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Audacity Works
Audacity Works
Buffet Episode! On ageism in performance, flow state, and witchy stuff
Click here to get on the list to learn more about Creatrix: a retreat experience coming May 2024.
Welcome to my second Buffet episode! When I get great questions I want to answer but I don't have necessarily 20 minutes to devote a whole episode to each topic, we get a Buffet.
Today's Buffet includes:
- Ageism in circus, and what to do when you're at the top of your game but are still hungry for something more
- Flow state, and accessing this state during an injury
- The episode concludes with a surprising twist as my friend Chris pitches in an unexpected question about witchy stuff
Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel
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Welcome to Audacity Works, a podcast inspired by and dedicated to the working artist, the creative, entrepreneur and generally doing the damn thing. This exists on the premise that the world belongs to those who have the audacity to believe that their lives have value. This is for you. Welcome to Audacity Works. I am your host, rachel Strickland, and this is episode number 46, which is another buffet. A buffet episode is where I take questions that I've gotten and requests that I've gotten that I want to answer and I want to acknowledge and honor. But I don't necessarily have 20 minutes of material to give to each one. So today we're going to have a buffet.
Speaker 1:So first up is from my friend, ross. Ross is an extraordinary performer and acrobat and clown and you know, I always thought that I hated clowns and that they were annoying. And then I met Ross and I was like okay, you are amazing. Ross is also an actor and the way that I found this out is because I was on a panel and I was helping to cast a show in Oakland at Kinetic Arts Center and Ross was auditioning. And I had never met Ross before, which is really odd because we'd been living and working in the same city, in San Francisco for years and had never run into each other. So that was odd. I'm like, who is this person? And he was doing some exercise and standing on top of some huge foam block and the way that he just like transported the whole room by shifting, the way that he held his body and how he was just masterful acting and I was like, oh my God, I've never seen this in real life before. I've only seen it from like Anthony Hopkins and Killian Murphy. Yes, this is high praise indeed, but I always take an excuse to glow about my friends. And afterwards I went up to him. I'm like that was incredible. How did you learn how to do that? He was like, oh, I'm an actor. I'm like, okay, all right, well, it worked. Whatever, whatever education you got to that end, good job, it was effective. So, anyway, ross is 40, like myself, well, I'm 41, so clearly older and what's no better joke. But Ross wrote to me because he's got a good deal, he's got a steady performing job and has had it for a while, and is just wondering, you know, he's hungry for something more and he's been applying to things and there's like some fear of ageism in there, because he's 40 and he knows he has a good situation, but he also knows he's kind of gotten out of it what he wished to get out of it and is hungry for more things. And he just wrote back at my request and said that that could be valuable to talk about. So I'm going to talk about it.
Speaker 1:The first thing I want to say is that it's really difficult to pinpoint ageism in performing arts and in circus arts, because when you get rejected from something, it's not common that people tell you why. If there's any way possible, when you have been passed over for an opportunity, if there's any possibility of you asking why, I think you have every right to do that. And you know it doesn't mean that you're going to get an answer, but at least ask. And I've done this before and it just saved me months of tearing my hair out wondering what I had done wrong, when it was nothing I had done wrong. It wasn't my age, it was my ass, but anyway.
Speaker 1:But because we're always going to be aware of the things that we perceive others might feel is less desirable about ourselves, then when we do get rejected, it's very common that we're going to project those expectations onto the person like well, it must have been this, because this is the thing that I think is less desirable to other people about me, and that's fair, it's very human assumption. But I think it's important to call it out, because just because we assume that is true does not make it true. That's why ageism is difficult to pinpoint in circus arts and in the performing arts, because most of the time when you get passed over, you don't know why, and these are just a bunch of words for you to carry around with you in your skull so that if and when this happens to you be it your age or something else that you perceive other people perceive as a deficit in you or something less desirable that you will recognize that that's not necessarily true. It could very well be true, it could very well be a projection, but it's nothing to be basing choices on and certainly nothing to be basing a view of yourself or even the industry on, because we don't know the facts.
Speaker 1:But that wasn't really Ross's question. What he was asking is so what would you, what would you say to someone in this situation? And it's really the same thing that I would say to someone in their 20s in this situation, like, if you have a good deal. You're hungry for something more. You want to see what else is out there. My advice is to go. I'm a big believer in not staying in a situation where you know you don't thrive Until you have something solid to run towards. I know that this could be very unpopular advice, but this is what I've done my whole life, and when I've failed to do it, I've regretted it.
Speaker 1:So, rather than waiting until you have a solid offer from you know Vienna or somewhere, say you really want to work in Vienna. Go to Vienna, meet the people there, get in their faces, train with them, have a beer with them, whatever Circus and performing arts are like, nepotism is real, or people hire their friends, and I don't even think that's a bad thing. I think that people want to work with people that they know, and If they have everything that they need among the people that they know, then you need to be one of the people that they know. But, rachel, you might be saying this sounds like a really reckless way to make life decisions, and I would agree with you. But like, come on, none of us got into this for the 401k, did we? No, we did not, and I think there is a way to do this with integrity, and integrity as an adult, as a grown-ass person Like you know, having having savings and hopefully having some kind of supplementary income from some other skill that you have to help out, not just when you're trying to make a major life change, but like if you get injured or if you get sick or if you just need to take a break for a while. But my advice would remain the same go go to where you want to be living and working and meet the people there, go play in the sandbox, go taste the food, go drink the wine, be there, tap into your community, your existing community, and Don't be shy, like, ask for those introductions, like can you vouch for me? Because getting an introduction to someone improves your, your chance of a response, like by something like 85 percent than if you just cold email them. So using your community and getting introductions, however distant, to places that you would like to be and people that you would like to know, super, super valuable. So that's my tank on that. Thank you, ross, for answering that email for me and all nothing but love for you. Nothing but luck to you.
Speaker 1:The next question that I got asked is from my friend Jesse, and this was after she heard episode number I think it was 44 About coming back to Ariel after an injury and she said I just listened to your podcast about dealing with injury. It got me thinking that one part of the puzzle you didn't touch on was flow state, something that I missed so much that state where time ceases to exist and you just get lost in concentration and passion for what you're working on. I would love more of your thoughts on accessing this flow state when you're injured. I tried to just tell myself to buck up and get used to it, but I hear it and thinking, oh yeah, when will that be? And it's, it's discouraging her.
Speaker 1:I Set with this question for a long time because here's a surprise answer. I I don't really experience that flow state. People have have dropped that term. The flow state you know throughout my life and throughout my career and I always kind of assumed that I knew what they were talking about. But this question really got me thinking like that's that doesn't describe any of my experience of training. So those of you that are familiar with accessing the flow state, I want you to sit with that for a second.
Speaker 1:Um to understand, as I just came to understand that our own experiences of training, this discipline, whatever discipline it may be, might be just completely alien to someone else. And now that I think of it, I I've seen and I've witnessed other people in this flow state throughout my training. The first person that comes to mind is uh, is Tonya Brno, um, who lives and works out of Seattle Washington. Tonya is an extraordinary technician. She was extraordinary 13 years ago when I met her and I would come into the studio and I had, I had, the things that I wanted to accomplish that day and uh, and I'd have them written out and I'd more or less stick to that plan. Sometimes I deviate from it whatever was feeling tasty to me at the moment, and then I'd get my shit done and I would leave. Tonya would have been there the entire time, not warming up in the fabric, like two, three hours on the fabric just doing shit.
Speaker 1:And I believe that what Tonya was experiencing is this thing that people refer to called the flow state, where time ceases to exist and you're just lost in your own creativity and you're trying stuff out and finding new pathways. And it's not as though I haven't done that before, but I don't recognize that as a natural state of mind in my own training. So if you do experience flow state, I am I don't want to say I'm jealous because I don't know what it's really like, so I can't say that but it does sound nice. It sounds nice and I'm happy for you that that's a state that you're able to access. And hearing about it and especially in the context of Jesse's question, if, if that's a state that you're accustomed to being able to access, injury would certainly put a stick right in the spokes of that wheel, because pain, pain and discomfort would seem to bring you out of that state pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:And I suppose this makes me not exactly an authority on the subject, having just professed that it's not a state that I'm, that I experience naturally in my own training. So it's difficult for me to advise you on how to get back to it, but maybe hearing from someone who doesn't access that flow state, the joy that I get from my own training outside of that state, might be valuable to you. So I'm going to describe that because even though I don't enter what you would call a flow state while I'm training does not mean that my training is devoid of joy by any means the joy that I get from training. Well one, the endorphins good shit. And the endorphins will come whether or not you are injured, because there's always something that you can do to exercise your muscle tissues and to release those happy hormones. So the active movement without judgment or expectation might be something worth going for, the practice of movement without judgment or expectation.
Speaker 1:Another thing that has brought me so much joy in my practice is the joy of my ambition. I've always enjoyed my ambition. I like finding new things. It doesn't happen to me in a state of flow, but it happens to me in a state of expectation of my own effort. Because here's another thing about me I don't have a lot of physical talent. I have a lot of emotional talent. For circus arts. I'm able to put up with a lot of shit Is the translation there? So I've never had a high expectation for my output and for for something being to a high level of excellence based on a physical talent which I don't have. And this lack of physical talent was actually really a boon to me, because my expectations were for the effort that I was going to exert. I didn't ever have the luxury of expecting a super high, excellent quality product from any amount of work that I put out. I knew that eventually I would make the product excellent. But that was only through my own expectation of my own efforts. Too long didn't read. Y'all are just too magical and talented for your own good. You know that. So there's some words for you from a mere mortal without those things. Hopefully they are useful to you.
Speaker 1:I will add something it's kind of like a caveat to the podcast a couple of weeks ago about coming back to aerial after an injury, which is for the first five training sessions that you've come back to your practice. Endeavor to divorce yourself from any expectation of outcome. Getting the body in the room and moving the body at all is a solid victory. I mean it. Five sessions. Don't cheap out and be like, well, I'll just give myself two, no five. The first five sessions have zero expectations of outcome when you go into the studio. So you know you can't have disappointment without expectation and our expectations of ourselves are not reliably accurate because of the thing I was talking about before. Like we're trying to get back to where we were before, and perhaps this is also true in the context of Jesse's question.
Speaker 1:If you're expecting your flow state now to feel the same way that it did before, then you're likely going to be disappointed because it's going to change. Because you have changed, it's going to feel different and uh, and maybe it hasn't been fully inhabited yet because you're still coming into this new version of yourself. My hunch is that fully inhabiting this new version of yourself, and therefore fully inhabiting the new version of your flow state, is going to have a lot more grace in it. I'd love to hear about it as it progresses. Jesse, let me know, you know I'm listening. And finally, so that noise in the background is my air conditioner that just kicked on. This is going to continue happening because once the oppressive heat leaves in South Carolina, it's going to get cold and then I'm going to turn the heat on and it's going to make the same sound. So I want to apologize for it. If you hear it, it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 1:But for our third and final question today, I want to take one from my good friend, chris, and this is a big swing away from what we were talking about before, like the whole episode. Big swing away, because I get questions like this quite a lot. Chris says I want to know more witchy stuff. Tell me about the Morgan, tell me about the Irish gods more witchy stuff. So tiny story. When I turned 40, not this past summer, but the summer before I sent out a question that said what would you all like to learn from me? This is before I even started the podcast, and the overwhelming majority of answers that I got were I want to know witchy stuff. I did not see that coming. I did not even realize that it was that apparent. You know that aspect of my life, but apparently it is so good job picking up on that, and if you are one of the people that would specifically like to learn this kind of thing from me, this last section of the interview is not an interview. I guess I'm leaving all of this in because I'm human. Anyway, this last section of the podcast is for you.
Speaker 1:So I think it could be helpful here to define some terms, because some people love the word witch, they love the word witchcraft I do too and some people it really turns off, but often we're talking about the same thing and just the words that we're using, because words matter and they have different connotations for different people. So it's worth clarifying definitions to that end. This is a popular definition of witchcraft that I'm going to tell you and I don't agree with it. But I'll tell you why this definition is witchcraft is the exercise of natural, of supernatural powers to influence the lives of yourself, the people around you and your environment using magic. This is why I agree. I disagree. Good God, am I confusing you yet? This is why I disagree with that definition the exercise of supernatural powers. There are no supernatural powers. It's not supernatural, it's natural. It's natural, it's all natural.
Speaker 1:Second part I disagree with to influence your life and the lives of people around you. No, do not pass, go, do not collect $200. I am a firm believer in not trying to affect someone else's life. That's amateur hour. And if you're dabbling in hexes and stuff like bullshit like that, I'm sorry. I just know, immediately, know hard pass. That is none of your business. Keep your eyes on your own paper and I don't deal in that, I don't espouse it, I don't condone it. Someone else's autonomy is way more powerful over their lives than your influence, using natural forces or not. So perhaps a better definition would be the exercise of natural forces to influence your own life and your environment using magic. And this is where we need to define magic and I can't. I've tried to.
Speaker 1:I've been asked for this definition many times throughout my life. I don't have a good one. Here's a disappointing one. Magic is an extraordinary power or influence, seemingly from a supernatural source. There we go again, two words that don't belong in the definition of magic Extraordinary and supernatural. It's not extraordinary, it's ordinary. It just seems extraordinary because, I don't know, maybe we're just expecting a bunch of mundane shit when we're surrounded by extraordinary things that are actually not extraordinary, they're ordinary. It's just our attention being drawn to it that makes it seem extraordinary. And the use of the word supernatural it's not supernatural, there is no supernatural, there is only natural. And that's not to say that I think that magic is mundane because it's not. It's the experience of it that feels extraordinary. It's the experience of acknowledging magic that feels supernatural, even though it's totally natural.
Speaker 1:Manflesh has said a definition to me many years ago. I think it's just unexplained science, and I think that he has a good point there. The only reason that I don't give you that definition now is because even explained science is magic. Do you know how your kidneys work? It's basically a system of controlled leaking Like. Do you know how your lungs work and the exchange of gases between the wet meat on the inside of your body and the outside air, and that there's an open channel between those two things. That's explained science, but it is no less magical. We saw Oppenheimer on. Well, it was just yesterday. We saw Oppenheimer yesterday. Totally worth sitting in a theater for three hours.
Speaker 1:And the reason that I bring it up is because, as Killian Murphy points out in the movie, most of what we see in touch is made up of empty space, and I can't quite wrap my mind around that. But I know that it's magical as fuck and that we are surrounded by incredible, totally normal, mundane things that, if we really took a close look at them, would blow our freaking minds. You may be wondering, rachel, do you just walk around in a state of constant awe? No, because I forget about this all the time. When I'm reminded of it once again, I'm blown away. So, yes, I do believe in magic, because I believe in the world around me. I believe in science, both explained and unexplained, and I believe that we are far, far more powerful than our culture has led us to believe.
Speaker 1:The least disappointing definition of magic that I found is techniques for harnessing internal and external forces that help us create change. Now, what I will say about witchcraft and magic I don't follow a religion. I don't have a religion. I have a spirituality, and there are a lot of techniques that I use and that I sometimes teach, but I have not ever done that in a very public way, and what I will say is that if this is something that you're interested in learning from me, the best and most flesh and blood impactful way that you will have the ability to do that is the retreat that I'm holding in the spring, in May of 2024. Right here in South Carolina. It's going to be on Edisto Island, which is a very magical place. It's called Creatrix and it's at the end of May in 2024. And the way to find out about that is to be on the mailing list that I will link in the show notes, and information about that it's going to start coming out very quickly. We have just wrapped up the launch for cycle 25 of the Audacity project and I can't wait to start my work with them, and that means that it's time for me to start telling you about Creatrix. So if you want to hear about that, there's a link in the show notes, and if you're interested in the things that I know and practice and would love to teach you about that, then that's the way to do that.
Speaker 1:Looking at the time, I am overtime by three minutes. I guess I just started, you know, up on my digital soapbox. I want to thank you for being here and letting me talk into your ear for over 20 minutes. An extra special thank you to my incredible patrons, who make all of this possible and so much more possible, and they know the things that I tell them there. I don't think 99% of it never sees the light of day on any other platform. So you know who you are. I appreciate you. Thank you for standing with me and thank you each and every one of you for spending this time with me. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them for future episode subjects. You can reach me always on Instagram at Rachel Strickland Creative, or on Patreon at Rachel Strickland Creative. Happy September, y'all. Don't go back to sleep.