WE’RE JUST REHEARSING or, Every Day a Little Breath
October 27, 2013 at 2:08pm
I wrote this for my very, very good friend & sometime director Margaret Smith on the occasion of her 60th birthday, 10.25.13A few years ago, when I started learning more about the life and music of John Coltrane—something I recommend everyone do—I was struck by the fact that every single person who knew him brings up the fact that he was ALWAYS rehearsing, during every spare minute of his waking life (and probably much of his sleeping one, too). When I first read that, I thought it was utterly unlike my approach to art-making, which tends to come in brief spurts, separated by long naps. Naps which can last for years, sometimes.
But the older I get, the more I realize that I have been rehearsing all along, even when I didn't realize that's what I was doing. It dawned on me recently that every performance is simply a rehearsal for the next one. But every single thing I do, whether it's gardening or cleaning the house or hitting a clearance sale or seeing other artists at work, is a form of "rehearsal," too, in that it almost invariably seeds a future project, one which may not bear fruit until 10 or 20 years later, in ways I could never have foreseen. And the naps, I now realize, are just my way of letting time pass. Of “sleeping on it.”
In fact, I don't think I really was much of a performer until my friend Margaret Smith encouraged me, almost 20 years ago, to rehearse (and rehearse and rehearse) my first full-length performance, which eventually became an entire trilogy of monologues of mine she directed,collectively called “The Dark Times.” Ever since then, the more rehearsal time I've had for a project, the happier I have been with it. People who only know me as an improviser are invariably surprised to hear how much I love to rehearse (or write and refine drafts), but the only times I DON'T do it are when circumstances (usually economic) don't allow it.
I think we are ALWAYS rehearsing, all of us, all the time. We are all constantly trying things out, brainstorming, running ideas up the flagpole and seeing if anyone salutes them, throwing things up against the wall to see if anything sticks. If you look at life this way, there’s a lot less pressure; you really can’t make any mistakes, or at least there is nothing you can do that can’t be undone, because there’s always next time. Today is just a rehearsal for tomorrow.
They say “practice makes perfect,” but I don’t really think perfection is the aim of all our rehearsing. I’m not convinced that perfection is possible; at the very least I have a gut feeling that “perfect” is a state that doesn’t have anything to do with the absence of flaws or rough edges or
impurities.
Imperfections. Perfect is a state of grace, a state that, every once in a great while, we stumble upon: a moment when all the hard work disappears and suddenly everything is …
Easy,
Easy like Sunday morning. Easy like Keith Carradine seducing three different women with one song at one time in one perfect moment in the movie Nashville. Easy like how it’s so easy to talk to Margaret about … about anything, really. Art, politics, life, death, yesterday, tomorrow.
Margaret perpetually inspires me: to try something new, to make something better, to … To rehearse, for instance.
Inspire: As in, to breathe life into that which is inanimate. To animate it. To breathe. To breathe in, and breathe out.
You breathe in, you breathe out. You breathe in, you breathe out. And in this way, with this simple procedure, life is generated and regenerated. Second after second, minute by minute, hour follows hour, day meets night and becomes day again, and before you know it, years turn into decades, and somehow, mysteriously, gloriously, our Margaret has six decades to call her own. Sixty amazing years of inspiring others, of rehearsing, of small unexpected moments of perfection and grace.
I knew that the word “inspire” came from the root “to breathe,” but I wondered about “rehearse.” All I could think was “Hearse.”Re-hearse. As in, “Here comes the hearse again.” And it turns out that IS where the word comes from! In-spiring turns into ex-piring, and sooner or later it’s time to load up the old hearse again. Bring out your dead! Your dead ideas,your deadLINES, your dead AIR, which to an unrehearsed performer in anything other than a Pinter play can be deadly. Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to BREATHE / FREE. Out with the old air, in with the new!
I have known Margaret for many years now, for – and I am bad at math, so I could be wrong about this, but I am pretty sure we have known each other for close to half our lives, or at least half of mine, which is slightly less long (so far) than hers. And during that time there have been points, one point in particular, when it seemed like there was just death everywhere we looked. One good friend, one lifelong friend after another, one gay man after another, BAM BAM BAM, just like that. It was a dark time indeed.And I hate to point this out, but something tells me it will only get darker,given that the odds are prettttttty good that every last one of us is going to quit rehearsing sooner or later. Maybe not BAM BAM BAM, but in the fullness of time.Which can be very, very full at times like this.
Is it wrong to speak of death on such a happy occasion? Have I made a faux pas in bringing up the word, the concept we don’t like to talk about ever ever ever, until it’s too late and we can’t hide from it anymore?
I think you know my answer to that jackpot question in advance. I am a big believer in etiquette, but I am also a big believer in there truly being no mistakes, in there being no bold lines separating the acceptable from the unacceptable, the speaker from the unspeakable. The happy from the sad. The living from the dead. I think most of us have reached an age by now when we know how lucky we are to still be alive at all, to still be breathing, to still be inspire-able, to still be able to rehearse. And we know how lucky we are to know Margaret, to be inspired by her, to rehearse with her and for her and to play with her and work with her and share a part of our lives with her. We know that this moment—
--THIS one, right here, right now—
is a fleeting one. So let us make the most of it! Let us breathe in the good air and let go of all the bad things that have held us back: The fear, the self-doubt, the misgiving, the often paralyzing terror of making mistakes. In this moment, THIS moment, there are no mistakes. There is only life, and we are in it and we are of it,
and we are blessed.
—Ron Ehmke
