Monday, September 29, 2008

Plans within plans

To take place in early or Mid November.   This will be a semi-private event, by invitation only.


Score:

Players:

one suspension artist 
one musician

Support crew:

Fire tender
Safety spotter (who can tie ropes,  handle bleeding and call 911)

Equipment needed:

two 8 gauge needles
two 8 gauge hooks 
two fishing lure spinners (heavy weight)
Cable/rope with 200lb break point minimum
two lengths of piano wire
Single Tree rope and pully rig
rope tie anchor 
audio recorder/4 channel portable studio system
microphone(s)
including contact mic
video recorder
Bow and other various sundries for playing piano wire

Time frame for performance:

afternoon set up fire, equipment, prep suspension artist

Duration of actual 'performance': 1hour or more, depending on tolerance of artist.

Directions for the suspension:

Artist will "walk up the tree" by placing feet on tree and using pully system as a harness system.  At comfortable height for player (Waist hight of musician playing strings) artist will then assume a "plank" posture and suspend flat with feet planted on tree.  Saw horses will be on hand to act as supports if needed for resting.  Actual suspension will last approximately 20 minutes, so sound testing will take place before hand using pulls.  


Friday, September 26, 2008

disambiguation

Thursday night was the first night I'd played any music since last Friday.  It was, to say the least, intense.

This entire process has been a continual stripping away.  The actual stripping away and peeling away and evaluating my art on a 'what is necessary' level began in 2002, but the body aspect began in ernest only 4 years ago.  But the intensity has changed over the years, and, I realize now, that this process is ongoing.  The process is the art, and it is not really explanatory.  What I am also realizing is that this process effects others as well, not just me.  Lets start with the music part:

When I play with other musicians, it is as though we enter into a really strange little contract.  There is a certain amount of trust that is going on,  a trust that we will follow each other (or not) and take care of ourselves(or disappear), give support if that is best (or not) and, in the end, be okay with the outcome, for good or ill.  To play with someone is to accept the absolute possiblity of failure.  Sure, most of the time, the worst is an apathetic response of "eh, it was alright", much like a bad date that you decided to go just a little to far with; "eh, I don't regret it, but, I won't be asking them out again."  And sometimes, you just try an experiment on stage that just doesn't work.  Sometimes, though, sometimes you get lucky, and it just works.  It just flows.

Thursday night was an interesting night of music, to say the least.  It was a beepwhrr night, to be sure, and I was generating a storm of sine tones unlike any I'd made in the past.  I was no longer after pure tone, clear and traveling.  I was interested in beat, and rumble, and breaking up stagnation through persistence.  I was playing to match texture, and pitch, and, where necessary, break that idea up a bit.  I had intentended to combine it with the Box, but, given my abdominal bruising at the moment that was a bit uncomfortable to play, to say the least.  No dampening of sounds, not to mention not being able to use my forearms in playing— it was just a bit too much to deal with at the moment.  So I played laptop with a few scratches on the box from time to time, and my duo- my duo went new places.  It was, to say the least, persistant.

Friday morning I listened to it.  A little reminescent of Rapoon, Scanner, and other ambient musics overly influenced by industrial music of the mid to late '90's, though it was still nice.  I am usually against documentation, this particular project was still good- a lot of the intense energy we had generated actually translated through in the recording.  This brings me back to my point- some times, when the music is right and the team is right, it is just on.  Last night, it was on, and, it was different.  I am so very happy to have a marker for this moment, this moment of sonic clarity.  They are rare, moments when we speak clearly without the ego and without the garbage.  I'm happy that it was recorded, if for no other reason than there were no lies in what I played last night.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Was noch?

So, what is next?  

Well, the test run was a success.  I plan on waiting two months (at least) until my next pull or suspension, as I need to process the event psychologically and physically.  I also need to work on the technical aspects of the sound devices.  The next run will be with piano string (I have some wonderful bass range piano wire on hand from an old Steinway just for this purpose).  I need to do some reevaluation of the project itself and do a bit more actual planning.  Now that I know I can do it, I need to really sit down and make sure everything is possible, and everything is go.  I am also going to be finding a good 'ground crew', so I'm going to have to interview people, talk with them, work out the details, as well as talk with a few medical personell.  

In the meantime, what will be the fate of this blog?  It will continue, as the overall project itself, the continual evaluation, construction and questioning of each aspect of my art, life and spiritual practice will not end simply because I am in a period of waiting and planning.  In some ways, it is the fact that I must work so slowly, so meticulously, that the suspension project is so astounding.  I can't just throw this project together.  Each piece must be exactly in place and ready to go at the exact right time, or it will not come together at all.  This is not my usual working practice, to be sure (though I have a fairly serious obsessive-compulsive disorder, my performance practice does not).  So I will plan, evaluate, procure equipment, test equipment (with the exception of the hooks, of course.  Those can only be tested every few weeks or so as I feel as though I should let my body rest between sessions).  

This week I'll post a bit about the experience, little musings and occasional memories from the event itself.  Even looking through the posts I made last week, I've noticed that my suppositions are not entirely correct, and that I have many different thoughts now.  

I think the most important is that pain is simply not a factor in this project (thankfully).  I mean, yeah, it exists, but there is no pain that is really worth mentioning.  Secondly, the outlook on the body is very different than I thought it might be, which is delightful.  There is more, but I am still processing the event.  Oh yeah, that is the other thing.  The event itself was profound, and really, extremely, important.  Unlike a lot of ritual stuff, and much more like performance, the event itself was important- it was the most important thing.  Unlike a lot of rituals that have rote learned actions that have vague outcomes, a suspension is more like performing in that you prep, practice, educate and evaluate and then when the time comes, there is instantaneous gratification for what you do.  It is so beautiful.

score

Objects needed/packed in:
  • four 8 mm piercing needles, autoclaved
  • four 8 mm tuna hooks, autoclaved
  • 24 feet orange 8mm polypropoline rope
  • vinyl gloves
  • nextcare gel
  • weights (acquired on site)
  • lantern
Format followed : 

  • Two hooks in arms; test run with pull on tree
  • sound test one
  • two hooks in lower chest/upper belly; lean back/pull against tree 
  • sound test two
  • addition of weights to arms, leaving cable on tree
  • final sound, four cables

Durations: 

  • test run; arms:  20-30minutes
  • belly test run: 10-20 minutes
  • full gear run: 40-50 minutes

total time actualized:  

  • 1 hour 20 minutes, not including prep.  
  




Sunday, September 21, 2008

What is the similarity between an experimental artist and tuna?

I sat on the ground next to her, and she handed me two beautiful 8 gauge hooks.  The were about two and a half inches long, and had small loops at the end to run cable through.  I couldn't put them down, they were beautiful beyond belief.  We had agreed that we would do this ritual at sunset, and I would pull into the night, through twilight.  

Finding the tree was easy, but strange.  We picked a beautiful grove, but I could not use any of the trees I really felt compelled to because the ground was too terribly unstable.  We settled on a shiny beautiful tree across a small brook.  I would be standing on marshy ground, but it would be somewhat flat.  She went in and put the cable on the tree, beautiful and orange against the dark gray bark.  It was so pretty I couldn't help but say something.  

She stood and said it was time to find a place to sit.  I found a small rock (not the one I was attracted to, but chosen out of convenience).  She prepped me a bit, gave me a bit of protocol, and threw in the first hook into my right arm.  It wasn't bad at all, so she went into my left.  It hurt a bit more, but, once she was done and the hooks in place, I was so very happy.  I could not stop smiling.  (Did I mention when she told me earlier in the day she had multiple hooks and gauges for me to choose from I did an uncontrollable little girl hop and dance?)  It was perfect.  We went to the tree, and she cabled me into it, giving me lots of slack because she knew I liked movement, and would not be content to simply stand in place leaning back. 

Leaning back the first time I was terrified.  It was not that I didn't trust her, I just didn't trust my skin- I did not know its strength.  Yes, I knew perfectly well in theory that it is possible to suspend the full weight of the body on the skin alone, but this wasn't someone else, this was me.  I didn't know what to do, what to think.   Eventually I relaxed a little bit, and she left to go to the main camp to get the second set of hooks for my chest.  

She returned after a while, I am not sure how long.  I did a fair amount of singing, and it was still somewhat light out.  She took me down and placed the hooks in my chest.  It is an odd sight, to look down and see that.  The brain wants to freak out, but you just can't.  There is a strange relationship between ecstasy and revulsion.  The hooks were not level (by design, not accident) and she tied me back up.  When it came time to lean back, I had to try different postures to reach a level of semi comfort.  I found the most balanced angle and leaned back.  After I relaxed a little bit —I mean very much a little bit.  The pain was minimal- in fact, the entire experience was much less painful than I thought it would be—  she ran her fingernail across the cable.  I could feel the movement of the sound in my skin, my bones, and, most of all, I could feel the air movement in my lungs change.  I could feel the air from one side of my lungs when it moved forward to back, propelled by the vibration of the sound.  It was amazing to feel the actual different rates of speed at which sound moves through objects directly in my body (this is what classes should be like — talk about kinesthetic learning!).  

At this point, I think it is important to bring up the fact that I am Vegan.  Where I am very much compassionate towards animals, I also do not think it is my place to dictate to others what they should eat, but that we should have total compassionate living.  I also believe that if you are to eat meat, you must, at some point early on in your development, be required to kill, skin and prepare your own "animal" dinner (yes, I did this at one point in my life.)  The second thing I need to point out is that I am, to be sure, the kind of person who has to joke and be a wise alec all of the time.  There were few points in this entire evening where I did not stop and laugh, make jokes, and generally have a delightful and wonderful experience.  (I've never been good at 'sacred', and, a very good Native American friend of mine always teases me in ritual settings for being  what he sees as a clown...  good ritual has good levity in my book — then again, few see the humor in my music, either.)  

Once I had settled to the hooks, she told me they were tuna hooks, for deep sea fishing.  It was that point that I realized that in my weird world view that you had to have total empathy and understanding for an animal before you could consider eating it stopped and said "Wait.  That means I can eat tuna now!!!"

It was shortly after this that we began to discuss our next meeting (yes, I was still up and moving and having a great time) that she played with the cable, using other sound making objects when we started talking about piano wire, bass strings and other primary resonant objects, to begin stage two of the project, having a musician play the strings that I am suspended from.

So, what does this all mean?

Turns out, you can tune an experimental musician and tuna fish.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Radio Silence

Morning ritual:

Wake, wash  and cut vegetables and fruit.  

carrots
kale
ginger
lemon
apple
grape


make enough juice to last me the day.  Prepare camping equipment.  Post blog.

Leave offerings for ancestors.

Pack enough rope for the tent.  I never leave my house without a piece of rope, but today is gratuitous, even for me.  

charge ipod

pack white shirt to wear after. 

I will return on Sunday, and write then.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Morning 2 of Fast

Breakfast, juice consisting of:

Ginger
Apple
Grape

I've fasted before.  This time it is different.  It's always easier to fast when you have an actual reason to.  I've never done well with your general detox fast, unless I am totally stressed out and trying to stop the migraines and other ailments from taking over.  This time is different- I have a concrete goal, a desire to succeed.  I know that I should be working on other projects this week, focusing on the mountains of reading I have to do by November 15, fixated on the notion that I just have to get through this week, and then I can focus on work.  This isn't exactly true- somehow, this weekend I need to read 600 pages or so of Neuroscience, Acoustics and anatomy texts and be prepared to discuss them by Tuesday of next week.  

The second day is always my favorite.  There is a weird sort of reaction that happens in my head, when I hit a point and am no longer hungry and my head tells me that food is an addiction, and like all addictions it can be conquered.  

When I was a body piercer, I used to never work on people who hadn't eaten that day, knowing that 9 out of 10 people would have serious shock type symptoms after a piercing.  I am beginning to wonder what the benefits are of fasting before hand.  A friend of mine says it is about less bleeding, and then I realized his idea of a fast includes no water.  No, I think it is so that the spiritual aspects of this particular suspension artist (the woman at the helm, guiding me on my journey) are fulfilled.  I remind myself that this is a simple little thing, nothing major.  

The thing about anything like this is this:  It is never the event itself that is important.  What is truly important is the information, the flow,and the direction leading into it, and the subsequent journey out of it.  It is not the means of the transmission, but the overall effect on the person after the fact.  Yes, for the onlooker, it is the event that matters.  This morning I have Marshal McLuhan in my head saying over and over "the medium is the message" and want to ask him exactly what he means by that.  Well, I suppose that is true, as my body is the medium, and, in the end, the overall impact is on my own body perception, and wondering if I can see beyond the body or if it is something that cannot be gone beyond.

A few weeks ago I was playing music with a friend of mine.  His love for what he did was so apparent, so pure.  He reminded me why I started making music, how I used to be so angry when people would address my work purely in terms of the body.  I have allowed the world to dictate the use of my body, and perhaps this is one means in which I can reclaim it.  I am not sure.  I am not sure that reclaiming or if offering it entirely to art is my goal.  Personally, I want to see what is beyond the body, beyond the gloves, beyond the objects that we touch and see.  So  many approach this idea by going head on into denial, avoiding any interaction, reaction, contact with the body.  Denial, abstinence, these things have never been a strong suit of mine.  I believe that going into this fully, taking on the body full force, may yield some interesting results.  Of course, everyone when they hear suspension goes immediately to StelArc and other artist who work with electricity (Huge Harry), but that really isn't necessarily what I am after.  Maybe it is, only time, research, and practice will tell.

Back

Many years ago I had a decent sized scarification piece done on my back.  It was done with a 'cutting' method, the design cut into my body and then ash, lye and color smeared into it as a poultice and left to sit on my back for three days.  It smelled like death as it sat there, my own blood putrefying over the scar.  In needs a touch up, but I'm hesitant to do so.  I will, but I just don't know when or how, as it is, I only know of one artist in the world who uses the technique done to me and she doesn't do this type of work any longer.

That was my first major 'ordeal' ritual, or rather, the first one that was marked by concrete spirituality and sound.  I remember the day, the design, everything so clearly.  I was called four days before it would happen "Hey, RG is coming to town on Saturday.  Want to get a cutting?"  I said yes, and then agonized for the next three days as to what it would be.  I knew it had to have three lines in it.  That was what I knew.  Eventually the design as it stands now came to mind- a symbol that is deeply enriched in my musical and artistic practice.  I remember when I got it done thinking "wait, what if I decide I want to do video instead?  I just made a contract with my soul to do music for the rest of my life!"  For years, when I would step on stage it would burn.  Now it only burns when I want to leave art.  Fortunately that rarely happens.  

The day it was done, I sat down in the chair.  There were 6 people in the room- each of us queer, and with our current partners.  One male couple, two female couples.  When she started the pain was intense, and the only thing I knew to do was to sing.  We were listening to Lisa Gerrard's "Duality" and I sang my own little made up song as my then partner crouching in front of me, holding my hands.  My song was to the universe.  I went far and wide, journey meditation taking me out so far that I was amazed when I came back to my body- just in time for a horrible phenomenon called "touch up".   I sang for probably 35 minutes or so, and the whole process took almost an hour.  It was intense, and it hurt like hell.  

I find it fitting that with the exception of one body modification, all of mine have been sound or art related.  In the end, it is always sound that motivates me.  Even with textures and my tactile nature- it is always about the sound that the texture produces, not about the texture under  my hands, my skin.  There is nothing in this world for me that sound is not a part of. It is so integrated into my daily practice that I don't often think about it.  But recently, that changed, and sound has become prominent again.  I am grateful for that, so very happy that sound has been thrust to the forefront. Happy that I can honor past contracts with my body and my art.  

Ictus

"You can hear through your connective tissues."  

She says this to me as she prepares to leave, having spent the day in my house.  We spent hours talking tech, swapping equipment, stories.  I gave her some of my favorite sensor material (a lovely stretch band) and she gave me this thought.  "You can hear through your connective tissues."  

I had contemplated suspension for a full year and a half at this point.  I'd been training, trying to get my body in 100% perfect shape for it (running, fasting, running, climbing, hiking, meditating) but one night I looked at a picture of it and thought "No. chance. in . hell."  Then she had to come along, giving me this tasty morsel of idea.  I could listen through the tissue that connects my skin to my muscle.  It was that point, that exact moment in time, when my art, my spirituality and my lifestyle collided to the point that they would eventually have to become inseparable.  

How I got into the idea of suspension is a vastly different story, one of broken hearts and betrayal, one that is so long and convoluted it isn't even worth mentioning any more, except to say it happened, and, in training to do this I found a way out of the pain and grief that I had. Spending two years exercising, training, getting ready to go up, the chance came, and I am taking it.  First we find out if I can take it, then, then we find out if I am resonant.  If I am, if I can get my bones, my flesh, my muscle to sing, then, then we will have something beautiful.  Something complete.   

Introductions, Explanations

Today is day one of the preparatory fast.  Friday night, at dusk (about this time Friday, I realize now) I will be starting the next leg of a journey that I started on 3 years ago.  I will be doing a major ordeal ritual outside, and will be suspended by metal hooks.  This is a private event, and, there will be a lot that I won't be able to formulate into words.  But this is okay, as it really isn't for everyone to know about.

So why, you ask, am I writing a public blog about the experience?  

I am making this process public because eventually this (hopefully) will become a part of my larger art practice.  Well, in that since, it already has, as it has taken me three years to get to the point of being able to even start the testing phase.  The first test in this portion of the project is simple:  Can I do this?  Can I bring such intense pain into my art practice and still create and generate art?  

So maybe I should back up a bit, and over the next few days discuss the background of why, and how, I wound up doing such a strange and crazy thing.  It started a little over three years ago, when my life fell apart (as I saw it), and, as I have managed to rediscover and redevelop myself over years of work, I find myself ready for this next transitional step, one of questioning the total reality of what my friends affectionately call "the meat puppet".  

The second point of address is the title of this blog, Chrysalis Void Mind.  What a pompous title, no?  I think so.  But the idea of transformation is wrapped in the idea of the chrysalis, and the best part of a chrysalis is that it may or may not actually survive the process.  In addition, it is a process that must be undertaken alone.  Unlike a chrysalis, I have had a lot of pointers and helpers on the way of my absolute personal transformation that I'm working on.  I admit this freely, and am grateful for the help I've gotten.  But in the end, the work is internal.  As to Void Mind, well, that has been the goal all along, with each step (and will continue even after this weekend, which in all honesty is a very small step, simply a key point on a larger journey).  No mind, void mind... this is similar, but not the same.  To be void one encompasses everything, and, at the same time, nothing.  It is a paradox, the paradox of a black hole.  This is my internal goal, the one I strive every day to reach.  I flounder from time to time, forgetting things like "void can have no attachments" and such (that is the hardest part, remembering that I cannot afford to keep attachments to people, things, places and so on) but the universe is self correcting, and I find that when I try to make attachments they often go away on their own.  I am terribly blessed by a universe that keeps me on my personal/internal mission.  

So wait, how does all of this blathering apply to art?  Well, I decided that because my music and art is intentionally a practice of obliterating obstacles and trying new things and trying to not make attachments and letting everything go, then my life should be this as well.  I am not to be separate from my art.  My art cannot be outside of me, nor me outside of it.  In addition, there is a concept that we are our truth, and that truth is something that exists beyond "the meat puppet" as it were- that beyond our chemical makeup, telling us to love and lust, be happy, be sad, that all of these are chemicals.  Art primarily comes from these concepts, and we judge our arts often on the merit of what pleases the meat puppet.  So for me, my life, and my art, is to see if it is possible to extend beyond the meat puppet and reach an actual truth.  

So this begins here, and I will slowly work through the history, tell of events, and continue the process of this art online.  Part catharsis, part process, part confession, and possibly fiction.