Where I find myself

What I am doing in France, a bit more about my current body of work, and a new way of practicing embodiment

View from my morning tea practice

I write to you from Southern France, where I have landed to develop a new body of nomadic performance and written work over the next couple of months. Later on in this missive I will tell you more about what exactly I am working on over here, and I am excited to share as it will be the first time I am more publicly describing what I’ve been up to over the last five years.

Though it is early May, it is summer, and my days are punctuated by long walks in the hot sun and salty swimming in the still-cold Mediterranean Sea.

The rhythm of life is decidedly different in this new place, not exclusively because of the new locational coordinates or the cultural connotations or even that the predominant language is not one that I speak. What is striking me most is my own aloneness and the being-ness that can arrive only in the margins of stillness and silence. Left to my own devices of mind, body, voice, imagination, and the tapestry of artists that I continue to hold onto for dear life, I am called to be witness unto myself. As I have been further developing an awareness of witness consciousness, heavily influenced by Janet Adler’s “Authentic Movement” methodology, I have taken to more simply documenting the patterns of daily life…the rules of engagement and shapes of the body that thread me from morning to night, and back again. Here are some observations from the last few days.

I wake to the blinding sun reflecting off the Mediterranean, arcing perfectly into the floor-to-ceiling window that opens up to the terrace outlining my studio apartment. 

I am alone – very alone, but only in the traditional sense. 

I am witnessed by Rock Rose and Rosemary; Stone Pine, a type of pine tree with a heartier belly laugh than those that I lean on in the Hudson Valley; Olive and more species of Wild Thyme than I ever knew existed. I am witnessed by my body, by a nervous system that speaks differently on the edges of the sea, and a heart that is tender and wide.

I witness my own deep humanity - the rules and regulations by which I abide, and my desire to achieve freedom from all that restricts. 

I listen to Scarlatti in the morning and Schumann at night.

I recite hymns: to the Sea, to the Muses, to Mnemosyne, to Sleep, to Dream, to Aphrodite, to the Graces, to the Fates

I keep no time aside from the needs of the body: when I am hungry, I eat. When it is time to move, I move. When words come spilling in during a 2-hour walk to a site of pilgrimage, I pull out my red notebook and begin to write sloppily to the tempo of cars whizzing by a very narrow, winding road. I try not to decide anything until my body tells me to do so.

The only clock time I keep is a swim during the sun’s peak. Each night I look up when Helios is scheduled to reach his apex, and be sure to be in the water the following day at that time. The water is still shockingly cold. It is hard to breathe for the first minute in this water, but this communion with sensation is something I seek each day. I keep the salt from the sea on my skin as long as possible. 

I remember how well I do outside of metropolitan cities: where silence is a daily engagement and a smaller percentage of choices are dictated by a technological ruling class. I am allowed to be myself in these spaces. This is not an allowance I typically feel afforded.

I vow to not forget what I remember. 

This close to the earth, to the birdsong, to the lure of ideas, to the remainders of the Sun sandwiched between night and sea, to the sharp spines of stones

I think about violence and I dance my grief. 

At the very center of that grief is great joy for being alive enough to commune with the sensations that grief, and a knowing that I can go deeper still.

And now, a bit about what exactly brings me here and what soil this project lives in:

The work that I am developing here has been, as one of my favorite ever thinkers Walter Benjamin spoke about his unfinished magnum opus The Arcades Project, “the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas”. For the last five years I have been