Liquid Caterpillars

Things are different now.  I am different.  I can trace this back to before the accident, before the disappointing auditions, even before having to sever pieces of myself off to leave Seattle.  We could keep going.  But anyway, here's how things are different.

My guess is that caterpillars have no conscious knowledge of the process when they begin wrapping themselves in a chrysalis.  Do you know what happens in there?  Their bodies liquefy, literally digesting themselves until all that remains is an amorphous soup.

Did you even freaking comprehend that?!  Do you even get how horrifying, how sublimely unlikely, and how freaking awesome that is?

Now let me be clear.  I am in no way comparing myself to a butterfly.  I am comparing myself to a soup.

And apparently, studies have suggested that the caterpillar's memory of its former life survives.  This seems justly right to me.  If I am soup, and it feels that way, my memory is all I have at the moment.

A thing I remember very clearly that seems far away, I wish to tell my most passionate students about.  There is a phenomenon that happens when you are new, and obsessed with an art, or a practice of any kind.  I see it happening in them, filled with a burning anger and massive output, and look back through soup-memory to see what it looked like on me.  And that thing is

the audacity of the new artist.

And I urge them to use every moment of that, because it naturally cannot last.  It transforms into something else...better work, more developed ideas, a reputation, a career.  But you need that driving medicine of your own undaunted enterprise before the reflection of it on the world comes back to you.

Ha.  In eight more years I'll probably look back on this writing and shake my head at this ridiculous sense of authority and write a very similar post to annoy my future self.

Anyway.  Here we stand after the old house has been torn down, and find more than anything the seed of what we originally wanted is still thrumming away at the core of the leftovers, and that living seed was the desire to Tell the Truth.

Let us endeavor towards that end.

This is a collaboration with videographer Colten Becker.  It could literally be titled "Tuesday morning".  In fact I think I will title it that...*wanders off to do just that*

This is what my time actually looks like- no lipstick. no stage...just pacing the floor and hammering away, and hoping I strike a gemstone every now and then.

beautiful studio space is Aspen Aerial studio in San Francisco.  Thank you Maia <3 p="">