made me think of this
ALT[id: x/twitter qrt from user styloshka that says "I read a forum post about art once, that it's a product of the dialectic between the effort of the artist and the friction of the medium. You push on the thing and the thing pushes back on you, it has its own voice. The weight of a piano key, the tension of a guitar string." original post from user colleen_daves says "Don't you want to skip over the mindless drudgery that is making art?" I do six stand embroidery and break like 10 needles a day, would I prefer that activity didn't hurt my hands and make me angry? Sure. But that's what makes having the finished piece after so worth it to me."]
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved when I got assigned a solo and would dance it over and over as much for pleasure as for the quest for perfection, but I loved the rest of it too.
I loved the slow methodical mediation of the stretches before class. I loved the quiet discipline of the barre exercises, the endless repetition, the feel of me shaping my body into the same forms, closer ever closer to correct.
Most of the others didn't rush onto the floor the moment it cleared to stretch alone.
Most of the others complained endlessly about barre. For me it was part of it. All of it was dancing and I loved dancing in every fiber of my being, pushing ever pushing at the boundaries of what my body can do.
It was never boring to me, not even the most mundane, repetitious parts. I gave no fucks for those few performances in front of the audience; I was dancing for me and that included doing feet positions over and over at the barre. It was doing the thing that mattered and I loved every second of it.
I was the same way with the assorted marital arts styles I studied over the years until my body gave out. The spars are the glamourous bits, but I loved the drills too, repeating, repeating, repeating.
I was the same way with candle wicking and needlepoint, my fingers reading canvas. My fingers mindlessly going in and out or doing the knots over and over.
It is possible to love every part of the thing, the colours unrealing on canvas, the patterns on linen, the repetition of form of drill of motion. Effort and beauty and sweat forever tangled together.
This is what Annie Dilliard said
A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, ”Do you think I could be a writer?”
”Well,” the writer said, ”I don’t know. . . . Do you like sentences?”
The writer could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ”I liked the smell of the paint.”
