I remember reading an article just before leaving "P.A." of an upcoming performance in my former home of New York City labeled "Alaska". Being on the precipice of my 'tuning in' (see below, March 19th) the neurons in my brain perked up as I thought "how ironic for New York and Alaska to be tied together in any way whatsoever, and how odd that I should have run into it, being emotionally torn between elements of both" (having left the former and sort-of fled to the other, then having tried to fit back into the former, only to create more longing for the other).
I began imagining what my dancer-friends would grasp from the work, "Alaska", having no firsthand knowledge of the space for which it was named...not that I am insinuating myself an expert on last-frontier-space.
Created by dance artist/choreographer Diane Szeinblum, the piece, as it was described in the article, was an artistic portrayal of relationships utilizing the idea of "interior spaces"...of one's soul, psyche, personality, etc. I deduce she was likening the vast open spaces of Alaska with some vast sense of solitude or alienation within the individual in relation to others. The journalist summarizing even labeled these internal spaces "disturbing little lonelinesses". I began to wonder: is this theme of withdrawal from the world a shortcoming?
I find this quality of solitude at the forefront of my personality more and more with age. Its harder to connect with others, to form new relationships and maintain them. Through all my traveling and short-lived living the things I really miss are good friends. Frankly, its hard to make new ones.
Most encounters with individuals are tucked away in little interior spaces and turned around a bit like clothing in the dryer and re-emerge as similar commentaries that might be found in the work "Alaska". This blog is essentially a record of my encounters with people to this end. I exist in a continual state of seeking-something-I-can't-define and resultantly I move often, desiring more from life than I am finding at my current locale. Each new landing zone presents the promise of more initially, then turns out just to be another port for my one-person boat to dock. Each time I tie up the line and disembark I anticipate an experience ahead with bells and whistles. And then become quickly disenchanted.
A recent quote I've adapted and adopted: "when your ship long moored in harbour gives you the illusion of being a house...put it out to sea" ~Archbishop Helder Camara, cited in the Art of Pilgrimage.
And so its time for me to load up and head out once more, before my boat becomes a house, or a tree that grows deep and debilitating roots. Big North here I come. I have been trying to get back to Alaska ( the physical site not the interior soul-space-probing dance work) since I left, puddle-jumping from town to town across this giant nation hoping to find something as glorious as the ethereal experience of Fairbanks I've been toting in my soul, but ideally to get back to the true original with dear friends waiting.
My fear: that I'll arrive, settle and take up work but still have the empty yearning within "interior spaces" that I have come to define as my own 'constant dissatisfaction'. I can't help but think my theme of withdrawal from the world has something to do with this perpetual searching. How can it be satiated?
A friend-of-a-friend, John-Paul, wrote: "Being active is exciting but exhausting, planning too much makes the moment seem as though it occurs before it happens. Perhaps, having focus is oxymoronic...when tomorrow arrives, the climb has superceded the summit; so we look for a different tomorrow, because the end seldom justifies the means."
So for now, here's to endless different tomorrows...and a dry cabin for my hermitage.
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