This fall is a ripe time for me. Typically I have found that October signals the beginning of my own new year, a time of rest, hibernation, and planning for what is new and arriving. Instead, this year I find that a more consistent and supportive creative process has led to a more continuous flow of showing up, taking risks and offering. I have found that by setting the next deadline -- even if that means sharing work with a trusted witness -- we keep moving forward even when the voice in our head says, "You're not good enough yet." By showing up somewhere (even if that somewhere is not online), we learn, we grow, and we improve. These are lessons I learned many years ago without knowing what I was learning, by showing up every week from the age of 3 to 17 at both my violin and piano lessons, whether I was truly prepared or not. Most often I was prepared, but several times I was not. I felt the sting and the pain and the shame of not measuring up to my own expectations or what my teachers had come to expect of me. I cried, and wanted to run away and hide. But one episode of shame was not enough to justify quitting.
Lessons about when to quit, and when it's wise not to quit, are more complex than I have space for here. But today, I am celebrating the lesson, which I once learned unconsciously and I am now relearning more consciously, that consistency and accountability truly do make a difference, especially in the process of learning or creating something new.
We are in a moment as humans where we are becoming very curious about our origins, our histories, how we have individually and collectively arrived at this place we now find ourselves. We simultaneously want to know that this is not a totally unique time we are in (that we have been this crazy before and somehow survived it), and we want the reassurance that in our modernity, we humans have actually evolved beyond our darkest times in previous chapters of history. I have taken my own ride on this journey, and the often painful process of finding my story -- not settling for old versions of it, or other people's version of it, or versions of it that might make me more popular -- I have come, slowly, into a new comfort with the complexity of each human's life experience. How there is a mystery to the collage of influences that shape each of us, the decisions that lead to the set of circumstances we call a life, the timing that is not a choice but rather some assignment we have responded to at the moment of our birth.
Next Thursday, I offer the current version of my solo autobiographical performance, entitled "Bad Asian Daughter", with a richness of feeling that grows each time I perform. I am honored to share the details of it here, and to share the stage with my friends and fellow performance creators, JP Tilleman and Scott Taylor, who each present original solo work created within the past year. I hope you will come, and I thank all of you who have been part of my life's journey so far.