Take One:
The other night I went to the opening of the Museum of Performance Art on Sutter Street, SF. Marina Abramovic had a swift windfall in the form of a 1700 square foot raw gallery space in a very nice neighborhood, far from the burgeoning artspace in Hudson, NY. The event was very awesome, and we went to see the work of our dear friend Kadet, who had several installations in the show. Not only was the work tactile, sensate, architectural, participatory, and all those groovy words that make you feel a p/art of art, but also, Marina A. started the whole event heralding us into viewing by s l o w i n g us down…..After some speech, we were invited to break up walking into four acts, guided by the depth and resonance of her voice: “Lifting…..”, “Stretching…..”, “Touching….”, “Moving….” … as we ended up basically single file winding up the staircase to the ground floor space, through the door met the first installation, Igor laying in a cut coffin-size space in the floor in a tuxedo covered in plexiglass. All the while the people continue to walk, “Lifting……Stretching……” Like a bath of sound, a meditation. I stayed there by the door in order to remain with the power of her voice, taken by the intensity of a being trapped (intentionally) in the floor boards, watching the choices people made to view, to walk over the board, thinking, they are doing this because they can.
Lately I have been amazed by somatic synchronicities that are taking place, perhaps because even in far afields, many are working in converging ways, or perhaps because I am fortunate enough to have attuned teachers, or perhaps because this work has attuned me. I arrive this morning to the park for qigong, and it hits me that Marina Abramovic’s mantra is the breakdown to some extent of the bagwa (pakwa), as we move around the octagon of the 4 cardinal directions, the lines that connect them, and the center that brings matter into the being, I hear it: “Lifing…Stretching……Touching….Moving….” Moving around the bagwa, there is an emphasis more in sliding than lifting, but somehow there is an echo there. And as I move my head around from my waist, I experience a horizontal bagwa in front of me, finally experiencing the embodiment of the elements in a new way synthesizing, so our movements and our touch indeed connect with a cosmic order.
Take Two:
In acupressure, the focus that is emerging for my own vitality is a focus on my lung/large intestine and heart /pericardium meridians… Metal and Fire. I go to a workshop with Dennis Leri ostensibly about Big Body, and find that he is strangely speaking to me….we end the day lying on our fronts and flying, doing Errol Flynn lessons, twisting out arms which in fact directly address the meridians listed above. This is after he told me story about Moshe Feldenkrais, who worked in an acupuncture office in Paris, I think, where he came to realize with the practitioner that one could access the points through movement, through posture, through form.
This phenomenon of movement as a potent enactor is something I have experienced through qigong, feldie, all the ones that come into my being, personally. There is this strange thing about movement and embodied research, to experience has the quality of the first time, as we tend to forget the things that can be so basic. It is as if I believe that there is something to get and then I am there, as if I achieve something and I have gotten there, when in fact the process again arises in its primacy: to remember, I must re-member. Those around me who dedicate in their own practices remind, as I align with my environment. Is it that my day is strange or that the world is strange and it affects my day, and is there any reality in the this or that, beyond the continuum, and polarity?