Henry Miller once wrote: “A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me.” He was describing his state of mind at a low point in his life, and how he let go of his literary pretensions, and just focused on his own writing. Out of that frame of mind came Tropic of Cancer, one of the most original works of the 20th century.
Now, I don’t know a lot about being an artist, but I think what Miller suggests in his statement is that at some point you stop thinking about what you want to be, or about the trappings of accomplishment, and just get down to work. Over time you find yourself so involved in your work that you no longer think about what you’re doing, but rather just work, and work, and work, until it scrambles your brain and then—Desire, expectation, concern, they become ash. Just grey matter, scattered to the Santa Ana winds. From that cogitative, and frankly lonely, Nirvana comes you—you are your work, your work is you, and the energy just goes round and round in a blender until the two can’t be unscrambled. You simultaneously forget your work, and can’t forget it, because your efforts have become so internalized they become a matter of identity.
I think, therefore I am? No, René, I work, therefore I am.
These days I’m so dissatisfied with the state of dressage in America. My past few posts have been about this same subject, but bear with me through this phase because I’m having a hard time coming to terms with the sad realization that to get anywhere in dressage requires a rider to be extremely mentally independent. Sui generis being the American condition, Nic and I have found several times that self-invention seems to be the safest yellow brick road to success.
I learned as a kid the skills necessary to achieve success in an athletic venue, and have achieved high levels in other sports before I took up dressage, but the type of mental toughness required in dressage is different. In both figure skating and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu the mores in each sport was such that the student could trust that the trainer had the student’s best interests in mind, or at least wasn’t imparting information that was half-assed or wholly self-promoting. Like Theodora of Constantinople on the night Justinian almost abdicated as emperor, the American dressage rider’s gots to grow a pair and maintain a strong sense of identity in the face of overwhelming pressure to do otherwise.
Honestly, though, the level of skill and theoretical knowledge required in both figure skating and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is simply not comparable to that of dressage. The theory and finesse is much more involved in dressage, and the basics can be understood and taught to the student on so many levels. Maybe that’s because all dressage really is about is refinement of the basics. In figure skating, there’s only so many ways to teach a jump, and if you suck at it, as long as you land it, that’s effectively all that matters. There isn’t the same building on basics from an intellectual standpoint – to go from a double to a triple, you just add an extra rotation. You can’t have the same relaxed approach to dressage and expect to get anywhere.
It’s part of the human condition, to shed beliefs like metaphorical snakeskin: when “everything that was” falls away. Somehow, with all this, comes an inconsolable sense of loss. I’ve found that I have to keep my agenda in sharp focus and constantly assess the information I’m given, testing the information for purity, weighing it on the scales of common sense like a trader at the Grand Bazaar. My knowledge base is constantly expanding, causing fissures in the system to become more blatant.
Nic and I went to another clinic this week, and I believe it was an unmitigated disaster. Postmodern literary theory espouses that everything—ideas, beliefs, emotions, and yes, teachings—is applicable in the moment, but not necessarily at any other point in time, and boy did this clinic illustrate that idea. The irony is that this clinician has been helpful with her, but advice that helped so much in the past, when Nic was stiff, is now passé—Nic is no longer stiff and resistant. We have the very basics—contact, submission, basic swung—covered. We are turning our horizons to gait and muscle development now, and this clinic was a step back for us. Nic came back sore, tense, and lacking self-carriage. There isn’t the same desire to build energy into the bridle. The training we’ve been doing with her is undone, and I’m frustrated.
