Leaving a Trail

Happy New Year! Yay! I got to do the first staff blog of 2012!

I was heading home the other day, and it struck me how important it is to leave a trail. Well, we always leave some sort of trail, but to archive and share the trail – or progress – is another.

When we – or at least I – work on ideas and some sort of artistic development, the process sticks in our memory for a certain length of time until it dissipates. Yes, hence the importance of the notebook. But I sometimes skips steps, and doesn’t write down every step of the progress and development. (Similar to how it’s so tempting to skip steps when solving math problems in grade school, since your head is already sitting on the next step while you’re trying to patiently write out the step before it.) Unfortunately, what often happens is a year or two later, I’d find myself pondering ‘what happened there? How did I ever get from this idea to that one? Strange.’

If I can’t fill in the gap between the progress notes, then I doubt anybody else can. Though, how important can it be to make sure for somebody else to get in on my process? If my notes can help other people branch out and extend from my stream of thoughts, I think that’d be amazing. If my notes on my process can make other people excited and be in a position to contribute and discuss, that’d be super awesome as well.

I like the dance show trailer videos and I think posting a tiny bits of rehearsal every now and then on your website is fun. They feel a bit like a page from a notebook, where the readers/viewers feel like they can see a bit into your process and might be able to get into the same (or similar) stream of thought as yours.

As for myself, if new year resolutions will mean anything to me, I think my 2012 resolution will be to update my thoughts-in-progress onto my website more diligently.

—- Annie