It's been a mighty long time since I've written in this space. Dishabituation?!
Most of my writing has been in my handwritten personal journal, and it's been happening 1-3 times per week at BEST! Habituation?
What got me here today is the Disahabituation of being in a new-to-me place: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. I’m here doing an artist residency program with like-minded jazz dance artist Kathleen Doherty and her company Votive Dance. It's definitely the furthest East I've been in Canada (and really, I don't think you can get much further East here!). It definitely has that East Coast vibe, reminds me a lot of the time I've spent in Newport, Rhode Island. Except maybe a little less "old money everywhere" and a little more "liberal, look out for everyone Canadian."
I'm kind of giggling to myself as I sit on the 5th floor of the Halifax Central Library, looking out into a bay off the Atlantic Ocean and thinking "NOVA SCOTIA GO WING WANG WA!"
Somehow, my brother and I, when he was 12ish and I was 9ish, got going saying random syllables with Eastern Canadian Provences (as you do in your youth), and the ones that stuck were that and New Brunswick (which, by the way, goes "WING WANG CHA!").
Man, this one is starting off silly. I guess I just thought it important to provide a little backstory as to the presence of Nova Scotia in my life prior to my visit :)
But Dishabituation! Really! I read an article recently about how the process of interrupting our habits is actually key to happiness, and how travel in specific really does this for us. Apparently it IS diminishing returns - studies have shown that the joy found in the dishabituation of traveling peaks at hour 43, meaning lots of short little trips might serve us better than fewer big, long ones (damn, our strategy is usually the later). With this particular trip being part work, part play, I don't think I've felt the peak yet. I am still really enjoying this shift-up in my everyday. While I'm NOT enjoying the 'being away from Niko and Kris' part, it has felt worth dealing with the missing them to be able to shake up my norm.
I suppose that is one of the inherent joys of artist residencies - separating oneself from the day to day in order to make space for shifted perspectives, different ways of thinking, appreciation for what usually is . . .
Anyway. I've been quite taken with it here. Much of it is just that it’s fantastically cool! Surely a portion of it is just being somewhere, anywhere, new. I remember my brother raving over every new place we'd visit on family trips, making fun of him for his enthusiasm for anything different! To this day, he is still this way, and I think it's very related to this 'Dishabituation' thing: perhaps he has just inherently understood this :)
I think I perhaps saw it as idealizing the different, which is easy to do. We get sucked into our habits, and that can make anything that isn't the norm seem spectacular. But I think that is just what this 'Dishabituation' thing is getting at: experiencing new-to-us things reinvigorates our desire to find new - or at least refreshed - insights into and within our own norms.
I think this is something the kids call 'romanticizing your life.' Whatever you call it, it's a good time.
I've enjoyed reconnecting with old friends and eating different foods (lots of seafood) and seeing what they carry in different grocery stores and looking at the ocean and going on ferries and walking the roads of an unfamiliar city and dancing in new spaces with new people. The slower pace/ release of day-to-day pressure certainly doesn't hurt.
Annnnd on that note, I have once again misunderstood the schedule - we start rehearsal at 12, not 12:30! I better get some things written down and get over there!
Dishabituation.
