quotidian freedom practices

from laura arrington dance (oakland, CA), march 2014

"Freedom comes from disruption, comes from feeling familiarity, comes from sudden dislocation and disorientation. So arguably, making art and thinking about the power of art are both processes of getting free. It’s a weird and humbling thing to think about, as we are – more than ever – so hugely aware of how embedded we are in the prisons and ruts of contemporary social and political systems. But when we look around and feel scared and frustrated, the two of us can’t shake the feeling that we have a choice; and the choice is about what we practice*. And so, Freedom Practice is about studying our quotidian impulses and behaviors, and learning their innards in a effort to infuse beauty, hope, and impracticality into each and every little thing we do.

But… it’s fucking personal. So, we need you to collaborate with us, please. We need you to ignite your own ideas and experiences of choice, of resistance, of madness, of body intelligence and survival. We want to build a new behavior, and this time of practicing with you is our research. We hoped that dropping the word “freedom” – as an object – into a text about a dance workshop might get your mind working on how, with our dance/art practice, we can begin to re-animate such a word; a word that comes with such a big blasting bombastic charge (a charge that is sometimes useful and other times not useful at all). It seems that a word like FREEDOM gets tossed around with such frequency that its potency becomes diluted by the sheer volume of its occurrence. Still… we think that we kinda know exactly what we mean, when we say FREEDOM. It’s a bodily state. It’s a way of being together. And when we can’t muster much action around any of this, it is at least an intention. One distillation of all of this is what ye olde dictionary (online) says, just to get pedantic on ourselves:

freedom- the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action

...We’ll create scores/rituals that we can take home and invite into the minutiae of our bodies, our homes, our beds, our dreams. We extend the practice to excavate the creative viability of the big wide world around us. Using the practice as both a personal and political tool to unlock the total possibility of LIVING ART. Let’s try hard! It is our personal belief, that the world needs these shake ups RIGHT. now. The potential of art/creativity/ritual/magic need to be unhinged from the pivots of “career” and “profession,” and allowed to seep into the totality of our being/living."

quotidian practice day 1/ PLEASURE BINGE

quotidian practice day 2 / SCALES

quotidian practice day 3 / SUBMISSION

quotidian practice day 4 / DESIRECHOICEDESIRE

also this is interesting

http://www.designingasociety.net/

i am in RESOURCE MODE
like making connections like knitting except at the end i DO NOT HAVE A SCARF
dropping words and pennies and then waiting for them to show up in a water fountain
you know, i really think i see it as a good thing in my life when the same advice/recommendation/etc. is coming from two directions at the same time,
this is happening because i am in RESOURCE MODE
and i feel a bit like a spider
an owl-mirror spider-dancer internet-crawling bike-about-er
maybe it is because i realized i will never fully integrate all of my parts
and so i want to integrate the world around me
weave webs tight as blankets that will serve as the walls
of our yurt-trailers in our utopic-dystopic queer perma-village of ephemera
when all of the RESOURCES are gathered
and there will be no more cracks to fall through because
we will not set up our village on a faultline or a cliff
and the crumbling that's happening will be mostly composting
instead of widespread precarity

in the face of precarity i launch into RESOURCE MODE
i danced it today

here's the new game, from leslie who learned it from a butoh artist in the bay who has a very long name that sounds like 'boat':
divide yourselves into pairs, lay out a rope on the ground.
not too neat, squiggled around.
one person goes to the beginning of the rope and closes their eyes.
they will walk, heel to toe, along the length of the rope without falling off, and their partner
holds their hand. the next pair follows, and so on.
upon completing the rope-path, switch roles;
when finished, take a few minutes to discuss.

optional follow-up: stand across the space from your partner. walk toward each other, precariously, with the same feeling as when you walked on the rope, maintaining connection and eye contact the whole time. when you meet, express your state through movement and sound, until satisfied. optionally, discuss.

sidewalk cracks and in betweens / life in a web

whew how the spirits of places guide our ups downs inspirations despair! been back 2 weeks in portland, bopping around writing hammering gardening dancing petting cats drawing pictures making epic dinners telling stories giving gifts.

hey you, wearing your nihilist craziness anxious ambiguity like a crown of clover buds and yampah roots, let's walk together behind the goats and watch their buttholes open and close like portals to another world where pooping is easy for everyone and we can digest much more of this world without being poisoned!

here's a question: what do we do with the products of industrial civilization and the industrial food system?
here's a question: how do you call yourself back home?
here's another one: when was the last time you did something unpleasant or hard for someone you love?
and: what plants do you use eat interact with daily?
and: how are you feeling this shift into august in your body, rhythm, state of mind?

hum, these days for me have been some HARDCORE HANGING OUT
which is also sometimes organizing & planning for the life and world i want to live in
i want for future children to live in
that i was called into being to help make
family-making without gettin wholesome
keeping my goodness and magic woven with nastiness and perversity
dancing out rhythms of place and being and priorities
drawing out maps of desire and walks

pshaw let me suck on your liver
taste the bloody dandelion root
drink milk-blood smoothies like i don't believe in the circuitry of disgust
raw testicles like the most special and most easy to put in your mouth
activate your third eye
touch your bones to help you remember their knowing
"your body evokes my body" we danced this
we danced slapped poked spun pushed edged this into being

what comes easily is not always because it existed before
but flows into existence because everything was ripe for its birth
already known and remembered even as as the most new just-imagined

ROOTS. BONES. MOVEMENTS. REWILDING. IMAGINATION. THE aRT wORLD. DROP OUT. AT HOME. ALIGNMENT. TENDRILS. LEARNING. BREAK. BUILD. WALK. SING.

an outline for stories i'd like to tell:
i. walking delicately in a web of beloveds / polyglamory and lessons on boundaries.
ii. moving from homelessness to homefulness.
iii. after death.
iv. nihilism and goat herding.
v. lessons from the hoop / dancing between the wild and the city.
vi. faeries and witches.
to be continued.

leaving soon to be moving again, back to the woods to the olympic peninsula to wandering to revisiting. lovin y'all like summer.

one feeling

coming back from witch camp
2 days later we drove into the city
to go to a dance space
and have a circle, shared breaths,
pushing pullling sweaty fleshy sinews
dance dance
and i feel it so hard
so sad
to dance in the presence of humans as the only life in the room
no roots to tickle my feet up to my knees
no branches to inspire my waving arms
no tall grasses to nudge my inner thighs
no sun shining to squint my eyes
no insects to buzz and "disrupt" with their divine intervention
bird calls
the scent of broken yarrow
non-humans can be our greatest teachers
in this dance of living, of feeling

off the off the of the

oh geez summer is shattering open in so many directions,
$10 in my checking account, kazoo in my pock-ette,
looking out over this garden, these red-hot poker flowers roses and hills of competing doug firs and cedars and white oaks and maples--
discomfort is a sign of a learning edge, a rich place to dig into
i love learning so i find myself on the edge of discomfort a lot.
the wind is singing and i'm learning to translate
for the fire's licks and the groaning of this dry red soil.
i've been around the siskiyous for the past month now, never thought i'd find myself in a place like this--this dry and brittle harbor, rich and seductive and secretive hills where craziness is an edge to dance along. we the firepeople waiting for the fire, scrambling strolling in this age of consuming forces and summer sun. getting downloads and uploads from the spirit channel; this land talks loudly in a thousand voices, a thousand thousand marrowed ancestors.
oh, to be a blade of grass. oh, to be a sharp knife. oh, to be an eagle chasing a rabbit--
for now.
back to portland tomorrow--more soon.

a moment before.

readying
sweeping cleaning washing moving stacking chewing
transforming
the living room, once close and warm, is now echoy and the floors are aching for moving feet.
wondering, too,
and missing and loving
and aching and sneezing
and building and painting
making nests as we clear out hollows

"[the bride] walks to her husband's home, never looks back or she'll turn to stone."
i mean,
fuck some patriarchal short-sighted family-breaking family-defining bullshit,
but i think there's something about not looking back
after all, our history is in our skin and our skin is dead until we begin to dance.

tonight i will be gray with lust and love,
spirit-filled stone,
concrete and fantastical.
and we will dance and dance and if you doubt for a moment and turn, you will join my ranks.

b brought up a good point--
to be in nature is quite a thing,
hard to believe that it was always there and will be there whenever we want it,
or perhaps pause to wander with our eyes and hearts,
and in the mean time the city holds for us so much, something like tonight,
something like multitudinous explosions,
social experiments,
a different souvenier to take into the woods.

and like wide-eyed rabbits, strong branches, sharp thorns, tufts of grass, furry humans,
we can love many a stranger if only for a moment

more on the birth of the internet, sweet sweet baby internet

this strip:
http://hijinksensue.com/2010/01/06/once-opened-may-never-be-closed/
is funny (for nerds) and made me think a bit more about the birth of the lovely human-machine hybrid we disgustingly call "the internet".
i've gotten completely off pandora. to hell with pandora. i'll choose my own music, thankyouvermuch, and i'll do it without any "meta"help. i'm getting really good at it too - i snag rips of 12" dubstep eps hot off the lines from cheery england. i spin em up on my newly built, beautifully deep cabinets in my room - the great thing about putting ten-inch car subwoofers in your room is that then, when you press the "bounce" button built into your bed, the whole thing shakes up and down like 80s LA all over again.
the whole thing? the whole bed? no - the whole room! and i've gotten into the habit of impromptu homework-break dance-breaks, to breakbeat and dub and harcore, with the lights off so that no one on the street can spy on any of my ridiculous posturings through my ginormous plasticolored windows - they wouldn't understand!
but i know you would, fellow squids, which is why as soon as i get my recording studio set up (which with help from deklen should be soon) i'll start to stream live video of said dance-breaks to the blog. ultimately, the goal is to convince little baby internet that dancing is a human skill worth saving, if only ultimately for its own occasional amusement, post-singularity.

hark, it is the dawning of the

brrrrr i c symphonic collusions on all sides
reminds of a waterfall in a nether world
rush & shush & rush & shush
suddenly BLAM! KERPLAM! (just kidding).

at the dinner table i am an elitist
[and? so? i've traveled galaxies, fought wars, raised monuments - i've lived for so long my beginnings are lost to memory - i love myself and i love you - so yes, i am a lelitist]

at the gay club i am a spectacle
[and what about the 35 year old lumberjack wearing a thong and tight leather pants pulled down under the thong, grinding on a metal bar - why are all the middle-aged guys watching chris and i? why did we bother with 21+ night?]

at night, wrapped in sweaty limbs, believe it or not, i am a star -
[i didn't see it coming - they and they and they didn't see it coming - but in the end, everybody is coming]

but only in pittsburgh.

film updates

i cant believe i havent shared any of my film experiences (of which there aren't many).

here's one:

I was in a dance class this quarter where I learned some stuff, first we learned one minute of choreography to a song "Hadippa!" from the movie Dil Bole Hadippa. Preeti (our teacher) told us the movie was bad and we shouldn't see it, but samantha bought it anyway and we all got pretty obsessed. it's a bollywood version of "she's the man" featuring the beloved amanda bynes, which was based loosely off of twelfth night. with rani mukherjee alternately as Veera and Veer. oh and playing opposite shahid kapoor, sigh. anyway the music is awesome, especially "discowale khisko." we told Preeti that we liked the film, and asked why she said it was bad and she said "that's not believable that she could be Veer, how could he not notice she has the same face?"

anyway, if you can get your hands on it, it's lovely mindless entertainment and good music.

ALSO

try to watch "Aladin"... with amitabh bachchan as the genie. hilarious.

ALSO

twilight and new moon just came out here but i didn't see it

ALSO

amitabh's movie coming out this weekend is "Paa"-- he plays a 13 year old boy who has Progeria, so he is dressed up to be an octegenarian, and his son, Abishek Bachchan, plays his father. the tagline for the film is "a unique father-son-son-father story"... only here are off-screen relations actually interwoven into the plot of a film; i don't think you'd ever see this done so explicitly in the states.

ALSO

this weekend a movie Kurbaan came out, where kareena kapoor and saif ali khan apparently have sex (!!!!!!). i read the plot and it looked way to complicated to understand without subtitulos. the tag line is "some love stories have blood on them" because the twist is that he's a terrorist. and her dad warned her not to marry a muslim.

okay। that's all; just doing my share.

boarding a train in 4 hours (at 3am) to head to chennai. goodbye pune, hello leave of absence!

ക്യാ ആപ് വ്ഹോയ ഐ അം വ്രിതിംഗ് ഇന്‍ തമിള്‍

வெயிட் தட் இஸ் மலையாளம்

థిస్ ఇస్ తెలుగు

ದಿಸ್ ಇಸ್ ಕನ್ನಡ -- ವ್ಹಿಚ್ ಇ ಸವ್ ಅ ಲೋಟ್ ಆಫ್ ಇನ್ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ

चेविंग गम है जा पि जा, हैण्ड पुमप है जा पि जा, लाइफ सा जूस है करती जा, फिकरे करे फिकरे , हरिप्पा!

wow. i didn't know i could do that. first is malayalam, then tamil, then kannada, telugu, then hindi. i wrote mostly in english and it transliterates it... shit that's cool. okay good night. or good morning.

Talking the talk.

It's winter today, I realize. For once, I have gloves. I usually never have gloves.

Today, I am bored in class. Not just in math (which honestly is a given), but in design as well. We go to the theater and we are told how it works. This always breaks my heart a little. "I know, I know," I want to say, "but can I climb on this?" And the TD tells us all about how hard it is to make art. "I know, I know," I want to say, "but can I climb on this?" By this time, I have to remember that the feeling of my heart breaking comes from my brain and that I am, in fact, dandy.

I go to art school for the first time today. I am a little nervous because of some ingrained message from the time I spent as an "upright citizen" that makes art schools seem so...precious to me, but there is something wonderful in the weird triangular staircase down to the basement, in the metallurgy workshops, the buzz of people, the high industrial ceilings with sweet hand-painted signs to tell you where you are, and clanging echo. It is very different that what I am used to. I spend a handful of hours playing, my head often close to the ground or falling out of a spin. My hip hurts because I push a little to hard, but I am no worse for the wear.

Today, I sit on the bus back from downtown and I look at faces. Michelle has recently told me a story. She says, "I saw a woman on a bus and she was like this (big wide-eyed, amazed face) and like 'new shoes really, I just bought these, but I think I'm going to return them' face never changing and just a mask!" She makes the face again. I make the face. I look like a blow up doll. I promise myself I will practice in the mirror. So on the bus home, I look at faces hoping to find Michelle's woman. But, everyone is tired and falling asleep so I spend my time staring at what look like death masks to me. It is a little frightening. To be less scared, I look at the notes the man next to me is writing in his limegreen notebook with red pen. His handwriting is terrible but I read something like this, "Are there certain humans born with spiritual capabilities? I have the impulse to say so. Yes, I suppose you could reach awareness and then through awareness enlightenment. But there is a long distance between awareness and enlightenment." He leaves a big space. He writes, "I imagine!" He leaves another big space. Then he writes a block of words I can't read from my angle. He gets off at 47th street. His writing has made me feel better, oddly.

Which is to say, today I have been vague and cloudy, but watching. Peering, listening, creeping even. I wonder how much watching I can do and how much I have done and what that watching all adds up to. Do you know?

remarks on being in the world

i just discovered that our dishwasher got fixed 2 months ago and we never noticed. yeah!

tequila and rum are different, i realized. after genderqueerchicago meeting last night, i came south with a crew and went to sav's to celebrate/take my pants off/send love with sav to d.c. i started taking dirty girl scouts (there were at least five scattered through my evening) and then moved to rum and coke which was actually, deceptively, tequila and coke. those are different things.

i am nibbling through my cocoon at istria; my wings are covered with grounds and mucus but i am very nearly a fullfledged Barist(a). a wondrous new world of people two minutes from the haus. yes.