So guys, I don't know if you heard, but the cast recording of Hamilton was released recently. I haven't gone a full day since without listening through it at least once. The show’s amazing, the album is amazing, Lin-Manuel Miranda won a MacArthur Genius Grant, everything is awesome, and there will certainly be other thoughts about Hamilton appearing here in the future. For today, I'm writing about one particular reflection it's been eliciting in me that's also making me think about–of all things–parkour.
Some background: in 2013, I was in the fall semester of my senior year at Princeton. I was depressed and incapable of completing work, engaging with people, or doing anything at all, really. (It turned out later that I had a severe undiagnosed sleep disorder…that saga is a post for another day). Anyway, I basically dropped out and moved back home for a year. In that time I mostly worked on getting happier and healthier in whatever way I could–going to therapy, working out, learning to cook actual food, reading books for fun again… that sort of thing.
One of the activities I decided to take up in the interest of getting in shape was parkour. It had always been a joke at my high school, people would jump up three inches onto a curb and yell "PARKOUR!" but I'd always been curious about the real thing. So, after a few months of idly thinking about it, I actually searched and found a parkour gym in San Antonio that had beginner adult classes and started going to lessons once or twice a week. I rapidly discovered something about myself–I'm completely terrified of failure. I mean, I knew I didn't like it-who does? But it turns out if I'm not 100% certain of my success, I often let that chance of failure paralyze me.
I was at my first parkour class, doing a relatively simple circuit of obstacles, and partway through I had to jump from the top of one crate to another, perhaps 3 or 4 feet away. The boxes were both about 2 feet high. I got to the edge of the first one, and I froze. I was looking at the gap, thinking "That's not that far, you can make that. Do it. Just jump. Just jump." I crouched, preparing to jump, then stood up again in place. Crouched, stood. Of course then my head started going in the vicious cycle of thinking that my hesitation would sabotage me (And I'd Sail Cat right off the box), only making my hesitation worse.
The teacher could tell what was happening, so he had me step off the boxes and come over to the side. He marked on the floor the distance I'd need to jump and had me do it flat. I cleared the distance needed easily. He had me do that several times on the floor, then go back to the crates. I made the jump and continued, but even being SURE of the physical ease of the task, I could still feel the fluttery terror thrashing around in my stomach as I jumped.
I'm not sure I'd ever done anything that physically dangerous. Yeah, I know all the peril of hopping a four foot gap. But still, I couldn't think of anything like it. Maybe when I was really young, before I can recall, but probably not. I grew up in the era of obsessive safety for the children-I remember all of my elementary school’s best playground equipment being replaced around 1st grade, because it was too “dangerous” (in case you're wondering: a jungle gym shaped like a fire truck and one of those playground spinner things).
Yet, that flutter had felt familiar. I tried to place it- thinking of times I was physically threatened. Maybe I’d felt it that time my car got hit? No, that was just an unpleasant jolt of surprise. My memory of most perceived danger was probably a giant wire swing line at summer camp, but it was a really thorough climbing rig that you were strapped into, so you knew you were actually safe. The slight thrill of fear up the back of my neck when jumping from the 40 foot wooden platform in my professional safety harness wasn’t even remotely comparable to the panicky feeling I had two feet off the ground on those crates.
It wasn’t until later after class while talking to my therapist that I was able to finally articulate why the moment had seemed so familiar, because the circumstances had nothing to do with bodily peril. It turned out I’d felt the same flutter of fear in a different context–attempting to express myself. Trying to ask a girl out, telling my parents I wasn't happy at school, showing a poem to a friend before creative writing class. That moment before the plunge of revealing myself, of being emotionally vulnerable, trying to make the decision to open up. That was when I would feel my stomach twisting in knots, my hands shaking (knees weak, palms sweaty, etc.).
So, what does this exposition about my history of expressive anxiety have to do with Hamilton, a hip-hop Broadway musical about one of America's Founding Fathers? Well, among the many subtexts and themes to be drawn out of the show (it's going to be the subject of at least 50 undergraduate theater theses in the next 6 months, undoubtedly) one recurring idea that really hit me was the continuous focus on how astonished everyone was by how prolific Hamilton was in his writing.
"How do you write like you're running out of time?" several characters ask Hamilton throughout the play. You can hear Lin-Manuel Miranda's admiration for Alexander Hamilton in every line. As a writer himself, Miranda knows how incredible it is to keep up such a relentless pace. This actually winds up being one of the reasons Hamilton (historical spoiler alert) comes into conflict with Aaron Burr, whose anthem in the show is literally called “Wait For It” and who eventually grows jealous of Hamilton's success. (Eventually, once people get tired of summer stock productions of 1776 and Hamilton being paired in rep, a regional theater will schedule a season with Hamilton and Amadeus together, and everyone will be like “OMG so dramaturgical”)
Now, I have an entire notebook full of potential essays/blog posts. My takes on any number of political and social issues. Lists of movies, songs, books I want to analyze. Personal stories to tell. On and on, down to things as specific as expostulations on the aesthetics of realism in the theater, how the realism aesthetic is harmful to the practice of modern stage combat, how the realism aesthetic is hurting modern straight plays on Broadway (I have a lot of thoughts on the American defaulting-to-realism-in-straight-drama thing).
I have several reflections on my undergraduate playwriting thesis project, split into multiple posts for different aspects of it, and just reams of other concepts. Many of them have a title and their main ideas laid out with first drafts, full paragraphs typed out. But every time I gear up to actually write one of them and put it out there (often when news/current events raises a topic I’ve been hashing out), I decide "well, everyone's writing about this right now. I'm sure someone out there will say it better than I ever could". Or in other words:
Burr: "No one will read them".
Hamilton: “I disagree”
Burr: “And if it fails?”
Hamilton: “Burr, that’s why we need them”
–The characters discussing the Federalist Papers, which Hamilton has asked Burr to help write. He refuses.
Now, that scene felt almost like a personal reprimand at the time I saw it in the theater. (Yeah, I managed to see it in person. Jealous?) And I FIRMLY resolved to go back to my hotel that night and write something, anything for my blog and actually post it.
I managed half.
I wrote a first draft of what was actually a rap response to the show, thinking I'd record myself rapping it in the hotel room, but the background noise made a really poor video quality when I did a test run, so I decided to wait until I got home where my better microphone was. I had the motivation to put my work out there revved up, but I'd missed something else I could have taken from the show about how to approach writing. I was listening to the cast recording again this weekend on a bus to Philadelphia (going to a stage combat workshop–another thing I should post about later), when a different moment clicked in my brain. This time it wasn't something Miranda wrote, but a real historical document–Washington's Farewell Address (which the show includes quotes from as we see Hamilton help Washington write it).
Miranda reads out the second to last paragraph of the Address, which is all about errors, defects, and faults. It's Washington's reflection on his term and his assertion that he may have messed up, but he did try his best at every turn. So what clicked was the way my fear of error (what I call "perfectionism" to make myself feel better about it) turns into procrastination. “If I wait one more day, I can edit it better.” “I’m tired now, I’ll give it fresh eyes in the morning.” “I don’t want to post it like this–it’s sloppy and terrible and I know I can make it clearer.” (Ironically, I wrote this paragraph four days ago and have been faffing about editing and rewriting the post since then. I’m literally doing what my own writing is saying I should do less of.)
So, step one is starting to write in earnest–not just for my own notebooks, but putting it out there. I may screw up, on levels ranging from typo to factual error to even advancing a political view that is wildly misguided… I don't know yet. But what I'll say right now, if I can blatantly use something from Miranda’s show, which uses something from Washington’s address, which uses something from Hamilton’s quill, is that my message to the audience of my blog is the following:
Though, in predicting the incidents of my writing, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may commit many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech my readers to avert or mitigate the evils to which those errors may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my audience will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, for the remaining years of my life dedicated to writing with a forthright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities in me will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must someday be to the mansions of rest.
Writing my thoughts down and putting them out there for other people to read. Writing down stories or putting them on stage for others to experience. Hey, what a way to spend a day. I make a vow, right here and now: I'm gonna spend my time this way.
Playing you out:
(A thing I'm thinking about doing consistently, where each post ends with a link to a song I think is a good companion to the tone/subject of the essay but not directly related)
Recommended Related Reading:
Ta Nehisi Coates on Writing - A video released as I was writing this post with essentially the same conclusion
How Perfectionism Can Turn into Procrastination (and what to do about it) - I'm working on this, but I'm not perfect about it yet, and that bothers me, so I try not to think about it and... wait a a minute.
Doctor Nerdlove’s Three Second Rule - This is more intended as dating advice, but applicable as far as the psychology of putting yourself out there in any context goes.
The Overprotected Kid - An article about an intentionally dangerous playground and childhood developmental risk taking
No comments:
Post a Comment