"Your creative endeavors can never be throughly mapped out ahead of time. You have to allow for the suddenly altered landscape, the change of plan, the accidental spark -- an you have to see it as a stroke of luck rather than a disturbance of your perfect scheme. Habitually creative people are, in E.B. White's phrase, "prepared to be lucky." - Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It And Use It For Life
Matt, Stan and I are waiting for our flight to board at SFO. The research trip portion of the yet-to-be-written-California-family-play is essentially complete.
As I write these words, thoughts are running through my mind of all of the dozens of people we did not talk to, all of the places we did not go, all of photographs that were not looked at and so on and so on.
Once you begin a project like this, you begin to realize the MASSIVE amount of source materials available to create from.
I cannot imagine being a biographer...studying someone's life and all the source materials surrounding them and trying to piece together anything resembling a "complete" picture of their life. It's just impossible. Impossible.
So...because creating a complete picture of the Wilcox family is something that cannot be done (and certainly not in a week...HA!), I will choose to believe that everything that Stan and Matt experienced was exactly enough...enough to get a sense, enough to spark an interest, enough to begin to make connections...
"What's next?" You ask.
1. Fly home to NY
2. Get back into swing of daily life again
3. Do NOT actively think about this week, just let it sink in.
4. Get together with Matt and Stan in a couple of weeks and have a post-trip-meeting to discuss our experiences (Probably over beers and BBQ beef brisket tacos at MexiQ)
5. Figure out the next step in the process to keep us rolling with this project (looking toward some kind of something workshoppy in the fall and some kind of something performance-ish in the winter)
I will keep you posted with the details as they become clear.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you....to all of my very brave and loving friends and family that have opened their hearts, memories, and homes to us on this journey so far.
Thank you to Matt and Stan for listening with curiosity, expressing empathy, putting up with my obsessive promptness, cracking jokes at all the appropriate (and inappropriate) moments, warm hugs and thoughtful conversations.
And thank you so much to all of YOU who have been following the blog this week and writing comments of encouragement. I promise to publish another post again in a couple of weeks to give you an update and let you know how our MexiQ meeting goes.
I think this project may turn out to be one of those things that I will look back on at the end of my life and think, "I'm really glad I did that when I had the chance." It's been a really meaningful process of for my family, sharing our stories with each other in the name of this creative endeavor.
As the Boston Marathon bombing reminds us, life is fragile and fleeting. Hug your loved-ones close today.
Oh! Gotta go. The plane is about to begin boarding.
XO!
Blessings,
Virginia
"This above all -- ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? [or act, or paint, or dance, or compose, etc.] Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
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