Joe Goode<\/a>, a long time dancer, choreographer, and movement teacher in San Francisco.<\/p>\nI admit to having been a bit nervous. The main way my body reminds me that I\u2019m old is with physical limitations. I ache in some spots and have lost range of motion in others.<\/p>\n
And, mind you, mine is a body that was never designed for most of the movements associated with dance of the performing kind. I could not do splits or backbends even when I was six.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, while there were dancers in the class, the focus was not on those skills. We started with a series of exercises Joe calls \u201cMovement for Humans\u201d that did not require perfection but that, in fact, did wonders for my physical being.<\/p>\n
We ended with an exercise that included a motion of throwing things away. And that led us into writing, starting with a thought about what we were throwing away.<\/p>\n
This workshop addressed two things that I sorely need.<\/p>\n
First of all, I always need movement and these days in particular I\u2019m looking for new movement practices.<\/p>\n
Secondly, I need to do things that open my mind to new possibilities. You might call this sparking creativity though I suspect it\u2019s much broader than that. <\/p>\n
Now I primarily write fiction, but I have not been interested in fiction classes for a long time. I loved my time at Clarion West and years back took several good workshops for fiction writers, so this is not intended as a slam at those things. It\u2019s just not the kind of learning about writing that I need now.<\/p>\n
I appreciate my writers critique group, because understanding how other writers react to the words you\u2019ve put on a page helps me develop it. But that\u2019s peer reaction, not a workshop designed to teach world building or plotting or characterization.<\/p>\n
I am not, and never have been, a linear writer. (I am the person who, back in school, wrote the outline the teacher demanded after I wrote the essay.) The things that affect my writing, my general creativity, my overall well-being are not direct things that can be easily labeled.<\/p>\n
Which means that the kind of classes I\u2019m looking for are not ones directly related to the writing of fiction.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve just signed up for my third drawing class. Drawing is incredibly useful because it teaches you to pay close attention. I\u2019ll see something I want to draw and then, once I start drawing it, discover all these other lines and shadows I didn\u2019t know were there.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve taken a couple of poetry classes and been writing some poetry not because I\u2019m becoming a serious poet (though who knows where things will end up) but because those classes open the door to new ways of looking at words.<\/p>\n
Movement has always done that kind of thing for me. I\u2019ve needed some new ways of getting into movement, though. Walking is wonderful for many reasons (some of which have a lot to do with looking at things). Even the gym is satisfying in many ways. Just moving is good.<\/p>\n
But Tai Chi, like Aikido, shows me things through my body I wouldn\u2019t have seen otherwise, which is what makes that different from just exercise. I suspect yoga does that for some people.<\/p>\n
The Movement for Humans work did that for me as well.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t always put what I find from that movement into words. I even wrote a senryu about that this week:<\/p>\n
My body knows truths
\nthat I cannot give word to,
\nor at least, not yet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But that movement is vital. And I need to find more ways of bringing it into my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Movement and words. For me, those things are the basics, the two places where I find my core being. So when I saw a workshop called Writing From the Body, I pretty much had to sign up. It was taught by Joe Goode, a long time dancer, choreographer, and movement teacher in San Francisco. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[411],"class_list":["post-3738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3739,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}