Failure Project Day Seven: Gliding Through The Sea of Silent Euphoria

Today felt immense. Yesterday felt immense too, but in a weighty way that I found hard to shake off in the evening - Lara had to remind me today that improvising movement while someone shouts negative things at you (it made sense at the time) will take a toll on a person.

Today we continued with physical improvisations. I do the improvisations, and Lara has taken on more of the role of director/movement director. We're trying to explore the physical and emotional sensations of depression. It is actually quite difficult to recall, when (like now) I am not depressed, the specificities of those feelings. But I know how I have described them to myself in the past, and so we have begun with that. As an example, we spent a lot of time today trying to pin down the feelings and physical sensations that underly the social anxiety that grips me when I am depressed - trying to find the word, the image, that seems closest. I think we got close by the end of the day.

We're also exploring contrasts and extremes - I spent some time today dressed as a giant golden sausage - and this afternoon we started to tap into movement that expresses euphoria and a sense of release. Thinking about euphoria led us to thinking about the things we do to connect to each other, and how depression is often a severing of or inability to make those connections. We closed the day by watching an absolutely classic TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor - "My Stroke of Insight". If you haven't seen it, and you can spare 20 minutes, just watch it right now.

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