It is Daylight

Yesterday I spent all of my daylight hours learning how to print color darkroom prints. 

I've wanted to learn how to do this through most of the last ten years of my life, and until a couple of weeks ago, I never truly entertained that I would or could. My instructor at the Glassell oh-so-patiently walked me through the process and forced me to walk her back through it. I didn't want to. I wanted to give up so close to the end; literally, I gave her every opportunity to call it a day so that I could bow out under the weight of my own fear. Trading places with her in the small, made-for-one-person darkroom, I was shaking. She could almost hear my heart beat; each beat could be seen in the slight vibration right at the chest of my t-shirt.

But she made me. I had to start over twice. After misprinting the first piece of paper, I sat it aside, said something about un-success being the worthy goal, success being an afterthought. In talking myself through the experience, I realized how many wonderful people have taught me about the learning process, and about failure in particular. 

I remember the first time Dola visited Texas; she was studying butoh, a practice about which I had no reference or knowledge. Over the course of a few days, following her words and the videos she shared, she did what only an exceptional teacher does -- she expanded butoh to include my world, the one in which I already lived and danced and shot photos, instead of what you would expect -- to learn the basis of the art so that you can be included in it, excluded from the exterior world in order to enter a new world. I remember badly balancing on a tree for a photo: "There's your butoh!" she said. 

Years later, I took a butoh class with Addie in NYC. That class was difficult. From the second we entered the door, I wanted to run away -- no, from the second I saw the door on the street. Truly, I attended that class as a sign of my friendship to Addie only; my curiosity, strong though it had been previously, had entirely disappeared by the time class began. I won't write endless details here (though they're pretty fascinating), but I found myself unable to take some of the guidance seriously. I held back half-derisive, half-insecure laughter through entire sections of instruction. But the moment I gave up -- stood up from my hunched-over animal-acting role and flopped my arms at my sides in bored self-disappointment -- the teacher pointed me out, pointed her actual finger at my face and said, "That's the butoh moment!" Pure feeling taking over all the thinking mind, and action following, thoughtlessly thoughtful.

Similarly, when I was at the beginning of my yoga experience (the very beginning being in Montreal a decade and a half ago -- eek!), the teacher would tell us: If you're not falling out of your posture, you're not doing yoga. That class was full of the most beautiful people. I would say inside and outside, but I only knew them by how they appeared. I didn't make any friends there, stayed in my shy bubble, speaking as little French as I could without dying of hunger or not knowing how to get home via a subway map. These men and women, silently, went from one position to the next, with seemingly zero struggle. 

Now I know that a lot of struggle happens on the interior of the body. (Later, dance instructors have said as much, and I've experienced it now as an instructor myself; the easier a practiced person makes it look, the harder they're working for it.) But in the moment, I felt as though I was the only person in the room falling to pieces. Posture after posture my hand slipped off my ankle or my knee off my chest. I fell, literally to the ground from standing, twice in the first month -- I've never seen anyone do that since! Often, I had to stop a posture as soon as I took it, being overwhelmed by the nausea that accompanies the attempt to push through serious inflexibility. And I won't describe the heat exhaustion.

But the teacher stood next to me in class one time, placed her hand on my shoulder (feel-good tv-movie style) and said something like, yoga is in the falling, not the standing. I hear those words today. I hear it right now as if it's being said. I'm tearing up thinking about it (projectile feelings again!). And I can't say I internalized it immediately; still, I want to stay upright when I balance on one leg and stretch another (just last night, for instance). But more often than not, I try to fall, I try to push myself to the point that my body-sureness wavers, that my mind-sureness wavers as well. 

Printing color gave me similar sensations. I could have written a dozen t-shirt slogans yesterday. You know what I'm talking about, pain is just weakness leaving the body, etc. I mention that one because I consciously thought of it while my hands shook in the total darkness. (Not safelight dakrness -- this is a total, can't see your own hands ten minutes in there darkness.) Amazing the reserve of encouragement that, thanks to many many extraordinary people, I've built over the years to leap over my own fear of failure. I had no choice in the moment but to eventually succeed, so I realized that my options were to either struggle against it or let the failure become me, be inherent in the process, be a pleasant and colorful part of it. 

Colorful part of it! I didn't mean that pun, but now I can't untype it.

I've slipped out of my narrative-of-the-past headspace this morning. It's 6:11 am.
I've been up for an hour and a half. 

An alarm clock has been buzzing for a good ten minutes in the bedroom apartment below my computer. 

My heart has stopped racing.

After cleaning the lab, I walked to my car with the four prints in a box. I put the box in my trunk and headed to dance class. After class, on my way home, I looked at my phone to see the photo I'd taken of the prints. But apparently that wasn't enough. Without thinking, I pulled into a parking lot, popped my trunk and grabbed the white container. And in that minute, I felt the rush of body-changes again. I had to see that it was there, that I hadn't imagined it. 

It wasn't as beautiful as I'd remembered, I won't lie. But it was better.

It had faults, needed more experience in it, so much expansive room for improvement.  

* * *

Long, long, long story short: yesterday I printed my first color darkroom photograph. 

Here it what I made alongside a self-portrait shot in the darkroom after welling with tears and making one phone call: