Diving in
“I have three messages: one is we should never ever give up; two is you are never too old to chase your dreams; and three is it looks like a solitary sport but it takes a team.”
I'm not one who tends to follow extreme sporting events, but for some reason I managed to catch Diana Nyad's incredible shore-coming on live TV on September 2, 2013. Of course I was awestruck by her unfathomable strength and endurance at having swum so far for so long and in such brutal conditions. No shark cage! Jellyfish stings! Grotesquely swollen face! But it was what she said to the cheering crowd after she stumbled onto the shore, supported by two members of her team, that really struck me. Reading the quote now, it seems like such a basic message--trite, even. "Never give up, follow your bliss, blah blah blah." Cyber-land is littered with such affirmational detritus, after all. Some days it seems like an endless hot-breathed harangue from Ghandi, Rumi and Eleanor Roosevelt exhorting us how to be better, do more, create our own Happiness in 10 Simple Steps.
But this swimmer's story resonated, for some reason. She had first tried--and failed--to swim from Cuba to Florida when she was in her twenties. She waited 33 years before attempting it again. It wasn't as though she had been idle in the interim; she had accomplished a hell of a lot in the ensuing decades. But that original dream always beckoned. When she announced her intention to complete the swim in her sixth decade, the naysayers piled on. She's out of her mind, it's a young person's game, sometimes you just gotta let it go. But she eased her body into the water, lowered her head, and swam (and swam and swam). The first three times, she didn't quite make it. But her fourth and final attempt was a success. Diana Nyad hoped that her extraordinary feat would be an inspiration to those with as-yet-unrealized dreams to get out there and start chasing them, dammit. Don't listen to the wasps buzzing in your ear, just put your head down and swim.
So here I am. In the water, head down, swimming toward my own long-sought goal. Being a performing artist is what I was put here to do, so I'm fully committing myself to doing it, naysayers be damned. Fortunately, I've got a boat-load of people cheering me on, and a rich lifetime's worth of experience, confidence, wisdom and preparation to keep me from drowning.
I'm deeply grateful for the art that I've been a part of up until now, and it's my intention that the work I do going forward is equally as fine. My goal is to work with like-minded people who are committed to telling the important stories of humanity, touching hearts and minds in important ways. I want to help illuminate, inspire, and uplift the global consciousness in the way that only art can do. The earth needs our stories now more than ever. And so...
Ker-splash!
