NJ Blog - Dominic Snyder

New Jammers Participant Blog 

Entry 2 - 7th June 2015

The second third and fourth meetings have been very positive.

In session 2, the underscore offered a gradual start with building arrivals, to the body, to a sense of weight and support within the space, and building to awareness of our possibilities for movement in our own reaches (kinesphere) and then shifting towards interactions with other New Jammers. I find the pace and flow of developing towards the Jam using this method is gradual and unforced and offers pathways  to visit, reject, like, revisit, restart, connect, disconnect… and potentially, within the mind, in a less forced or cluttered way than can sometimes be the case. Getting the chance to Jam together offered a chance for more bonding and this, I felt, helped to deepen the engagement with the group. My attention is engaged with on going developing awareness of the underscore and with the many different approaches to the warm up.

Towards sessions three and four the process of preparing warm up sessions was a challenge and I found the communication with Tom opened up some things in my prep work. Session three delivering the warm up was definitely exciting and engaging and with one exception the group seemed to get into what I was offering. The seven warm ups were well considered and diverse. Each of us has brought something different into the sessions. The eventual application of these within full Jam contexts will be another leap (hopefully forward) and one to look forward to, and I guess, potentially bringing to fruition a start point of the intent of the whole programme?

I still don’t feel resistance to anything significant during the sessions so far, with the exception of the space at KPC being sometimes cold due to the dreadful summer we are having…!!!.

I would say that I am definitely feeling a deeper engagement with some aspects of Jamming. I am finding some instincts growing out of the underscore, which make interactions, flow and weave in, or out, of the constantly changing possibilities and impossibilities. My perceptions of the relationship between movement, sound and drawn imagery have also been changing throughout the recent weeks and months. I am not there yet in terms of getting each of these completely out of their individual boxes, to play freely together, but I do feel some passages of Jamming that move in that direction.

And finally, as regards facilitating as opposed to participating, this still feels like a challenge, but so does Jamming in a different way and definitely to a lesser extent. Most creative and experiential learning I have ever engaged in, particularly around music and performing, embraces the concept that a healthy sense of challenge, perhaps fear manifested as a bit of nervousness…? Can be a good thing, obviously as long as it drives us forwards and not inwards.

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Spider diagram - 30th May 2015

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Entry 1 - 12th March 2015

What am I finding most exciting and engaging?

The first meeting was exciting and engaging in the sense of feeling the start and potential foundation of a small supportive community built within the @TheGlasgowJam context. There was a very reasonable amount of openness and I look forward to this widening. Movements in the first Jam passages felt comfortable. The idea that this can grow and help the wider Jamming group seems very tangible and the initiation and designing of the programme to get this going shows a lot of consideration.

What am I resisting? What has my attention?

I didn’t feel resistance to anything significant within the first session, either within the group or the initial engagements. The Underscore, which is the focus of the next session, has my attention. Although I am not readily familiar with all the vocabulary of this I find this approach helpful and opening up the Jam process in a sign posted and structured (but not over-structured) way.

Where are new questions popping up and how can we investigate these?

I felt new questions around making more sense of the mark making side of things, and looking at how to discover and develop ways to share ideas and activities around this, finding ways to investigate further and integrate the mark making with the movement.

Facilitating as opposed to participating, how do I feel?

This excites me and I see it as a healthy challenge. I look forward to building structures for this generally and specifically in relation to the mark making side of things. I want to develop more skills and sense of structure, flow and response to the warm up and warm down side of Jamming.

More deeply… what and how?

I would like to develop a sense of instinct and timing and intuitiveness for the responses involved in the ever changing and never exactly the same Jamming context. This is not just from a selfish point of view, but to discover instincts which can be shared when facilitating.

Do I want to facilitate a jam?

Yes. I facilitated one before which I really enjoyed. I was aided in the warm up and warm down in this. As I have said, I look forward to doing some work on this.