The moment is eternal and repeats itself over and over again without linearity. Our membranes re-produce, produce, move : fluidity, vibration, organic transitions.
I couldn’t stay out. Out of what?
And this moment in between where I choose to break the rules, I need it: something that only I could give to myself.
Yet emotion still runs like clouds, maybe it’s the talking about death, the sounds about death, the image about death, the end like the beginning.
Moving today goes far away, from here into my life, the life I have lived till now. And like the wind brings back a sensation for which I found no words.
Just a texture, a dense liquid texture, moving continuously all around me powerfully, sensuously, sinuously.
Maybe we can re-trace our years back to all those places, smells, encounters, tastes, seas and oceans, eyes and skins, they are all here.
Berlin
day one
to be
absorbed: spong(ee) ness
the sense (ing) of water
moving through interstitial (spatial) fluids
moving around
moving through
what forms fluidity
what freezes
what flies
what flows
questions for approaching
explanations of history
partners with histories meeting towards a quartet
day two
on the belly … after Yoga Nidra …
radiating softly
turning softly … exploring fluids …
cellular timing
Duet with Nadia softly guiding head-tail/extremities
amazing quality of touch because of the charge in her hands,
the knowledge she was listening to and guiding us both with ….
Lin following the tangible listening of this …hearing touch through skin … vibration
softly dynamic
mouth
belly
breath
shaping
song
resound
resilience
resonance
respiration
repetition
rehearsal
day three
shedding skin
breaking ice
holding onto objects
folding into time
ironing through wrinkles
towards losing
losing everything,
fighting against losing
and finding yourself with a tail
and asking questions with only ….
“this I like”
“this I like too”
“I like how you do what you do”
“I like it too”
and the snake song goes along
wrapping itself underneath
the music
where she stands …
these,
sounds of paper
“I love how it sounds”
she dances through the paper
she flies in the air
he goes upside down
“I like this too”
“ this you …”
too
too
too
how music is made organically,
arrivals of losing
lose it faster
lose it lighter
lose it bigger
lose it slower
lose it, lose it, and lose it …
fight with, love it, and love what you do …
lose it singing …
songs of shedding
songs of unraveling
trails and tails
pathways to history,
breaking skins to begin.
after the practice, again I stare out into the room …
the elegance of paper
holding shapes,
dances frozen –
reading the flat paper with nothing on it
reading the wrinkles,
over and over
as it sounds
quality time
afterthoughts
waiting as writing
digestion as writing
elimination as writing
swallowing as writing
sounding as writing
vibration as writing
singing as writing
dancing as writing
writing as writing
The notion of somatic dramaturgy: a discussion in point form
-
how knowledge of the soma softens and expands our ways of “being ready”
-
a state of readiness, instead of saying a place from which we can make a choice.
-
“readying the body” so as to be part of what is happening, and allowing availability and listening skills into what your actions may be.
-
this is a new thought, Paola is suggesting … by taking away the word “choice’ it becomes less binary and more expansive … perhaps the choice choosing you …
day three
We begin with Miranda’s exploration on Day three.
I change it a bit to accompany the somatic explorations we have done with Paola and Nadia: and also because it might “ready” the body in a more appropriate fashion
We find three places to describe to each other in the room …
and we explore them with our whole bodies, not just observing them with our eyes …
when we describe them to each other …
we articulate our sensations of the place,
we sound,
and create descriptions with and without words,
with shapes and sounds
and we ask others to join us in discovering the acoustic of the space,
and its haptic qualities …
it is another way of describing.
……..
like a harp
like the inside of a shell
this water heater looks outside
its shaping exposed
my hands play over its surface
and how many times have I
been in studios with water heaters,
radiators they are called,
and yes, this one is radiant with memory …
now I am in Simone Forti’s loft on Broadway in New York City …
I am dancing in a class led by Danny Lepkoff …
he is a master of space and paying attention to how “it” shapes “us”
…. so much of
what we do is where we are …
there, back in the New York space,
I was constantly amazed at the grace of Simone Forti’s loft.
always a generous and playful space …
full of potential.
what is really invisible?
outside in, inside out …
travelling through
time
as this radiator permits so much travelling …
Paola puts her ear close in and
all of a sudden there is a spark
and there is also an orchestra of three
Guy, Nadia and Paola
play the radiator
radiating
outside in
and
inside out
the shape of this thing
a place containing water
tubes for resonance
spaces for travelling.
after the practice
surprise
I quite smoking
surprise
I never started
surprise
it is invisible, these rooms,
this room disappeared
and became
a whole new universe.
one with more clouds
and a woman dressed in black
standing on a chair
rescued by another fellow who has a
penchant for breaking things
can be trusted
and salivates
when he sings.
She broke through the canvas
singing something pastoral and Romanian all at once,
we were together in another country,
in a bar where everyone was
smoking and drinking and we were
celebrating
then we moved a bit to the left
and all our old habits disappeared
surprise
we are listening to grandparents
holding hands
mine and yours.
and yes,
there is something seductive
about the handle of the door
even though locked
“I like it”
“I really like it”
locked like a wall,
with a potential to open, the door stays shut,
and because of it
and moving a bit to the left
another door appears because
you look like a suitcase
“where are you going?”
“how far is it back to being a parent?”
the woman in black says
“now, that’s crazy”
as she remembers how to dance
and slides onto his back
then
surprise
everyone is laughing, I am too!
now cannot remember what was funny …
I am smiling
like a primitive urban,
a ritual
that deals with
symmetry and clouds
and the constancy of birdsong.
(drawing of Nadia writing)
new definitions …
magma: texture in time.
‘sprezzatura’ : lightness in gesture and speech
Tanzfabrik showing
Guy began dancing with the “springee” floor,
everything softened the moment he began to dance,
stories he told of diplomacy
and the importance of
light in gesture and speech
seemed
appropriate for somatic dramaturgy or
somatic dramaturg,
he was his body
his body in lightness and speech
as the duet with Nadia and Guy began,
the room tilted sideways
and I sat in the chair as if
I was already there …
“ where do I put my memory? she asks,
“down” I say
“put it down”
“but where?” she says
I cannot answer but remember
she places the tiny paper bird in a glass,
I picked it up … it’s import weightier
than I imagined,
I put it in the window
in fact
I , my
desire was to put everything in the window …
the long line of our stories on paper
went out the window …
it was a kite
it was a flying tail/tale
into the air, my lungs
expiring/inspiring as I am dancing with Paola,
a little bit to the right of our habits
way to the right of our habits
and all has been changed
new habits appearing as we fly into the air
as this swirling somatic practice
of fleeing
flying
lying
dying
sighing
and
the
why
why not
of it all
as we read to gather Paola into the suitcase
that is surprisingly light
as Guy turns the room around
bringing the chair through the air
placing it so
we both watch in wonder
as the brilliancy of your partnership
warms the whole room.
We are all somewhere else as
you speak together,
wrapping your hands around
your faces in the hilarious
wrinkles of time and friendship
this quality of time with value.
As Paola leaves Nadia against the wall … sleeping upright and humming
Guy goes out to join her …
and Paola and I begin
to sing with you as he
blindly believing your journey to the window
will bring back the lightness
as you descend slowly from his embrace
we all sigh together
with the somatic of drama.
Lin Snelling
notes
guy cools
Rewriting Distance in Berlin with Paola Bartoletti and Nadia Cusimano.
09/07/2013
In Memory of…
To lose or to fight with one’s memories.
Like shedding a skin or growing a tail or singing stories that you can’t tell.
‘I like what you do! I like it!’
We are transparent and our spinal column is a moist organ.
I like waiting and placing my arms on the table, pressing against the wood.
Our tails were connected like an umbilical cord and when it broke, I felt reborn. Like shedding my skin and discovering underneath the transparency of my fluidity.
Wrinkles are one of the most beautiful things, I know.
Why would you want to flatten them?
You can’t fight what you need to lose.
What remains:
-
Fragments of a shed skin
-
An umbilical cord
-
A long wedding veil
-
Pieces of a tail, bitten off
And all of these leaving somatic imprints on my tailbone, my belly button, my skull, my freckles and wrinkles.
‘I like what you do!’
‘Me too!’
‘Thank you.’
10/07/2013
(Miranda’s exercise to explore the space.)
I am attracted by the black hole in the tribune and when I look through it, I find this immense space behind it: a long, dark street and the screw in the middle looks like a lamppost. It is the experience of the magic boxes we had as kids.
While writing this, I notice my pen got deficient because the pressure on its tip, isn’t stable anymore and I think this is the result of the magic Paola cast on the first day. The pen is moving, becomes liquid like the marks of water drops left on the grey of the wood in front of me. And I like what it does to my handwriting.
And only now the most pregnant memory related to me looking through the dark hole comes back: when I looked long enough, I really started to smell the wood, which reminded me of the wood shop of my ancestors and my love for wooden things, old wooden furniture in particular.
You were right not to completely trust me, after only two days.
And I did destroy a lot of things, when I was younger, especially on my birthday.
But then when you did, and gave over your weight to me and the instability and the newness of the experience made us create sounds together, wooh and aaah, it was as if we were together on a rollercoaster. A rollercoaster of somatic shifts and turns.
I no longer destroy my presents and I am even looking forward to celebrating it here in Berlin with my loved one(s). Although I will still worry for the absent ones.
And while telling the story of my grandparents’ lasting love, I gave myself the answer to my question. I think it is a good thing in a relationship to find eventually each one’s side of the bed where you feel comfortable alone and together. And you can still move the bed together, if necessary.
Because maybe it is not so much changing your position towards each other but changing the general direction of the cardinal points: north-south in winter; east-west in spring; south-north in summer or west-east in autumn.
Another discovery we made together, which makes completely sense to me, is that there are only six chakras and six=one.
A guy comes into a radiator shop and asks ‘how much for that accordion?’ and the shopkeeper answers, ‘ I guess you must be a drummer’.
12/07/2013
(my 49th birthday, coming of age)
A couple of insights from this week/exchange.
The practice is a container that each time is filled with a new content, defined by the experience, skills and interests of the people in the room.
The complexity and richness of the quartet form, especially when duos come together and separate again with the third partner in the space functioning as a visual or auditory counterpoint and the fourth partner always grounding the experience in the witness seat/position, completing the quadrant.
On a somatic level, something very subtle has shifted on the cranial level by all the further opening of the throat and hearing. Curious how it will evolve and reveal itself in the coming days and months.
Berlin, July 2013
Guy Cools