Week 08: Daily Practice: Freestyling as Flow

The Accidental Ritual

My daily practice wasn't planned... it emerged organically during Project 1's production phase as a way to blow off steam. I tend to overthink everything, and freestyling became my antidote: a practice that forces me to literally go with the flow. No scripts, no plans, just pure spontaneity.

The ritual, when it exists, is simple: I need to get out of my head. Sometimes that means freestyling about pooping (which I find hilarious), other times it's whatever bubbles up in the moment. Initially, this was just for fun, a release valve. But when I realized it was too late to pivot to my other ideas (daily screaming performances in public or guerrilla crochet graffiti), I started putting more intention into it.

Documentation

What Became Evident

Through this practice, I'm building vocabulary and technique. When I start a flow, I now think about subject words I want to keep rhyming with or how to create combo flows. More importantly, this practice is making me more confident in public speaking and speaking from the heart, not just reading off screens. It's teaching me to take risks and trust my instinct with whatever needs to come out of my mouth, whether it's vulgar, real, silly, or just meaningless.

Dada and the Found Freestyle

I've always had a fascination with Dadaism and the concept of found objects being repurposed as art. Working at Material for the Arts, I witness this constantly. I'll send an eblast about an industrial sewing machine, and later see it used as the foundation of a sculpture piece, completely divorced from its intended use.

Freestyling operates on the same principle. Words become found objects. The beat is raw material. I'm not using language for its intended purpose but repurposing it, letting it tumble out spontaneously.

Tzara wrote that Dada was born

...of a need for independence, of a distrust toward unity...

and that

...we are human and true for the sake of amusement, impulsive, vibrant to crucify boredom.

 Freestyling embodies that same spirit. It's spontaneous, rejects overthinking, and embraces contradiction. Some flows are deep, some are about bodily functions. Both are valid. Both are Dada.

There's a lot of videos of me just staring at the screen, waiting for the beat to naturally bring words out of me. I laugh halfway through some. In others I look intense. Most are very silly. But by day 5 and 6, I saw real improvement in my flow, my style, my delivery. The small, consistent practice that James Clear writes about in Atomic Habits actually worked.

Impact on My Topic (Or Lack Thereof)

This practice hasn't clarified my topic for Project 2. I'm still sitting with three curiosities: public art installation, performance art, and work where the content is more serious/meaningful (because I'm usually silly and goofed out). I'm not super attached to these yet. What I do know is that I really want to work with my hands, and freestyling doesn't scratch that itch.

What's Next

I need to talk with Margaret because I'm still not sure what direction I'm going in. I need to explore the tension between my desire to make something serious/meaningful and my natural inclination toward silly, spontaneous work. Maybe the answer isn't choosing between them. Maybe it's finding where they overlap.

For now, freestyling taught me something valuable: sometimes the best work happens when you stop overthinking and just do. Whether that manifests as performance, installation, or something with my hands remains to be seen.