Rough Friction : Rough Magic
addiction and attention
This week I am sipping on some of my own medicine.
Often when I go to make my little memes for IG, I hear the words drop in first, like a golden arrow shot from the Muse, piercing the ground at my feet, and I’m like okay dang thank you that sounds good, what a nice little arrangement of words, lemme get to typing...
And sometimes I’ll have the experience of folks reaching out and sharing that those words were precisely what they needed to hear in that moment.
Other times—times like today—I find myself flailing around in the choppy waters of myself, grasping for a flotation device and I think ah yes, turns out the meme was for me, the snappy words are my bouy in the dark. Ok, noted.
The rough friction of reality is big time having its way with me. I am, in spite of myself, making room for the idea of some skin shedding.
Some skin I am shedding lately~
an addiction to dissatisfaction.
I’ve been thinking about the idea that bodies can be addicted to a specific cocktail of brain chemistry that gets released in response to stressy thoughts.
I’ve been thinking about the body begging the brain to be irritated, be annoyed, be outraged, be snarky, be petty, so it can get a hit of the hormone sauce it’s become hooked on.
I’m still chewing on this. I’m so devotionally in awe of the body and it’s supreme intelligence that I think it’s less of the body doing the begging and more like a malware virus that’s hijacked the system, running a program of lemme get a hit, let’s look for more evidence of how this moment sucks, GO!
If you’ve read my zine on attention resuscitation, you know I’m deeply focused on what I’m focusing on right now, as the number one predictor of my mood, experience, and availability to life.
For a couple of months, I’ve been trying to bring more awareness to the auto-pilot gaze of suckage. I know I come by it honestly, it’s so culturally sanctioned. Complaining, whether silently to myself with butt-feathers perennially RUFFLED, or out loud to a witness who I know will corroborate, has been an unconscious but deep part of my identity. Almost as if it’s a demonstration of my intelligence. Bringing a critical lens to circumstances gets conflated with performing hyper intellectualism. Complaining and criticism are energetically different, but they both require your attention to be focused on shit you don’t like or agree with.
Thus, engaging the addiction loop.
I’ve been feeling into the hulk-like strength required to move the needle of attention away from what’s causing the friction, and towards what is satisfying within the details of my present environment. Or maybe it’s less force and more watery surrender.
The research continues.
At Crybaby Dance Club, I often use the cue: Your only job is to stay interested in yourself moving in this moment. Your only job is to pay attention to what feels good. Notice aches, notice pains, notice muscular tension, but keep orienting the gaze towards pleasure and curiosity.
In my mind, this isn’t the same as ignoring the pain and friction. It’s about cultivating a balanced attention, and noticing the habit (or addiction, even!) of orienting towards discomfort and dissatisfaction.
Folks who come to class have talked about how insane it is that there’s really no where to go on the Crybaby dance floor. Meaning, at a regular club you could go outside, smoke a cigarette, get a drink at the bar, do any number of actions that pull you out of the moment of just you and your shit on the dance floor. I always tell people they can go make a tea or get a snack at our little provisions table, or step out and watch, but mostly people stay in, like one big sweaty moving meditation.
There are so many opportunities throughout a single day to get bored or irritated or afraid of what’s coming up, just like in meditation. I am forever so interested in arriving to that moment of ROUGH FRICTION and staying with it to see what ELSE is here, what other stories can be told beyond the fear and vilification of the friction.
The moment is just the moment. Every aspect of it is completely neutral. But where I am sending my attention, my gaze and my energy has everything to do with how sucky or how easy this moment goes for me.
What if our Problems™ were actually just fun silly challenges that we got to try on like a costume, or like trying to learn a TikTok dance challenge?
What if the stakes were actually low low low low low and there was a sense of funny failure being just simply part of the deal?
Like, you just know you’re gonna suck at the dance challenge the first 10 times—I say this as someone who has never attempted a single TikTok dance challenge. But the people are out here really into this kind of rigor, doing so with a high threshold of failure tolerance. Even though we only see the ~polished~ version, you know it’s been practiced and attempted many goofy times.
What if it all is just a silly dance challenge?
If you want evidence of what sucks, it’s certainly available for you.
If you want evidence of what’s fun, joyful, delightful, curious, titillating, it’s also there for you, it might just be really annoying and challenging to look for at first.
The last Crybaby for the season is this Tuesday. I’m so in awe of the community that is emerging and growing here. If you’re in Atlanta, come over and we’ll dance out the rough friction of it all, what do you say???
We’ll have very cute merch for sale ~ a tee designed by my pal Jon Dones and screen printed by Jane Foley and myself! I’ll post what’s left in my web shop and send ya’ll a note here when they’re available.
Thank you for being here <3