dear practice,


where do we start to tell this story? do we start in 2010 or do we start with my earliest memories of joy? do we start with the time i begun to recognise and know the limits of reason i was compelled to aspire to or do we start at some other time, like the time i remembered how much i loved to stare, not knowing that what i was doing was observing the world or the time i remembered how much i loved to stay up late, because dreaming was easiest when everybody around me was finally asleep?

coming to you feels like coming back, it feels like returning not departing, coming to you feels like dreaming not searching, like breathing not grasping. it took me a long time to learn that where you were was never outside, you were nothing to be searched for, nothing to be found. you were always already here, you were always already here. and so to look for you was exactly how i was never going to find you, never going to hear you, never going to feel you, or trust you. looking for you was only ever going to take me away, lead me astray.

i am writing this down because now i can

find your voice, they said. but whenever i spoke i was asked why i had to go and make things so complicated. find your voice, they said. but whenever i spoke i was asked if i can say what i said but in this many words. when did anyone actually have to convince anyone of anything in an elevator? be more grounded, they said, time and again without ever explaining what they meant by “grounded” or why they cared about it so freakishly much. it took me years before i asked if demanding groundedness had anything to do with whatever made that boy force my neck into the fold of his arm and press and press hard and continue pressing until the teacher came back into the room from her self-assigned break taken in the middle of an art class she taught to thirteen-year-olds. it took me years before i asked if demanding groundedness had anything to do with whatever made those employers tell me that i had so much to contribute but was not really quite what they were looking for in that particular instance. next time, however, they are sure to think of me. i could still be waiting for all they know. all those years of my young life i thought the fault was mine, i thought it was me who couldn’t get the timing right. but who can afford to time things right when rent is due and you’re twenty-two living on the other side of the continent because your own government could not yet educate you and see your worth? it took me years before i asked if demanding groundedness had anything to do with whatever made all those programmers ask if i’d consider staging my work



in the museum when i prepared it for the stage, or if it had anything to do with whatever made all those people in charge ask how it was that i was credited a dancer when i was not on stage dancing. because how is dancing ever a photograph or a poem ever written in prose?

of course now, though not yet every-where, are we able to recognise and talk about indoctrination and heteronormativity, of neo-liberal values and colonial white-privilege and systems of power knowing well enough that recognising and talking does not yet release us from instincts developed over eons of time. competition after all still sees artists be called artists at the speed contemplation and critical thinking cannot quite compete with. the joke is on me, perhaps, but the joke is my own for now i know what they could not. that their violence was only ever going to provoke my resistance, such that today their violence i am grateful for because it distracted them from a weapon most powerful, the acknowledging of my desire to belong which to this day exposes my vulnerability, when their refusal to change their mind shakes me and breaks me and cheats me into doubt, and i turn yet again into one that wants to please. for how else do i create an opportunity for us to thrive?

so let’s talk about experiencing unconditional love. about the mother who insists upon loving her son though they continue to challenge everything she ever thought she knew about the world, about the man who insisted upon loving his lover though now we were three with much learning ahead, about the employer who insists on loving her employees though year in and year out we cannot seem to grasp just how high the stakes are, about the friend who insists upon loving their friend though life keeps throwing the die and the challenges we are facing are never the ones we prepared for. let’s talk about practice, about continued commitment to learning to speak a language whose origin is not quite your own but comes from with-in you to speak. with you, to think. with you, to move in an out of sync, with the world.

and how is that, my friend, all that moving around, experiencing things within and without
not dancing?


i love you,
end of list.
pavleheidler
2020-04-13