ARTIST LETTER NO. 20
Messages from the Future
On timelines converging, and what the work keeps teaching us.
This week I've been reviewing the modules of The Dancer's Path, my course for pre and professional dancers, preparing it for a new student.
The course was created six years ago.
I recorded voiceovers, designed meditations, crafted Dance Alchemy's and mapped the transformation.
Then I set it down.
As I'm going through it again something strange is happening.
When I listen to my own voice guiding the exercises, I don't hear a "past me."
I hear a version of myself who somehow knew this time would come.
A voice that was speaking to the person I am now.
It's hard to explain.
But it's like timelines converging — the me who made the work, and the me who is still living into it, meeting in the same room.
There's an expression: Do something today your future self will thank you for.
I always thought that meant discipline.
Savings accounts.
Good habits.
But this week I discovered it differently.
What if the things we create — the art, the words, the teachings we offer — are messages we're leaving for ourselves?
What if the future we're building is also building us?
A Dance Alchemy I did over the weekend still moved something in me six years later, and showed me something I hadn't fully seen before.
The work is alive.
And it keeps working.
Maybe that's what happens when we build from our truth. The thing we create doesn't just serve others, it continues to teach us, too.
I share this because if you've ever made something meaningful, like a piece of art, a practice, or anything you made with real love, maybe it's worth revisiting. Not to critique it. But to let it speak to you again.
Your past self might have left you a message.
With love,
Kristen
The Dance Alchemist