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Transcript

Alexandra Beller · Postcards to the Universe

0:09
Speaker 1: Welcome to Postcards to the Universe with Melissa Capria. Do
0:14
Speaker 1: you believe in magic? What if you were told that
0:17
Speaker 1: all you had to do was get a little creative
0:19
Speaker 1: and work a magic spell to bring anything you can
0:23
Speaker 1: imagine into your life. Here on Postcards to the Universe,
0:27
Speaker 1: we will share manifesting tips, postcards, creativity, abundance, and prosperity.
0:34
Speaker 1: Here is your host, Melissa Capria.
0:39
Speaker 2: Hi everybody, and welcome to Postcards to the Universe with
0:42
Speaker 2: Melissa creating the life you crave. How are you guys doing.
0:46
Speaker 2: It's Wednesday, my favorite day of the week. I have
0:49
Speaker 2: a really cool guest today. She's an artist, a choreographer,
0:52
Speaker 2: a creative and an author, Alexandra Beller, and she's going
0:56
Speaker 2: to join me in just a few minutes. So I
1:00
Speaker 2: have some announcements that I want to make.
1:03
Speaker 3: Well.
1:03
Speaker 2: First of all, if you're hearing me for the first time,
1:06
Speaker 2: I want to say welcome, And just so you know
1:10
Speaker 2: that we do record the show live, and if you're
1:13
Speaker 2: listening and it's October fifteenth at four pm Eastern time,
1:16
Speaker 2: you're listening to us live. But every show goes up
1:19
Speaker 2: on all the podcasting platforms. It goes on Ome Times
1:22
Speaker 2: Radio in the archives, and it goes on my website
1:26
Speaker 2: Postcards to the Universe dot Com. In the podcasting section.
1:30
Speaker 2: There will be a bio about the guests that I
1:33
Speaker 2: am talking with that day, so please go through. You
1:36
Speaker 2: can listen anytime you want. So the announcement that I
1:39
Speaker 2: want to make is you're listening to me on radio
1:42
Speaker 2: and in starting in November, I'm transferring the show. It's
1:46
Speaker 2: still going to be on radio, but it's also going
1:49
Speaker 2: to be on Home Times TV and I'm going to
1:52
Speaker 2: be on television also, so we're going to have the
1:54
Speaker 2: show with video and radio. I'm going down though, it's
1:58
Speaker 2: just with the video. It's too difficult to do every Wednesday,
2:00
Speaker 2: so my new schedule will be the first and the
2:03
Speaker 2: third Wednesdays of every month. I'm very excited about it,
2:08
Speaker 2: so I just wanted to share with you all, and
2:10
Speaker 2: for my regulars who I just adore you, Thank you
2:13
Speaker 2: so much. You'll get to see us on It streams
2:16
Speaker 2: live on YouTube on Home Times TV YouTube and Chris,
2:20
Speaker 2: my producer, is going to try to stream it live
2:23
Speaker 2: on my YouTube channel too, which is Postcards to the Universe.
2:26
Speaker 2: If we can't do it live, you know, I will
2:29
Speaker 2: put it back up there, and I'll always have links
2:31
Speaker 2: to it all the time, so I definitely will be
2:34
Speaker 2: sharing that and also anybody who's interested in who likes
2:40
Speaker 2: to do, you know, online events. There's a really cool
2:44
Speaker 2: one that I am a part of. It's called The
2:46
Speaker 2: Abundant Life, a Harvest of celebration of Spirit and Expansion.
2:51
Speaker 2: I am giving a talk on October twenty six, which
2:56
Speaker 2: is Sunday, and it is a whole bunch of spiritualists.
3:02
Speaker 2: There's going to be people reading cards. It's an amazing
3:05
Speaker 2: event and I'm My subject is Weaving your Destiny, a
3:08
Speaker 2: mystical approach to dreamcasting with Postcards to the Universe. So
3:12
Speaker 2: you can find out if you go to my website,
3:15
Speaker 2: if you go to Postcards to the Universe, I'll have
3:19
Speaker 2: the information link up there. But I asked it on
3:21
Speaker 2: my social so really you can find it on Instagram
3:23
Speaker 2: and Facebook and LinkedIn, so you can just find the link.
3:27
Speaker 2: But it's called The Abundant Life, a Harvest celebration of
3:30
Speaker 2: Spirit and expansion. So I just wanted to share that.
3:33
Speaker 2: Go to Postcards to the Universe my YouTube channel. I'll
3:38
Speaker 2: talk about that on there too, And I've been doing
3:40
Speaker 2: these short videos. I made a deck of oracle cards.
3:43
Speaker 2: I've been reading those. I'm learning to row, I've been
3:46
Speaker 2: playing with that. That's all on there, So I'd love
3:48
Speaker 2: to see you over there, all right, So now let
3:51
Speaker 2: me get to my guest today, Alexandra Bellar. She is
3:55
Speaker 2: a celebrated choreographer, a director, and educator with over twenty
3:59
Speaker 2: five years of experience dance and dance, theater, and the
4:02
Speaker 2: creative process. A former company member of the Bill T.
4:06
Speaker 2: Jones Arnie Zane Dance Company, director of Alexandra Beller Dances,
4:11
Speaker 2: and professor at universities throughout the country, she has since
4:14
Speaker 2: become a sought after mentor, helping artists and students cultivate brave, embodied,
4:19
Speaker 2: and meaningful creative practices. She is an award winning choreographer
4:24
Speaker 2: for theater and intimacy director, and is the author of
4:28
Speaker 2: two books, The Embodied Conductor and The Anatomy of Art,
4:32
Speaker 2: Unlocking the creative Process for theater and dance. Anatomy of
4:35
Speaker 2: Art is a field guide for artists, a powerful blend
4:38
Speaker 2: of poetic insight, practical tools, and embodied wisdom that challenges
4:43
Speaker 2: makers to disrupt their habits, trust their instincts, and reimagine
4:47
Speaker 2: how they create, whether in studio or on the page.
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Speaker 2: She brings clarity, rigor, and deep care to the messy,
4:53
Speaker 2: beautiful work of making art. I love it so much.
4:57
Speaker 2: You can find out more about her. You can go
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Speaker 2: to her way site. It's Alexandrabeller Dances dot org. I'm
5:03
Speaker 2: gonna spell it since we're on radio A L e
5:06
Speaker 2: X A n d r A b E L L
5:09
Speaker 2: E r d A n c E.
5:12
Speaker 3: S dot org.
5:13
Speaker 2: Welcome Alexandra, thanks so much for being here with me today.
5:17
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
5:19
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk to you, and I love the
5:21
Speaker 2: fact that you're doing creative work because here's the thing.
5:24
Speaker 2: I think people think they have to be an artist
5:26
Speaker 2: to tap into their creativity, and I don't think that
5:29
Speaker 2: that is true, right, Like, I think part of what's
5:33
Speaker 2: going on in our world is because people are so
5:38
Speaker 2: unhappy because they are not tapping into the creative spirit.
5:42
Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean that you have to be a
5:44
Speaker 2: painter and be showing at galleries or a dancer, you know,
5:48
Speaker 2: doing a theater production. I mean you could if you
5:50
Speaker 2: wanted to, but you don't have to. So share a
5:53
Speaker 2: little bit about like how you got into the journey
5:56
Speaker 2: of what you're doing right now with your art.
6:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just want to say first about one hundred
6:03
Speaker 4: percent agree. And I feel like books like The Artists'
6:07
Speaker 4: Way are made to prove that point that we are
6:12
Speaker 4: innately creative. If you look at our sort of first
6:17
Speaker 4: language of physicality, our bodies are innately curious. If you,
6:22
Speaker 4: you know, have had the pleasure of watching a baby
6:25
Speaker 4: explore and discover, and a toddler, you know that we
6:29
Speaker 4: are We learn the world, We ingest, metabolize, and we
6:33
Speaker 4: become ourselves through exploration, curiosity, and creativity. Everything that we
6:40
Speaker 4: become is because we are ingesting the world with a
6:44
Speaker 4: certain kind of attention and vigor and metabolizing it in
6:49
Speaker 4: our unique way and then making something from it. And
6:52
Speaker 4: as you said, the thing we make from it doesn't
6:55
Speaker 4: need to be you know, art with a capital A.
6:59
Speaker 4: You know, we're you decide to put your couch, what
7:01
Speaker 4: you decide to wear that day, how much salt you.
7:03
Speaker 3: Put in your soup. It's all creation.
7:07
Speaker 4: And I'm working right now with a client who works
7:13
Speaker 4: predominantly with disabled bodies, and I've been mentoring her and
7:20
Speaker 4: we've been trying to come up with essentially like what's
7:23
Speaker 4: her signature method. And one of the things that came
7:29
Speaker 4: up in our conversation that I've been really holding in
7:34
Speaker 4: my space for weeks now is something I said to
7:40
Speaker 4: her but kind of just in slow and I've said,
7:44
Speaker 4: people who are living in disabled bodies are the most
7:49
Speaker 4: creative people because every aspect, even mundane things in their
7:54
Speaker 4: life often requires that they find a way around, over, under,
7:58
Speaker 4: through because the world it's not made for them, and
8:01
Speaker 4: the world's not made accessible to them, so they have
8:05
Speaker 4: to figure out how to access what they need in
8:08
Speaker 4: a world that's not made for them. And for those
8:10
Speaker 4: of us who have like invisible disabilities like autism, et cetera,
8:16
Speaker 4: we may feel that way as well. You know, even
8:19
Speaker 4: though it's maybe not visible to the world that we're
8:22
Speaker 4: doing so much adaptation.
8:24
Speaker 1: But our.
8:26
Speaker 4: Innate creativity is writing our lives, writing the constant change
8:33
Speaker 4: that is life, that is creativity. We are constantly creating
8:39
Speaker 4: our life. And yes, of course you can have anything
8:45
Speaker 4: from a mild hobby through a profession that's more like
8:49
Speaker 4: a capital a art, but that's sort of irrelevant. Like
8:53
Speaker 4: the way you parent can be creative, the way you cook,
8:56
Speaker 4: the way you communicate the way you put your words together.
9:00
Speaker 4: And I don't even mean like in a creative writing,
9:02
Speaker 4: but just how you articulate what it feels like to
9:05
Speaker 4: be you to other people. So I one hundred percent
9:11
Speaker 4: triple down on what you said.
9:15
Speaker 3: How did I get into this? I feel like I was.
9:18
Speaker 4: Do you think sometimes you meet kids and you're just like,
9:21
Speaker 4: you're an unusual child. You're definitely like a very mature, creative,
9:28
Speaker 4: precocious something, and you know, sometimes that's trauma and sometimes
9:33
Speaker 4: that's whatever else is part of you know, what we're
9:37
Speaker 4: born with or you know, depending on what your belief
9:40
Speaker 4: system is around how we become us and what our
9:44
Speaker 4: usness is. But you know, whatever the algorithm of that
9:48
Speaker 4: is for you, whether that's you know, full spirit, astrology, whatever,
9:52
Speaker 4: you know, Like, children have something and they're different from
9:55
Speaker 4: each other, and then of course there's all of this
9:58
Speaker 4: nurture or lack thereof that becomes them. And so I
10:04
Speaker 4: was always a very creative to the point of being
10:08
Speaker 4: an unusual child. And I did really fancy art with
10:13
Speaker 4: a capital A first, drawing and painting and singing. But
10:18
Speaker 4: when I took my first dance class when I was eight,
10:21
Speaker 4: I was like Oh yeah, that's me.
10:24
Speaker 3: That's it.
10:25
Speaker 4: That's where I find myself. And that's really what it
10:29
Speaker 4: felt like. And I think my version of childhood had
10:33
Speaker 4: a lot of a lack of visibility for me, so
10:37
Speaker 4: not a lot of people were watching me, and so
10:42
Speaker 4: I think in some ways it wasn't just the being watched.
10:45
Speaker 4: It was the reflection of yourself that you get from
10:48
Speaker 4: people watching you that helps you feel yourself. And I
10:54
Speaker 4: sometimes when I look back on it, I think I
10:58
Speaker 4: think I disappear a little bit in the absence of
11:02
Speaker 4: other people, and dance, in addition to actually being physically
11:07
Speaker 4: visible for people, I experienced myself and I experienced parts
11:14
Speaker 4: of myself that I didn't experience in conversation or in writing,
11:19
Speaker 4: or in academia or in sports or any other place.
11:23
Speaker 3: It was like dance opened up access to myself and
11:28
Speaker 3: then made.
11:30
Speaker 4: That self visible to other people. So it was quite
11:34
Speaker 4: a magical place for me to be.
11:38
Speaker 3: That's beautiful.
11:39
Speaker 2: I understand that I'm a visual artist. I'm a photographer,
11:42
Speaker 2: that's my background, and photography does that for me. I
11:46
Speaker 2: can say things in my work that I couldn't say
11:49
Speaker 2: in words and couldn't describe, you know, in my photos,
11:52
Speaker 2: So I get that, but I have to say I
11:55
Speaker 2: love what you said about disabled people. And because my sister,
12:01
Speaker 2: who passed away three years ago was developmentally disabled. My
12:04
Speaker 2: sister Tony, and I have a nephew who was on
12:06
Speaker 2: the spectrum who is very verbal but doesn't speak in words,
12:10
Speaker 2: and we take care of ten girls. We have two
12:12
Speaker 2: group homes and we take care of ten girls in
12:14
Speaker 2: the disabled community. And my sister Tony, when you said creativity,
12:20
Speaker 2: she was the one her and my nephew both. I
12:25
Speaker 2: have never seen unconditional love expressed in a way that
12:33
Speaker 2: it is expressed from that community. And it made me
12:38
Speaker 2: think of her, and that was her expressing her creative,
12:42
Speaker 2: poetic side of who she was because there was never judgments,
12:48
Speaker 2: you know, like we do like we quote unquote you
12:52
Speaker 2: know whatever that normal is supposed to be, right, putting
12:55
Speaker 2: people in categories like, it was never like that, you
12:58
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. Yeah, I never thought about it
13:02
Speaker 2: in terms of expressing creativity. And I love that you're
13:06
Speaker 2: doing that work and you're mentoring somebody right now doing
13:08
Speaker 2: that kind of work. That to me just touches my
13:10
Speaker 2: heart so deeply.
13:11
Speaker 3: That's really beautiful.
13:12
Speaker 2: Actually, thank you for sharing that.
13:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I feel like.
13:19
Speaker 4: Survival often has its own category for people. And you know,
13:28
Speaker 4: as you said in the beginning, oh, it doesn't need
13:29
Speaker 4: to be you know, on a theater, on a canvas,
13:32
Speaker 4: et cetera. But I don't feel like as a society
13:36
Speaker 4: we really understand the level of creativity that.
13:41
Speaker 3: Is necessary to survive.
13:44
Speaker 4: And anyone that's been in survival level situations and you
13:49
Speaker 4: can go really extreme and say, you know, plane crash
13:53
Speaker 4: and you're on a mountain and you you know, have
13:55
Speaker 4: to figure out how to survive, your comp't like let's
13:58
Speaker 4: use this and let's do let's charten that. Let's you know,
14:01
Speaker 4: make a trap right and you're creating right. That's total creativity,
14:05
Speaker 4: survival level creativity. But I think also socially, emotionally, politically,
14:10
Speaker 4: et cetera. When we're in a survival situation, which you know,
14:17
Speaker 4: unfortunately living an enablest society, it does require a different
14:26
Speaker 4: level of adaptation and creativity from anyone who doesn't quote
14:30
Speaker 4: unquote fit in, and we don't honor the kind of creativity.
14:37
Speaker 4: So what this Peter and I are working on is
14:41
Speaker 4: how we can not only remind the people that are
14:46
Speaker 4: living in these bodies, how creative they are all the time,
14:52
Speaker 4: and how like extra skilled they are at adaptation and creation,
14:57
Speaker 4: which is most of the skill set for movement improvisation
15:02
Speaker 4: is adaptation and spontaneous invention, right, we're talking improvisation. So
15:07
Speaker 4: where we want to find ways to remind the disabled
15:10
Speaker 4: bodies like you are uniquely gifted at this, like you
15:14
Speaker 4: need to tap into how often you do this but
15:17
Speaker 4: actually do it for pleasure and expression rather than survival.
15:22
Speaker 4: And then what can we learn from people who are
15:24
Speaker 4: so uniquely gifted at this?
15:26
Speaker 3: How can we.
15:28
Speaker 4: Bring their wisdom through their body into the room in
15:32
Speaker 4: a way that it can affect and teach maybe more
15:37
Speaker 4: able bodied movers to listen to the level of constant
15:45
Speaker 4: adaptation and spontaneous invention that somebody in a disabled body
15:49
Speaker 4: has learned.
15:49
Speaker 3: How to do.
15:50
Speaker 4: How can we learn from them? Because of course there's
15:53
Speaker 4: all of this hierarchy inside ableism of like, oh, you know,
16:00
Speaker 4: you're doing sort of a factimile of dance. You're doing
16:04
Speaker 4: the best you can in your chair, and it's such
16:08
Speaker 4: an offensive you know, version and vision, and we would.
16:14
Speaker 3: Like to figure out how to flip it and.
16:15
Speaker 4: Be like oh no, no, no, no, you know a
16:19
Speaker 4: ton of things that these people don't know. So how
16:22
Speaker 4: can we figure out not only remind you how much
16:25
Speaker 4: you know, but bring it into the room so that
16:27
Speaker 4: they can absorb it and metabolize it.
16:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me, especially now watching
16:35
Speaker 2: my nephew grow up, who is communicating with us all
16:40
Speaker 2: the time, but not in the way that I'm speaking
16:44
Speaker 2: to you, right, But his understanding is that it's such
16:48
Speaker 2: a high level and the way he navigates his life, right,
16:54
Speaker 2: I'm amazed at what he is capable of finding ways
17:01
Speaker 2: to communicate to us in different ways than talking and
17:07
Speaker 2: he's verbalizing, but he and he does it and he
17:11
Speaker 2: manages it, and it's incredible to watch because this is
17:16
Speaker 2: how he is navigating his world, right. Like, So, so
17:20
Speaker 2: I see what you're talking about, Like, we need to
17:24
Speaker 2: as a society, able bodied, able mind, whatever you want
17:30
Speaker 2: to call it. I don't know, I don't know about that,
17:32
Speaker 2: but but just or yeah, neurotypical whatever that is, muggle,
17:39
Speaker 2: we call them muggle.
17:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
17:42
Speaker 2: I think we need to have conversations like this is
17:47
Speaker 2: important and realize that there's wisdom there for us, and
17:53
Speaker 2: there's there's there's things happening that are so much deeper
17:58
Speaker 2: than we are aware of, right, And I love that
18:02
Speaker 2: you talk about this, and I love that you talk about,
18:05
Speaker 2: you know, embodied creativity and what the body knows before
18:10
Speaker 2: the mind knows. So can you share a little bit
18:14
Speaker 2: about like what you mean about that for people listening?
18:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, So.
18:20
Speaker 4: Not everybody will share this belief with me, but I
18:24
Speaker 4: will say.
18:25
Speaker 3: From both.
18:28
Speaker 4: Empirical knowledge, with the wisdom of my own experience in
18:32
Speaker 4: my body and a lot of watching bodies, I have
18:37
Speaker 4: absolutely no doubt that the body has information that is
18:42
Speaker 4: not always part of our conscious mind. So and it's
18:48
Speaker 4: not you know, we can talk about trauma, and that's
18:50
Speaker 4: an easy one.
18:51
Speaker 3: To see, but it's not just trauma.
18:53
Speaker 4: I think all kinds of feelings get stored in the body.
18:57
Speaker 4: One definition that I use for trauma is when we
19:02
Speaker 4: do not have enough time durational time to process and
19:06
Speaker 4: metabolize something that has happened to us, and some things
19:09
Speaker 4: that happened to us we will never have there's there
19:12
Speaker 4: doesn't exist enough time to process some of the you know,
19:18
Speaker 4: worse things that can happen to a human being, which
19:21
Speaker 4: means you will always deal with some level of trauma
19:24
Speaker 4: in your life and you're managing it. Other things I
19:27
Speaker 4: think can be metabolized. But there's something about that definition
19:32
Speaker 4: and talking about it in relation to time.
19:36
Speaker 3: That I really like.
19:37
Speaker 4: And so if you think of it at a somewhat
19:40
Speaker 4: like reductive level, something happens you do not have or
19:45
Speaker 4: take the time required.
19:47
Speaker 3: To really process that.
19:48
Speaker 4: And that thing could be, you know, the way that
19:52
Speaker 4: your mom talked to you, or the way that a
19:53
Speaker 4: teacher talked to you, or a way that you've felt
19:57
Speaker 4: in relation to other people. You're a age, et cetera, right,
20:01
Speaker 4: and it doesn't need to be a trauma with a
20:03
Speaker 4: capital T. You don't have the time where their resources
20:07
Speaker 4: or information whatever, it doesn't get processed. It has to
20:11
Speaker 4: go somewhere. The feeling itself has to go somewhere. And
20:17
Speaker 4: one definition I've heard about emotion is that it's the
20:21
Speaker 4: mind's way of making sense of what the body is feeling.
20:25
Speaker 3: So it's like, the.
20:26
Speaker 4: Body feels something and then the mind is like, oh you're.
20:30
Speaker 3: Sad or oh you're scared.
20:33
Speaker 4: But actually the body, and we certainly know this from
20:36
Speaker 4: our adrenal system fit, flight, freeze, fawn flop, et cetera,
20:40
Speaker 4: the body often responds faster than we can catalog something,
20:46
Speaker 4: and that's well proven. Neurologically, we have something called the
20:51
Speaker 4: enteric nervous system. There's over one hundred million neurons in
20:56
Speaker 4: the gut. So when people are talking about your gut instinct,
20:59
Speaker 4: your gut response, say it from your gut. But that's
21:02
Speaker 4: real science. There's there are neurons in there that makes
21:07
Speaker 4: a body react and an act before we have any
21:13
Speaker 4: kind of conscious like oh I'm scared, or I'm drinking
21:16
Speaker 4: or I'm retreating. So I notice in my own system,
21:22
Speaker 4: I have released a lot of the inhibition and shame
21:28
Speaker 4: around letting my body be authentic. Meaning sometimes I'll find
21:36
Speaker 4: like my shoulders come up near my ears and my
21:38
Speaker 4: hands are in little fists underneath my chin, and I'm like, oh,
21:42
Speaker 4: that that's a young part of me that's having a
21:46
Speaker 4: feeling right now. And of course I don't do this
21:48
Speaker 4: in every situation. I'm not like, you know, teaching a
21:51
Speaker 4: class at Princeton and becoming five years old, unless it's
21:55
Speaker 4: indicated and I'm framing it. I have done it in
21:59
Speaker 4: college classes, but in a very particular way where I'm
22:03
Speaker 4: talking about it and then saying like I'm going to
22:05
Speaker 4: let this happen in front of you. I'm going to
22:07
Speaker 4: show you something, and I can basically like release the
22:13
Speaker 4: control on it. Basically, I feel like we all have
22:18
Speaker 4: a certain amount that we're controlling and inhibiting some of
22:22
Speaker 4: our parts from acting out saying what we want to
22:25
Speaker 4: say and the way we want to say, using the
22:27
Speaker 4: tone of voice, making the facial expression, letting our body
22:29
Speaker 4: do what it wants to do. I, over time, in
22:33
Speaker 4: my own body, have gotten quite a nuanced sense of
22:38
Speaker 4: the I call it the mixing board of like my
22:40
Speaker 4: different parts, and I can basically just sort of turn
22:45
Speaker 4: the volume up and let one part like.
22:48
Speaker 3: Take over body.
22:49
Speaker 4: And I can still like speak as a fifty three
22:52
Speaker 4: year old woman, but my part of my body is
22:57
Speaker 4: five and is visible as five, and I can talk
23:01
Speaker 4: like an adult. But I can also talk to the part.
23:05
Speaker 4: I can talk to my fists under my chin and
23:07
Speaker 4: be like, hey, what's going on? You know, there's somebody
23:12
Speaker 4: really young, So that's part of it. And then there's
23:17
Speaker 4: so much more that's in the body. And when we
23:20
Speaker 4: do a practice like authentic movement, which is simply moving
23:26
Speaker 4: without full destination, inhibition, et cetera, in front of a witness.
23:37
Speaker 4: Usually one person is watching you and you have your
23:39
Speaker 4: eyes closed and you're just letting yourself move in exactly
23:43
Speaker 4: the way that your body wants to move. And that
23:45
Speaker 4: could be a big dancer, it could be curling up
23:48
Speaker 4: in a ball and rocking.
23:49
Speaker 3: It could be anything.
23:50
Speaker 4: It's not meant to be some performative experience or beautiful
23:55
Speaker 4: dance or anything like that, even when you're a very
23:57
Speaker 4: fancy dancer. It's meant to be just exactly what your
24:01
Speaker 4: body wants to say.
24:03
Speaker 3: And we our.
24:05
Speaker 4: Body stops trusting us when we don't listen to it repeatedly,
24:12
Speaker 4: and of course we often have to ignore the body.
24:15
Speaker 4: It's simply like living in late stage capitalism. You know,
24:20
Speaker 4: I have to show up for the class, and part
24:22
Speaker 4: of me does not want to go teach that class.
24:24
Speaker 4: I want to do something different. But we're going to
24:28
Speaker 4: go show up for the class, and we're going to
24:30
Speaker 4: be fifty three, and we're going to take care of
24:31
Speaker 4: other people, and we're going to make a strong frame
24:34
Speaker 4: for the room, and we're going to do what needs
24:35
Speaker 4: to be done. And my body doesn't always want to
24:38
Speaker 4: do that. And so if I don't make space for
24:42
Speaker 4: my body later to express itself and to repair a
24:47
Speaker 4: little bit, like when you've dragged your toddler around all
24:51
Speaker 4: day and then in the grocery store they melt down,
24:54
Speaker 4: and really the only reasonable thing to do is to
24:58
Speaker 4: like say, okay, I forget about my groceries right now.
25:02
Speaker 3: This is what's really important.
25:04
Speaker 4: Then you get down on you know, a knee, and
25:07
Speaker 4: you're like, buddy, I'm so sorry. I have not been
25:10
Speaker 4: listening to you, and you've been asking me all day
25:13
Speaker 4: for something that you want, and I have been ignoring
25:16
Speaker 4: you and shuttling you around, and I, you know, I
25:21
Speaker 4: want to repair it, and let's figure out what you need.
25:23
Speaker 4: And that toddler in that moment may not be like, oh, okay, great, thanks,
25:28
Speaker 4: let's do this.
25:29
Speaker 3: They may be like, I don't believe you.
25:31
Speaker 4: I don't trust you. You said we do this after that,
25:35
Speaker 4: and then we didn't do that. And you know, parts
25:38
Speaker 4: of your body can feel like that after sitting at
25:42
Speaker 4: your desk all day, or you know, sticking to your
25:44
Speaker 4: schedule or showing up for everybody but yourself, and the
25:49
Speaker 4: body needs some attention and repair and listening, and just
25:57
Speaker 4: the way your toddler would need it if they lost
26:02
Speaker 4: faith that you were listening to them so and when
26:05
Speaker 4: I say that, I'm like, oh, that's that's sad. You know,
26:09
Speaker 4: if I imagine one of my kids being like, whatever,
26:11
Speaker 4: I don't really tell you anything anymore because you never
26:14
Speaker 4: listen to me anyway, and it doesn't make a difference, like, oh,
26:17
Speaker 4: that's heartbreaking. And most of our bodies are in some
26:21
Speaker 4: version of that state with us where they're like whatever.
26:25
Speaker 4: You know, you gave me to the gym and you
26:27
Speaker 4: think I'm working out, and you know, like you think
26:29
Speaker 4: that that's but that's not what.
26:31
Speaker 3: I wanted to do.
26:32
Speaker 4: I wanted to sing on the swings, or I wanted
26:34
Speaker 4: to lay in bed, or I wanted to have ice
26:37
Speaker 4: cream and you wouldn't let.
26:38
Speaker 3: Me, or you know.
26:39
Speaker 4: And of course that doesn't mean we just do whatever
26:42
Speaker 4: we want whenever.
26:45
Speaker 2: No, it's really making me think about how we don't
26:48
Speaker 2: we don't listen to our bodies, and how we can release,
26:54
Speaker 2: you know, like release our bodies to be able to
26:58
Speaker 2: express what it needs right separate from what our mind
27:02
Speaker 2: thinks it needs or our mind is telling us we
27:04
Speaker 2: must do. I want to talk more about that when
27:06
Speaker 2: we come back. I just looked at the time we
27:08
Speaker 2: are at the halftime mark. Let's take our break here
27:10
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk more when we come back.
27:12
Speaker 2: Stay tuned and I'll be back in just a couple
27:14
Speaker 2: of minutes.
27:19
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29:30
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29:38
Speaker 2: will be introduced to the coolest guests, trailblazers, mystics and
29:41
Speaker 2: creatives who enrich our lives. Welcome back. I'm speaking with
29:53
Speaker 2: artists choreographer, dancer, creative and author Alexandra Beller and we
29:57
Speaker 2: were talking about our bodies and lis listening to our
30:00
Speaker 2: bodies and using our bodies for creative expression. So is
30:05
Speaker 2: there some kind of a for anybody who's listening Alexandra
30:08
Speaker 2: who is like, you know, that sounds really cool, Like
30:14
Speaker 2: I need to allow my body to express itself and
30:19
Speaker 2: maybe you know, you want to do it in private
30:21
Speaker 2: in your bedroom. Is there like prompts that you help
30:24
Speaker 2: with your students, like you know they should I don't know,
30:28
Speaker 2: you know, do ten jumping jacks just to move the energy,
30:32
Speaker 2: you know, anything that I'm I'm just fitballing here, just
30:35
Speaker 2: coming out anything that I can think of, But like,
30:38
Speaker 2: do you tell people of certain things that they can
30:40
Speaker 2: do to kind of move that energy in their body?
30:43
Speaker 3: Stuff that we can do? Yeah, I mean, I think
30:46
Speaker 3: it's very.
30:48
Speaker 4: Case specific and part of part of what I'm really
30:54
Speaker 4: interested in is like what does your body want?
30:58
Speaker 3: And so I think, I mean.
31:01
Speaker 4: I certainly believe movement is great for us, and movement
31:04
Speaker 4: is great for the body, the mind, mental health, et cetera.
31:08
Speaker 3: And there's nothing.
31:09
Speaker 4: Wrong with any kind of movement unless you're doing it
31:12
Speaker 4: to punish yourself in any way, or you know, doing
31:15
Speaker 4: it in any kind of self abusing way, which you
31:19
Speaker 4: know we do sometimes right at the gym or weight
31:22
Speaker 4: loss or whatever, where we get so focused that it
31:25
Speaker 4: becomes self harm.
31:26
Speaker 3: But barring that, I'm.
31:28
Speaker 4: A huge fan of any kind of movement you do
31:30
Speaker 4: is great for you and will benefit you and benefit
31:33
Speaker 4: your life. What we're talking about, though, is so so
31:40
Speaker 4: much deeper and more nuanced, and I think it does
31:44
Speaker 4: require shedding this obedience to outside information as an authority
31:55
Speaker 4: over our bodies. And I another belief I have is
32:02
Speaker 4: that our intuition.
32:05
Speaker 3: You know, we we sort.
32:06
Speaker 4: Of jokingly or gently lovingly refer to intuition as a
32:13
Speaker 4: sixth sense, but I think actually biologically intuition was meant
32:20
Speaker 4: to be our sixth sense, but we train ourselves out
32:24
Speaker 4: of using it. So if you, you know, were born
32:28
Speaker 4: with the privilege of vision, but for most of every
32:32
Speaker 4: day you had to keep tape over your eyes and
32:35
Speaker 4: you couldn't use your eyes for most of the time,
32:38
Speaker 4: your vision would not be a very dependable advanced sense
32:44
Speaker 4: for you, right of course, And of course other you know,
32:49
Speaker 4: as we know from people who are born without that privilege,
32:52
Speaker 4: like other senses do come online even greater. I think
32:57
Speaker 4: that we essentially most of us are conditioned. We have
33:04
Speaker 4: tape over our intuition metrics for most of our life and.
33:11
Speaker 3: The whole Like you.
33:12
Speaker 4: Know, you're five years old, you again are learning through
33:15
Speaker 4: curiosity and discovery, and your head is wildly wandering around
33:18
Speaker 4: and you're looking at everything, and you want to say
33:21
Speaker 4: things and you want to ask things. And then somebody
33:23
Speaker 4: tells you, at about five years old, sit down, look
33:27
Speaker 4: straight ahead, don't move, and be quiet and do what
33:31
Speaker 4: I tell you to do. And even in you know,
33:35
Speaker 4: more loving educational systems for the most part, once we
33:40
Speaker 4: stick a child in you know.
33:42
Speaker 3: Fairly western education they are.
33:47
Speaker 4: And then we say, you know, well, what does the
33:49
Speaker 4: doctor say about your body? And what does your parents
33:51
Speaker 4: say about your body? And what does the media say
33:53
Speaker 4: about your body and et cetera. We start losing our signals.
33:59
Speaker 4: And the metrics for intuition are all these other senses.
34:05
Speaker 4: Vestibular proprioception. Introception, which is your sense of what the
34:10
Speaker 4: inside your like when you can feel things.
34:12
Speaker 3: In your organs or your gut.
34:13
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm bloated, that's introception. Proprioception is looking at the world,
34:18
Speaker 4: but yourself in relation to it. How far away are
34:22
Speaker 4: things at this velocity? How long will it take my
34:26
Speaker 4: hand to get to the cup so that I know
34:28
Speaker 4: to open my hand around the cup. That's proprioception, and
34:33
Speaker 4: you know, vestibular is like equilibrium responses. Those are just
34:37
Speaker 4: some of the things that are I think that the
34:41
Speaker 4: scientific metrics that would underpin the sixth sense of intuition,
34:48
Speaker 4: but we get conditioned out of it. You eat at
34:51
Speaker 4: a certain time, you do this in this way. You
34:54
Speaker 4: know your body should be this size, regardless of your
35:00
Speaker 4: you know, natural makeup or your metabolism or your irovatic
35:03
Speaker 4: type or what you know, Like none of the none
35:05
Speaker 4: of this information, none of our individualization really comes into play.
35:11
Speaker 4: There are these standards and goals and milestones, and you've
35:15
Speaker 4: hit this mark, and we're not asking, you know, could
35:19
Speaker 4: you imagine if from when they're really young and we're
35:22
Speaker 4: trying to understand what it's like to be that particular child.
35:27
Speaker 4: If in the doctor's office, in addition maybe to blood
35:31
Speaker 4: pressure and weight and height and blood we were like,
35:34
Speaker 4: how does breathing feel to you? Like, how does how
35:38
Speaker 4: do you notice sometimes you breathe only little, and sometimes
35:41
Speaker 4: you breathe really big. Do you notice which times you
35:44
Speaker 4: breathe little? Oh, I don't breathe a lot around my dad. Oh,
35:50
Speaker 4: what's going on there?
35:52
Speaker 3: And we don't need to wait for a bruise.
35:54
Speaker 4: On your body and for somebody from child Protective Services
35:59
Speaker 4: to say that you're being abused, because your body is
36:02
Speaker 4: going to be communicating. And if we made real invitations
36:07
Speaker 4: from a very young age to like, I don't know
36:09
Speaker 4: the answer, maybe your body knows the answer. What does
36:13
Speaker 4: your body say? And if we really respected what their
36:16
Speaker 4: bodies were saying. And you know, I'm a parent, so
36:19
Speaker 4: I get that. It's like I made dinner and it's
36:23
Speaker 4: dinner time and I need to eat your dinner. And
36:25
Speaker 4: I get that. And at the same time, like that
36:29
Speaker 4: kid's not hungry at that time on that day, or
36:33
Speaker 4: their body really wants something that you didn't make. And
36:36
Speaker 4: I'm not just saying, like you know, given to every
36:39
Speaker 4: women every request. You know, there's an ecosystem in the
36:42
Speaker 4: house and we all count, and you know parents count too,
36:47
Speaker 4: And there's just such a conditioning against the truth of
36:53
Speaker 4: the body, and I think it just trains us out
36:57
Speaker 4: of real intuition.
36:59
Speaker 3: We have some I.
37:01
Speaker 2: Agree, and I notice to me that my creativity always
37:06
Speaker 2: stems from my intuition. They're they're, they're they're connected, completely connected,
37:11
Speaker 2: and I'll get intuitive hits and then I'll create something.
37:15
Speaker 2: Some some download will come to me because of an
37:19
Speaker 2: intuitive hit, and I want to create something, and then
37:21
Speaker 2: I create whatever kind of art I'm working on at
37:25
Speaker 2: the moment. And it's interesting you were saying that about
37:30
Speaker 2: you know, we we we're putting every especially kids, in
37:33
Speaker 2: these boxes. And I have a niece who is fifteen,
37:37
Speaker 2: and she is immensely creative, and I watch her put
37:42
Speaker 2: herself in this box of trying to fit into the
37:46
Speaker 2: western high school system. She's she's a junior. And I
37:50
Speaker 2: told her ago, you got more left left behind you
37:53
Speaker 2: than in front of you. You get through it, I know,
37:56
Speaker 2: but you're going to be able to create what you
37:59
Speaker 2: want just right. You know. I can see how she
38:03
Speaker 2: has to bring herself down. Yeah, because because she has
38:07
Speaker 2: such this creative person and she has so much and
38:10
Speaker 2: her unique way of expressing herself, right, she has to
38:14
Speaker 2: shut all that down so that she can finish, you know,
38:18
Speaker 2: and graduate school like we're supposed.
38:20
Speaker 3: To, you know kind of thing.
38:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you talk about and about the habits, about
38:28
Speaker 2: dismantling habits and why it's so important for artists. So
38:32
Speaker 2: let's slick segue a little bit into that, right, because
38:35
Speaker 2: that's what we got conditioned into habits, Like you said,
38:38
Speaker 2: we eat at a certain time, we do this at
38:40
Speaker 2: a certain time, we go to school at a certain time.
38:43
Speaker 2: So how do we dismantle some of these and why
38:46
Speaker 2: is it important for the artists or the creatives?
38:49
Speaker 4: And I will absolutely answer that I'm going to have
38:54
Speaker 4: out the answer before I give it by saying habits
38:57
Speaker 4: are also great and useful and necessary, and we need
39:01
Speaker 4: habits otherwise everything would be invention and we'd be exhausted
39:05
Speaker 4: by noon. And like I don't need to invent which
39:09
Speaker 4: pocket I hold my keys in. I don't need to invent,
39:11
Speaker 4: you know, like certain habits allow us the stability to
39:16
Speaker 4: be So in one of the practices I teach, which
39:21
Speaker 4: is called lab on mosment analysis, there's a concept called
39:25
Speaker 4: stability mobility, and essentially it's saying that for every amount
39:31
Speaker 4: of mobility that you want, you need equal amount.
39:34
Speaker 3: Of stability, and vice versa.
39:36
Speaker 4: For every amount of stability you want, you need a
39:39
Speaker 4: certain amount of mobility, which is why bridges are.
39:42
Speaker 3: Made to sway.
39:43
Speaker 4: And if you stand with your eyes closed, you'll notice
39:45
Speaker 4: your feet are doing all these micro adjustments.
39:48
Speaker 3: That's what's stabilizing you. Right.
39:50
Speaker 4: The more brittle, rigid you are, the less stable you are.
39:54
Speaker 3: Right.
39:55
Speaker 4: So stability mobility is this we call it a lemnus gait,
39:59
Speaker 4: like a modiu spand or this. You know, insinity signs interconnectedness, interdependence.
40:06
Speaker 4: So there is a stability to habit and then a
40:12
Speaker 4: mobility to creativity. And so we need some habit to
40:16
Speaker 4: keep us stable, and then we need some absence of
40:21
Speaker 4: habit or novelty or void or empty space for invention.
40:27
Speaker 4: And we just tend to bias towards habit. So I
40:33
Speaker 4: caveat it because I don't want to leave with the
40:36
Speaker 4: impression that, like you should arbitrarily break all your habits.
40:39
Speaker 3: Some of those habits.
40:40
Speaker 4: Are really useful and help and nourishing and lovingly protective
40:47
Speaker 4: of your energy or your boundaries or you know.
40:49
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
40:50
Speaker 4: I have a habit I don't keep my phone ringer on.
40:54
Speaker 4: That's that protects my peace right. And I like that habit.
41:00
Speaker 4: And then I have other habits.
41:01
Speaker 2: I have in the same habit. A picturb is on
41:05
Speaker 2: a lot throughout the day.
41:08
Speaker 4: And then I have other habits that inhibit my invention,
41:12
Speaker 4: so that one doesn't inhibit me.
41:13
Speaker 3: That one protects me. But I have other habits.
41:18
Speaker 4: And it's not that you shouldn't write in your writing
41:21
Speaker 4: chair that you lovingly arranged in your living room and
41:24
Speaker 4: you made a beautiful little spot for you to do
41:26
Speaker 4: your journaling, and that's great. And when all of the
41:34
Speaker 4: factors are similar, what's gonna the output's going to be similar.
41:38
Speaker 4: So you know, if you're fine with your journaling being
41:43
Speaker 4: a pretty similar practice, that chair is working great for you.
41:47
Speaker 4: And that habit works great if you are writing poetry
41:51
Speaker 4: or a screenplay, or you're writing something and you're like,
41:55
Speaker 4: I don't want this to be like the last thing
41:57
Speaker 4: I wrote. I want this to be different. Thing as
42:00
Speaker 4: simple as changing your location, changing your environment, changing your
42:04
Speaker 4: oral environment, what you're hearing, changing what you're looking at,
42:09
Speaker 4: changing the kind of clothes you wear, being barefoot instead
42:12
Speaker 4: of wearing.
42:13
Speaker 3: Shoes, et cetera.
42:15
Speaker 4: Like any novelty is going to shift the nervous system
42:20
Speaker 4: enough that it stimulates new thought and new idea.
42:24
Speaker 3: So you know, even something simple and you know, I.
42:28
Speaker 4: Use as an example of a positive habit, but it
42:30
Speaker 4: also could be a habit to break. Take a different
42:34
Speaker 4: walk home from work, get on your bike with your
42:38
Speaker 4: other leg, brush your teeth with your non dominant hand.
42:44
Speaker 4: Anything that you do that disrupts the familiar synaptic pathways
42:54
Speaker 4: alerts your brain to wait, something's.
42:58
Speaker 3: Not the way it always is, and you wake up.
43:01
Speaker 4: And that awakeness is part of what we started talking
43:04
Speaker 4: about in the beginning around disabled bodies having to be
43:08
Speaker 4: so awake all the time because the world is not
43:12
Speaker 4: just naturally laid out for them, so they're not really
43:15
Speaker 4: afforded the luxury of habits in the same way that
43:19
Speaker 4: you know people in more abled bodies are.
43:22
Speaker 3: Right, like I can.
43:22
Speaker 4: Reach for the you know, the elevator buttons always at
43:27
Speaker 4: a fine place for me.
43:28
Speaker 3: I can always reach it.
43:29
Speaker 4: I could reach with either hand and you know, so easy, right,
43:33
Speaker 4: But sometimes that's not true for a body, and so
43:37
Speaker 4: they have to invent something in that moment, so their
43:39
Speaker 4: level of awakeness is higher. And so what we're looking
43:43
Speaker 4: to do in ourselves is to find places where it
43:47
Speaker 4: is healthy and fertile to wake ourselves up, and other
43:53
Speaker 4: places where like that comfort and stability of habit is
43:57
Speaker 4: nourishing and loving productive.
44:01
Speaker 2: H Yeah, absolutely, yes, of course, some habits we definitely
44:07
Speaker 2: need to have that keep us going and keep society going. Right,
44:12
Speaker 2: of course we know that, right. You can't be a
44:15
Speaker 2: you can't be a pilot and decide my body doesn't
44:18
Speaker 2: just feel like flying today, you know, yeah, right, it
44:22
Speaker 2: doesn't work that way. But I want to say, because
44:24
Speaker 2: I'm seeing that where God time is going by so fast,
44:27
Speaker 2: I want to talk about your books, The Embodied Conductor
44:31
Speaker 2: and Anatomy of Art share a little bit about uh,
44:37
Speaker 2: you know, either but both, or if you want to
44:39
Speaker 2: if you want to pick Anatomy of Art the Field
44:42
Speaker 2: Guide for Artists, and talk a little bit about what
44:44
Speaker 2: what your books are about and what you wanted what
44:47
Speaker 2: you want people to gain from your writing.
44:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you for that question. And neither of them
44:54
Speaker 4: have released yet. They're both coming out in twenty twenty. Okay, thanks.
45:01
Speaker 4: The Embodied Conductor is really a supplemental textbook for conductors
45:06
Speaker 4: around embodiment, which seems odd that they don't it's not
45:10
Speaker 4: a major driver in their practice. But actually, music theory
45:15
Speaker 4: and pedagogy are really some of the major drivers that
45:19
Speaker 4: they used to teach conductors, and yet they're entire saying
45:23
Speaker 4: he's a dance and it was a revelation. My co author,
45:29
Speaker 4: doctor David Vickerman, brought me into San Jose State University
45:33
Speaker 4: when he was creating his first wind Conductor Symposium because
45:37
Speaker 4: I had taught him this practice of movement analysis, and
45:40
Speaker 4: he was like, I want you to teach my conductors.
45:42
Speaker 4: And it became such a beautiful exchange that that first
45:46
Speaker 4: summer we decided, let's write a book about this. So
45:49
Speaker 4: that's that book, and it's pretty niche and specific. My
45:52
Speaker 4: book I is a solo project and I have been
45:56
Speaker 4: working on it for nine years and I handed it
45:59
Speaker 4: in a week ago yesterday to Bloomsberry.
46:04
Speaker 3: And so it's a synthesis.
46:07
Speaker 4: Of a lot of my experience being an artist and
46:11
Speaker 4: then a lot of experience being a coach and facilitator
46:16
Speaker 4: for other artists and supporting them and making their work.
46:19
Speaker 4: And there's nothing quite like really tuned in mentorship. Mentorship
46:29
Speaker 4: where the mentor doesn't have an agenda. They're not trying
46:31
Speaker 4: to get you to be them or do something that
46:34
Speaker 4: they want you to do. They're really trying to support
46:38
Speaker 4: you being the most you you can be, and they're
46:42
Speaker 4: really curious about who that is.
46:45
Speaker 3: And they're also.
46:47
Speaker 4: You know, they're cheerleading you, but they're also providing enough rigor.
46:52
Speaker 3: And obstacle that you have to.
46:55
Speaker 4: Push and stretch and elasti size and challenge and move
46:59
Speaker 4: obstacles out of the way.
47:00
Speaker 3: And get creative right.
47:01
Speaker 4: We were started off talking about how the original form
47:06
Speaker 4: of creativity biologically is adaptation, and so I am naming
47:14
Speaker 4: a lot of the facets of the creative process from
47:17
Speaker 4: my own experience, and I and other people could have
47:22
Speaker 4: picked I picked twelve topics, could have picked twelve totally
47:25
Speaker 4: different topics, and nobody would be wrong. But I said,
47:28
Speaker 4: these are some of the most important things in my
47:31
Speaker 4: estimation time space, relationship, meaning environment, process, fact, faith, communication, material, context,
47:43
Speaker 4: and culture and priorities.
47:45
Speaker 3: So those are my twelve chapters.
47:48
Speaker 4: And in each one there's a journey from like more
47:52
Speaker 4: conceptual theoretical to embody to creative to practical. And so
48:00
Speaker 4: it starts with an essay and then there's tips from
48:02
Speaker 4: the essay, and then there's a framework to be able
48:05
Speaker 4: to use some of those things in practice. There's writing prompts,
48:09
Speaker 4: there's an embodiment exercise, there's a creative practice exercise that's
48:14
Speaker 4: not meant to to create a product, but meant to
48:19
Speaker 4: practice a set of actions or a mindset. And then
48:23
Speaker 4: there's a score that's meant to produce something. And then
48:27
Speaker 4: there's a bunch of questions at the end of every
48:29
Speaker 4: chapter for you to when you're hitting all on that topic.
48:35
Speaker 4: So when you're say, if you're a crack for a director.
48:38
Speaker 3: And you're like, what is wrong with this? I don't know,
48:41
Speaker 3: I'm stuck, I don't know what, I don't know what
48:44
Speaker 3: to do.
48:44
Speaker 4: Okay, So does one of these words feel like it's
48:48
Speaker 4: the portal to this this question, this wall you're hitting, Yeah,
48:52
Speaker 4: it feels like it's about relationship. Okay, So go into
48:56
Speaker 4: the relationship and go into the questions and see if
48:58
Speaker 4: one of those questions is the question that's gonna shake
49:01
Speaker 4: up your snow globe a little bit. Because often that's
49:05
Speaker 4: most of what I do in the room is like
49:06
Speaker 4: I try to ask just the right question.
49:10
Speaker 3: So, how do you feel like.
49:13
Speaker 4: What strategies are each of them using to get what
49:17
Speaker 4: they want? Or you know, where in their body do
49:22
Speaker 4: you feel like that actor has not committed to this action,
49:26
Speaker 4: you know, or whatever the question is. And when I'm
49:30
Speaker 4: in the room with them, it's easy. But being you know,
49:34
Speaker 4: outside and trying to respond to everybody's art through a book,
49:40
Speaker 4: that was the hardest part was like, what's the question
49:42
Speaker 4: that's going to totally open something up based on me
49:47
Speaker 4: having zero information about what you're making, who you are,
49:50
Speaker 4: what you care about. How do I write a question
49:52
Speaker 4: that's really specific that will help almost everybody, that doesn't
49:58
Speaker 4: offend anybody. It gets to something isn't generic. It's not
50:02
Speaker 4: an AI kind of question. It's like a you know,
50:06
Speaker 4: like really specific question. And that was the hardest part
50:10
Speaker 4: for me was figuring out those questions.
50:12
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it sounds really great. I'm excited for you
50:16
Speaker 2: and it's coming out in twenty twenty six. That's fantastic.
50:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.
50:20
Speaker 2: Now, how did you find the writing? Did you enjoy
50:23
Speaker 2: sitting down and writing as somebody who likes to dance
50:27
Speaker 2: and movement? Did you find it difficult? Because I've written
50:31
Speaker 2: a book, and for me, writing the book is not
50:36
Speaker 2: my first love.
50:37
Speaker 3: Of creating the art.
50:39
Speaker 2: You know, So it was a practice I had to
50:44
Speaker 2: get myself to do, you know, I had to give myself.
50:50
Speaker 2: I gave myself a timeline. I had certain hours of
50:54
Speaker 2: the day that I contributed to my book because I
50:56
Speaker 2: wanted the book to be born. Yeah, I had to
50:59
Speaker 2: write the book for it to be born.
51:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
51:02
Speaker 2: The writing for me is not what I enjoy the most,
51:04
Speaker 2: So I'm just curious as somebody who loves theater and
51:08
Speaker 2: dance and that has embodyment.
51:12
Speaker 3: Yeah.
51:13
Speaker 4: It was quite a process, and lucky for me, I
51:16
Speaker 4: was writing a book about creative.
51:18
Speaker 3: Process, so I got to.
51:20
Speaker 4: Try on and model the things I was talking about
51:23
Speaker 4: in the book in my writing practice, and I was like,
51:26
Speaker 4: why don't you try breaking a habit here?
51:27
Speaker 3: Why don't you you know, and like you're talking about this,
51:30
Speaker 3: why don't you try that. One of the biggest.
51:32
Speaker 4: Things that was a learning crew for me that I
51:35
Speaker 4: do feel like eventually I got to is I think
51:39
Speaker 4: one of the quintessential skills that every artist needs, which
51:44
Speaker 4: is understanding I'm really embracing celebrating their own individual process
51:52
Speaker 4: and not trying to sit their process into a mold
51:56
Speaker 4: or an outcome or compare it to somebody else's process.
51:59
Speaker 4: And eventually I got to really love writing. But I
52:04
Speaker 4: also discovered like there are certain parts of the writing
52:07
Speaker 4: process that I love and other parts that feel very strenuous.
52:12
Speaker 4: And I started to also love the rigor of the
52:17
Speaker 4: strenuous part, but I needed the landscape.
52:21
Speaker 3: I needed to map it.
52:22
Speaker 4: To say, Okay, I really like that first very creative.
52:25
Speaker 3: I don't outline.
52:26
Speaker 4: I do like just divergent thinking, you know, like stream
52:30
Speaker 4: of consciousness.
52:30
Speaker 3: I write something and I'm like, then I analyze that.
52:33
Speaker 3: I'm like, what's in this? What am I trying to say?
52:35
Speaker 4: That's the part for me that became painful was like
52:39
Speaker 4: the real rigor of I want to put pressure on
52:44
Speaker 4: my thoughts. I want to have really challenged this, thinking
52:49
Speaker 4: that what's the part that became strenuous. Then I started
52:52
Speaker 4: to learn how much I could enjoy grappling, just the
52:58
Speaker 4: way that we can enjoy doing aps right. And even
53:03
Speaker 4: though it's work, like you can get yourself into a mindset,
53:06
Speaker 4: we're like, it also feels very alive and it feels
53:10
Speaker 4: like powerful and it feels good. And I'm like, yeah,
53:13
Speaker 4: this grappling also feels good. But I needed to remember
53:17
Speaker 4: what part of the process I was going into and
53:19
Speaker 4: also check in with myself. And this goes right back
53:22
Speaker 4: to one of our first things about you know, authenticity
53:25
Speaker 4: in the body. Do you have that grappling in you today?
53:28
Speaker 3: No, I don't.
53:30
Speaker 4: I need to be methodical today. Okay, go back and
53:33
Speaker 4: edit something else. Don't try to grapple today. I need
53:36
Speaker 4: to be pretty and creative today.
53:37
Speaker 3: Great, write something new.
53:39
Speaker 4: And I needed to understand what the book needed and
53:43
Speaker 4: what I needed and to negotiate between them in a
53:47
Speaker 4: very conscious way. And once I learned to do that,
53:49
Speaker 4: I actually all I wanted to do was write my book.
53:52
Speaker 4: And I was kind of resentful about having to like
53:55
Speaker 4: go teach classes or go to work. I was like,
53:57
Speaker 4: I don't want to stay and write all day. I
53:58
Speaker 4: don't want to do all this other stuff. I want
54:00
Speaker 4: to have an eight hour writing block. And it became
54:04
Speaker 4: my joy and actually my pain that I couldn't do it.
54:08
Speaker 2: Wow, that's interesting. Well that's good. I'm glad. That's good.
54:11
Speaker 2: I'm glad you had that experience. We didn't even get
54:14
Speaker 2: a chance to touch. I just want to touch on
54:16
Speaker 2: this because we only have a couple of minutes left.
54:18
Speaker 2: Is making meaning in a world that wants product art
54:21
Speaker 2: versus capitalism, Because especially when you're watching if you're on
54:26
Speaker 2: social media and you're watching videos and short videos. It's
54:31
Speaker 2: like all about monetizing, monetizing, monetizing, monetizing, And don't get
54:34
Speaker 2: me wrong, I would love to monetize, but I want
54:37
Speaker 2: to be my authentic self. I want to talk about
54:40
Speaker 2: and create what I want to create and talk about.
54:43
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's a push for everything to be a
54:47
Speaker 2: product and it doesn't have to be. So maybe you
54:50
Speaker 2: can just wrap us up with that, you know, as
54:53
Speaker 2: we have all left.
54:55
Speaker 4: I think that the most important aspect of that is tempo.
55:01
Speaker 4: And I think the thing that gets co opted the most,
55:04
Speaker 4: and it's a nervous system thing, is our tempo. And
55:09
Speaker 4: in general, I think we're all moving faster than we
55:12
Speaker 4: really want to be moving, and that speed does not
55:16
Speaker 4: facilitate creativity and invention and authenticity in.
55:21
Speaker 3: The way that we would value.
55:23
Speaker 4: So I think the most important f you to capitalism.
55:29
Speaker 3: Is to slow down.
55:31
Speaker 4: And if I could leave with something is to say,
55:34
Speaker 4: the biggest revolution you can do is to slow down.
55:40
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I just got goosebumps. We couldn't have
55:44
Speaker 2: ended it better than We couldn't have ended it better
55:47
Speaker 2: than that. Thank you so much, Alexandra. It was a
55:49
Speaker 2: really pawful conversation. I really enjoyed having you on my
55:53
Speaker 2: show today. All right, everybody go and check her out. Yeah,
55:58
Speaker 2: and thank you so much everyone for listening Postcards to
56:02
Speaker 2: the Universe with Melissa creating the life you crave. And
56:05
Speaker 2: I'm wishing everyone a wonderful week filled with joy, abundance
56:09
Speaker 2: and love. Peace,