About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)

July 02, 2018 by Ben Miller in Art, Magical Thinking

These are some notes written to myself and to that absurdly alluring voice in my skull that says I should bury myself in isolation. The voice that says I'm a turd who should avoid all discomfort and all situations that elicit vulnerability and the possibility of rejection. Turds, after all, are fragile things. They're not made to weather the blows of the world. The voice in the head will tell me that, as a turd, it is best to stay in the shadows where, though it may be lonely and bleak, I will at least be safely concealed from the chaos of the outer world. This is all delusory, of course, but there are days when that voice can be so damn persistent. These notes are written as a response my own mind's smelly murmurs of fear and doubt. They were sparked by art/music performance, but are easily applicable to any other circumstances that poke and prod the belchy belly of fear.

If you are a human, and if you are alive--which you probably are if these words are registering within the grassy field of your awareness--you will be disliked, hated, rejected, misunderstood, and, worst of all, ignored. You will have your spiritual gonads stomped upon by a large portion of earth's populace. Not just once. Many times!

THIS DOES NOT MATTER.

Your mind will likely convince you that it does matter. This is a delusion, albeit a persistent and persuasive one. This is not to belittle or judge the feelings of pain that you have in response to these blows. Life hurts! The hurt and pain is natural. But it's not immutable. And it's not all there is. Writing that "pain is not all there is" makes it sound obvious, but sometimes I have to remind myself.

Try to shift your focus. Gently. Gradually. Little by little.

Shift your focus toward enjoying the act--the moment--of creation. And if it's your desire to do so, put yourself and your work out there.

If you do this, you are guaranteed to meet more people who will once again kick you in your spiritual gonads and write nasty words on the inner walls of your heart.

BUT...

You will also meet people who connect with you and your work. You'll inspire others and they'll inspire you. You'll find the path, places, and people who support you and help you. This is the avenue that will fill you up, light you up, and give you the strength to stomach the darker, more trying days.

You can only find this path, these places, and these people if you put yourself out there. This means you will be vulnerable. When you're vulnerable, you'll meet pain but you'll also be much more open to all of the other qualities of life that make it worth living, whatever those are for you (love, laughter, connection, joy, inspiration, growth, etc.).

If you are meeting lots of rejection, you are actually getting closer to the path that will work out for you. This is because rejection and finding out what doesn't work is part of the process of finding out what does work. This might not make the pain any easier, but it will at least give you a reason to persist, a reason to not give up, a reason to continue trying to do whatever it is you are inspired to do.

On my blog, you can find more writings on art and alchemical thinking, interviews about creativity, psychologically-oriented reflections on tarot, and more. You can check out past posts in the categorized list below.

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Art
- Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
Interviews
- Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
- Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
- Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
- Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
- Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
Magical Thinking
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
- Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
- Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
- Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
- Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
- Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
- Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
- May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
- Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
Tarot
- Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction
- Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
- Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
- Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
- Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
- Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
- Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
- Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
- Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
- Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
- Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?

The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)

June 22, 2018 by Ben Miller in Art, Magical Thinking

Before I perform, there will usually be a physical, palpable knot in my stomach. A ball of tension and fear. A fear that suggests maybe it would be better to just stay home, sit in my underwear, and enjoy the comfort of being sealed within the membrane of my bedroom, where fears are less likely to rear their warty heads up from the dirt of my subconscious.

The fear is a guide. It's trying to bring my attention to some latent, illusory beliefs I've been holding but haven't addressed. When performing, the fear that emerges most often is the fear of allowing myself to be myself. What does it mean to be myself? It means to move, speak, and sing freely. To be loose and uninhibited. To be playful, light, and open to love, laughter, and the feeling of WOW. To me, this is the natural human state, but it becomes obscured by inherited fears: They won't like me. They hate me. I'm worthless. I shouldn't be this way, even though it's the way I truly wish to be. I'm unlovable. I'm a piece of shit so low that even the sphincter that squeezed me out from its sordid orbit is ashamed of me.

These beliefs that come from the voice of fear feel very real and undoubtedly have very real effects, but they are not real. They are illusions that we have inherited from family, culture, and past hurt. The structure built by these self-imprisoning illusions might seem tall and insurmountable, but it can be dismantled. We can look at its bricks, study them, and remove them one by one.

Any experience we have automatically reflects back to us the inner contents of our being. Our fears, our conscious and subconscious beliefs, the meat, bones, and blood of our heart. I know the heart doesn't have bones, but you know what I mean.We are always, automatically projecting these inner aspects onto the outside world. The notes below were written after a performance, in an attempt to observe and converse with my own mind and heart.

Tonight at Kickbutt’s open mic, my intention was this:

Be yourself!
Be free.

After the show, a woman named Amy approached me and said it seemed that I was “being myself up there”. Intentions DO come through!

When you perform
sink yourself deeply
into whatever you are doing.

FEEL it.

Then let that feeling flow
into your performance.

That is how you will bring people into the experience.

Don’t concern yourself with worries; worries about whether or not the performance is going well,
worries about whether people like it or hate it. Don’t fight these fears if they arise, but tell them that they are irrelevant and unimportant.

Good? Bad? Doesn’t matter!

Thinking about “good” and “bad” take you out of the moment, out of the art--and that’s why you’re here! The art and the joy of making it is the whole thing.

Just focus on connecting with the feeling of your music and your self in the present moment. Connect with that feeling as much as you can. Then let that come through your performance as best you can.

Whatever audience response will come will come, but it’s not your real concern. Your primary concern is to channel the music, to amplify the feeling of the music with your own energy and focus. The rest (the audience response) is up to life.

If it goes well, enjoy it.

If it goes “badly”, enjoy that, too!

____

When you are playing for a friendly, familiar audience (like friends in Seoul or Milwaukee), you feel so comfortable that it’s EASY to let yourself be yourself. Once you are in that zone, the zone in which you don’t inhibit yourself from being yourself, then the performance goes terrifically.

When you play for an unfamiliar or challenging crowd (a new venue or an audience full of old, cold-face men who seem resist to the strangeness and emotionality of your performance), you freeze, you hesitate, you doubt yourself. You stop being yourself because you’re worried about rejection.

This doesn’t need to happen!

To be afraid of strangers and rejection is totally understandable and valid, but it’s not necessary!

Being around friends makes it easier to be yourself, to be loose, to PLAY, but that state of freedom is ALWAYS accessible. You need only decide to shift your awareness to that frequency and the qualities you associate with it.

If you notice fear and inner resistance, that’s okay. That’s human. But it doesn’t mean you need to let it control you. CHOOSE to go beyond it. You don’t need to fight it or make it go away. Just choose to disregard it. As best you can, focus on the feeling that you want to experience (playfulness, openness, love, passion, free expression, etc.) and put that into your performance.

If at first it does not seem real or possible, then pretend. Act as if you are already inhabiting that feeling. By doing so, by moving, speaking, and singing as you would if you felt that feeling, you will be generating that feeling within you. In other words, by pretending you are that, you actually become that.

_____

Follow the paths that allow you to risk failure.

If it scares you and it gives you joy,
then YES,
do that.
That’s where the wonder is waiting.
That’s where your freedom can be found.

Freedom from fear doesn’t come from erasing the fear.
Freedom from fear comes from entering the fear.

subscribe via rss

Art
- Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
Interviews
- Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
- Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
- Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
- Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
- Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
Magical Thinking
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
- Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
- Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
- Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
- Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
- Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
- Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
- May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
- Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
Tarot
- Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction
- Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
- Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
- Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
- Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
- Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
- Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
- Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
- Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
- Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
- Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?

Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance

April 03, 2018 by Ben Miller in Art, Magical Thinking

The world and the mind are malleable in nature but the weights and self-imposed restrictions we each carry can sometimes impede our ability to BE as we would like to BE. Detrimental patterns of thought, emotion, and action—usually rooted in the subconscious—impair our ability to shape our self and our world in a creative, life-sustaining way.

In these street performances, I use playfulness and absurdity as tools to temporarily disrupt those inhibitory patterns. I try to invoke within myself a state of freedom and lightness, then do what I can to benignly infect others with those qualities, if they seem open to the experience.

Ben Jon Miller (www.benjonmiller.com) performing on 6th street during the South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX, USA, March 2018. Camera: James Fain

Why?

Firstly, it feels so darn good!

It feels liberating to allow myself to be foolish and childlike, to let go of behavioral rules and limitations, to unshackle myself from the expectation to be normal—to be myself. It feels good, but on a deeper level, learning to access this state makes it easier to connect with myself, to connect with others, and to connect with a sense that life is meaningful and worth living.

I have so many internal patterns that withhold me from this state. Pessimism. Anger. Apathy. Lethargy. Sadness. Loneliness. Judgment of myself and others. The demons available to us are bountiful and ever eager to shake our hands, only to never let them go. Creating the amplified lightness and playfulness that I do in public performance gives me a chance to counterbalance my inner attachments to misery and reinforce my visceral connection to hope, love, and laughter.

I could do these things alone at home, but when I do it in public and am able to share it with others, the felt effects are exponentially multiplied. I amplify the experience for the audience and they do the same for me. We are all constantly creating the collective reality. In these performances, we create and access another dimension of existence in which personal freedom and lightness are more readily available. And that is what I want my art to be: a tool to improve and harmonize our collective existence, not only as a theory in the head, but also as something felt stirring in the heart, singing through our skin and bones, shaking loose the ossification and letting the vitality of our being flow freely, torrentially, teeming with an undercurrent of experiential beauty.

Is that idealism? Probably, but why not try? Why not try to make a step in that direction, regardless of how small the efforts may seem, regardless of how insurmountable the mountain may appear? Maybe we will never reach a peak where pain is absent and all problems are solved, but if we can get even a tiny bit higher and freer, that is something worth trying. Every day, we wake up and find there is still more life in our palms. Why not do something beautiful with it?

Video: Street performance during SXSW Festival in Austin, USA, March 2018. Recorded by James Fain.

subscribe via rss

Art
- Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
Interviews
- Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
- Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
- Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
- Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
- Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
Magical Thinking
- Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
- Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
- Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
- Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
- Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
- Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
- Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
- Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
- Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
- Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
- Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
- Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
- Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
- Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
- Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
- May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
- Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
Tarot
- Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction
- Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
- Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
- Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
- Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
- Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
- Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
- Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
- Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
- Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
- Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?