issue nine

losing everything and so on and so forth

I touched on a concept briefly in my first issue of this newsletter, but I’d like to expand on it now. Someone recently sent me some words from James Baldwin which I find particularly relevant now. 

​​“For nothing is fixed,

forever and forever and forever,

it is not fixed;

the earth is always shifting,

the light is always changing,

the sea does not cease to grind down rock.

Generations do not cease to be born,

and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.

The moment we cease to hold each other,

the moment we break faith with one another,

the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

• from Nothing Personal by James Baldwin 

What Baldwin succeeds in describing is the connectivity of change. How does change occur if nobody witnesses it? Can individuals change and affirm themselves without external observation? How does isolation breed change in a way that compounds the above concepts?

I’m in one of the most transitional periods of my life thus far, and it is insurmountable. I’m learning more about myself and how I connect to others, what my future looks like, my strengths and weaknesses, all that good stuff. The real marrow of the challenge I face is when I have to reckon with how I have changed, and where that leaves me now. 

Not my image! I wish it was though (found on Pinterest)

I recently started writing poetry again. I also recently started letting myself think fully about writing prose again. Both of these things are monumental, and passed about as easily as kidney stones. The reason for this is that for the last however many months this pandemic has been going on, I’ve been cracked open and put back together. I’ve had to explore who I am in the absence of things, and the presence of new things. It’s grueling.

A year and a half ago, the one thing I was determined to do was dance. I’d fine-tuned my tunnel vision for collegiate dance programs and the maximum amount of training needed to reach them. I danced in my free periods, during my lunch, after classes, before sometimes. A seed had been planted as I got glimpses and tastes of what it would be like to do this full time, and I tended to that seed like my life depended on it. It did. 

You already know what happens next. I’m not even going to say those cursed words, but the other shoe finally dropped. The gliding, fine tuned machine and routine of my life ground to a halt, and I was alone. With only my apartment floors and bathroom mirrors to keep me company, I had two choices. I could power through the indefinite end of the earth with newfound strength, or I could be an actual human being for the first time in a while. 

I eventually found a weird compromise between the two. My first few months or so of quarantine were motivated, muscled boot camp days. I kept up with Zoom masterclasses, I attended virtual intensives, I encouraged those around me and I kept my eye on the prize. I, unfortunately, did not have the foresight to see that this pace would shoot me forward into burnout even faster than my previous lifestyle. Attempting to maintain the proximity and intensity of Leah the Dancer in a changing world with back-to-back blows was nearly impossible.

By November I was an empty husk. The days ran together, the precedent of yet another virtual audition for company commitments discouraged me, and my college list was in disarray. I no longer felt that I could put all my eggs in one basket, because I shouldn’t have. To this day, I wonder how my current life would be different if I had just let my pride rest and admitted that proximity to dance for me was not only blinding, but burdening. 

By the end of my senior year, I knew something was going to change. Asking myself if I could endure another year of what I just had with the pressures of collegiate life made me freeze, and that was my answer. I put down my sword, picked up a notebook again and committed myself to storytelling in any other medium than movement. 

This turning point was humbling for multiple reasons. First, in dance (particularly ballet, though this applies to various arts and disciplines) we have a really odd complex about quitters. To stop, or pause even, was to admit defeat and weakness. Even if those around me didn’t hold this belief, I held it to myself like a grudge. I wanted to keep going out of spite, to prove that I could even when it didn’t benefit me. Second, I hadn’t entirely burnt my bridges to writing, but I certainly hadn’t crossed some of them in a long while. I told myself and others that it just wasn’t what I did anymore; I let my diaries and notebooks gather dust on my bookshelf, and only wrote poems in feverish catharses past 1am. This was no longer the girl who read for glee and wrote in excess. Various weights and influences had compressed me into some gnarled, unfamiliar, unforgiving version of myself. Third, I knew I would miss what I once had. I still grieve the loss of what feels like entire parts of myself left on barre corners and marley floor seams. I miss the exhaustion of a long, delicious day in rehearsals, the command of my own body I felt in class. I can barely reach those things now, and I feel like an outsider in what used to be my own house. 

In my mourning and frustration, I looked (and still do) for somebody to blame. A virus? Myself? The mental toll and constraints that have become a norm for much of the dance world? Right now, it’s kind of all of the above, but losing dance felt more like just that; I had had something taken from me, not willingly surrendered. 

All of that oversharing considered, this is not an isolated experience. I had my senior year, my year 16, my potential and drive for a specific future all “taken away” in some aspect. It’s not enough to just acknowledge that hurt, I often take the extra step to consider what more I could have done if I was able to gain that time back. Maybe I’d be dancing. Maybe I wouldn’t. The all-consuming nature of those changes obscures that possibility for me, which I believe Baldwin was beginning to get at in the excerpt I shared earlier. 

Sometimes, within reason, it can be healthy to wallow for a bit. To sulk, to brood. To pout, even. Usually after I’ve squeezed out the last of my resentment and moping, I can get over whatever it is I was moping about. I can focus on what matters most, and begin the long process of moving on. I should be grateful for any opportunity to succeed, whether that is on stage or on paper. My ancestors would have a heart attack at the mere idea of me at a private university, studying works written before they were born, or preserved stories that parallel their own. In finding that sacred hope in the right people, the right things to cling to as Baldwin advised, I’ve been able to weather the changes I undergo in stride. I’m sure a wave will completely blow me over soon, but it’s nothing that hasn’t happened before! How bad can it be? I love you, and I’ll see you next week.