Perfectionism in Space

So as you know, perfectionism and the way it can stop you in your cold, dead tracks (did I just mix metaphors or invent a new one?) has been on my mind.

Then today I came across this post on IttyBiz which basically nails what I in my meandering way have been trying to get across. The topic is starting an online business (something else I’ve been edging towards in my sidelong fashion), but it is equally applicable to creating a solo performance, making art with a group of people, marketing your work… basically any activity you might do, alone or with others. Well almost any activity. Let’s keep this clean, people.

I love this section:

Let me put this another way: In my experience, if you want to do business online, you’re going to have to be willing to do your thing to the best of your ability even if it doesn’t feel like you’ve defined yourself and your value proposition and your website perfectly enough yet. You’re going to have to accept that the way you’re doing things in six months may well be totally different from the way you’re doing them now. You’ll need to realize that just because you’re writing about how much you love explosive pies today, you may be organizing courses to train explosive pie disposal units in half a year. That has to be okay with you. You have to go with your gut, and go where the market seems to be taking you. You have to let your voice and your method of operation evolve with time.

This really gets to the heart of the quandary: what I’m working on is always far from “done” but I have to put it out there sometime. Ready or not. And I have to be okay with what people say, knowing that they will be legitimate to criticize it for not being fully realized. And in fact, that is the only way it can grow into its strongest, fullest form – by putting it out there. Before it’s perfect. Because if you wait until it’s perfect, you’ve waited too long.

This is the course Hand2Mouth has always followed, and that I have followed as a solo performer. It’s how I’ve learned everything that really matters as a performer and creator and (god help me) marketer. But it’s still hard to do, and hard to articulate.

God, speaking of marketing – I have such a love / hate relationship with it.

I’m trying to think of “marketing” as another creative outlet, a positive thing, an HONEST thing. On the love side I’ve got this and this and this to back me up. On the hate side: this (more on that here).

Maybe I should follow Havi’s lead and come up with a new term for the m-word (she calls it biggification) so I don’t feel like a sleazeball who’s trying to autohypnotize people.

Could I call it creative describing? That’s a terrible name. Creative telling?

What it comes down to is: telling people what you do in a way that condenses it and gets the feeling across. Right? Especially important for H2M since we can’t invite everyone to just come to a rehearsal and watch how we work (not that we haven’t tried), and there aren’t too many influences we can link ourselves to that people instantly recognize (saying our influences are Forced Entertainment, the Wooster Group, Teatr Usta Usta and Radiohole often leads to neverending explanation which is not the best way to communicate excitement and adventure). (not to be confused with The Neverending Story which IS the best way to communicate excitement and adventure).

How about creative space & time travel? Hello, I am the director of creative space & time travel. No, it’s too bulky. Creative communication? Well that kind of says it, doesn’t it? I’d still like to work space and time in there somehow though. Creative interdimensional communication?

Oh, as you may have guessed I’m in the midst of “creatively communicating” the new work-in-progress H2M show, Uncanny Valley (talk about being comfortable putting your work out there in an unfinished state). That probably explains why I want to work time & space into my marketing. The number one thing this show has taught me is that any concept, any theory, any activity of any kind, is VASTLY improved upon when launched into space.

Well. As often happens I’ve gotten off track. I’ll have more later on the many angles of perfectionism. And space. And creative interdimensional communication. And possibly my neglected little business plan.

Battling Perfectionism

I think of myself as a recovering perfectionist. The clearest insight I had about this came when I was seeing a therapist two years ago (back when I could afford the luxury of mental health) and told her that I struggled with perfectionism, but not really, because actually I wasn’t doing anything well enough to qualify as a perfectionist.

Wait, she said. So what you’re telling me is you would be a perfectionist if you could just do things a little more perfectly?

Well… yes.

Yeah, that still counts as perfectionism.

Because I was going through my actions as if there were a level of perfection that it was possible to achieve. Because I was comparing myself to mythical people (or the real people around me who I was remaking in my head as more perfect beings) and finding myself lacking. Because I was beating myself up all the time for not doing things the right way, the better way, the more thorough way, the more organized way. The perfect way.

So that Perfectionism -- damn, is she a tricky beast. She invades your thinking without you even realizing it. One day you’re taking notes at a company meeting, the next day you’re hunched at your computer taking an extra thirty minutes to get the font right so people can read it, the next day you’re taking an extra hour to organize everyone’s action items at the top of the notes even though nobody reads them (of course there’s a nice dose of Martyr / Victim Complex that always seems to crop up alongside Perfectionism. They’re sort of like that mean girl in elementary school and her super sweet best friend).

(Wait, except Peppermint Patty isn’t really a perfectionist, is she? Well, you get the idea.)

Anyway, in my epic struggles to not let Perfectionism boss me around, I have found a few techniques helpful:

• Leaping into things before I’m fully prepared -- leaping past that urge to be “prepared enough” (which is impossible) by jumping in when I know that I am in fact not fully prepared. A sort of “fuck you” to perfectionism.

• Laughing at the things I have done perfectly and not taking their supposed perfection seriously. As in: look at these amazing gleaming golden NOTES I took at the company meeting. Aren’t they perfect? Aren’t they an incredible shining example of what notes should be?

• Admitting right away when I don’t know how to do something or think I may have done it wrong. In effect, thwarting that perfectionist desire to know everything and hide all failure by being openly, publicly honest about my mistakes and what I don’t know.

• Remembering that a completed imperfect task matters more than a task that comes in late because I needed to know more, prepare more, edit more, etc.

Caveat: one undesired outcome of these techniques is that I sometimes overcompensate and use this as an excuse to NOT PREPARE. Which is not the same thing at all, and only gives the Inner Perfectionist fodder for telling me what an incompetent, lazy, unbaked fool I am. No: the trick is to prepare -- to take things seriously -- but to also leap in no matter what when leaping is called for.

I must admit, though, there is one aspect of Perfectionism I haven’t yet figured out how to handle, and that is other perfectionists.

Again I turn to Peanuts for inspiration. Of course Peppermint Patty isn't the Perfectionist, it's freaking LUCY! Watch, she's basically my Inner Perfectionist in cartoon form, and Charlie Brown is her poor misguided Martyr / Victim aka my SENSITIVE SOUL:

In the same way that recovering alcoholics find the company of practicing alcoholics to be the most challenging, and in the same way that recovering alcoholics can’t expect other people to change their drinking habits -- I have to figure out how to interact with people who display perfectionist tendencies, without giving in to perfectionism myself and without expecting them to change.

Because maybe they don’t have a problem with perfectionism. Maybe it works for them. I imagine that some people take great comfort and pride in their drive for perfection. In fact a lot of things in this world would not exist were it not for perfectionists. So I’m not knocking it. But for me it’s toxic.

So what I need to figure out is how to tolerate other people’s desire for attaining perfection, without letting it trigger my own toxic desires. It’s pretty tricky. Maybe I need to find the equivalent of AA for Perfectionists.

Hello. My name is Faith Helma, and I am a perfectionist. It’s been three days since I gave in to a desire to be perfect. (Ok, fine: three hours) (Ok you got me, I am actually obsessively editing this post RIGHT NOW. Fine, I’ll just post it.)

There you go.

Variations on Causa a la Chiclayana

Alright, well since nobody cares about my sensitive business plan, I’m going to start writing about food. Not to say that this is a “food” blog. It is still a “sensitive person with crazy impossible business ventures” blog. But damn it, food is something I love to prepare and eat and think about. And in fact the more seriously I take the rest of my creative pursuits, the more I recognize that cooking is just another creative outlet. Plus it satisfies the other need of mine, to be of use to people.

So I’m going to start writing down some of my cooking experiences. And I’m not going to take photos yet because I have a camera phobia.

I fall in the improvisational camp when it comes to cooking. I love to read cookbooks and food blogs (my favorites right now are The Pioneer Woman and Bitten -- though Mark Bittman has now been absorbed into the Diner's Journal so we'll see if my love continues). I consult recipes for reference but I can’t bear to cook something exactly the same way twice so I usually start to tinker with them right away.

For instance: I found this 1950s Latin American cookbook which is fascinating (it translates Salsa Cruda as “uncooked spiced tomato sauce”) and actually has a wealth of recipes I’d never encountered before. I found a recipe for Causa a la Chiclayana (seasoned mashed potatoes with fish and vegetables) that intrigued me, because instead of mashing potatoes with milk and butter and serving them with gravy, you mix them with lemon juice, chopped onions and olive oil. I made this meal and was blown away by how simple and mindblowingly delicious the potatoes were – still potatoes, still comforting and starchy and filling, but also light and spicy and piquant.

Now I make them at least once a week, and can’t go back to the regular kind of mashed potatoes. I also can’t help but add in variations. Here’s the recipe from the cookbook, and then some variations:

Causa a la Chiclayana:



And now for the variations:

Variation #1: I like to let the onions sit in lemon juice & salt for a while before adding the olive oil, making them essentially into lightly pickled onions.

Variation #2: I started using dried chipotles instead of fresh chiles. You know what, you should go find dried chipotles and start using them in everything. You can chop them up and cook them in butter for fried eggs, or add them to chili or any beans you’re cooking… anyway I won’t go on and on about it, just understand that they are divine.

Variation #3: I started adding in fresh parsley from our garden, which is the only thing that keeps on growing through the winter.

Variation #4: I realized if you didn’t mash the potatoes and instead roughly chopped them you’d have an incredible potato salad. I am waiting for the right summer party to appear so I can bring this. I bet it would be awesome with hard boiled eggs too, and maybe even chopped pickles.

Variation #5: This week I was boiling the potatoes and had made the lemon onion mixture, and I decided to also make a kale salad my friend Judy showed me how to make (using raw kale, but you massage it with your hands so it breaks down almost like it’s been steamed). While I was massaging the kale I had a flash – I should mix it in with the potatoes! So I did! And it was awesome. Kind of like colcannon but less hearty & creamy, and sprightlier because of the lemon and chiles.

Variation #6: my favorite variation: you can fry up the leftover potatoes (if there are any) in the morning for breakfast.

Look at all those variations! Basically that one recipe opened my eyes up to a huge revelation: that mashed potatoes are incredibly versatile. My favorite thing to serve with these potatoes is a big pot of beans, with fresh tomatoes chopped up and spooned on top (when they’re in season). Imagine that! Before I encountered this cookbook I would have thought lemony mashed potatoes topped with fresh tomatoes was the wierdest dish ever.

Anyway. So that’s my cooking lesson for today. A very sensitive cooking lesson. Let me know if you end up cooking this and come up with variations of your own!

Business plan: Tangible Feelings™

Previously I have written about my business plans of opening a creative space / kindergarten classroom for adults or becoming a palm reader. Neither of those plans have progressed much (though I still like them), but now I’ve got another one.

The other day I read that cosmetics companies don’t sell lipstick, they sell feelings. Hope, fantasy, desire. This is not news, everyone knows that Mary Kay is selling eternal youth not skin cream, and Levi’s is selling Portland hipster dreams, not jeans.

Still, it got me thinking. If what most businesses are actually selling is feelings and desires, then why not sell that directly?

I’m all for paying $7 so you can apply long lasting color to your lips. But I also know that the pleasure found in lipstick is fleeting. And if what people want is hope and encouragement and a reason to feel good about themselves, is there a way to give this to them in a more satisfying way? For a similar price?

I think maybe I can. So I present to you: TANGIBLE FEELINGS™ (note: I realize this is a terrible name. Can anyone think of a better one? Someone suggested FEELINGS BY FAITH but that makes it sound like a Christian rock band).

Some things I might offer:

TINY BIT OF HOPE. $7.
A short message tailored to your situation, to lift your spirits and get you feeling good.

SEXY SEXY SEXY. $10.
A passionate exhortation on what it is that makes you incredibly sexy and what you can do to expand on your natural sex appeal.

BIG RAY OF HOPE. $15.
A personal pep talk written just for you, including your favorite quotes, heroes and inspirations, and oratorically delivered and recorded so that you can play it any time you’re feeling low.

JOY JOY JOY. $20.
A song composed and recorded just for you. It’s yours to do with as you please. And you can tell everybody, this is your song. It might be quite simple but, now that it’s done, I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words how wonderful life is when you’re in the world.

IMMORTALITY & ETERNAL YOUTH.
Still in development.

So. What do you think? Am I crazy? Would this be something anyone would actually pay for, ever? I am half-serious about making this into an actual business.

Rant #3: Speaking in Accents

Every once in a while I like to talk about something that makes me spitting mad. And this article on the NY Times arts blog got me thinking about my #1 pet peeve in theatre: the pointless mastery of accents.

I can’t imagine a bigger waste of time than having a broad range of accents and dialects at your disposal. And yet many actors spend their precious life energy -- time they could be using to learn judo or tap dance or something else that actually enhances your stage presence -- learning how to do just that.

I know many people think that without someone speaking a perfect Irish accent the audience will not enter into the world of The Lieutenant of Inishmore. But I have found the opposite to be true. And I just don’t get why you’d care.

Actually I do get why you might care. That’s why it bothers me. Because when I was in college I spent hours listening to British and Southern and Irish dialect tapes. It was something I could easily master and write down on audition forms and display at parties as an example of Something I Know How To Do. And if I was cast in a play I could spend all my time focusing on the easiest, most graspable aspect of it: the accent.

In my present life, I don’t need to master an accent because I do not act in plays that require them. (I act in plays that require you to be yourself with quotation marks, which I’m sure some people find equally annoying). But I do still watch plays in which actors are speaking in accents, and I always find it distracting and I always wish the director had decided to not bother with it. Good accents have never made me love a performance. In fact there is nothing more annoying to watch onstage than an actor who has effortlessly mastered a dialect (except of course for an actor who is painfully butchering one). There’s a flair and a self-consciousness in their delivery that says LOOK AT ME, I’M SPEAKING PERFECT BRITISH. Or South African. Or god help us, Russian.

It’s just a waste of time, in my opinion. For everyone involved. And then to justify that waste of time, actors inflict their mastery on innocent people at parties, people who are just trying to have a conversation and don’t want to hear you launch into guv’nor, fancy a bite to eat, what for NO REASON AT ALL.

Honestly, I’m trying to think of one reason why speaking in an accent would improve the quality or depth or intellectual merit of a play at all, and I can’t. The only reason I can think of is to show off. And if you want to show off, I’d much rather you dress head to toe in sequins and sing me a show tune. Well… as long as it isn’t this show tune. (that is another pet theatre peeve: fifteen year old girls singing On My Own at musical theater auditions. But I can’t in good conscience rail against that since that’s how I spent my adolescence).

UPDATE: see, the Guardian agrees with me.

Inspirations

I know I talked recently about being inspired by bad art, but that doesn’t mean I’m not inspired by good art too.

I want to mention some awesome things that have been inspiring me. BLOGGY STYLE.

Jenny the Bloggess and her funny ass descriptions of social panic and confidence wigs. Oh my god, I love her so much I want to show you her picture:


And speaking of social panic, I love this post over at Mommy Melee about freaking out at BlogHer. I love it when people are honest about their struggles with high pressure social situations. It’s always a surprise when you hear it from someone else.

You’re like, “what? But you have your shit together and you’re so articulate!” And they’re like, “what are you talking about, I’m having a panic attack right now!” And you’re like, “wow, that’s the classiest panic attack I’ve ever seen!”

I think that’s a beautiful thing for us neurotic introverts to aspire to: classy panic attacks. It worked for Greta Garbo.


Other inspiring things:

Shiva Nata, this crazy kind of yoga I heard about through Havi Brooks over at Fluent Self. I’ve been practicing it most mornings for the last five months (give or take a few weeks where I got frustrated and dropped it altogether) and though it is many times bewildering and seemingly pointless, I totally credit it with getting my mind out of a dark place post-NYC in August, and changing some of my habits without me even thinking about it. Of course I still have a lot of bad habits I’d like to get rid of, so that I can be a gleaming golden ice bodied icon of perfection. But my brain probably realizes that would actually be horrible. And honestly: the number one habit that trips me up lately is Perfectionism. Oh perfectionism, you cold-eyed, diabolical taskmistress. That is a topic for another day.

But let’s move on and talk about a lovely taskmistress: Dooce! This was the first blog I ever got hooked on. Whenever I check in on Dooce, I feel like I’m catching up with my cousin or something. And more often than not there is something that makes me laugh out loud, and then my husband looks over and I say, “Dooce poured bacon fat into a plastic bowl and melted it!” and he gets that concerned/horrified look on his face that means he thinks I’m spending too much time on the internet (he does not believe in using the internet for anything except finding artist residencies in Berlin. I think he thinks Dooce is my imaginary friend. Which... wouldn’t be all that far off, I guess, since we certainly aren’t real life friends). Anyway, I just love Dooce.

Jeff Hylton Simmons’ internet radio station. I just met this dude a few months ago and of course because this is Portland it turns out he knows every third person I know. He’s got broadcasts from people all over the world. Big dreams, big ideas. It's awesome.

And one more thing before I say goodnight, dear internet: the ultimate inspiration. I can remember my brother sitting rapt, 4 years old, in front of the TV watching this performance of Michael Jackson on the Grammys in 1988. I DON'T CARE, I CAN'T GET CYNICAL ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON! I just can't.

Manifesto update!

I was thinking it would be a good idea to check in on my manifest declarations and see if they still hold. Because I’ve noticed that often when I passionately declare my opinions, I’m talking out of my ass.

For instance – my last manifesto was all about doing it yourself and not fetishizing teachers into gurus and just getting on with it and learning stuff. DARE TO BE A PIECE OF CRAP, I believe I said.

And the example I used was how I was going to learn how to play piano on the old keyboard I found in my basement.

Yeah. Well here’s the thing: as it turns out it’s really HARD to learn piano that way. And I’ve been plunking away every morning for 5-10 minutes and then I go do something else. Which is fine. But it’s become clear to me that I’m never really going to learn piano that way.

So daring to be a piece of crap isn’t the best mantra for me to use if I want to dare to learn piano. Maybe DARE TO GET YOUR ASS IN MOTION AND FIND A TEACHER would be a better one.

Anyway. As for the items in my first manifesto:

- Still don’t want to work for anyone, but my unemployment runs out in a month or so and with it my noble intentions. I’m hoping I can hold out for a boss who isn’t insane.

- Still think we shouldn’t make excuses for Roman Polanski just because he’s a great artist. Though I have to admit I’ve moved a little into Michael Jackson territory with Roman: I’m not making excuses for his appalling behavior, but I can’t help feeling sorry for him. I don’t know if this makes me a good empathetic humanist or a bad feminist. Or both?

- Still love beets with every fiber of my being. In fact: I have developed a variation on my beloved Beet Blast: so you’re boiling the beets along with some carrots, celery and onion in a big pot of water, right? Well after 45 minutes you can remove the beets, chop them up and eat them with the broth! Or by themselves! I always thought they were too mushy after that much boiling but I suddenly realized – hey wait a minute, beets take a long time to cook. So 45 minutes of simmering and you’ve got a beautiful bright red broth, AND beautiful tender beets!

Also speaking of beets (I should have a weekly post devoted solely to beets), I just remembered this opening passage from Jitterbug Perfume which I have always loved, even before I had tasted a beet:

The beet is the most intense of vegetables.

The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

- Back to the manifesti: still a cryer. That is never going to change. In fact I’ve been thinking more and more about how useful & cathartic crying can be. Case in point: back in October we were rehearsing Everyone Who Looks Like You two weeks before opening, which is to say we were madly swooping and careening and wheeling in circles. I was trying to write a song based on screaming (oh, I see I’ve mentioned this before) and I’d gone through at least three distinct versions and every time people didn’t quite like it and I was getting more and more frustrated and in the middle of rehearsal I just burst into tears, cried out I’M SORRY THAT’S THE BEST I CAN DO and ran into the bathroom. It was so embarrassing. I stayed in the bathroom for a while, not sure what to do, and then walked back out expecting horrified silence. But instead everyone came up to me one by one and gave me a hug and apologized! And they hadn’t even done anything! Somehow by letting people see I was overwhelmed, we were able to let go of the tension that had built up around that stupid song, and I was able to see that in fact the pressure wasn’t coming from anyone except me (and after that we figured out how to fix the song, so it was a win win all around).

Of course, if I cried every rehearsal, that would be a problem. But once in a while, it’s a good idea to let your feelings roll over you, come what may.

So that’s where I stand. Looks like half of my convictions still hold water, and the rest have run out of steam (to mix my metaphors). Stay tuned for NEW random passionate declarations, coming soon.