my things that I hoarded when I couldn't afford to let anything go.

Set up a comically large desk (an 8.2 ft IKEA countertop set on sawhorses)

Install a large mirror on the wall

Place a 5'x10' martial arts mat for tumbling, contact improv, stretching, flopping, wrestling and jiu-jitsu, performance practice, yoga, working out, laying down and thinking, puppeteering, rehearsing, etc. in the middle of the room

Set up a whole wall for painting, easels, work pinned on the wall.

Boring things: bright white, color-accurate light for working, low lighting for thinking, shelving and storage for big stuff, more minuscule ways of organizing the art supplies I intend to use.

Goals for the room:

I want this to be a place that can be open (inviting others) but not by default.

I want this to be a space that I have complete creative control over: no one tells me what to do or how I should organize or use it, or what items I should have in it.

I want to prioritize maintaining open space and a few views where I can look at empty wall, or mirror, or floor. I need it to be open so that other things can come to rush into the space. Ideas, mostly. I need my eyes to be able to rest.

I want to exist physically in an un-self-conscious way.

After a couple of weeks, let's see how we did:

I'm very proud of it!

Is it silly to bank so much possibility on a 11' x 12' windowless room? Yes. But we're out here anyway!

In short, some brave and hard-headed people who can be firebrands of their own selves can make art and noise among others with (RELATIVE) ease. For the extremely, overly sensitive people such as myself, who are always looking over their shoulder and wondering how other people might be thinking of them, maybe it's good to be cloistered. Yes I really like vocal improv and improvisational movement and writing vulnerable manifestos. Yes I am too scared to do that in front of you right now. But at least I can build myself a cave. Come visit sometime!