Use it up!
On my personal blog I’d written a little over a year ago some thoughts on the recycling lobby and just last week some revealing theories on the Reuse lobby.
The gist of the latter post was that instead of saving (and storing) “stuff” to use later, we should just use it up now. This seems to also be true in the realm of ideas and improv.
I for one am too often guilty of saving ideas for some future prefect time. Most often this means ensuring that my *awesome idea* isn’t wasted in a rehearsal or workshops with no audience to appreciate it and where it might even get interrupted by a teacher who GASP! has their own agenda that fails to include basking in the genuius of my idea.
Lately I’ve been challenging myself with the mantra “use it up.” When inspiration strikes I want to act on it immediately and completely without plans to save even a little bit of it for later. I wish my motivation was located in maintaining the integrity of the art, but alas, more practically I’ve found that when I keep the ideas in my head for later, new ideas stop coming.
I wonder what it is about the storing of ideas that acts like a dam to the flow of new ideas.
January 15th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I just wish I had an audience in the backseat of my car while I commute, because I have all kinds of ideas while I drive, and I have to throw them all away!