Jarkko Lehmus Diary

Psychoholically Unsound Meditation

Due to my psychological consultant informing me during a burlesque show that the past entries have been far too understandable even without severe medication I decided that the only logical way forward would be to soak myself in Scotland's finest and high doses of nicotine, stretch and meditate on the Way of the Samurai while admiring the genius of RZA and the beauty of the stillness of Forrest Whittaker under the direction of Jim Jarmusch in The Ghost Dog, have another slice of PC6, ponder on the social and political problems of the country I live in, the challenges of management in the context of the dance world and, finally, the way everything fades into insignificance in the absence of love and the way everything is glorified in the presence of love.

Doing all of the above to the soundtrack of the Wu-Tang Clan's 1999 double release Forever has most definitely primed me for an epic session of utter nonsense and a disturbance of seismic proportions to my biological rhythm.

If you either couldn't make any sense of the above or stopped half-way through to skip to the next paragraph in the hope of something more understandable, I suggest that you either close this page and seek your entertainment elsewhere or possibly even turn off your computer and do something useful with your life.

In the unlikely case that you are still reading this: enjoy the ride, you weirdo.

I'd like to start the ball rolling with a spate of self-criticism. First of all nights like this are seldom healthy, and, albeit being big, they aren't really clever. The amount of rubbish I am bound to spout at some point will possibly lead to a professional suicide and certainly this kind of reckless/sleepless behaviour will be felt by my ageing body for days to come. On the other hand I need to let some steam other somewhere to prevent self-combustion and it is after all Sunday morning, so I can sleep it all of during the next 24 hours. even with all the hard lessons I've learned through the multitude of mistakes I've made over my life and the intensive management and pressure training I received during my time in the Finnish army, I'm seldom the most coherent, intelligent or forward thinking of people. The lack of political correctness also features high on the list of my possible weaknesses or strengths. Under which category that particular trait falls under is entirely dependent on the viewpoint of the observer. In this case that particular person would be you. Feel free to judge and reflect your judgement on yourself.

Due to my sporadic ability to observe my actions and the causes they have, I am occasionally capable of observing the actions and the repercussions of the actions taken by others. I do my best to swallow my ego with a suitable lubricant and to learn from those flashes for the good of the people that end up having to deal with me and for my personal development. In return I would expect other people around me to do the same. O understand that we all have our own roads to travel and demons to contend with, but those things are generally personal issues and, in my view, should not be spread around like a cluster bomb to mask the personal pain with maximum collateral damage.

Then again, who am I speak in the light of the content of this blog?

I consider myself to be fairly happy with the status quo of things until proven utterly wrong. I also consider the experience of being challenged and proven wrong to be a healthy process of development. It so easy to be smug in when observing other people when you're only thinking about the things that you do better than the people you observe. It is far harder to try to see all the things that the people you observe and interact with do better than you do. When faced with an experienced professional with an apparent lack of ego seeing the contrast of the intrusiveness of your own ego is quite harsh indeed. How many mental and emotional crutches and hidden agendas do we really carry with ourselves into any given situation? What do we wish or want from any given situation? Do we want to use or contribute? Diluting all that: what is our actual aim in life when life is essentially only the current moment?

What do I really value and what am I willing to do to achieve the goals that I know would be good for me?

Arriving as a burnt-out and prejudiced hulk of a person into the socially and professionally challenging environment that a ballet company is, how do I make the best of the cards I've been dealt? After four and a half years of working for a ballet company I finally have a hunch that I might be becoming a more technically accomplished and useable tool for the various choreographers that I encounter and that I might have mileage beyond my obvious strengths. Although the skills I possessed were the initial reason of my employment, world keeps revolving at a disturbingly fast rate and things like surpassing your dreams can not be let to be in the way of development. In my personal case landing in a situation where I am performing repertoire that I newer thought possible and realising the flaws of my former idols was quite hard and it took me a long time to see past all that to come up with new dreams. Although, due to being beyond the boundaries of my previous dreams, I don't have a clear image of a goal. I can only keep ploughing into the white areas of the map of my life with the zeal of a child digging into Santa's sack just to see how far he can go and what unimaginable treasures might lie in wait. When the bag is far deeper than you originally thought you are constantly breaking through self-imposed barriers, but I guess that gets easier over time. Hopefully to the point when you cease to set barriers and see the world around you with all it's opportunities as it actually is and trust your intuition enough to commit to the ones that will eventually take you far further than you could have ever imagined at the moment when you were just looking at Santa's bag and wondering what might be inside.

The sun is up and my brain is down hanging low with my liver that's having a little jig with the kidneys.

It might just help me and you both if I reeled the fish in a little: Beauty's casting for Newcastle is up with six straight shows for just about everyone, R&Js roles are laid out and I've landed the first cast of Lord Capulet and the second cast of Tybalt with the positive surprise of far more challenging dancing than I had anticipated, Diana's piece is coming along very nicely with a refreshing depth of organic contemporary dance language, my own piece is just about in the bag and I'll get to hear a rough sketch of my score next week. So all is pretty well on the Planet Ballet.

Another very nice departure from the lately all too serious grind was a dinner with the newly formed Scottish Ballet Social Club. In other words Tama and his partner Simon organised a very nice dinner that lured a pretty healthy number of the dancers and their partners into a social situation outside of work. It's nice to be reminded that we work with some beautiful and nice people and that there is more to the people that we see every day in the context of sweaty dance gear and exhaustion.

To end up on a high, Saturday also saw some sunshine resulting with all the neds prancing topless around George Square and even a lonely black bloke trekking up Hope Street in shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops. It's still flipping February! It's a tropical bloody paradise, Glasgow is.

Posted by Jarkko at February 10, 2008 08:55 AM