In this post I am going to encourage you to make a mess of things, make messy things and write bad poems.

Here we go:

I am in rehearsal for a show called Picasso at the Lapin Agile – written by Steve Martin. We open the show six days from today. We’ve reached that point in the rehearsal schedule where we do run-throughs every night. A run-through means you start at the beginning and go to the end. It’s basically a performance minus the audience. It’s repetition. Last night all the pieces finally came together and we took flight for the first time. That’s the beauty of repetition – it eventually sets you free.

We’ve spent time memorizing our lines – what to say, learning our blocking – where to go, playing with our characters – who to be. We’ve added the costumes, the lights, the props, and the set. Each piece line by line, bit by bit and scene by scene – until we finally have a whole play.

But, honestly, two weeks ago I couldn’t see how it was possibly going to come together. We didn’t have a show two weeks ago. We had a mess. I was lost. I couldn’t find my character. I didn’t know my lines – I didn’t understand why things were happening and I couldn’t remember the order in which they were supposed to happen.

Let me set the scene:

The play takes place in a bar. It goes something like this…Picasso and Einstein walk into a bar and the bartender says…

Remember Steve Martin wrote the script.

I play Germaine. I’m the bar maid and the bartender’s girl and Picasso’s lover and I think Einstein is a big weirdo. And there’s this annoying chick who keeps flirting with Picasso and…I have to walk and talk and flirt and pour drinks and wipe up spills and laugh at everyone’s jokes and put Picasso in his place and…it really is an endless job for a girl to keep up with all this – but not for Germaine because she is really much cooler than I am in real life. She makes it look smooth. She owns the place and she runs the men. (So not like me.)

This is when I make a real mess:

One night the director decides it’s time to stop pretending to pour drinks and start using liquid in the bottles. We were pretending up until then – walking around with air-glasses – like air-guitars – pretending to sip and swallow while walking and talking. So we fill the glasses and bottles with water and I pick up the first glass and slosh it all over the front of me.

Einstein could probably work out the formula, but the deal is you can pick up an air-glass with much more force and momentum than you can use when picking up an actual glass filled with H2O.

Of course, I forget what I was supposed to say. I’m sure I looked like a deer caught in the headlights – a very wet deer caught in the headlights. Everyone else thinks this is very funny so we have to stop and let everyone laughed at me and I have to laugh too and we have to start over.

Like I said, it was a mess.

But that’s the process. Layer by layer. One spill at a time. Trial and error. And repetition. Doing it again and again and again so you don’t spill or slip or slurp or slurr or bump into the furniture or forget your lines and stand there in dead silence looking like a wet deer while everyone laughs at you. Or – if any of that does happen – you can make it look like you did it on purpose. Mistakes become happy accidents.

Now I can pour two drinks at a time with a bottle in each hand while walking, talking and flirting – and do it backwards AND in heels!

That’s the beauty of repetition and it applies to every act of creativity. We train ourselves through repetition to make it look easy. To make it look spontaneous. Because we have done what we have done so many times that we’ve earned the right to play.

So I hope you make a mess today when you are facing off with that canvas or that blank piece of paper and I hope you will get up and do it all over again tomorrow and the next day too. Repetition is the key. Repetition gives us permission to start fresh and play every day.