Pages from a Choreographer’s Notebook.
Updated 11/2/2019
Read this and dance.
It’s been written.
It’s been etched. It’s been
danced. Still, no one really knows what
it is.
March 10 2018
Everything is happening at once, as usual, even though the
clock is supposed to prevent that effect.
The currents flowing are at once fast and slow. This time it’s going to require love and sex
to keep from going under.
Creating a show that has no name yet, is unnerving. Choreography is there but the right music is
taking some time to be found. For years, looking for the easy fit of dancers
and musicians, is so difficult. Now entertaining this one possibility of a musician
who has appeared. But alas, he’s not ready for this level of creation. The
first and last time mpowerdance project had incredible live music was way back,
in the beginning, with Serpentine Vision.
Since then, as director, I’ve resolved to rely on the readily abundant pre-recorded
music choices along with the technology of Garage Band to create my own mixes. Still, finding the music that fits has not
fallen into place. A stack of top
priorities form one thick clump at the top of the big to-do list.
A picture of these beautiful and colorfully cloaked women
and children arise out of scrolling research.
They are starving in Mogadishu Somalia.
In 2019, two million Somalis could die of starvation amid drought, UN
warns. In 2017, 6.2 million were Fighting to survive hunger in Somalia. What happened to 4 million people? Are they being
counted? Climate Refugees. Homelessness.
The pictures appeared the same time I was asking the universe
for nourishment. It reminded me again of
how insignificant my pain was in comparison to my Mothers. This was not the first time I asked the
vastness for nourishment. This wasn’t
the first time I felt the insignificance of my pain, my malnourishment, my starvation. It was the first time I had to admit my need
or die. I had to admit to myself that I was
vulnerable to starvation and death, in the smoke and ash of my own life picture.
O Ocean, the ebb and flow, the ebb and
flow, long loss and painful fear, it chills my body. I know the mandate let go,
keep on, to fly, to dance. Insufficiency
takes up my potency, fills the cups of scarcity. Oh Ocean, bring the salt water purified to
quench our colors. There is a chill in separation,
the future of it. I take a step closer
to the steep edge of HER shore. I will
lose again, I will lose myself again, differently, time again. Kindness is king, gentleness is hers.
Let me rest here O Ocean. In your space, let the waves cradle me in
gold. When bliss arrives, what am I
becoming? Over there, bold awakening and
lonely regress, tortured for the sins of many. Here I am at the beginning
again, entering the Lover’s stream.
March 12 2018
A learning fool, who I am, should be terrified. I am. But
I am not petrified. Time to unwind, moving
with it, not forcing my will. Forced to
listen well or pain will speak more loudly.
Figure eight circles unwinding, turning toward the right to live. My body rebels in fear, an absurd protective
guard attempts to take over. As if death
over life is a better option. My mind
knows what I must do, my heart allows for all movement, listening, experiencing
life, and lover.
March 17 2018
This beat is unbearable.
The constraints compress universal agreement of conformity, into
a notion that gives up on new growth. It
gives up on the perception of possibility, gives up on her wellspring, then
presses a rigid wall against dance. It
is a torment to my femininity in a world dominated by misogyny found in both
men and women.
I will not be in your face with my
crotch to show you how important it is. But maybe I just did. I will not sculpt
my dance in the image of toxic masculinity.
I will not feed the falsity of a value, elevated or diminished, as it is
created wholly in the image of misogyny or misogynoir.
I will not participate in a label created by toxic masculinity.
Everything is shifting now, breaking wide open. Nothing is
for certain, same as it ever was. Except now the extreme possibility of the
unknown is an inescapable gaping relevance.
Tortured for the sins of many and my own, vulnerable and
blank, like “I” don’t matter, like life is for everybody else, like I’m
supposed to rise above it, without a need.
This stone-cold place is a blank space of invisibility. My pain exists because of your pain. My pain
exists because of what I’ve done, what you’ve done and what has been done
before us and to us.
The Indefinite One plays a funny tune about “renunciating”
the renunciation to give hope for my human condition. An offer of flesh with disassociation and
detachment is usury. My shadow itches,
yes, the last five hundred years without sex, plus the previous twelve thousand
years of starvation, is calculated instantaneously. My shadow sex communicates: my tongue on him,
my breast on his lips, his thrust. We could easily seduce one another.
My wild comprehends perception, beauty in the soul of The
Indefinite One, his vulnerability seeking his truth with trembling, his light.
I was taught by great rinpoches, gurus, lovers, tricksters and friends. I will not take or steal anyone’s
innocence. It must be shared for no
compensation, other than expanding hearts and minds and trust. The gifts that relinquish expectation to only
presence, are the gifts shared. We both
choose life.
I let go, turning the wheel of the dharma. I bawl my eyes
out.
March 18 2018
More unexpected downpours from my eyes.
The looking glass mirrors my own defect, my deficiency, loss
turned into shield turned into a sworded-tongue and body. The toughened barrier
of strength freezes my sensuality into crystalline obscurity. This long enduring strength weakens the body
to its death. My need remains. It
crushes me further under the view of my malnourished shadow. This is a would-be thief, if not for
prescience.
There is a river warm and beckoning.
March 19 2018
Something beautiful for lonely hearts:
At first, the Jerden took me to a calm
dark fullness. Upon witnessing my own deprivation
in its reflection, it drew me closer, so close I clung to its rocky edge, stuck
between rocks and the undertow. In the
struggle to live, I remembered.
The way it is supposed to be does not
exist.
The thief dweller of that abyss would
have all of me by now, if not for the gift of this cursed prescience. I crawled
up the slippery slopes with a friend, empty hand in hand, up to where we found another
river, the Warm River glowed into an ocean.
The ebb and flow together. O
Ocean, drops the rhythm, pulsates the life, giving power.
I come to her shore a beggar, for me,
for our food. She offers a single drop of amrita, softening the cold stone left
in my loin. O Ocean gives not because
she must. Her nature is of abundance and beauty.
March 20 2018
Between
these edges of the cold Jerden and the Warm River is a longer distance than I
knew. Holding true to the most evolved
outcome is the strangest battle, an invisible one, at the line of
evolution. In our time, there are
powerful words turned into weapons that destroy our hope.
Dante Alighieri began writing the Divine Comedy around 1308 and finished in 1320, a year before he died. In Italian he wrote, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate". Abandon all hope ye who enter. To live without a drop of hope is that Inferno. The drops of hope that do rain down on there, are soon to evaporate, if one does not rise to meet them.
The Indefinite One fears a truth that he knows. When we arrive, WE all arrive. Her shore will
recede forever. WE aren’t even close to
there yet.
O Ocean, meet those who arrive at your
golden shore, then watch them. Watch
them as they flee back to the oily banks of Jerden, watch them as they lose
their minds confronting their truth, their beautiful need. Then watch them as they leave those oily
banks, still dripping with its slime, headstrong for this light of purified
water.
Guard the few that risk return closer
to those banks of Jerden, the ones who care and applaud the shamaness and
sorcerer emerging out from its hold, guard them as they climb together toward
the clear waters. O Ocean, keep the need
of remembering strong, of returning to HER shore with the more frequency, lest
the cool darkness enchant the heroes fall again.
The stand with HER is letting go of how it’s all supposed to
be. It is a vanquishing of false
limitations. It is discernment, a
respect for the real fears while holding fast to the light and living it indeed.
Patience doesn’t even begin to define doing
time here.
March 23 2018
Everything at once. A
fire breathing dragon, an exposé, delivers like a deathblow to me right
now. I am in the throes of it, for all
the world to see. I must read each line
like a scientist, hoping for certain changes in words and pictures that
remember and acknowledge the reality of love feeling itself, a truer love that
heals through time and space. So far it feels insignificant to this story. All at once, I don’t even know the name of my
own upcoming production coming in June, for three nights.
The weight of this March mocks me, as if to say, “okay, go
ahead and dance bitch.”
March 25 2018
Spontaneous shares of sensual kisses from The Indefinite One,
builds a good fire with music that draws out the sorrow. I’m not his fault and he’s not mine. He’s not my fault and I’m not his. Belonging to this light together, a present
is given.
Most live in their cage, think they are
free, too afraid to walk away, or too afraid to stay, too afraid to fall in
love, or too afraid to change. Change
comes anyway, whether afraid or not afraid.
Hearts have been broken. Paths have been lost. Still there is together enough to make
whole. Keep on. Alive. Live on.
November 2 2018
Mercy St. brought me to this wound, the personal wound, the
familial wound, the collective wound.
Generations without love wounding each other, loving forward without
knowing love, without knowing how to love. Generations unloved. In the shadows, abandoned graves in the shape
of my fathers, my lovers, my mothers. No
one comes for me tenderly but I give tenderness to all that arrive. I love the wounded ones. I love the neglected ones. I am one.
There is a ghost that visits
frequently, he/she whisper-speaks in matter of fact tones, lie upon lie to keep
me imprisoned, always burying away the joy of play. This ghost feeds on my
life-force binding me to a worldly fear that I am unworthy of bliss. With all its worldly compression, it
estimates that I won’t run, that I will stop my dance, that I will fold my
wings, never fly or love wild again.
So many of the old myths lock the woman away while the man lays
with young girls (or attendants). Who
wrote that crap?
Apparently, not many men and women have the courage to be
both tender and strong, the vital requirement of meeting wild power. In the world of man, the wild is slaughtered
or domesticated. Wild animals are
murdered out of anticipatory fear of being eaten, fear of emasculation by a
wild animal, which all turned into some sport of extinction. Sometimes by accident, like road placement, animals
are murdered. If it is an accident
usually there is little to no reflection on coexistence. Carelessness and arrogance of human actions
distort the ecological balance. We have
become unconscious killers, the most convenient solution.
I will change. I had just completed months of chasing bats
out of my cabin. It’s a dance. Mostly it
was the cute little brown bats not the larger white aggressive bats. Eventually the cabin was bat proofed. Once again deep in appreciation for the
benevolence of a full night’s peace in uninterrupted sleep. Then just after a
few nights there was a loud uninterrupted gnawing on the outside trying to get
in. Night after night the gnawing.
I lay there listening to the sound of
this giant rat. It was smart. I would
sneak out on the deck to find it. It
went silent, hiding. Once back in bed, the loud gnawing again, up I would go to
chase it away, and silent it would go, to hide. I would get up. It would hide.
It was a deadly comedy.
I set the trap. I heard it snap. When I went to see, it was so small and soft
and cute, I knew I was wrong. My ignorant
form of greed and laziness, lack of intimate relationship with life, with the
creatures of this world, boasted supreme.
I did not like what I did, and have not forgotten.
A friend told me about catch and
release traps. My mother laughed and
said they just come back. Another friend
said get a cat. I think the mouse made a deal with the bats to get back
in. I will understand my purpose.
The eons of human numbness, keeps the evil effects of
misogyny’s poisonous tendrils. The business of business commercializes and
profits from misogyny, carving the system of usury and consumerism deeper into
a normalized mindset. It seems that a normal love throws away love once it’s
been spent. It is this form of usury that resembles slavery. And from this
slavery our wild power is oppressed because we fear to face our ignorance. If we fail to question our conditioning, our
intimate relationships suffer.
We participate in a death comedy we didn’t even know we were
players in. We do not control, can never
control HER. If we will it, we will
choose it. We can live to learn our
purpose in this lifetime, to dance.
Wild is unknown, unpredictable, unique,
individual. Love the wild. Stop trying to tame it. This lonely place where few men have the
courage to be, has a grave the shape of me.
O Ocean show me myself. Am I sitting yogi-like on a tiger, performing
cries to the heavens, laughing at the conundrum? The green forest grows under my skin.
Once again, she sings into the
lonely, listening for songs in return.
An ancient bird echoes octaves through an old growth redwood forest
unshackled to this spot, singing love all and serve well, the choiceless
choice.
There is truth in this emptiness,
the power. O Ocean gives. Listen to this sound lover equal in
vulnerability, his eyes lock from the height of that tree, it stuns for a
moment. Time steps in like a mother,
giving the moment needed to comb through her hair. Let us see each other again.
Read this again and dance.
