Alexandra Beller on Trauma, Movement, and Navigating Emotional Landscapes

Bubba Startz welcomes Alexandra Beller, diving into her background and exploring the interplay between trauma, movement, and their effects on the body. The conversation navigates balancing masculine energy and the internal dialogue found in music. Bubba shares personal trauma experiences, discussing the complexity of emotions. They transition to Alexandra's shift from performance to education, addressing stage fright, while Bubba reflects on his journey from past struggles to podcasting. They explore empathizing with different aspects of oneself and confronting self-sabotage. Alexandra introduces her new book, providing an overview and release details, and they close with a reminder to like and subscribe.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome in to another exciting episode of theScene Projects.
I am your host, Bubba Starts, and with me todayis author and choreographer, Alexandra Beller.
Welcome to the show, Alexandra.
Thanks for having me.
I am thrilled.
It's not often that a small town South Dakotaboy gets to talk to someone from the big city.
You are in New York City, and, just I wasalready admiring the lovely architecture behind

(00:26):
you, the the old houses, and you said you livein a beautiful brownstone.
But before we get into all of that, I wannagive you a chance to just kind of introduce
yourself to our listeners and to me, and, we'lltake it up from there.
Thanks.
I'm Alexandra.
I am I have been an artist for a long time,first a dancer, then a choreographer.

(00:46):
Somewhere in there, started really loving theart of teaching and got a bunch of degrees
related to teaching and choreography.
And, the main one is about how to analyze thehuman body for movement, which took me into
theater and doing private work and mentorshipwith, individuals to try to heal their bodies

(01:09):
and make their bodies the most efficientvehicles for their life they can have.
And then I started writing a book about a lotof this material, which is about to get turned
in next week to Bloomsbury.
How exciting.
And I think as a society, we now know that ourtraumas and and things live in our bodies.

(01:31):
Right?
They have physical manifestations inside of us,and the only way to really work through those
is movement.
Right?
You know, we talk so much about working outthese days, right, and and being healthy in
that regard, but I don't think that many peoplehit on the effects of dance.
So I think that's really beautiful how, like,the choreography and, like, that previous life,

(01:56):
it seemed like spilled into teaching and thenspilled into, oh, we can actually be, like,
healing people with all of these skills that Ihave.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
It's been a really nice fluid trajectory in mylife, and I I am not sure I'll be able to
really figure out what happened until I'm, youknow, really close to the end, which, you know,

(02:17):
hopefully, I'm not right now.
But I feel like when I look back, I feel likeI've had 18 different careers, but they each,
linked pretty gracefully to the other.
But what I was thinking when you just saidworking out is and nothing wrong with working
out.
Working out's great.
Totally appreciate it.

(02:37):
People should do that.
And sometimes it actually does the opposite.
It, like, creates this shell of us that doesn'tallow for some of that interoception, which
means how you feel the inside of the body.
And again, nothing wrong with working out.
I'm not I'm not criticizing it.

(02:59):
But we can sometimes do it in order not to bein touch with the body, which sounds
contradictory or counterintuitive.
But there's a lot of very subtle informationthat can be heard with softness that cannot be
heard kind of through the noise of muscularityand trying and making and doing and being and,

(03:22):
you know, all of that stuff that's gottenconditioned into us through hypercapitalism
and, that productivity, and I have to be betterand do better and make more and and get ripped.
And that mentality sometimes can keep us fromlistening to the darker, softer, smaller,

(03:42):
littler things inside, and I think that's wherea lot of the healing can come from.
So sometimes it's not about doing more, but,like, resting and, being still and listening to
just what comes up in stillness.
I love it.
I think, especially with a podcast that focusesa lot around independent musicians, we are all

(04:06):
about that very raw masculine energy in a veryfeminine art form.
Right?
You know?
A lot of it is loud and and just kind of givingit to you full force, right, especially with,
you know, a lot of us are country musicians outhere.
Rock and country are our predominant kind ofmusical genres.
So it's very easy to get caught in that.

(04:27):
You know, for me, I work around, you know,sports teams and motorcycle rallies and music
festivals.
So it's it's very hard to find a quiet stillplace.
But, a great example, I feel like I just kindalived at this last weekend.
We were at a festival called Rock the Country,here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
I mean, it was thirty, forty thousand people.

(04:48):
Right?
Huge acts, kid rock, and and these bigbombastic bands.
And my wife and I found a a shady placeunderneath their little, you know, sunshades
they had built out.
We dropped our backpacks and our blanket on theground right there, and we sat back in the back
in our own little world and just enjoyed theshow from there.
And it was, almost better for us than being upin the front pushed against the, you know,

(05:14):
pushed against the grates and being inside ofall that energy.
We both feel a lot more comfortable on theoutside, you know, observing and and there and
and kind of feeding off the energy, but notfully invested into it.
Yeah.
And, I think, you know, sometimes that loudnesscan be cathartic and really great.

(05:37):
Sometimes that can be an intuitive place to getauthentic.
And it's also sometimes not about, like, whatthe outside world is doing, but how you're
listening to the inside world while you'removing through it.
Well, and how much more necessary, I feel like,in a place like where you live than where I

(06:01):
live.
For us, it's very easy to find silence.
Right?
We can go out on the farm.
My in laws have a thousand acres that they farmout here.
It's very easy to walk into the middle of thefield and hear and see nothing.
Right?
But much different for most of, you know,citizens of this planet that live around major
city centers where it never stops.

(06:22):
There there's always noise and interferencefrom the outside.
Yeah.
And, I think many of us are envious of that,you know, ability to find external quiet.
But I think also what I'm talking about isthis, choice to find internal conversation.

(06:42):
And it can be easier when there's quietoutside, but theoretically, you could do it in
Times Square too because what I'm reallythinking of is the amount of noise we make
inside ourselves.
And you could be in the middle of thatbeautiful field that I'm envious of and still

(07:03):
be making all that noise inside.
And that noise is your shame and your innercritic, like, making enough noise that you
don't have to listen to what the stuff is atthe deeper levels.
And so that doesn't necessarily requireexternal quiet, but it does require quite a bit

(07:25):
of bravery.
Well, in a a whole different skill set thatmost people aren't equipped with.
That introspective nature is not, especially ina hypercapitalistic you know, not just our
society, but the time in which we are allliving right now.
Right?
It can't get you can't get any more informationcoming in.

(07:46):
Right?
We we are all on overload all the time.
So we've kind of forgotten those skills of ofjust, you know, how do I feel?
Right?
And not just physically, but how do I how do Ifeel, like, as a human being right now?
How do I feel about my life and and where it'sgoing?
And sometimes it's hard to quiet those feelingsof how your life was.

(08:06):
You know?
A little bit about me, Alexandra, because Iknow you don't know me.
Our listeners, know a lot more, but, you know,I've been to prison.
I've experienced homelessness.
I've done all these things.
So I've kind of, like, I've lived through thesethings, and it would be very easy for me to, to
busy my mind with the negative thoughts.

(08:27):
Right?
Of, oh, well, you're never gonna be anythingbecause that's who you were, and you're never
going to get where you want to go because ofthese things in your past where nowadays, like,
if I don't tell anybody about it, you wouldnever assume that about me.
Right?
So it's being able to let go of that thatnegative self talk that we have.

(08:48):
Right?
And I think that's a skill that's even harderfor people to grab onto now just because you're
bombarded with information and being told whoyou should be and what you should look like
and, you know, what clothes you should bewearing and just all the things.
And I I also think thanks for sharing all ofthat.

(09:09):
I also think that, it's really challenging tolive with contradiction and, to have feelings
that don't fit each other.
And I feel like we're always being pressured toreduce down to one thing.
I'm confident.

(09:30):
I'm but you can be insecure, and you can haveinsecurity and confidence in the same body.
And I feel like this pressure to just be onething that a lot of society is like, you have
to be this, and if you're not this, you'rethat, and all these binaries that we face.
They don't they're not realistic because so forexample, when I was, at a certain point, I

(09:54):
essentially folded my dance company as aperformance company and create created an
education company out of it, and I startedchoreographing for the theater.
And I was telling a friend that I was havingsome grief about letting go of my dance company
because it's something that I had done forsixteen years.
And they were basically like, first of all, oh,well, then don't do it.

(10:14):
If it creates discomfort or you're having badfeeling about it, you shouldn't do it.
And I was like, no.
No.
No.
It's the right decision.
I want to do it, and I'm feeling sad.
And I'm feeling a sense that, like, it didn'tit didn't do everything I wanted it to do in
the world.
It there's, you know, some sense of pride init, and then I also have a sense that it it

(10:36):
failed in some ways, and I feel sad about it.
And they just and this was, like, a high level,evolved, emotionally intelligent friend, but
she was, like, trying to talk me out of feelingthat something had failed.
And I was like, I'm okay.
I'm saying this is a real feeling.

(10:56):
It I feel sad that I didn't get to accomplisheverything that I wanted to.
There there's a a feeling of sadness andfailure in there.
Also, feel really proud.
I think I made a lot.
You know, she was like, you made so many thingsand you toured and you did this.
And I was like, I know all those things.
And I feel good about all those things.
And I feel sad about these things at the sametime.
And I'm sad about this decision, and it's theright decision at the same time.

(11:20):
And we're just we're very complex creatures,and society is always telling us to reduce down
to a single thing, and that thing is on abinary against another thing.
And it's it's not a way to live an authenticlife.
Like, we have to reject that, reductivismreductionism.
And I feel like like, I've I've lived my lifeas a dancer in a body that was not a

(11:46):
traditional body.
I was always bigger than traditional dancers.
And people always wanted me to be this, like,oh, you're so confident.
You're this role model, and you're you loveyour body.
And I was like, when did you ever hear me sayany of those things?
I've never talked about my body.
You've taken a look at me in a big major dancecompany as this, like, success story, and

(12:09):
you've decided that I feel a certain way aboutmyself, which is completely untrue.
You have not asked me how I felt.
You've never heard me say how I felt.
So you've made a huge assumption about mebecause it's a story that you wanted for
yourself.
And because there's a binary for you, eitheryou're totally confident, you love yourself no
matter what you look like, or you're like apile of tears in a corner hiding yourself

(12:30):
because you're not what society expects you tobe, and that's the binary.
And it's total BS because I, plenty of times,did not love my body, did not feel confident or
secure in it, and at the same time, was able towalk onto an opera house of 3,000 people and,
you know, a a small costume and dance and bereally proud of my body and what it could do

(12:53):
and passionate and expressive and real, andalso insecure and a little ashamed and fearful.
And those things could coexist, and that mademe real.
That's beautiful.
That's and that's it's so funny that we we lookat the world these days as it has to be like

(13:16):
you said, that binary, it has to be black orwhite when in reality, the entire world is just
different shades of gray.
It's it's it's all these different shades andmixes of it.
And it's, like, in a in a deeper level, we allknow this, but we still try to be this
reductive, you know, that it has to be this,that a dancer has to be confident and love

(13:37):
themselves.
And they created this entire story for you justfrom seeing one performance.
Right?
And for someone who doesn't necessarily speakduring their performances.
Right?
It's a lot different than me going up as asongwriter and standing on stage, and I'm able
to tell you the story behind the song before Iperform it.
You're not getting that.

(13:58):
So, yeah, I'm sure I'll just I probablyhundreds of thousands or millions of people
have a story in their head about who you arewhen they see you on stage that is not even
close to the real the real thing.
Yeah.
And if I had forced myself to take on thatmantle that they wanted me to be I'm I'm so

(14:19):
proud.
I love myself so much.
I'm great.
You should you can't you can't criticize me.
I am I'm badass, and I'm, you know, the best.
Right?
If I had done that, I would have gotten moreand more out of touch with how I actually felt,
who I actually was.
And all that does is compound trauma in thebody.
So when you said com trauma lives in the body,and movement is how we speak to it, and when we

(14:44):
can speak to it, we can heal it, that movementrequires authenticity.
I cannot be this tough girl body.
Nobody can get me down.
I only have one set of feelings, and they'reall what we'd call good.
Right?
That's not real.
And so I'm I'm getting farther and farther awayfrom my real self, which means my trauma has

(15:07):
nobody to talk to because I'm not I'm not inthere.
I'm out here presenting something.
Alexandra, was there a specific moment in yourcareer where you wanted to shift from the
performance side to the education side?
We kinda just touched on you closing the danceside to be in education.

(15:29):
Was there a single moment, or was it somethingthat built over time?
Everything's been pretty smooth in terms of mylike, I've really cross faded all of my career
choices.
While I was performing and dancing, I reallystarted wanting to choreograph.
And so then I left the company I was dancingwith and started choreographing, started my own

(15:52):
company, but was also performing in it.
And then during that, I was like, I am notmaking the I'm not able to make the work I
wanna make when I'm in it.
So I stepped out of it, and I would stillchoreograph, like, solos for myself.
Myself.
And then I just found I lost the bug to be onstage.
Like, I just didn't feel the need to bewitnessed.
I feel like my artwork had gotten clear enoughthat I felt like I was being seen when people

(16:18):
would watch my art even when I was notphysically in it.
So then that became fine for me.
And then so many of the ideas that I was, like,passionate about working with as an artist, I
started bringing to other artists and gettingtheir ideas and talking to them about their
art.
And that started to feed a lot of that energytoo.

(16:39):
I still love making art myself, but I startedbecoming really enamored with how many
different voices there are in the world and howthose voices don't always have access to the
world, and how could I help people bring theirvoice more clearly out into the world, their
artistic voice or their actual physical voice,you know, in the case of actors.

(17:05):
I just love how, because I don't necessarilythink of I think of dance as art, but I didn't
think of the choreography as an art form,right, until you mentioned.
And I was like, oh, of course.
You're a painter, but you're painting withpeople's bodies and their movements.
And and what a beautiful, beautiful way to lookat it.
And I'm sure there's choreographers out therethat don't necessarily look at it the same way

(17:28):
that that you do.
Right?
You know, everybody's kinda coming to it from adifferent you're so so introspective and so in
the art, and it probably comes from, you know,decades probably inside of it now, a long
performance career.
Now I hope a very long teaching career.
When when did the transition happen, in years,in the timeline?

(17:50):
When did that kind of performance bug leaveyou?
And it was just like, you know, I wanna be onthe other side of this now.
Let's see.
Five years ago, I did I performed for acolleague of mine, and I told her it had been
eight years since I'd been on stage.
So it's been about thirteen years since I was,like, really regularly performing.

(18:13):
And then it has to be something that feels likea really unusual project to make me want to
bite into it as a performer.
So I would say that in the last thirteen yearsI'm actually Sunday about to perform something,
but, from another friend, colleague, but itit's really been thirteen years.

(18:39):
Now you you seem a little nervous almost aboutgetting back out and performing.
Do you feel like kind of letting that go for solong kind of reinvigorated that that it gave
you time away from it?
Because as a and I'll speak from personalexperience.
As a songwriter and and, you know, someone whogoes out and plays three, four hour bar gigs,

(18:59):
right, we're playing at, you know, a a bar andgrill.
They're not real fancy gigs.
We're not performing at, you know, theaters onBroadway or anything.
But it it it can get to feel like a job, right,that you're just kinda going through the
motions again and you're not really doing that.
You get burnout, right, I I'm sure is what wewould call it in today's society.
Do you feel like kinda letting that go a littlebit gave you chance to kinda recharge that side

(19:24):
of your personality?
I wouldn't call it a recharge, but what I wouldsay is it, I think it emptied the need.
Like, I I kinda drained out the need that wasbehind performing.
And now every once in a while, new interests inperforming come up from other places because

(19:49):
that old need, which I think to me did have alittle bit of trauma in it.
Like, not being seen much as a kid, I think,gave me this feeling of, like, I don't know if
I exist, if people are not watching me.
And I think as I healed that, I that reason forbeing on stage went away.

(20:11):
And then there was sort of an emptiness, not ina bad way, but just a kind of stillness around
it.
And then in that stillness, I can hear like,oh, that's interesting.
That's an interesting idea.
I would play with that in front of people.
That that would be cool.
And the thing that I'm actually grappling withnow, ironically, in terms of your show is I've
always had stage fright to sing.

(20:33):
And so and I started learning guitar justbefore the pandemic so that I could because I
would sing to my kids, and that's no problem.
That's easy.
And I really enjoy singing.
Like, my body really enjoys singing.
But the idea of putting it out in front ofother people without a dance I've I've had to

(20:55):
sing in a dance performance, and that's fine.
No stage fright.
But singing, like, at a microphone in front ofpeople who are just there to hear the singing,
that's terrifying to me.
So I've been trying to work my way into gettingon stage to do that because I feel like that
would be a breakthrough for me.

(21:17):
So I think what what happened is that my oldreasons for performing went away, and it's not
that they got reinvigorated, but somethingelse, a little healthier, came in their stead.
A curiosity?
Yeah.
I find that for myself.
So we started this podcast, just a year and afew months ago.

(21:38):
So relatively new to the podcastingbroadcasting world, but I've always loved deep
conversations.
And I really didn't realize what this podcastwas gonna be until, you know, maybe the
beginning of this year and and getting into it.
I knew we had something because there's justthere's no podcast out here, not just in South
Dakota, but in the Midwest in general.
Right?
There's just not a lot of people, so there'snot a lot of artistic people that are going to

(22:01):
go chase this.
And we don't even have, like, weekly artsmagazines here.
Right?
So they're we're kinda becoming a hub for ourlocal Midwestern people to kind of come to to
meet the players and to to find out a littlebit of what's going on.
That's an ever evolving kind of thing, but it'sit's taken away the need for me to go on stage

(22:21):
and sing because the same things.
Right?
I was like, I I I need to be heard.
This is how I feel, you know, validated in mylife is this.
Because when I, you know, I I talked aboutexperiencing homelessness, well, I I was never
really destitute because I always had a guitaron my back.
Right?
Like, my family, I grew up around music.
I grew up playing guitar since I was 12, 13years old and singing all the time.

(22:45):
So that was always kinda like my my reach backto feeling that was the place I was most
comfortable with, especially when you're I sayhomeless, but I was a vagabond.
Right?
I was just I was hitchhiking around andexperiencing life.
I was 19, 20 years old.
So, like, where I felt most comfortable waswhen I had the guitar on, when I'm playing, no
matter where I was at.

(23:06):
And now it's changed to, well, I I don't needanymore.
Who am I now without that side of of the, ofBubba?
Right?
Where are we now as kind of Bubba the podcasterwho's busy, kinda bringing other people out and
asking interesting questions, and and it allcomes back to just curiosity.

(23:29):
I'm so curious as a human being.
It's probably why I was on the road, you know,as a hitchhiker just because, like, I don't
wanna settle down.
I wanna see this, and I wanna see that, and I Iwanna do it all.
And, you know, I'm a little sad that my travelsnever brought me to the East Coast.
Right?
I never got to experience New York City as thatperson.
Right?
I think I woulda had a great time, albeit,probably not for long.

(23:52):
I didn't do very well in Los Angeles either.
It's a few too many people.
But, you know, you talk about sadness.
I I loved that part of my life.
But is there some grief attached to that?
Is there a little bit of, hey.
You know, you could've you could've had adifferent life or done these other things and
but I don't regret doing what I had done.

(24:12):
Right?
It's all made me so it's poised me for thispart of my life, and and and the being curious
part has never left me.
So, yeah, I love it.
You know, you used that word regret, and Ithink that that's such an important word inside
this conversation because, you know, I don't Idon't feel regret for any of oh, well, was

(24:37):
ruminating on regret when you said it, and Iwas thinking, like, yeah.
Oh, I don't I don't believe in regret because,you know, every choice brought me here,
etcetera.
But then I feel like there's this expectationif we say, I don't regret anything, that I
don't have any sadness, or I don't have anywishes.
Like, you know, I I wish I had treated thatperson with more kindness.

(25:00):
I wish that I had spent more time with thatperson.
It's not regret.
It's sadness.
Right?
I feel sad that I wasn't the person that couldhave done those things at that moment.
Right.
And the two terms don't have to be inextricablylinked to one another.
Yeah.
And, you know, I think we can feel I don't Idon't wish I had done anything differently.

(25:22):
Even the things that I can see, oh, if I haddone that differently, I might have saved
myself some pain or grief or stress or loss ofmoney or whatever it is.
But that's what I did at that moment.
You know?
I'm not gonna regret it, but I do feel sad thatI didn't have the, you know, validation or the

(25:43):
confidence or the, you know, sense of myself tostand up for myself in that bad relationship
or, you know, whatever it is.
It's not regret.
But I'm I'm sorry for that.
I'm sorry for that old version of me that Ididn't have more resources or more help or more
self assurance or something to get myself outof a bad situation.

(26:05):
And I'm also proud of that person for survivingit and getting getting me here even though I
had to climb through some stuff.
So, you know, I have, even then, contradictoryfeelings about that person.
Like, what an amazing person that was that,like, survived all that and got me here.
And, oh, I'm sorry for them.
Like, I wish that they had had an easier timeof it.

(26:28):
I wish that could have been easier for them,and they could have had more community around
them or whatever whatever it is.
And I can simultaneously feel those things, andI feel like people wanna talk you out of that
too.
You know?
Like, reduce it to, oh, but you can't regretwhere you've been.
You You wouldn't be.
Yeah.
I I'm not regretting it, but I am sad for thatperson.

(26:49):
Doesn't mean I have to be like, yeah.
Yay.
My really hard, struggle y, survival y life.
Yay.
That life.
No.
It could have been easier, and it wasn't.
And I'm, like, I'm amazed with myself that Igot where I got.
And I can also be a little sad that, you know,at some points, I didn't take the easy route.

(27:09):
Like, we can do both of those things.
Wish I'd known better here or there.
I wish I'd, you know, believed in myself morehere or there.
And I'm also, you know, yay me for gettinghere, through there.
You know?
And they just they coexist.
And when we when we force ourselves to onlybelieve one of them, it's just shutting down

(27:31):
the authenticity.
And you you said something several times now,like, feel bad for that person, and you're
talking about you, that previous version ofyou.
And I think so many people are so trappedinside of their ego, right, that that I that I
well, I did that.
Well, I mean, a version of you did that.
You know?

(27:51):
You're you're not I'm not the same person I wasyesterday.
Right?
And and none of us are.
And I think there's a mentality there that Ibelieve you and I share, obviously.
Maybe it's a performer artist thing, right,that most people in our fields would would have
a little bit of that.
But the the introspection, most people justdon't even have the skills to be able to go, I

(28:13):
I feel bad for that previous version of me.
Right?
People can't even get to that point.
It's poor me.
It's poor well well, yeah, but it didn't happento you today.
It didn't happen to this version of you.
It happened to that version of you.
But And
that version of you, you know, wastheoretically doing the best they could with
what they had and, you know, didn't make thechoices they would necessarily make today, and

(28:38):
that's okay.
I understand them.
I have empathy for them.
I I have some sadness for them.
But even even now, like, I don't feel like Ihave a singular I.
I have lots of parts right just sitting hereright now, and some of those parts do things
that make me feel really proud, and some ofthose parts do things that frustrate me.

(29:01):
And, you know, it's about having a conversationwith my different parts right now.
And, you know, the parts that are doing thingsthat frustrate me are not trying to derail my
life.
They're they're not being attended to in someways right now.
Right?
So for me, even now, it's a conversation with,like, why are you sabotaging this?

(29:26):
What is happening?
What are you what are you trying to say?
What are you trying to get?
Like, we don't do anything that's bad forourselves arbitrarily.
Right?
We don't we don't drink too much arbitrarily.
We don't, you know, get sucked into addictionarbitrarily to stay in a bad relationship.
We do it because we're getting something out ofit, and that something needs a conversation.

(29:53):
Right?
Because just like we said with the performance,like, oh, well, that that need to be on stage
was really from something else.
And when that thing got fed, that need changed.
And it doesn't mean you can never be on stageagain, but it's just not for the same reason.
And I think sometimes we need to be able tohave a conversation with some of these parts

(30:15):
that are not doing things in our best interestand say, hey.
What's going on?
What what is it that you need that you're notgetting?
What am I not hearing you say?
What am I not listening to?
Oh, you need more rest.
I'm pushing too hard.
Or you need to be away from these toxic people,or you need to get off social media or whatever

(30:36):
it is.
Like, something's happening that's causingdistress in the ecosystem, and I can see
because something's not functional in myecosystem.
I'm not taking good care of myself.
I'm not exercising, or I'm not, you know,having healthy relationships.
Or so so what's going on?
Because I can't just force myself to do betterthings.

(31:00):
For some reason, part of me doesn't wanna dobetter things, doesn't want to take good care
of myself.
So does part of me not feel like I deservecare?
Does part of me not feel like, I deserve thatrest or that sleep that good food or that
exercise or healthy body or to be around peoplethat love me or right?
Like, so that's how I start to get to talk tomy trauma parts and heal them so that they can

(31:27):
collaborate with me on wanting to go to bed ontime.
Like, I find I was talking to my partner aboutthis last night.
I sometimes get a little, like, toddler energyat bedtime because I've been working so hard
all day, and and, you I don't wanna go to bedand wake up in the morning and I have to go
back to work and now I now I just I wanna stayup and watch TikTok or something.

(31:47):
And I was talking to that part last night thatwas saying that to me and I said, you can stay
up and watch TikTok.
You're you're an adult.
Like, if you wanna stay up and watch TikTok,you can.
You know, you're gonna be tired tomorrow.
And I realized that the part of me that's wassaying, I don't wanna go to bed, actually, is
not the part that gets up in the morning andgoes to work.

(32:09):
And so they didn't really care that I was gonnabe tired for work.
And I was like, oh, we're not we're notagreeing enough as an ecosystem.
Right?
Like, that means I'm not taking that part of meto work.
That means I'm shutting part of me down to goto work.
That means that sometimes in the morning, I'mthat part of me wants something like, I wanna

(32:31):
stay in bed and have a hot chocolate and watchTV.
And I'm like, shut up.
Get back in there.
I gotta get to work.
And when I say that enough times, that partdoesn't really care about work.
Right?
Because they're never getting to do what theywanna do in the morning.
So I need to have more talk with that part.

(32:52):
And every once in a while, you know, certainlynot every week, but every once in a while, I do
need to say, you know what?
I am gonna take the morning off and make a hotchocolate and get in bed.
That's what I'm gonna do because that's whatpart of me wants to do and has been yelling at
me every morning for three weeks to do it.
And you know what?
They're gonna get what they want this morning.
Oh, and there's always time to get the thingsdone that need to be done.

(33:14):
And I think that's another kind of byproduct ofthe society that we all live in is that
everything just needs to be immediate.
And and in no way has your life taken thatpath.
Your your life is like a slow flowing river, itfeels like, and it's gonna take its time and
evolve at its own pace anyway.
But sometimes you gotta let the toddler out andtake him to the park.

(33:35):
Totally.
Totally.
So you got a book that you're finishing.
I'm assuming it's probably finished now andgetting ready to get shipped off.
Can we talk a little bit about the book and,before I let you get out of here?
Yeah.
It's called the anatomy of art, Unlocking theCreative Process for Theater and Dance.
And I've taken 12 aspects, that I think arefundamental to our creative lives, but things

(34:01):
that we don't necessarily look at individually.
So time, space, meaning, relationship,environment, process, facts, faith,
communication, material, context and culture,and priorities.
Those are the 12 topics.
And I feel like each one of them is a juicyplace for us to explore as creatives.

(34:23):
Like, if I just spend some time really thinkingabout my material or I spend some time thinking
about, the environment that I create or that Iin which I create.
And so it's if you've ever heard of TheArtist's Way, it's like a more specific
artist's way.

(34:43):
It's like an artist's way for artists.
The Artist's Way was for everyone, which isbeautiful, gorgeous book.
And this is like a a more specific artist's wayfor creatives.
So for creatives that feel like, I wanna levelup my art or I'm I sometimes hit these walls
and I feel static or stagnant, and I want Iwish I had a mentor.

(35:05):
I wish I had somebody to really just, like, getwith me in the studio and help me with my art
when I hit a block to give me little tricks toget out of it.
That's what's in the book.
And my hope is that it provides mentorship forartists who, you know, don't have access to to
mentorship.
That's me.

(35:25):
Well, that'll be out in May.
Well, I cannot wait, and I hope that I can geta copy to put up here in our beautiful display
behind me for other artists to see, and we'llbe, recommending it in our Scene Projects book
club.
And, yeah, thank you, Alexander, for forsharing so much with me today.
It was beautiful to get to know you, and you'rewelcome back on on any of our shows anytime you

(35:48):
like.
Get better together is one of our programs onthe network that really allows us to get into
the, into the dirt, if you will.
It's kind of how our community gets in and justtalks about the the stuff that's actually
happened to us and how we came through it andand how it's made this version of ourselves

(36:09):
exactly the people that you see in front of younow.
So, Alexandra, just a pleasure talking to youthis morning.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me.
That is Alexandra Beller.
Remember to like and subscribe to all thisstuff, and we will see you all next time.
And remember to make yourself part of thescene.