Iconoclasts

Yes, I think I may have mentioned this show on the Sundance Channel. I adore this program, and feel constantly inspired by both its premise and its actuality. The episode on now features Mikhail Baryshnikov and Alice Waters, and I feel homesick. It's strange.

'Homesick' is the only word that encapsulates this feeling.

Watching dancers reminds me of where I have been before. I dated a modern dancer, and shared a life with her for a few years. She and I had similar paths, where she was classically trained as a ballet dancer, and then went on to focus on Modern Dance when she went to college. (I was classically trained as a metalsmith, and have gone on to do installation and video work.)

For me, my history was about learning the foundation of my craft, and then building out from there with a more artistic eye. But I grew to resent my peers at college who *knew* they were artists, but had no formal training in their forms media. I felt partly envious of that sense of righteousness, and partly annoyed at that sense of naivety that lends to narcissism. This ex of mine shared those same sensibilities, having been trained as a ballet dancer. A process far more strict and disciplined than my silly metal work.

We shared that language, that intuition about art balanced with a refined, well honed craft at the spine of the work. She and I would go to performances and many types of displays of art, and always deconstructed them afterwards in this common language. There were times where we could literally read each others' minds amid the silence of a performance. We could predict and project how the other would experience and interpret the unfolding work before us. I miss that sense of intuition, that sense of intimacy, especially related to creative facilities that now have grown dormant in me.

It's not so much that I miss her specifically, but I miss feeling *known* in that way, and knowing someone else so well, too. The lack of that can sometimes make me feel like the loneliest boy in the world. Hoping to someday find it again.

I constantly watch this show about connections between visionaries, and I yearn to be one myself someday. I wish to have all of this self exploration, all of my unbridled passion lead me somewhere fruitful and altruistic. And more than that, I hope that it connects me to other like minds, where we can 'tune in' to this higher, more mindful narrative. I crave that more than anything. And times like now, it is what I miss the most. Not the warm body beside me, or the carnal instincts, but that unspoken language where I felt most understood despite the silence and the gaps.

I want to understand someone like that again. I want to be understood.