Why do we decide to do the things we do?
How do we arrive at those decisions?
God do I agonize over that all the time.
As a director (and artist, really), decisions are kind of everything. From the moment you commit yourself to a project, you're making countless decisions. Who to work with. How to frame the production. What you care about. What you can afford to care about. What you can't afford not to.
Sometimes these decisions aren't really decisions. Like, not actively. You don't debate back and forth between separate & distinct options and come to a rational conclusion about which option is best. A lot of a production, or a life, really, can feel inevitable. There wasn't a choice between apples and oranges. There were only, always pears. I feel that way about love, too. A lot of times you say yes before you even know why. And always you are forced to defend decisions you never even knew you made.
I've been thinking a bit about making firm decisions as a culturally-masculine trait. It's at least something that I feel expected of as a man. Being a Decider. Being confident in my decisions. Sticking by what you do, not wallowing in possibilities, being firm and strong and, well, decisive.
Hiding in there is the notion that I have to make rational decisions, too. Men & emotions aren't really supposed to coexist, in this Culture of Masculinity World, except in the case of anger and frustration as a natural result of testing a man. So feeling bad about decisions, being unsure, feeling lost, feeling afraid, these don't really mesh with an understanding of men as mountains. Mountains don't feel. They stand.
Now the work I like to do can function quite against making decisions this way, sort of unilaterally, in a top-down hierarchical fashion. Knowing in advance sort of defeats the purpose of experimental theatre -- then where's the experiment? Even the most traditional play I start by trying to locate the places where I don't know how to solve the problems it presents. Decide as I may in advance, it's really the process of doing the thing that unlocks what these potentially infinite moments are.
Certainly setting framework and limits on creativity fosters clarity, fosters specificity, and can foster quite a lot of creative growth. You have to kill the notion of ALL ideas to find which of THE ideas your piece is actually working with.
The actual has to kill the potential. Sad, I know, but true.
So, to kill a few potentials.
I am moving to New York City this summer.
It's a decision I made over several months, not knowing what would happen with grad school, not knowing what will happen with the other opportunities I've applied for, nor really knowing if I was ready to go when I decided.
I made the decision as emotionally and intuitively as I did rationally. The woman I love is moving there, and I want to be closer than a 2 hour 2 train ($33 roundtrip) ride away. I want to start building my life with her. We both want that.
And I think there's a lot of stigma and cynicism against that? Like, it's sort of a role reversal, in a way, for a man to move for a woman & her career. I mean, it's not to say I'm not also moving for my career, which is at such an indeterminate state at the moment it really could go anywhere.
So, I'm moving because of that state of indeterminacy.
I'm moving for the new jungle gym.
I am moving to be challenged by the sheer size and scale of New York.
I'm moving to be challenged by the competitiveness,
the cutthroatness, the danger, the madness, the stress.
I'm moving for the opportunity and moving for the change.
I'm moving for the move, in a way.
Which I think is okay.
Which isn't to say I'll be leaving Philly behind.
Cue that half-measured indeterminacy.
I'll still be back.
Particularly for opportunities that keep pushing me forward.
I think that's okay, too.
In all ways, I'd prefer to define my own limits.
I recognize fully that I've very little control over a lot of things.
So, rather than jump to the anger and frustration mode when I am being tested,
I'd like to sit
In this state of not-knowing
And feel along the walls for what I can.
I'm going to write a lot more about decision-making and masculinity and moving and art and everything, but I definitely want to put something up on this blog as it's been far too long since I last decided to post. If there's a firmness to my decision-making I want to bring out for the future, it's in getting out from under my covers and keeping writing.
A daily decision-making challenge.
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