Lemme rub this first one out real quick...

The irony of working in a theater and feeling a complete lack of creative outlet makes me feel like a failure.  Maybe not a failure, I’m probably being dramatic, but at least like my eyes aren’t open wide enough, my shoulders aren’t clenched close enough together in the artistic industry hustle.  I pour myself into the programs I’m trying to establish. I run around non-stop increasing the community accessibility of our theater.  Our amazing fantastic theater.  We need coalitions, and I’m the bridge builder of the moment.

But I have been struggling STRUGGLING artistically.  It’s like every time I try to sit down and write, or dance, or draw, my shit comes out contrived.  If at all.  And it makes me want to fucking SCREAM.

It’s like being sexually frustrated.  Like my body’s tense, I can’t always sit comfortably. I get worked up over little things.  I’ve become reactionary, snappish unless tamed.  I’ve tried to do the writing equivalent of rubbing one out—writing on my BART commute.  But the tension, the build up, takes the scrawl on my page no where.  And then I’m home.

I try to relax, take a breath, take a step back.  Breathing is so important.

If my masturbation analogy holds through and true, it seems that my case of frustration cannot be solved single-handedly.  The creative climax.  Sometimes, you need other people to make you get there. I need a community to find myself again. 

Paolo Freire said that it should be a reciprocal process, individual and community, that we are actualized together, feeding into each other through genuine learning, communication and dialogue.  A reciprocal process means that the individual is only as strong as their community and vice versa.  We should be self-interested in developing each other.  We should be there for each other.

Being there for others.  Being there for myself.  I’m hoping this blog is a reciprocal process.  Because damn, my right hand is getting fucking tired trying to do it alone.