Regardng WORK and POTENTIAL

I sit in classrooms sometimes and actively want to raise my hand. It (hand) quivers on my notebook while people around me are jabbering, and sometimes I start to form words that dance like spittle across the top of my teeth before receding like waves. I nod furiously, I'm one of those people who nods. I tut, I agree, I do the "shrimp paw" (that floppy, erratic gesture indicating that some moments you're sure you need to speak and seconds later your point has become irrelevant). I also think a lot about the repercussions of what I am about to say, to the extent that I loosen the bolts in my chair and start to float away from the conversation and towards the ceiling. I worry that the comment will betray an undeserved sense of self-righteousness: self-righteousness by virtue of the fact that I needed to say something just for the sake of saying something and undeserved by virtue of being stupid and poorly thought out. I worry the comment will not be profound. I worry, subsequently, that I do not deserve to utter it. I worry that I shouldn't deign to utter it, because my mind is already well on to the next junction in the conversation, and then I worry again that a sense of entitlement is the only reason why I should speak. I wonder how it's possible to feel simultaneously smarter than and stupider than everyone around me. I worry how my comment will alter the temperature of the room, or disrupt the natural flow of the conversation. So incendiary are my potential feelings on Sartre's "Nausea" (for instance...) that the world could change. I worry people will look at me differently after I say it, although that part is also kind of a thrill. I worry most of all that no one will get it, and nothing will change, and the paragraph and a half of internal monologuing was time wasted on ridiculous neuroses better spent either a) listening to the conversation as it continues or b) doing something mentally worthwhile, like making a list or having a daydream. An idea.

The first neurotic nugget up there, the fear that a comment will betray an unpreparedness, is something I worry about a lot at studio especially. I am often in rooms where I resolve from the get-go not to speak; I have not done as much work outside as I ought to, and therefore nothing spoken or heard can possibly be valuable until I berate myself sufficiently and show up later, another day, better equipped. Is this an excuse? Sounds like an excuse. Walks like an excuse. Grins sheepishly like an excuse. I deluded myself into thinking this attitude was instead a higher instinct at work, a crass, hardened old dance teacher somewhere around my medulla with a switch in her wizened paw, a presence reminding me that I can do much better than whatever I'm doing at the moment and one day when I really try I will be able to use whatever comes in. She's on a cigarette break but she's there, sure as shit. She's taking a while. She's possibly fallen asleep in front of her stories again.

At Playwrights Horizons, she is an excuse. Here's why: I have learned that there is nothing to be gained from lamenting ill-preparedness or under-preparedness for any work brought in, ever. All that you can do (all that anyone can do, ever) is respond to/ work from what's exactly in front of them with honesty and flecked integrity. My sassy ego is a veiled Shiva, obliterating useful learning, secretly fearing repercussions both external and internal. She does not want to admit to failure at her best, so she's mired in the much easier to take (to take and conceive of and feel bad about and move on from) failure at her worst. Ironic. Tongue-in-cheek. "If I had tried, I could speak". So for fear of not being enough, I sit on my hands, allow people glimpses of a fabulous, imagined untapped intelligence. Alas, I am not a plumber, I have not been plumbing myself. In more ways than one, I have not reached a certain perceptible potential.

Teachers have been telling me for two years now that I should "stop all this". That I am smart, full of worthwhile things to say, that I am pretty, that I am worthy of all kinds of gilded validation. tHE THING IS, like Woody Allen (Allen...we're probably related to each other. Mystery absolved) I unapologetically KNOW I'm smart and full of worthwhile things to say and pretty, despite seeming to require reactions from the rest of the world in order to begin creating and making and interacting. Praise is merely the best kind of anchoring, to hear the compliments spoken aloud by people I fear and respect. The praise carries me, it does, for a good class and a half while I sail through the truth of my great qualities and try to focus primarily on the product of contributing and creating wholly not halfly, sans nitpickery and the excusive dance teacher with a switch, but sooner or later the paragraph comes back -- I say to myself, "well if I had done more work..." . Did I stop doing THE MOST work, or did I just stop measuring products that way? Clearly there is more than one way to push yourself, and the dance teacher's tenure shields her ineptitude. I ought to change.

On the other hand, what kind of advice has "just stop it" ever been, to anyone? In fact, I don't even think that counts as advice. That's an admonition. I want CASE STUDIES. I want METHODS. HYPNOSIS. I want tactics and experiences to shoo away the deadly inhibitors. How does a caterpillar do it? How does one realize a potential? How do you go about it? How do you conquer your fear of not knowing, that dark of the coccoon? Afraid to not seem perfect, paradoxically, equals, imperfect.

I mean, I guess a caterpillar works really hard. She weaves for months and months. She can't talk, so she's got not problems with the hand-raising business.

I worry this all means I am doomed not to get what I want. Maybe 'get' is the wrong word, because that implies someone is withholding. Screw the whole sentence -- I worry this means I do not actually know what I want. Screw that one too -- I worry this means I am not willing to do what it takes to get what I want. I worry I don't want it enough. What, then? What do I want? What will I work for? What am I not afraid of?

Smart, full of worthwhile things to say, pretty.