- deep aesthetic thoughts

When done right, the negative-space artistic perspective of the sport is exactly concordant with the positive-space version. More than just a balance between physical agility and artistic expression, there is the baseline point that the act itself, the expression of lacing up leather attached to steel and stepping onto frozen water in specialized attire to move the ether with your music and balance both defines the purpose of art and makes a mockery of it at the same time. It is as abstract as abstract can be while at the same time being as physically concrete as is physically possible. Everything about it should be impossible, and yet it happens anyway.

- triumph

It seems natural as we are growing to attach our selves to things. It starts with a connection to our mother, then to toys and friends, then interests, workmates, and lovers. As souls follow their paths however, unfortunate worldly circumstances may cause disconnections, and hence sorrow.

We may defray this sorrow by attention to physical activity, "centering," or by shifting our attention to art or entertainment, thus joining a larger global culture.

Skating meets all of these needs: it is artistically entertaining, physically demanding, and culturally enthralling.

Is sorrow necessary to be a good skater? Otherwise you are just skating for attention, fun, peer or parental approval. When you are skating to relieve sorrow though, something else is in play.

Skating is also one of the few sports that relies on near total physical detachment. The skater uses just her mind, body, and some steel blades to excel in her sport while only attached to the world by a thin layer of water melted over ice.

Skating demands that the skater connect to a larger, longer-timelined culture. It requires intense attention to physical centering. And it constantly reattaches the skater through love to her coaches and to her audience. She does all this only because it is what physics allows.

Skating is the triumph of physics over sorrow.

- the point

First there is skating skill, the stroke and the jump, the spins and the footwork. Next comes the imagination, the artistic flourishes using the arms, hands, and a projected imagination. Third comes an audience awareness: sensing what they feel and striving to please them.

The final polish though, that keystone that connects all of the pieces together, is the magical ability to "point:" to connect an active imagination with the ability to direct an audience's attention to that which is being imagined.

Pointing takes just as much practice as all of the other pieces, and arcanely you can only practice it with feedback directly in front of an audience.

If you over-point too blatantly, then you come across as fawning. If you under-point then the audience misses half of your presentation.

The best skaters are aware of what they are doing on all four planes: physically, expressively, impressionistically, and metaphysically. This is the point.

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- hypnotism

The best skaters hypnotize with their performance. They do this not through their artistic arms nor their skillful jumps and spins, but rather by focusing where they hold their own awareness.

Even on practice ice one may easily discern which skaters have hypnotic power: they are able to concentrate and hold their awareness continuously at a point of high Qi, between their third and fourth Chakra. Physically this is a location about half way between their actual center of gravity and their heart.

While contemplating the hypnotic skater you watch their Qi glide smoothly as it effortlessly slides around the rink in gentle parabolic arcs through jumps, resting perfectly fixed in space during a spin.

When a skater focuses on her Qi rather than on what she is practicing, she will follow the natural hypnotically expressive path that her skills and physics allow.

- audience

If you happen by some quiet private ice it's a good opportunity to watch the ladies practice the sections of their program. Watch closely and you'll immediately notice two classes of skaters.

About two thirds of the skaters have a future audience on their mind: they are aware of both a need to impress and a need to achieve. One third of the folks are there however just to, well, skate. Maybe they are older now and used to compete and performed many years ago, and now they skate just to stay in shape. Or they skate to reminisce. It's not that one class is better than the other, it's just that they are distinctly different.

What is it about having that future audience that makes so much of a difference? When a gal skates for herself you can see her think through the moves from a bodily-awareness perspective, with the point of view of limbs traveling through space.

But a gal with an audience does this and something more: she is calculating the reaction from her viewers. What will the viewers think of *this*? The difference is as great between blueberries and blueberry pie. That added step of separation and projection is what turns the skating from physics to performance. It is that power of love.

- sparkling

A fairly wide gap spans envisioning and actualization (actualization being the physical expression of a creative concept). You can't do a great job of actualization however without a healthy dose of envisioning. Hence, the first step of artistic skating is getting those old creative imagination juices flowing.

At its core the envisioning process in skating is similar to how it works for any other creative art. You browse other skaters for what you find appealing. You discern, summarize, invert, invent, extrapolate, generalize, and reframe. You add dynamics, texture, and personality. You expand your awareness and sensitivities. You learn to communicate feelings through movement. You find a muse. You learn to move souls.

At the same time though this imaginative pre-vision mental construct doesn't happen in a vacuum. You bracket ideas of what might be possible by feedback of your own expressiveness, a sense for dramatic "reveal," and by practice in building a story arc.

When it all comes together you sparkle.

- outside

Skating can be about projecting an imagination. This can happen two distinct ways however. Call the first way "from the inside" and the second way "from the outside."

From the Inside everything happens in your head, you have an idea of what you are creating and sharing that runs through your mind as you practice, and you share this same thing when you skate in front of an audience. It is a Performance.

Imagination from the Outside is different entirely. When you are practicing with your imagination outside, you have an idea, a template for what you wish to communicate, but it isn't cast in stone and it changes depending on the mood and who is watching. You become both connected and interacting with your environment and the spirits around you.

Skating with your imagination on the Outside is more then a performance: it is a Show.

- the perfect spin

Once the skater is accomplished, the thing about spins is this: they allow a subtle expression of artistic creation, a certain mixture of the psychic atmosphere, a twisting dynamic artisanship of grab and release, inward pull and outward explosive color, as the arms and hands trace colored space sculptures and both extend and trellis, making vortexes that twirl and grow at the same time that they are being created, taking the two dimensions of torque and angular position and adding the third dimension of movement across time, and the fourth dimension of the trail itself of what has been.

- sparkles

The competition today is in Anaheim at Disney Ice; it's one of the largest competitions in Southern California with five or six hundred skaters spread across five days. My daughter skates a short program in the morning and then her long program that afternoon. To avoid the locker room crazies she puts on her performance costume at home. As we get in the car before sunrise I ask the usual checks: do you have extra tights? Your music?

What with all of the preparation, coaching, skate sharpening, clothes, filming, practice tights, transportation, snacks, photos, music, ballet instruction, stretching, makeup, hair scrunchies, and performance costumes, it finally all comes together as we head down the I-5. As I drive she applies the final touches to her makeup in the passenger visor mirror. The clouds clear and the sun rises, reflecting off of the sparkles in her sequin dress, filling up the interior of the car with thousands of small moving rainbows. Deep breath.