After two weeks away working in Dubai I am finally going to get down the notes made at our last meeting.
This might be a bit rambling...
We started this session with some really straightforwards floor movements, more as a way to stretch and loosen up rather than anything either of us would consider actual work.
We worked by directing movement from the core. Bringing an awareness to movement originating from points of pivot in hips, shoulder blade etc.
This led me to think about how we move and are defined by actions and gestures that originate from the core but end up existing on the periphery. By periphery I mean small hand gestures, facial expressions, style of walking etc.
This is not to say we should or even would/could consciously move in such a way that is defined by movements originating from our core. This way of moving might be more inherently akin to dance or performance.
Is it for for practical reasons more than any other, that we operate, move and read or own and others gestures on a periphery level?
Taking some leaps this brought me to think about ourselves and our movements in terms of truth and lies. It felt as if when Andrew and I moved from a conscious center it was in some way more truthful or base/primeval/primitive. And further, that there is something in this notion of of truth emanating from the core out to varying shades of truth right out to 'lies' at the very tips of our physical self/reach.
Relating this idea to a sexual context (not 100% sure why I always return to this) is helpful I think. Titillation, foreplay, flirting are all arguably activities existing more in the periphery space. Sex itself could be seen as more truthful perhaps because it movements are closer to the core, in origin.
God did I just write that?
Stay with me... I'm heading somewhere with this!
This brings me back to thinking about how we relate to and interpret each other based on periphery 'lies'. Might it be that we need to categorize, define and pigeon hole people we encounter based on 'lies/untruths/periphery-action-gesture?
Thinking now of the Pueblo clowns and their lewd acts, specifically the excrement flinging and urine hurling, how are these actions interpreted in terms of truthfulness? Urine and shit originate from inside us, arguably truth embodied as waste, true in the sense that its and unequivocal leveler. We all shit and piss. Scatological obsession can be childish, base, perverse or political. Urine has a strange duality, waste and a healing agent. Like feces it is context dependent.
There is a need to laugh at lewd behavior because it releases tension and removes unease. We laugh in order to reassure us of our safety/sanity/existence and in order to distance us from the said danger.
Is this similar to the phenomenon of pedestrians and traffic slowing to pass a car crash? Which is something we do in order to make ourselves feel more alive, to assure us that its 'them' and not 'me'. We laugh at the inappropriate joke of recently dead celebrity. To laugh at this is to be confronted with the coffin, it is a necessary confrontation which reassures us f our own mortality.
Could it be that as a species we need confirmation. Our brain is not something which sits easily with uncertainty. Arguably why religion exists, on the most base level. It is something born out of a need to find assurance in a shared global uncertainty.
So, after that rambling meander to somewhere odd I return to Andrew and I. After mere minutes engaged in simple floor exercises, we brought a new level of focus which enabled connections between us and our thoughts.
This has brought us back to thinking about developing a work based around this idea of truth as the core catalyst for actions on the periphery which are akin to lies.
Is it possible to think about gesture in terms of truth or not?
Truth - Lie.
The Mudheads, importantly, when clowning and being lewd, are not laughed at, or allowed to be laughed at. Their deeds are seen to be a truth, deeds that Pueblo society wants to commit but cannot themselves. These deeds/actions are venerated when practiced by the holy clowns. A tension is relieved which is felt by all.
