‘excitement’

It was interesting to talk with a friend about ‘excitement’ last night.

‘It was a “Are you ‘excited’ about what you have coming up in your diary?” sort of question ….”there are some good things coming up for you, you must be excited!”

But no, what I feel is not excitement. For me excitement is an ungrounded, jump in my heart feeling. Slightly off world and out of control, with a weakness in the knees, in the belly.

Excitement has not helped me create great work.

Excitement takes over my head and makes loud thoughts.

What I need is slow, gentle, groundedness and weighting into the earth. I need to sink my toes into mud and stay with the sensation of water squelching between my skin and the earth.

I need calmness of breath to work, to create, to organise my upcoming opportunities.

I need to tune in to my soul and what message she wants to take out into the world.

I need the courage to get bored and to find the new ideas that lurk in the corners of boredom. In the familiar things.

So …. what place has ‘excitement’ in my life?.

Before I play I experience a tide of energy. First she leaves me, I slump empty on the couch. Then about an hour later, she fills my every pour with a surge of …. excitement… adrenal spike. That’s my moment to take all the work I have done in those long months of preparation and offer it to the world.

Those last moments before I am on-stage, in the greenroom, as the lights come up, as who ever is playing before me is reaching for the stars and showing me how well the sound system is pumping.

That’s when I am excited.

Today I am here, with my two feet on the earth. There are a lot of creative ideas and realities inhabiting my mind and I need to be still to filter and form them.