Keep the Channel Open

There is a good chance you don’t know who Agnes de Mille is, nor Martha Graham. The long and short of it is that Agnes de Mille was a choreographer responsible for the legendary Oklahoma!. Despite achieving widespread acclaim and commercials success, de Mille was not entirely satisfied. She felt that a lot of her other work was actually much better yet received far less recognition.

To reconcile her feelings de Mille sought out Martha Graham, another dancer and choreographer who, while relatively less well-known outside the world of dance, was without a doubt one of the most powerful influencers of modern American dance. Graham was intense and painfully passionate, once saying “I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable. (src)”

I think that this sense of misplaced success is one that is more and more familiar to the world as a whole. In the brave, new, connected world, where judgement lay a tap away, we leave more and more of our self-perception to the hands of others. Is this a bad thing?

What follows is a quote from the conversation where Graham responds to de Mille’s fear that she will not be able to be excellent:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

-Martha Graham