Thursday, February 14, 2013

Releasing — Changing

To release is also to renunciate, to disown, to repudiate as valid.

A sport's figure in Boston admits that he needs to change his attitude—give up on one way of dealing with a situation and find another way.

To renunciate—to abandon something and to turn, and turn again, until another way is found is hard.

Once I thought that I'd write a novel—not pulp fiction, but literary fiction. Time passed the novel remained in my head. More time elapsed— I wrote short pieces, poems, essays, but not a novel. I bought books on how to complete a novel in fifty-two weeks. By week four I realized that the process didn't belong to me.

Then one day I simply released the notion, sent it out into space. If I couldn't write the novel I'd want to read then the time was right to dispense with fooling myself.

The freedom of letting go felt both expansive and constrictive. Had the universe shrunk?

To renunciate something is akin to walking on a tighrope—stepping away from a safe place and venturing across a wide abyss until you reach the other side. The safe place might not look safe, but it's familiar. For me it was the talk of completing a novel, a chapter or two done.

Then I found myself engaged in the type of writing I enjoyed and reading the type of books I'd like to write, but didn't need or want to know how to write.

The trick is learning how to look upon a release as permission to change. It's not giving up. It's looking in the mirror and really seeing.

I went to high school with twins who wanted to be mime artists. They watched old Chaplin and Keaton films. They studied mimes. One twin expressed each emotion as an abstraction, a fluid ballet. The other twin's mime, although studied, lacked grace. All through high school they spoke of creating pieces for two, of mime and dance as integral pieces in their repertoire.

Then Noel, the older by two minutes, realized that his skills lacked the fluidity and expression, the evocative quality his brother Noah possessed. Noel stopped rehearsing his part and released his brother so that, Noah, could move on.

Noel continued to love mime and often performed for people, but he relinquished his desire to pursue mime as a profession.

"I love," he said,"to see Noah so in tune with his audience. They understand every silent word, every nuance. Do you see how people laugh or cry. Marcel Marceau said A magician makes the visible invisible. A mime makes the invisible visible. "



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