prompt or no prompt: scoring my life

Today’s NaBloPoMo prompt is about whether or not one can write to music.

I always used to write to music. At least when I was writing essays in college and graduate school. One CD, over and over. Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island.

Even as I recall it, the music starts to play in my head.

What I apparently cannot do is blog/write while the TV is on. I had to leave Scott just now, by himself in the living room with Next Work of Art, but without me.

So the prompt felt very a propos, sort of.

* * *

Today I finally installed the proper software to download the photos off of my new camera. I posted about wanting the camera here. And magical parent fairies gave me birthday money and I saved some more pennies and I bought it. And now, all I want to do is play with the new pictures and learn more about digital processing.

So much to learn. So little time. So old, my brain.

I suspect bombarding you with pictures this month is not what NaBloPoMo is really about.

But there is something happening here that is related. As I continue this marathon of daily posts, I am chipping away at perfectionism and coming out of hiding. I am finding an old self that I cannot believe I managed to misplace. It seems like motherhood is the obvious culprit and yet I don’t get how that was the cause. Maybe it was the excuse. A convenient excuse for leaving me for a while. A me-vacation.

The thing about the photographs — I was taking pictures of a friend who was sitting for me rather under duress. He tolerated my hovering around him and clicking for literally 2 minutes, from 2:16pm to 2:18pm, according to the file data. But the last two shots of him that I took in the last seconds, I love.

If I get his permission, I will come back and post them here.

What I love about them is that they are so me. In fact, they remind me VERY DISTINCTLY of a series of portraits I took of a more willing subject (my friend Julia Dashe; where is she now???) during my two years at Laney College, between my Bachelor’s Degree and Graduate School.

I was 23 years old. I had finished a degree in Anthropology, I had studied abroad in Russia. And I had no idea what I wanted to do next. Except I did have an idea. I decided, that summer of 1992, to finally just do the things I’d always wanted to do.

I started taking improvisational theater classes, and then also photography and even a tiny dip into drawing. I built a darkroom in my apartment and I even got some paid portrait gigs and had some photos published in a magazine.

After two years of that, I went to graduate school to get a Master’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Art. I ended up letting the photography go to the side while I focused (ha ha) on writing and theater and became a solo performance artist. And then I got involved with an esoteric body-based improv ensemble form and then autobiographical improvisational storytelling. I performed, practiced, and taught improvisation up until about six months into my pregnancy with Jonah.

It was during a practice one evening with a few of my close friends. We had just finished a “score” — which is what you call it in improvisation when you set the parameters that will shape a scene — and we were doing a post-game wrap-up. One of the improvisors said: “You know, in order for the improvisation to work, you really have to let the other person in.”

I had really been struggling. Not just that night, but for weeks. Struggling with my motivation and my confidence. Suddenly, I got it. Ummm… somebody already in here. No room to take in another person.

And that was it. I quit what had been my regular Monday night practice group for a couple of years.

Which felt really true and right at the time. But now I wonder if being tired from making a baby and being engrossed in that creative process was also an excuse to stop fighting. To stop challenging my perfectionism and my fears of not being good enough.

How funny, since motherhood has basically thrown me up against the exact same walls.

So, about the photos… The ones from today that match the ones from my past, circa 1992. When I was printing the earlier set, I remember one of my classmates looking at the photograph sloshing around in the tray and asking: Oh, is that a self portrait?

It wasn’t, of course. But that moment caused a revelation. In my photography, and maybe this is true for all photographers, I am always shooting myself. The moments I am compelled to capture are a reflection of my energy and my personality. Every portrait I take is a self portrait.

Now, here I am, getting back to writing for myself. Getting back to photography. And also considering how to bring improv back into my world.

Maybe it is because my child is going to be four in a couple of weeks. This is the age when a mother finally has enough time and energy to poke her head up and look around.

Who am I? How did I get here? Who do I want to be next?