I have a habit. Whenever something is not working, I try to take it apart, look at all the parts, see if I can see what isn’t working, and then make the necessary adjustments to get things to work. I do this all the time in Tap Dance Land. If a step isn’t working, I take is apart. I check the movement, rhythm, and sounds for errors – places in which what I’m aiming for and what is happening aren’t lining up. There is a temptation here that I often succumb to. I can get wrapped up in the details. The parts of the step are intricate and interrelated. My focus can shift from the movement quality and rhythmic flow of the step as a whole to all the little movements and rhythmic structures that make up the step. I get wrapped up in the intricate and interrelated activities that make up the step. I can lose sight of the step as a whole. This shift in focus hinders my ability to do what I can to bring the step to life. The vision of the step, after all, is what I’m aiming for. It is the basic unit of analysis.
When it comes to my own formation, my habit of taking things apart and getting wrapped up in the details is also present. The idea that the practices I’ve cultivated in Tap Dance Land have deeply shaped how I operate in other areas of life is something I’ve been thinking through for a few years now. The more I dig into this idea, the more I find it to be true. Not necessary, mind you, but true. It is a key principle behind the motivation of my upcoming Spiritual Formation for Artists Course.
As I continue to work these ideas out, I find myself needing a continual reminder. Taking my own formation as the play space, I could easily get wrapped up in my own thoughts, emotions, desires, and physical habits. Every one of the parts of my person – mind, body, soul, and will – is indeed an area of focus of formation, but they are not the basic unit of analysis. The basic unit of analysis, that is the thing that we look at to see whether the adjustments we are making are working, is the whole person. It’s just me.
There is an interesting corollary in all this to the focus on individual expression in the arts. In Tap Dance Land, for example, there is an ethic of individual expression. At some point in the formation journey of a tap dancer, mimicry becomes frowned upon, and improvisation is lauded. This shift from “do what I do” to “do what you want to do” is rooted in an ethic of individual expression. It is expected that the tap dancer be able to make choices on their own; that they can use the language of Tap Dance to say something; that they can bring their own voice to life. There is a tension here, however. You can’t “do whatever you want to do.” There is an expectation that as you express yourself, your prior formation – having clearly defined what is good and not good in Tap Dance Land – will point you in the direction of good choices. These “good choices” are of course filtered through your personality, thoughts, feelings, and artistic preferences. While your dancing is uniquely yours because there is no one else like you, you are not an isolated person. Everything happens in the context of relationship. In this case, it is at least in relationship to generations of prior dancers, and your own generation of contemporaries.
This relationship to others brings up the other side of the coin for me when talking about units of analysis. Here I have to say that I am not an academic. I don’t do research in the way academics do. So, my thoughts here, and elsewhere are strictly anecdotal. Actually, one of the reasons I write is to see if the ideas I’m thinking through resonate with anyone else. All that said, the other side of the coin from the deconstructed parts of the person are the group identities that said person fall into. At any given time in my life, there have been anywhere from five to ten labels – group identities – that I have carried. I talk a lot about this in my solo show, Rising to the Tap, my documentary film, Identity, and this TED Talk on labels. My own labels have included things like immigrant, only child, smart kid, unathletic, Lebanese, Arab, Christian, tap dancer, and foreigner, among others. Each one of these group identities brings with it a story. If you are an immigrant than you must…fill in the blank. If you are a Christian why’s aren’t you…fill in the blank. The more a particular term is active in the public discourse the more of a story is assigned to it. The more weight that story can bring to bear on the people that carry that label.
Case in point: I was part of the second graduating class of my high school. As we began applying for colleges, we were all brought into a class wide meeting with our guidance counselor. They began to explain to us how important our performance in the colleges we ultimately attended was going to be. They said that our performance would set the standard for how that particular college viewed future candidates from our high school. Our performance would be the start of the story of our high school for those colleges. Our actions were not our own. They would be reflective of who our high school was. We were carrying the name of our high school into the colleges we would attend. Our high school would be measured against our actions.
This of course is a weighty proposition and can bring the risk of really hurting people under the pressure. Think of the times if ever you were held in the position of spokesperson, or even responsible for the actions, of someone you didn’t know but were considered part of the same group. It is not an easy place to be.
I’m not sure if there is a way around any of this. The scale of the institutions of the world is such that even small organizations use group identities to target potential clients. The language around the market is often impersonal or manipulative at best and violent at worst. “We should figure out how to incentivize, capture, target more leads or clients.” Conversations have a way of moving quickly into painting whole groups of people with large brushstrokes. “Well, those folks over there, do things like this.” The way surveys and statistics are used to find patterns doesn’t help this tendency toward the general with loss of the specific.
If, we measure people firstly from their group affiliations we miss something. If, in an effort to avoid such generalizations, we swing the pendulum in the other direction, focusing on the intricate and interrelated parts of a person, we miss something, too. In both cases, it is the wonder and awe that exists at the level of the person that we miss. This is where everything meets. This is where our relationships and inner parts continually interact in the beautiful act of ongoing formation. This is where we all truly exist. This is where we must be loved, first. This is where we come to life. This is where our love flows from. Then, as we approach the challenges of our day, it is a person, even our person, that we may look to as we reflect on whether or not things are “working.” When we approach the ideas of formation, how we become who we envision we can become, the person is the basic unit of analysis.