the big open nothing

So much movement lives in an empty space. 

This started off as an ode to a space—a beloved space where I have spent many an hour recovering my body. Scouring the air for shards of something “good.” Fighting and riding conversations with ghosts. Enjoying the inside looking out. Dancing like it’s 1999. Thank you Triskelion Arts. Out of you, I’ve squeezed a wedding gift dance, a cathartic solo and countless little ephemeral dance ditties. Even when I’m lying on the floor moving slowly, or because I’m lying on the floor moving slowly, I come back into myself. Supported by the empty space. There on the floor, I’m a dancer, if only for an hour.

So much is possible in an empty space. Too much, maybe. So much everything.

I love this space. It gives me a clean, peaceful feeling. Even when nothing happens, it’s something. 

And somehow, looking at all this open space and possibility, my little brain drifted off, as it will, somewhere else. My thoughts on this particular space led to thinking about space itself. I mean the in between. The empty, the waiting, the nothing. We might call it negative space, but there’s so much there to celebrate.

That’s where Arvo Pärt enters. I can’t remember how I arrived at the connection to this composer. Crazy synapses. There they go (…**!...***!......*!...**!). I started thinking about all the sonic space in Pärt’s music. It can be sparse. It can be minimal with a capital M. But those carefully chosen notes suggest so much and allow your brain (synapses, synapses) to travel where it will.

Yes. It’s true. Many choreographers are drawn to his music. Fleets, hoards of dancers, hungry for the music. Perhaps to the point of overuse, but for good reason. There’s so much movement in there. The emptiness between the notes yells out, “Get up and make something heartbreaking and profound!” In that space arises the possibility that the dance can live next to the music, the two streaming side by side.

At least when I heard his music in the past, movement swirled in my mind. So, in a hazy googling vortex, I looked him up. I found this video of Pärt discussing his piece “Fur Alina.” And almost more than the music itself, I was struck by the way he moved when he spoke about it, poised over piano keys. The rhythm of his pauses. He works his words in between the notes as afterthoughts. Concise affirmations. There’s so much space to think and feel in between each musical thought. His descriptive mini-lessons mix with his notes, delicately, barely touching almost nothing. Moving in and out of emptiness…suggesting, suggesting….anything.

He talks of the breath of the moment before the piece begins. The hanging moment. He says, “I imagine the conductor having an upbeat when the whole thing starts. We can’t hear anything yet. And the people in the concert hall don’t know what’s coming. Then the conductor makes the upbeat. The upbeat, the moment when he raises his hand actually contains the formula of the entire work.”

I love the idea of that bit of nothing, that is really quite something, at the beginning of a piece. I think immediately of birth. I think of a dancer ready to go. Beckett’s inhale from Breath…short, full of expectation and then, perhaps ridiculously, despairingly, over. I see an Olympic diver’s ritual, hovering over the board. All muscle with so much movement couched in stillness. Even Napoleon Dynamite’s sighing decision to run. Silly, yes, but sad somehow to me. A letting go. You have to take yourself off balance to shift your feet before you can even begin to go somewhere.

“The conductor makes the upbeat”…

And now I’m skimming through the Youtube vortex. A title jumps out. “Björk interviews Arvo Pärt.” It’s not just the pair of fabulous umlauts that catch my attention. I’m leaning closer, watching Bjork tumble through her thoughts about Pärt. Even their language “barrier” speaks; each musician sends careful English into the air (and true, this “barrier” is no barrier. Their collaborative intelligence—emotional and musical—cuts to the heart of each idea). They give deliberate weight to each thought…exchanging the essentials, slowly, delicately preying upon the right images.

Björk takes a breath (a hairline gasp), inhaling both sets of fingertips to her lips. And with that, her words (“inside your music”) take on the ethereal, wordless quality of her meaning. I’m reminded of my own observations of people when they talk. I catch myself hearing and seeing the space in between their words. Often, I’m so busy watching how they say something I don’t hear what they say. I’m sorry. I’m not listening. But I pick up an entirely different message—something less practical but more emotional, intuitive and bare behind the effort of words. To me, that’s the most important part, where I derive the most meaning. Maybe that’s why I have a hard time hearing what people actually say. I’m watching their bodies, fighting and riding the words. Words are never enough. The body fills in what’s left.

And this all started with an empty room. A little nothing stirs up something. And my tangents here remind me that the first breath can take you anywhere. You just have to take it.

Full Disclosure: I started writing this while in the head space of quiet January at Triskelion and the slow, attentive dreaminess of Arvo Pärt videos. Now I’m finishing this up to the heart-pumping tones of Depeche Mode live in concert. Fun little paradox. I have to say, and my head space loves it. Oh wait…now a little Dolly Parton/Emmylou Harris/Linda Ronstadt. Love that, too.  Aaannnnd finishing up with a little De La Soul and Arcade Fire. But still conjuring the quiet. On the inside.

way out on the end

Here is my little boat friend. Nothing’s moving but the wind through the grass and the undetected wobble on the surface of the water. This boat is steady and constant, anchoring me, helping me breathe fully and be here exactly, precisely for this moment. Things are as they should be. Take it in. I’m right here, I’m right here, I’m right here. And here, in this case, is Montauk. Sweet, breathtaking and bike-able (although some of my almost-stationary uphill peddling left something to be desired…).

 Earlier in the day, we rode all the way out to the lighthouse, my patient husband coaching me along. I could have fallen off the bike I was going so slowly up the hills. That would have been a first—falling due to slowness. Along the way, we took in the beautiful stream of green and horses and green again and finally sea on all sides. Sweet and salty old ladies were there to guide us up the scary spiral stairs to the top of the lighthouse. Looking out, we were at the end of the earth. Ready to begin again.

Cut back to my little boat friend. Here’s a view a little to the left of boat friend where the clouds crack open with sunset-i-tude. Over a luscious lobster dinner (the most deliciously casual, back deck, do-it-yourself lobster dinner I’ve ever had), the sun set with impossible grace and very little fanfare. Strange, how sunsets are both imperceptibly slow and inevitably fast. It takes so long, but then where does it go? There’s no way to linger.

Here is my little boat friend after the sun disappeared over the water. After an hour of dying, graying light, a brilliant pink-purple glow softened everything it touched.

Now I’m back home—no more boats, no more Montauk—and that open summer feeling of being held by the heat is hard to find. But when I feel my muscles tensing up (let go left palm, you don’t need to hold on so hard), I’ll have this mental image of my little boat friend. Breathe it in. And exhale, exhale, exhale. Thinking about it does change my body. My eyeballs release. My forehead lets go. My mouth gets a little dreamy. I’m right here. I’m right here. I’m right here.

I realize these posts are all out of order, time-wise, but then again, so am I. And it will always be so. Starting this project, I’m jumbled and giddy with tiny discoveries. And now that I’m really looking and writing with a reason, I see things everywhere. So I’ll be jotting things down and posting them as they come, and I’ll try not to get in my own way. Go forth, Good Spirit of Words! Tell the people what you find!

blurring, breathing

a gasp
a breath
a moment held in
the pause of the in right before the out
that certain nothing
that sits in the rush of everything

Dancing with a few beloveds, this little inhale was caught. I like the whir of it all. We’re all on our way somewhere, eyes closed, going by feel. Even though days, years have gone by, we’ll always be suspended here a few inches off the floor, listening, swimming in the air.

 

thanks for the photo…Dave Cheng / thanks for the dancing…Mindy Upin, Virginia Munday, Alexa Weir and Holly Colino / thanks for the costumes...Paula Davis

irresistible cupcake monster

In honor of approaching birthday 2010, an ode to birthday 2009. May this year be filled with whimsy.

Once in a lifetime, a birthday gift comes along that gets to you, changes you, makes you a better person. Sometimes that gift is a cupcake that doubles as a monster. Sometimes you take this monster and spend the day with him. Become his special friend. While away the hours. Hold hands. Well, him. And spin. Just spin. And spin and spin and spin. Pose for photo ops.   

Here he is in his birthday suit. “Surprise!” his sweet eyes say, “I’m your little blue friend!” That same old silly grin never fails to make me smile. 

Don’t you ever get sad, little guy? “No,” he smiles, “never.”

We look into each other’s eyes. And say all we need to say.

“Ohhh,” he says, “Ohhhh.”  

We take long rides in the car. He feels a little angry about the seatbelt. But I say, “It’s for your safety. It’s because I care.” He looks away.

I hope we never part.

And we don’t. For a while. Despite his edible make-up, he spends the next six months brightening my kitchen with his bubbly effervescence.

You can still hear his little chirrup from time to time, echoing, echoing.

Funny what two tiny frosting blob eyes and a wonky pink mouth can do.