My summer began with my brain imploding when it encountered Miranda July’s All Fours, a smart and hilarious investigation of a woman’s midlife … what? Crisis? Adventure? Exploration? I told anyone who would give me five minutes that it was an absolute MUST READ. Not every friend who read it was as impressed with the novel as I was, but I’ve made my claim and I’m sticking to it—this is required reading for all women, of any age.
The narrator’s decision to create a dance routine for her beloved and post it on Instagram requires her to get fit. She (we never learn her name) is “mind-rooted,” someone for whom exercise is, at best, optional: “Exercise-wise I’d never done more than buy ten yoga classes and take two of them. I was so weak that sometimes my arm got tired brushing my teeth.” She decides on a three-month regime and heads off to the gym, where trainers Scarlett and Brett put her to work: “In old sweatpants and a T-shirt I heaved black metal balls and barbells around, dumbly lifting and lowering however many times I was told to, my face bright pink with heat and embarrassment.” Eventually, she begins to notice changes, “Like carrying in the groceries—I could hold one bag in each arm, even if they had jars and bottles in them, and it was kind of pleasurable, the bags bounced.” And then she records her dance–the start, it turns out, of a new life, or at least a radical revisioning of her old one.
The summer task I set myself was to try something new and not mind rooted, something that would leave me pink with embarrassment, if not heat. That something turned out to be singing lessons. I had sung along to music in the car (quietly) and tried karaoke (once), but never had I ventured out on my own, just me, my voice, and I. (Before you wonder why I’m talking about singing in a fitness blog post, I invite you to try a few vocal exercises. Figuring out how to fill the belly with breath and then climb a scale is a demanding physical task!) The effort and embarrassment had me close to fainting on several occasions. It was unbearable, hearing song, squeaky and out of tune, come out of my mouth. Could I have run screaming from the room without appearing like a bad student, I would have.
This got me thinking about the Why. Why was I so self-conscious? Why was it so excruciating to make mistakes? What had I missed out on by not singing LOUD and WRONG, as my wonderful coach, Rachel, instructed me to do, all these years? Where was the harm in humming or singing to myself while walking down the street? What other forms of embodiment or creativity has my internalized cop censored?
So, here’s the Miranda July challenge: figure out a move, in your body, that you have not made before. Find out what you need to learn about making that move. Practice it, for at least a few weeks. And see what it has to tell you.
