I have been a bit off the air for a while as the circus has kept me busy and I am also attempting to finish a few projects that are moving much too slowly. I find myself stuck at times or mentally unwilling to proceed.
Over the years when I inevitably become immoveable on a project, instead of banging my head and forcing the muses to keep walking, or else; I change direction. I "Go Left".
In 2002, I was in the sixth month of my time in the Circus Center's Clown Conservatory, I was stuck. I had to invent a new act, but my mind felt like a blank slate. I stared at notebooks, paced halls, scribbled lists—nothing clicked.
That’s when my mentor Peggy Ford stepped in. Peggy was extraordinary: one of the first female Ringling Brothers clowns, and one of the first women to graduate Ringling Clown College. She carried in her bones a legacy of daring, whimsy, and refusal to settle for the expected.
She looked at me and said:
“Don’t work on the act again. Go for a walk. See an opera. Read Vogue. Anything but mash your head into the same page.”
I nodded, half skeptical, but obeyed. The next morning in San Francisco, I left the circus school behind and wandered. No agenda, just observation. I stopped charging ahead and turned left.
As I walked, I found myself in the financial district. I saw people sweeping sidewalks before the city’s rush, shopkeepers opening gates, delivery trucks rolling in. I saw the undercurrent of the real city preparing for the storm of commerce, tech, suits, anticipation.
Two things emerged from that walk:
1. The Act That Wouldn’t Have Happened Otherwise
Out of that wandering, I conceived one of my wildest performances. It was a bit absurd, theatrical, playful, and symbolic:
I would play a “business man” faceless, corporate, mechanical.
My partner in the act would be “the common man” human, grounded, embodied.
The two of us would engage in a slow motion WWE-style wrestling match, set to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, each move exaggerated, symbolic, absurd.
This clash was less about wrestling and more about the struggle between abstraction and humanity, capitalism and daily life, the elite and the everyday. In early 2000s San Francisco — in the midst of the tech boom and its cultural clashes — this act felt sharp, timely, necessary.
It all seems a bit strange today and hits in a different sort of way. The 22 year old circus school student who floated from sublet to sublet, couch to couch, scraping by vs the 47 year old business owner with a mortgage and too many pairs of shoes.
Maybe I will put on some Wagner and wrestle with those ideas. A fodder for a different article.
The point is, I never could have arrived at that act by forcing ideas. It emerged from observing, letting the tension of the city whisper through me, allowing my mind to wander.
2. Discovering the Performing Arts Library & Museum
On that same walk, by chance, I stumbled across the San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum (then called SFPALM), now known as the Museum of Performance + Design. That find changed many mornings (and afternoons) in my following years.
Walking inside, I found boxes of programs, old photos, taped performances, design sketches — shadow-worlds of theater, dance, clown, performance history. I would lose hours there: paging through, digesting, being inspired.
A bit of background: this museum arose from the collection of Russell Hartley (1922–1983), dancer/designer connected with the San Francisco Ballet. Hartley began collecting performance materials, eventually creating the private San Francisco Dance Archives. Over decades, his collection grew, was incorporated into the public library, then housed in the Opera House, and eventually became SFPALM. It now embraces performance, theatrical design, and archival conservation — more than 3.5 million items and counting.
For my artistic self, those archives felt like a map — a reminder that someone else once walked, made, failed, staged, dreamed. They anchored me in lineage and possibility.
Why “Go Left” Isn’t Just a Trick — It’s a Practice
Peggy didn’t give me a productivity hack. She offered a worldview. Over the years I’ve come to see that what she taught me aligns deeply with neurological and psychological principles:
Incubation: when your conscious thinking pauses, your unconscious mind can continue forming connections.
Zeigarnik Effect: tasks you leave unfinished linger in your mental workspace, continuing to nudge you in the background.
Default Mode Network: when the brain rests, regions associated with creativity, memory, and insight become active.
Attention Restoration: focused work depletes our mental energies; stepping away — especially into nature or curiosity — helps restore clarity.
Mind-wandering as incubation soil: letting the mind drift enables seemingly unconnected ideas to link in surprising ways.
When you “Go Left,” you don’t abandon the effort — you offset it. You let your system breathe, recalibrate, shift. Some of the purest insight comes in those moments.
A Call to Detour
If you find yourself grinding against a wall — creative block, stalled decision, emotional fog — try this:
Step outside for 20 minutes. Walk without your phone.
Visit a museum, art gallery, or archive you’ve never been to.
Read something outside your domain — poetry, fashion, foreign essays.
Sit quietly. Let your mind drift.
You might return flustered. Or you might return with your own gripping, wild act, a strange metaphor, a fresh question. That’s the beauty of lateral move. Sometimes the leap forward comes from the side.
When I look back on that time in San Francisco — surrounded by a city in flux, cultural collisions, creative ferment — I see now that the act, the archival inspiration, the tension I felt, all converged in that moment of walking. If I had stayed in my room, pounding on blank pages, I might still be there.
Peggy’s gift to me was trust — trust in the sideways path, trust that when you step off-grid, the invisible wheels might turn, new routes might open.
