mary-masked

Do As You Will

Published: August 14th 2018, 1:52:45 am

I tried to do a drawing of Maggie. It was a good enough sketch, but didn't really look like her. I tried again and it was worse. I started a new drawing but a few seconds in I stopped trying to draw Maggie and just let my hand do what it wanted. And my hand wanted to draw this.

It's rough but I like it. It has a bit more character or style than what I usually draw and drawing it felt easier, more fun. I feel like the past couple of months, some part of me has been pushing me into making art with less thinking, just kind of starting and trusting my instincts. It's something I'm used to with dancing, but it's new for drawing and creating burlesque acts.

In The Last Unicorn, one of the main characters is Schmendrick the magician. He's a really bad magician. Any spell he tries to do fails. But when he's really in trouble and says "Magic, do as you will," his magic takes over and something miraculous happens. It's not what he meant to happen, because he didn't have a specific outcome he was going for, but it was what *needed* to happen.

I've always felt that way about dancing. Put me in any dance class and I am a *horrible* dancer. Try to make me follow choreography and I look exactly like Liz Lemon in a zumba class.

But play a song that I like and let my body do whatever it wants (especially if I have a pole to hold on to) and...I don't really know what happens but it looks good!

With the last few acts I've done, I've been trusting my subconscious more and the results have felt more important to me, more meaningful. But it's a really scary process. I didn't realize that I'm a control freak but...yeah, I guess that's what perfectionism is.

So...I guess I'm going to work on that.