Tales from the Abyss

It's difficult to pinpoint this process of awareness that comes in like ocean tides, waves sweeping in and covering me and then receding and leaving me exposed and raw as I understand that for a moment I couldn't breathe, and I was gasping for air. Then suddenly there is a flash of consciousness, and I become aware of thoughts and ideas that were uncovered as though the sand of the beach was swept away and what was left was a kernel of truth.

It is even harder to understand that this is a fundamental flashback to points of discovery and to moments when I committed myself to believing in impossible dreams. I was also embedded in despair of a world I thought was dissolving out from under me, and there was no more reason to continue in any direction because everything was quicksand.

So into this abyss came the Trio, or perhaps my invention of the Trio was my hope that such vision for beauty and truth could be shared and become the reality of its potential. So when I asked my friends if we might adventure together for a time, it was an innocent and naive assumption that such a fusion of purpose was possible and desirable.

What followed was indeed adventure and deception. 

The Year That Was....

I am not sure what should be written in this space as I know I am entering a time of existence that is not shared by everyone. I know that I have been through the worst of years and in some ways, I am passing through the best of years.

2013 has been a a bewilderment. It has had my best moments, and it contains my greatest disappointment and despair.  I have come to appreciate how we define each other, and how the relationships we pursue transcend the ways that we survive the day to day challenges that create the continuity of our awareness. Perhaps our greatest focus is the one that forms our survival through the creation of partnerships through which we create families and populate the world. For most of us that is the ultimate focus, but I suspect there is a new time ahead in the adventure of cosmic awareness. We are on the verge of discovering ways of being that extend far beyond the notion of survival.

I am sensing a different level of exchange among those I have been fortunate enough to meet and follow their adventures.

It is true that we never really repeat anything. But we often miss the immediacy of what is happening, and the moments that pass endure as a reality we cannot really grasp because we are not equipped to enjoy the scale that forever requires.

I find that my love for all who occupy my world has deepened, and my perception of the meaning each has brought to me continues to expand to connect the past with the relentless surge of Now.

Such feeling is too intense... Too combustible, too demanding... And so I must retreat... Or be consumed by the very passion that inspires us to be the best that we can be.

This passion is the life force of us all... Until now I have been reluctant to acknowledge its power in my life and have hesitated to embrace its manifestation. I have allowed illusions to distract me, and fear to paralyze me from the true freedom of being. So as I try to understand this extraordinary balance of past, present, and future, I know that I am on the verge of creating many new ideas and works that have been brewing for decades...

This was the year that was astonishing as it surprised me through dismantling all that I thought was fixed and established, and revealed that my greatest challenges are waiting somewhere ahead...

I actually don't know if I will survive the provocations exploding all around me. I don't know if I can endure such profound beauty of awareness.

A Story That Could Be Short...

How strange,  as I approach what is described as my golden years, that I should be shook to the foundations of my feelings and emotions… As though I were a teenager overcome by emotions and fainting on the stairs.

Feeling closer to so many people... More than at any other time of my life... Feeling the joy of knowing them and being witness to the greatness that resides in each and everyone of them...

And in such deep and deftly etched feelings,  I face a dilemma that is unsolvable and also simple... So vividly simple...  in the midst of such turmoil, I touch the fabric of such joy... The joy of having known and shared so deeply --- without the slightest caution or reserve... Only to find the appearances of illusions that mock the simplicity of trust and all that was created… Yet I would not give one moment back to gain peace of mind… I am brimming over with ideas… all stemming from the inspiration begun within the majesty of such devastating beauty that comes from the source of being… of who we really are… it was not a mirage of mental fabrication… we were tangible… we were real… we were the elegance of pure connection… we were friends...

We were the innocence of trust. But maybe such innocence was my diversion. Yet, something came from  nothing... something emerged in the world that had not been there before...  it is still there, illuminated and pure, but distant, as though I have somehow wandered to new and foreign regions.

I love all that has been these final years... My awakening... My renaissance... The new work ... The incredible surge of energy that illuminates these moments....and those who have inspired and sustained me, and those friends that bonded in a moment of time... ah, but Time is so fragile... The only time machine is memory, and memories fade...

Now I feel the simultaneous loss and gain that Time brings to this moment... Yes, it is all over... Yes, it is all beginning...

It all began when the afternoon sunlight of Spring poured through the window and left me dazzled...

Embodying The World

Since I was about nine years old I have regarded consciousness as a medium for being the world and connecting to beingness and timelessness through imagination which then presences the world as emerging reality… but reality is not just isness, it is the continual becomingness…

Sorry to enlarge the words… but being and time have become so value laden that I was trying to imbue them with an urgency of NOW, but not doing it very well…

We often think of ourselves as being in the world, enveloped by the awesomeness of the planet we inhabit as well as the universe that earth inhabits. But perhaps the reality is that this is all consciousness,and it is more inside us than we are inside of anything.

Embodiment has been my way of integrating technology and the human form... my creative experiences all have sought this integration. My creative work has been about embodying technology for discovery and extending our expressive range. Through this awareness of embodiment,  the things we do take on sharper meaning, and the reason for connecting and creating becomes more focused and more purposeful.

Embodiment has been my experience since my earliest days of sports and dancing... the presencing of ourselves as the embodiment of being the world is central to understanding what the world is to us. The world inhabits us, we embody the world, and give shape, purpose, and continual unfolding of moments which is more like the flow and expansion of air that the ticking of a clock.

Consciousness is not something that exists inside a brain, it is the process of our being, creating from nothingness and evolving and changing reality. Consciousness is us embodying the world. It is not somewhere. It is everywhere, but not static and stationary... dynamic and the essence of creating and creation.

That is why everything about us is always about change.

A TEXTING MOMENT

The texting below was an exchange that took place just before midnight... Earlier I had been texting to another person and it started to go bad because the ideas were very complicated and misunderstandings started to erupt. So we decided to stop. Such negative Texting can be a source of tension and miscommunication. This can also happen in email exchanges. Having suffered through the extreme misunderstandings that can occur through cybertext, I know that such discrepancies are not trivial. Some have changed my life in ways that I wish I could take back. Once text has become an object occupying space and no longer an expression in time like conversation that vanishes into fleeting moments passing by, it can become a destructive force that gathers momentum.

But the text offered here was a spontaneous exchange. The imagery that was created in the moment will serve as a road map to the planned experience in the Greenwich Village restaurant known as Choga. LN is a noted and accomplished choreographer, multimedia artist, and educator.


Wizard: I was advised to take it slow in making changes...
This struck me as spectacularly wise.
Did I ever give you the book Science and Technology in the Arts 

LN: No.

Wizard: That big book in guest room...

LN: I looked through the book when I was there and wondered if I could get a copy.
Our legacy is in that book!

Wizard: But "taking it slow" seemed good because I thought I would be surrendering a property I have been working on for more than 50 years.
My Credo was multimedia...

LN: Yes, give yourself some time.

Wizard: Stewart Kranz was impressed and that was why I was in the book...
If you look, the images are like pictures from IMPACT...

LN: Yes! I want to teach a course and use that book!

Wizard: When I got to NYU, I had chance to implement ideas as curriculums and productions
That's why I'm Having so
Much fun with the new EXPANDED MUSIC

LN: Great! Wish we had planned for your course and mine to connect!

Wizard: NOW EXPANDING MUSIC INCLUDES THE SENSE OF TASTE AND IMPROV AT CHOGA
Let's see about next semester. I'm
Offering it again...  Will have so many students for Spring
I have a great cellist in my class.
He is from Turkey.
His mother makes cellos.

LN: Wow!!!

Wizard: He is playing her instrument...
He is so sensitive and musical

LN: Does be compose?

Wizard: We have terrific violinist ...
Cellist seems afraid to improvise and we are
Taking all of us there tomorrow on video.
We are officially having class in Choga.

LN: This is unbelievable. I just came from a meeting
with a very important person and I suggested we use a
music composition with violin, cello and flute!

Wizard: They now have multimedia.
Choga has three screens and good sound system

LN: You never cease to amaze me !

Wizard: We are linking movement to notation
Our dancer will be our notation...
We will play her as she moves...
We will use both physical and emotional space as the score.
LN: Are you actually going to notate (symbols on a page)?

Wizard: I wish I had that Korean Artist... But yes... we will ask some students to map it.
Thanks for reminding me to take materials!
The strategy of getting musicians aware of embodiment  has really worked...
Last week everyone choreographed each other...
Conceptually this has been growing with me
and that IMPACT student Connie who was interested in embodiment

LN: One of the basic techniques is learning how to open to using space

Wizard: Not sure what you mean
How to open using space

LN: If you take you arm out to the side, it has a certain extension.
But if you take your arm out with the intention of expanding to the length of the room
You fill more space
You take in an idea

Wizard: Interesting... We use similar analogy with the voice

LN: Let the body open to dimension

Awareness is everything

You can do all kinds of movement awareness exercises.  I make them up. Try this one :

Bring your chin to your chest
Now left your chin with no particular intention
Now bring your chin to chest again

This time think about throat opening
Revealing throat
Do you feel your throat more?

Wizard: Yes

LN: I'm not sure that came across

Wizard: And I could see or hear filling the open throat with sound

LN: If you bend your elbow,
Now think of opening at the joint
To straighten your arm,

Wizard: I forgot to mention that Choga has this big open
Space in front of bar... So it is like a stage... a place for embodiment...

LN: Embodiment is about intention

Wizard: Yes, I agree
But it is also about Beingness

LN: And Nothingness ..

Wizard: And Heidegger

LN: Sartre

Wizard:  I'm going to take this text and turn it into my blog

Languaging and the Worlding of the World

Yes, writing takes time... And we have to take the time or time disappears, evaporates without any words to mark its passing.

Now that I feel the end of my time passing faster and faster, I regret all the poems unwritten, all the songs still inside, all the music left in the silence... The books unwritten...

Wait! Just one more moment!  Ah... Now the saying "time waits for no one" tolls like an ostinato across the emptiness of mind...

Howl is such a great movie. It has just been released for the home market. As good as the poem is, the movie may be better... Howl is about language... The essence of words and the eloquence of their sounds that transcend meaning...

I seem to have lost power like a car running out of gas or a blackout that suddenly descends upon a city... Not without warning... But with an impersonal  indifference ...

This text is empty... Just clicks across the screen... Taps of the true digital wasteland of fingers and thumbs eking out letters and words...

I am a romantic. I do believe in forever, even though I know I will soon disappear as everyone has before me and as will those who follow.  Yet for me,  forever persists as a premonition of a deeper truth. It flies in the face of the reality of the universe. Newtonian Physics describes a universe that  disperses energy so that eventually existence as we know it comes to a close, the law of Entropy.

Believing in forever is like believing in fairy tales. But it is the stuff that drives us to great achievements. The stuff that dreams are made of.

My friend says compose something, create something to pull you through nights of despair. But nothing comes... except I find myself echoing the Cole Porter song In the Still of the Night  because I recently had an epiphany that Cole Porter was summing up the existential question:

Do you love me, as I love you
Are you my life to be, my dream come true
Or will this dream of mine fade out of sight
Like the moon growing dim, on the rim of the hill
In the chill, still, of the night

This is sung to the night, to the universe... wondering if the love we feel in being alive will be returned by the world, the life we love. Or is our place in existence just a dream that fades out of sight like the moon growing dim....

In the chill,

Still,

of the night.

The hoped-for return of the world loving us is an illusion fading out of sight, like the moon that will be lost to the earth as it escapes its orbit... we see our hope growing dim on the rim of the hill until it is gone.  And all that we thought was as enduring as the universe is just illusion...

There is this shimmering moment in time that I think is forever...It is in the fire of imagination and the inspiration of those that inhabit my experience and my world...

Creating new work is more than refuting despair, it is making the world and creating ourselves in the emerging moments... evidence that we here and we are enduring... it is the worlding of the world.