Whatever you love, you are
It turns me to water
Those warm words, that smile presses into me
Darkens into pools, spreads like a song, humming
Carving me from within, an underground river
That causes the surface of me to erode, collapse, give in and be liquefied
I flood
And no dust remains
Just hope, swimming
What are you writing?
—dances and ideas, I say
Beginning to drop back into choreographer—but the language differences both verbal and movement vocabulary require a certain adjustment.
I cannot wax poetic—need to engage images, ideas in a kinaesthetic or vocal way—perhaps just trust my body and vocalisations to give information they can interpret themselves
Or
Write a poetic image and get it translated
Drought
I am a small speck in the desert
A mirage
shimmering
evaporating
dispersing
I am hanged
Life shudders out of me and the sands rise to meet me
A river of blood tracks forward
My joints crack open releasing me in brilliant shafts
Catching the last drops of desire in the cup of my hand
Strewn to the dunes
Tossed to the winds
Pulled up inside the cyclone
Unravelling
I grasp the essence of myself as a handful of dust
And blow myself into the universe
I talk to Kailash about water and he tells me that in the beginning everything was water and then the first incarnation of god came as a fish…”water has the power to create and to destroy”
He watched me looking at the river as he did years ago…
“So” he says, “this is a beginning”
Also today:
• An elephant passed on the street as I sat in the mobile phone shop
• The passport photo shop man asked to have his photo taken with me
• A man in the street asks to shake my hand and thanks me
Leaves fall like eyelashes
Moments dropping
Thoughts drift and carpet the ground
I’m perched
On these new edges
Marble, rock, clay, sand
My feet feel like foreign containers adrift on the ocean
Poised on my sit bones
New feet that pinpoint me in this heavy dry heat
Another leaf taps me on the shoulder
“Who are you?” it says
Everything takes longer here
and schedules change daily
How do you look at a body’s identity
When it is covered by so much cloth?
On the one hand shrouding, denying, repressing
On the other, taking on the colours and textures of the landscape it lives in
Celebrating a connection to place
I have a desire to dig below
To read the skin’s surface, the tensions in the muscle, the notches in the bone
things unspoken
The power of the performer
Mallika as matriarch, goddess, author, diva
So strongly positioned in the centre of things, a fixed point within a landscape,
a complete entity rather than disembodied parts.
In my case, my multi-tasking and my worker ethic seems to distract me from my potential
I put out, she draws it to her
Humility versus charisma
(so what of Gandhi?)
I think about our connections to our bodies and physicalities
These Indian bodies strongly connect to ritual—movement, song, physical labour—
to what extent do their actions imprint on emotions, patterns of thought
I think about subtleties of tensions, isolations of body parts, working at a cellular level,
The ricochet—an impact resonating through the body’s systems and the calcification or embedding that occurs over time
The personal scar connects to conflict on a global scale. Wars or illness are an outward expression of this repressed personal hurt.
She says I have to come up with A THEME
I don’t like the idea
Seems too simplistic and too soon
And I recognize some themes of my own—denial, complexity, endurance
Char Rasta/Cross Roads - Moments in our lives where we are presented with a choice.
What pushes us forward and what holds us back?
Which people move us on?
What things do we hold on to?
(me holding onto questions?)
She is a catalyst—pushing people into the future.
I look at myself reflected in her eyes
I feel decisions sitting heavily in particular parts of my body
I hear something cracking under the frequency of my voice
Moments of realization
Mumbai
16 million
are honking their horns OK please
are knocking at the car window
are crowded around the shop front card game
are winding between the rickshaws, motorbikes,
goods carriers, cows, dogs,
are singing their puja
they
are 20 storeys up supported by bamboo scaffolding
sleeping on the footpath, their heads on their shoes,
begging with one hand, hiding with the other
being shaved in rows on the street
sarees riding side-saddle on the back of bikes
talking on their mobiles, dwelling on the fringes, starring in movies, staring at me,
living in public
it’s
moth balls, damp, urine, sweat, spices, exhaust fumes, smoke,
a pungent plant, animal excreta, incense