performance of/and the everyday extraordinary (long)

trying to collect some thoughts & questions about money, crafting performances & workshops i can actually do, & intimacy or sociality. this is all steeped in disability & autistic realities (probably trans realities too), the need to find more from-scratch ways to participate in both work-as-living-art & work-as-income-generating activity inasmuch as the two are (in)separable for me. i'm moving with issues of beginning to require monetary compensation for things i have done, or usually do, for free. 

it's a struggle to move in this way. i don't imagine my future-newer modes will be consistent, so it will look from the outside as though i capriciously charge money to some people & not to others. or will perform/offer feedback/mentor for free for some people but not others. i can't control what others will say or think of me, but i can try to find peace with this likelihood & accept that ethics & finances only align roughly. you know the feeling in your hands when you move two positive or two negative magnets toward each other? that's ethics & finances. i want to do this only for love, because i do in fact need to circulate love in order to thrive. but i also need money. it might impact my life if others begrudge me compensation for my work, but it definitely will be a problem if i continue to begrudge myself that compensation.

there's a story i've been trying to assemble over the weeks of this month. it's a story about a private event that straddles the line, or effaces it, between performance & socializing. i'd been thinking about it as a social event i attended, but the more i unpack what unfolded (& there was a lot that unfolded, layers & layers, most of which i am not going to share in detail) the more i realize that it was also, maybe primarily, a performance i took part in. 

at the recent doctor who convention i've written about here, my husband & i attended a ticketed event billed as a "meet & greet" with a pair of actors i'll call smc & sa for ease of telling. it was a small group, between 15-20 people. because no one was quite sure what the expectations were, we all collaborated to some degree on making the event. "two actors & 18 fans in search of a play" may be a good way to conceive of the feeling as the event began. there was a sense of both awkwardness & tremendous possibility. i am used to awkwardness & i love tremendous possibility, so this wasn't a problem for me, & i began taking an active hand in this collaboration. r. also became involved after smc asked him to get his trumpet (r. always has a trumpet in the car). this made a huge change in feel as sa & then r. played, smc accompanying on spoons (& my shoulder) with others clapping & stomping. the ice was broken, the tone was set, the pressure was off, & we all made a deep & rich conversation. 

among the many reasons i have been turning this around & around in me, i'm struck by 

1. my need to make a caring space that responded to everyone's needs & empowered the creation of something extraordinary without burdening any one or two participants;
2. the blurring of line between the social & the staged;
3. that this was a ticketed event wherein we paid for close access to the presence of these guests & for their time, but did not all have solid expectations of what that entailed;
4. no one there begrudged the payment;
5. it would have been a very different thing, for everyone, without me & r.

so, part of my takeaway from this event (& from my approach to the whole convention, really) was that i have a lot of investment in collaborative events/performances, & in making safe spaces for all participants. i also found it multiply confirmed that asking to be compensated for time & presence is totally appropriate, whether separately or as a baseline for compensation for specific performances.

my thinking's still emerging, of course, but i had to put this down & out there in a place where i could find it & where others might see it. cheers.