Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance

The world and the mind are malleable in nature but the weights and self-imposed restrictions we each carry can sometimes impede our ability to BE as we would like to BE. Detrimental patterns of thought, emotion, and action—usually rooted in the subconscious—impair our ability to shape our self and our world in a creative, life-sustaining way.

In these street performances, I use playfulness and absurdity as tools to temporarily disrupt those inhibitory patterns. I try to invoke within myself a state of freedom and lightness, then do what I can to benignly infect others with those qualities, if they seem open to the experience.

Ben Jon Miller (www.benjonmiller.com) performing on 6th street during the South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX, USA, March 2018. Camera: James Fain

Why?

Firstly, it feels so darn good!

It feels liberating to allow myself to be foolish and childlike, to let go of behavioral rules and limitations, to unshackle myself from the expectation to be normal—to be myself. It feels good, but on a deeper level, learning to access this state makes it easier to connect with myself, to connect with others, and to connect with a sense that life is meaningful and worth living.

I have so many internal patterns that withhold me from this state. Pessimism. Anger. Apathy. Lethargy. Sadness. Loneliness. Judgment of myself and others. The demons available to us are bountiful and ever eager to shake our hands, only to never let them go. Creating the amplified lightness and playfulness that I do in public performance gives me a chance to counterbalance my inner attachments to misery and reinforce my visceral connection to hope, love, and laughter.

I could do these things alone at home, but when I do it in public and am able to share it with others, the felt effects are exponentially multiplied. I amplify the experience for the audience and they do the same for me. We are all constantly creating the collective reality. In these performances, we create and access another dimension of existence in which personal freedom and lightness are more readily available. And that is what I want my art to be: a tool to improve and harmonize our collective existence, not only as a theory in the head, but also as something felt stirring in the heart, singing through our skin and bones, shaking loose the ossification and letting the vitality of our being flow freely, torrentially, teeming with an undercurrent of experiential beauty.

Is that idealism? Probably, but why not try? Why not try to make a step in that direction, regardless of how small the efforts may seem, regardless of how insurmountable the mountain may appear? Maybe we will never reach a peak where pain is absent and all problems are solved, but if we can get even a tiny bit higher and freer, that is something worth trying. Every day, we wake up and find there is still more life in our palms. Why not do something beautiful with it?

Video: Street performance during SXSW Festival in Austin, USA, March 2018. Recorded by James Fain.

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On my blog, you can find more writings on art and alchemical thinking, interviews about creativity, psychologically-oriented reflections on tarot, and more. You can check out past posts in the categorized list below.

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• Art
  • Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
  • Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
  • Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
  • Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
  • Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
  • Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
  • Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
• Interviews
  • Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
  • Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
  • Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
  • Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
  • Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
• Magical Thinking
  • Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
  • Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
  • Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
  • Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
  • Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
  • Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
  • Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
  • Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
  • Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
  • Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
  • Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
  • Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
  • Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
  • Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
  • May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
  • Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
• Tarot
  • Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction
  • Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
  • Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
  • Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
  • Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
  • Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
  • Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
  • Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
  • Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
  • Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
  • Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?

Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm

It is happening. You don't know what It is, but It is unexpected and unpredictable. You can't make sense of it. Your reality is trembling. All of a sudden, your socks have become ill-fitting sweat sponges and your dearly held beliefs seem fickle. Your to-do lists seem like a map for a world that doesn't exist. You don't know who you are or what you're supposed to do. You don't even know what you'll have for breakfast anymore because, in an instant, you've realized that you can no longer continue having the same bowl of oatmeal every morning.

This is chaos.

Before we go on, please note that I have nothing against oatmeal. I love oatmeal, but maybe someday I won't. Chaos happens.

Normally, our mind converts perceived phenomena into cohesive data to which we can rationally respond. But when chaos emerges, the mind struggles to comprehend what's happening. Because we cannot interpret the occurrence, we don't know how to respond to it.

What do I do? How am I supposed to be in this circumstance? 

In this scenario, we have a few options:

1) Fight the chaos
2) Avoid the chaos
3) Welcome the chaos

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The chaos is initially perceived as a lack of order. Unstable disharmony. The key to utilizing chaos as as an aid, is to recognize that its disorder is an illusion. There is order and direction to it. It just doesn't fit within our previous conception of the world. 

When we are confronted with a situation that doesn't align with our habituated perception of life, the mind may want to conclude that it is inherently chaotic, totally void of direction. The mind sees chaos and panics.

When chaos comes a knocking--or, more likely, when it kicks down the doors of perception--we may be at a loss as to how to respond. Unfamiliar situations necessitate unfamiliar, creative responses if we are to progress through them. Instinctually, we may want to fight it, get rid of it, or ignore it. On the other hand, if we can welcome it and take an open, curious look at it, we will be opening ourselves up to new modes of perception, new qualities of existence, and creative (as opposed to rote) paths of action that we would not have otherwise been privy to if we had continued along the path of predictable familiarity.

Familiarity, predictability, and stability have a definite usefulness, but so does chaos. Chaos and order are tools which the mind can use in order to alter the contents of its reality. 

How can we use chaos as a helpful tool?

We can welcome it. 

When we encounter the unexpected, whether it be a small accident or a storm of shit in a fan, we can circumnavigate our knee-jerk desire to fight it or avoid it. We can then intentionally strive to enter the very situation that is challenging us. Rather than shutting it out or attempting to get rid of the chaos, we can be curious about it, look at it.

In the moment we open up to the chaos, we transform our relation to it. And when we transform our relation to chaos, the chaos becomes less threatening. If we act out against it or evade it, then we are treating it as a danger. If we embrace the unexpected, then it becomes a stimulating addition to our life. Our reality isn't being threatened. It is being expanded. This expansion might not be comfortable, but if we are open to it, it won't need to be so painful. If we can play with the chaos, not only will it lose its sting, but it will also become a source of joy, learning, and creativity.

If we attempt to adhere our lives to a straight and predictable line, we will limit our experience. We will have to block out anything that doesn't fit within our conditions. This might be healthy or useful in certain times, but if we continually block out anything the unknown, we will be confining ourselves within a prison of our own making. Not only that, but we will have to expend enormous amounts of energy to enforce the walls of our box so that perceived threats don't destroy our definition of life.

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What happens when we willingly get our hands dirty with the muck of chaos? The world opens up! It opens up because we have opened up. Restrictions are replaced with possibilities. Threats are alchemically transmuted into aids. Illusory dangers become friends that teach us a new way to navigate the ever-fluctuating terrain of life. While we previously knew life to be a battle necessitating a constant state of fight or flight, we will instead find it to be a game of growth and playfulness.

Sometimes, we will find it easy to play with the surprises life deals us. Other times, it will feel like life is shitting a mess of terror upon our gaping face, to which it would be impossible to respond with anything but fear or anger. We each have our own special triggers that stomp on our hearts or send them beating at the pace of demon-possessed pigs running off a cliff. Even though it will be difficult or seemingly impossible to welcome these situations--or, what's more, to play with them--it is in these very situations that we have the greatest opportunity for more freedom.

The more difficult a situation is to face, the more imprisoned we will feel within it. The larger the obstacle, the more strength and creativity we will need to transmute it and move beyond it. In this way, obstacles give us an opportunity to develop previously untapped capacities within ourselves, but only if we enter the obstacle and face it with constructive intentions.

The navigation of life's obstacles and mazes might initially seem like arduous work. A struggle through which we have to sweat and break our spine under the burden's weight. This might be the mind's initial tendency, but it doesn't need to be that way! 

How can it be other? How can chaos, obstacles, and the shitstorms of life be anything but hard labor?

Through playfulness.

Playfulness is like a magical force that can transmute pain and perceived danger into avenues of discovery and joy. 

When we are possessed by fear, our mind will imagine all of the things that can go wrong. We will remind ourselves of all of our failures and envision ourselves repeating those failures into the grave. We will shrink away from life, feeling disconnected from ourselves and the world.

And if we play? 

The world is transformed! 

Even if nothing is different externally, our experience of it will be utterly transformed. When we are playful, we naturally discover new possibilities without even trying. We feel lighter, unencumbered, more capable and more inspired to do what we truly wish to do.

The secret is that chaos isn’t chaos. 

If we play with chaos, we allow the unknown to become an adventure. When we play, we find that chaos is helping us by removing our self-imposed, fear-induced limitations. When we willingly embrace chaos, we will find that it isn't chaos. At first, we perceived the unfamiliar phenomena to be symptomatic of disorder and disharmony. When we observe that apparent disorder, we will find that there is an order, a structure, a progression toward harmony and cohesion--we just weren't aware of it before.

Chaos only feels like chaos if we don’t get to know it. Just because we don’t yet see the order and creative potential of an event doesn’t mean it isn’t there, it just means that we have to look for it. And the more we engage with chaos, the more we play with it, the easier the process becomes. Heck, we might even begin to enjoy chaos.

Is it easy to find these hidden qualities in chaos? Is it easy to find gold in a shitstorm? Not always, but we can begin to develop this awareness. In this practice, playfulness comes in handy. Playfulness expands our awareness and makes our minds more flexible. Playfulness increases our accessibility to creative perception and solutions. Playfulness is the magic carpet that allows us to fly through chaos and surf its currents, rather than be disheartened by it.

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On my blog, you can find more writings on art and alchemical thinking, interviews about creativity, psychologically-oriented reflections on tarot, and more. You can check out past posts in the categorized list below.

• Art
  • Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
  • Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
  • Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
  • Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
  • Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
  • Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
• Interviews
  • Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
  • Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
  • Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
  • Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
  • Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
• Magical Thinking
  • Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
  • May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
  • Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
  • Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
  • Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
  • Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
  • Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
  • Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
  • Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
  • Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
  • Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
  • Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
  • Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
  • Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
  • Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
  • Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
• Tarot
  • Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?
  • Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
  • Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
  • Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
  • Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
  • Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
  • Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
  • Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
  • Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
  • Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
  • Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction

Why the Tutu?

Folks ask me why I wear a flimsy white dress, white face paint, and messy lipstick when I perform. They ask me this often enough that I think about it regularly.

When I leave my house to do a performance at a show, at an open mic, or on the street, I’ll be wearing my normal clothes. Unassuming pants. A solid, muted t-shirt. Neutral and nondescript. These are the clothes I wear when I am Ben. And when I am Ben, which is most of the time, I do things a certain way. I know that Ben speaks like this, he thinks like this, feels like this, walks and eats like this. Shits like this. Laughs like this. Sometimes constipates his anger like this. He has painful memories and joyful memories. He has particular beliefs about himself, others, and the imagined future.

Underneath my pants and shirt, like Superman's costume hiding within the shell of Clark Kent's business suit and precocious demeanor, there is a frilly, limp tutu and some aging tighty-whitey underwear that probably should have been replaced a few months ago. A German friend once saw the underwear drying on my laundry rack and told me that there is a German phrase for such underwear. I don’t remember the term, but roughly translated it means underwear that exterminates sexual desire. The anti-aphrodisiac. 

Anyhow, Ben is a role that has been constructed over the course of thirty years. He gives me an identity and helps me find a place in the world. Having an identity is useful, even necessary. How would you get a bank account or a job if you didn’t have an identity? How would you have friends or lovers? 

Identities help us to live, but they can also box us in if they become too rigid. If they don’t yield to change and growth, they will cause us pain and cut us off from the broad scope of what life has to offer. 

Having an identity necessarily limits our experience. This limitation has its advantages and disadvantages. 

The identity we assume tells us, We are like this and we are not like that. We can do these things but we don’t do those things. We like these people, but not those people. Life is like this and it is most definitely not like that.

For me, the ideal is to have an identity that is fluid and flexible, one that will be a carrier of whatever qualities are chosen in a given moment, rather than holding onto one set of traits exclusively and pushing away anything that challenges my identity.

When I am wearing a silly dress and sloppy makeup, I feel so ridiculous that I automatically take myself less seriously. It helps me to temporarily detach from the identity I assume in daily life and distance myself from the limitations of thought, feeling, and behavior that come with that identity. It doesn’t exactly help me to be someone else. It helps me to access qualities of myself that don’t always get full expression in my day-to-day life. I think we all have inner aspects that swim and swirl within us that don’t get to be fully expressed, because if we let them hang all out with no holds barred, we would all seem absurd. 

Because we all have absurdity within us.

If we don’t find an outlet for that dammed-up dimension of our being, it will well up. It will fester. It will start pounding on the doors of our hearts and minds. We’ll either have to deal with it or distract ourselves from it. Enter drugs, booze, TV, excessive eating, endless web-surfing, or whatever else serves to divert our attention from the unresolved facets of our inner worlds. If the psychological constipation goes on long enough, it’ll wreak havoc. Nervous breakdown. Midlife crisis. Volcanic outbursts of anger. Torrential downpours of depression. Pervasively disruptive anxiety. That which is inside will eventually come out, one way or another.

Wearing the dress and makeup helps me to access that inner world and channel it into outward expression.

What happens when that happens?

Almost every time, it feels uncomfortable. Mentally, emotionally, and viscerally unnerving. Before a performance, my breathing will get all funked up. My stomach will knot up. Anxiety will swarm my thoughts. Why did I come here? What the hell am I doing? This is going to go terribly. This is the identity’s resistance. The identity--you could also call it the ego--realizes that it is going to be challenged, so it puts up a fight. It makes me feel nervous and tells me to run, go home, don’t go out, don’t be silly. I am realizing this right now, as I write these words.

Sometimes I listen to that voice. I throw in the towel and stay home. I wouldn’t say that’s wrong or bad. But it doesn't leave me feeling well.

What happens when I don’t listen to the identity’s resistance? What happens when I say fuck it, let go of my inhibitions, and do the thing anyway?

It feels great. Freeing. Not all of the time, but most of the time. Increasingly often the more I do it.

Even if a performance doesn’t connect with the audiences as I would like it to--there have been many performances that tanked--it still feels liberating to temporarily release my self-imposed limitations and allow myself to be myself, however I want to be in that moment. The resultant state of being resembles that of a child who is playing freely, before they have absorbed and been possessed by the conditioning they’re given by parents and society.

Before the child is conditioned to behave in accordance with the expectations of others, they are free to be themselves. Because of that, they can more easily play with life. The more we play with life, the more engaged we will be with it, as opposed to being disengaged, apathetic, resentful, or disheartened.

When we are playing with life, we stop fighting life. We stop fighting ourselves. When we are playful, we automatically accept the present circumstances as they are and do what we can to interact with them positively, creatively, and constructively. Consequently, we enter a state in which we enjoy and appreciate ourselves, life, and those around us. We can operate from a standpoint that supports and uplifts life.

That’s why I wear the tutu.

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• Art
  • Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
  • Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
  • Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
  • Aug 17, 2017 Put the Potatoes on Your Face
  • Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
  • Dec 19, 2016 Wakey Wakey, Inner Kiddo
• Interviews
  • Jul 18, 2018 Artist Interview: Kayle Karbowski
  • Jun 4, 2018 Artist Interview: Sally Nicholson
  • Apr 23, 2018 Interview: Yogi Ron Katwijk
  • Mar 1, 2018 Artist Interview: Lawrence Blackman
  • Feb 21, 2018 Artist Interview: Samantha Blumenfeld
• Magical Thinking
  • Jun 21, 2023 Magick for Reshaping Life and Transmuting Trauma
  • May 18, 2023 Magick is a Sentient Entity: Using the Imagination to Co-Create with Magick
  • Dec 4, 2020 The Healing Voice: Wounds, Addiction, and Purgation
  • Aug 5, 2019 Celebrating Your Misery
  • Jun 21, 2019 White Peacocks, Constipation, and Emotional Liberation
  • Aug 23, 2018 Melting a Snowball of Misery
  • Jul 2, 2018 About the Folks Who Think You Stink (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Jun 22, 2018 The Freedom and Fear of Being Yourself (Notes on Performance and Life)
  • Apr 16, 2018 Questions for Limitations
  • Apr 3, 2018 Public Alchemy: Notes on Street Performance
  • Jan 5, 2018 Chaos' Playground: Finding Gold in the Shitstorm
  • Dec 1, 2017 Why the Tutu?
  • Sep 14, 2017 Art is a Portal
  • Aug 7, 2017 Three Reasons to Destroy Yourself (Or Not)
  • Jul 6, 2017 Nerves and Tutus
  • Feb 19, 2017 Why Does Heartache Happen?
  • Jan 15, 2017 Following Fear
  • Dec 28, 2016 How to Make Magical Oranges
• Tarot
  • Oct 24, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #5: Why does my skin crawl with wonder and fascination as such important relationships in my life are connected by the eyes?
  • Oct 11, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #4: How long will it be until I have a new job?
  • Sep 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #3: Why can't I find more hours in a day?
  • Sep 3, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #2: Do abusers know they're being abusive, or is that just their sense of reality?
  • Aug 25, 2019 TAROT QUESTION #1: Why is the Present Moment So Much All the Time?
  • Aug 18, 2019 Today's Tarot: Shifting Pain by Surrendering to It
  • Aug 13, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Golden Devils Inside You
  • Aug 12, 2019 Today's Tarot: The Moon of Self-Loathing
  • Jun 27, 2019 Today's Tarot: Snot, Beauty, and Tea for Pain
  • Feb 28, 2018 Today's Tarot: The World is in the Seed
  • Aug 26, 2017 Tarot as a Tool for Reality Construction