Clearing the work out of the play

I've spent three years, six semesters, playing this game of the student, trying to get my mind around massive subjects, pulling up a magnifying glass to nitty gritty details, and spending god knows how many hours in the library waiting for paper ideas to materialize into coherent sentences. and i'm finally starting to feel a change that was articulated so simply in todays lecture. "In order to become successful you have to have discipline, not the kind of discipline where you work all the time, but where you work hard for a good hour and then play for 2 hours."

Yesterday I did just that at the closing performance of the time-based art festival here in downtown Portland. I'll be posting pictures of this joyful experience (ending with the perfect memoriabilia pin with the word "PLAY" on it now strapped to my bag) when I organize that experience into a sort of review. For now I'm just marveling at how much better life is when you do separate the work from the play.

Before heading to Nora's class today, I got the urge I haven't had in at least two weeks to just sing and play my guitar. It helped having no one home and 10 solid minutes before I needed to speed away on my bicycle to get to class, of course longer would have been good but it was enough to make me want to return home after class for session number two, mirah tabs in hand, new song ideas of my own ready to be recorded on garageband, for the later more serious work/play of finishing and rewriting songs. I'm still working on clearing away the fog that work casts over my clear sunny dreams, and on days like today I'm allowing those dreams to peak their heads out of the covers; I'm giving them the time they need to wake up and sing in the morning. I'm still too afraid to post what those dreams might be, and the "covenant" to myself we were asked to write up in class the other day. I have a feeling, like I always do, that my dreams involve the community of the arts (music in particular) and my place within it. For now I'll make sure to only do work when I'm doing work, and leave the rest of my time to explore whatever's inside my curious soul, and unabashedly go outside and PLAY.