Well, that kicked my ass. And I don't mean it in the that-was-new-and-tough way. I mean it in the I-knew-everything-we-did-and-it-still-kicked-my-ass way. It's that unique brand of ass kicking where you can't really peg a reason for it. Nothing was unexpected. You've been trending positively in terms of building skills and becoming a better dancer. There was just...no reason to suck as severely as I did.
I have a track record of being hard on myself, so maybe, objectively, it wasn't as bad as I thought. Plus, there really weren't any other newbies in my sixth class. It was a bunch of people who had done ballet at a different school (which just meant they had their own finesses on a bunch of the moves, which, I mean, I have, too, if falling is a finesse) and the guy who literally founded the place where I take lessons. So, y'know, no pressure. But, despite this, I could see a few moments, upon reflection, where I was at least slightly in the zone. Stretching, for instance. I think I have that down. I can stretch like a boss now. Jumping. I'm okay at jumping, as long as it's in the same place. It's the moving. Last week, we did these turns (not even spins, but turns) at the barre that, for whatever reason, felt easy at the time. Last night, we did the same turns, and it was like I just got a new pair of legs. As someone whose sole purpose was to turn, I consistently forgot which way to turn. There are only two options! Yet, every time, I felt like I picked the wrong way.
It was that feeling that dominated my experience last night, and I just left feeling...sucky. It was all in my head. My teacher was wonderful about reminding us that even she has days where it's one stumble after another. But what came of that was this thought:
Progress is not linear. Progress is fluid.
At least, I think that's true. Progress doesn't happen in one neat, straight line. It flows all over the place. Sometimes, that means a leap. Sometimes, that means a giant leap backward. And sometimes that means you're doing something in a totally different ballpark (I'm thinking Leonard-Nimoy-having-a-music-career different, here). I see this in my own students all the time. One essay will be a delight; the next will be approaching incoherence. That's no fault of the student. That's just how it goes. We can bemoan the fact that we, as humans, are sometimes-failures, or we can celebrate ourselves as sometimes-successes. If you want the ratio to favor the successes, well, I guess that's where the real hard work happens.
But I also think, on top of this, that this caveat, that progress is fluid, applies to gender, too. At least, gender as I experience it. I'll try to articulate this as best I can, though I'll probably fall short. Gender, to me, is fluid. You can kind of weave in and out of many performances in many ways, or perform more than one simultaneously. You can also be none! Or you can wear the same black turtleneck every day and let people make of that what they will. The options are endless, but, if you are someone who likes to blend and switch gender performances, then I wonder if, some days, you judge your look (or "lewk") to be more successful than others. You've got some feeling in your mind, a feeling of demiboy- or demigirl- or non-binary- or trans-ness, and you want to represent that through your comportment and attire. That takes creativity because there is yet to be a Gap Non-Binary, so you try to create a mixture of clothing (provided you don't just walk around naked) that gives those you interact with a snapshot of where your head is at. (Some enbies do this sort of blending, some don't - all are valid!) When you nail it, you know. When you're suddenly wearing lipstick on your earlobe and a thong as a top because it "seemed like a good idea at the time," well, you know that, too (and, for the record, I know some people who could *rock* that, but I don't think it would work for me). Or, to offer a more typical example of this sort of "failure," you know you're non-binary, but you have to put on a binary uniform for work (whether that be a suit, a skirt, or whatever is dictated by the workplace). It's easy for me to feel, in cases like these, like I've let down the part of my brain that wants to grow and experiment with gender.
But progress, like gender, is fluid. Just because I either *have to wear* or *end up wearing* a certain set of clothes on a given day that create dysphoria, it doesn't mean I've failed my self. It means that this is where the fluidity of progress has taken me today. It isn't up or down, good or bad - it just is. Tomorrow may be different. Self-exploration allows for this sort of happenstance.
It's a little less happenstance-y in skill-based work. It wouldn't comfort me to have a brain surgeon say, "Well, I don't really study this much, but, hey, if I mess up today, things could be better for the next patient. Who knows!" With ballet, I can control my own outcome a little bit through practice, which I'm horrible about doing on my own. I know, as a teacher, that should be the first thing I'm strict about. But I'm not. No excuses. I'm just not.
So acknowledging that I can actively take steps to "favor the successes" (and then, of course, take those steps), I can make space for the fluidity of progress, which goes hand-in-hand with metacognition. There's a version of that that can work for gender, too. We're all surely in some version of a self-discovery process, even if gender never enters your self-questioning. The more one engages that process, the more aware one can become of their own fluidity, however that fluidity manifests. (I would celebrate the person who decides to try cookie dough ice cream for the first time after a lifetime of vanilla AND I would celebrate the person who tests out a new gender performance for the first time. They're not the same, but both actions speak volumes in beautifully different ways.)
Therefore, on the days that suck, especially the ones that come after the days of success, spill a glass of water on a table, and remember that the water makes no judgement about the way in which it spreads, it only cares that it eventually covers the surface. This was the lesson I learned on Valentine's Day, and it's not a bad one. Love yourself, even if it seems like your ballet flats don't.
No comments:
Post a Comment