Last Days

We ate dinner Tuesday night at Djerassi director Margot's house, which is the former house of Pamela Djerassi, founder Carl Djerassi's daughter who took her own life many many years ago.  Beautiful house, but quite isolated - not a good place to be if you are depressed.  The dinner was lively and funny - chemical engineer Curt told stories about the kind of food he grew up eating in Minnesota, with doctor/biographer Charlotte chiming in about her mother's cooking in Tennessee.  Lots of jello, spam, canned veggies, white bread, fake whip cream in a can, dreaded lima beans (they both had to eat everything on their plate or stay at the table until they finished).  We laughed through the meal.  Visual artist Meredith gave a surprise performance lying on the table (cleared of dishes) with projections on the ceiling - a hilarious send up of "what is art."  After returning to our property, we gathered in the artist house and Jim gave us all surprise gifts - etched plexiglass tiles with one of his physics symbols on it - quite beautiful.  We all gathered round talking about this art/science residency and what can be done to truly start a meaningful conversation about the intersection of the two.  Then on to the artist barn, where we danced until 1:15, letting our joy flow out.  Our Indonesian residents, Budi and Andreas, had to leave on Tuesday at 8 am, but they partied along with us.
Last day, getting everything together and trying to sear the beauty of the landscape into my brain. The day starts with fresh baked scones by Sasha.   I am sitting in my studio writing this, enveloped in peace, quiet and serenity looking at the vistas beyond.  Basket making workshop this afternoon with Sasha, final dinner, then sharing our favorite poems with each other after.  A fitting end to this time together.
This has been one of the most fulfilling, enriching and inspiring experience I've ever had.  I am beyond grateful that I got to live it with this amazing group of people - each so unique and so memorable.  I will cherish my days here and hold them close to my heart.

I Danced

Sunday, 7/27, was Open House at Djerassi.  Once a year they invite the public to the property for hiking and artist presentations.  300 people (the maximum) showed up and wandered the grounds, packing into performances and gobbling down pizza made by Dan (our amazing chef).  There were about 10 plein air painters from the local community scattered throughout the property painting the beautiful landscapes they saw before them.  For my presentation I danced both of Pireeni's poems that I had choreographed, and did a few short improvs similar to what my dancers did recently - I handed out slips of paper and people wrote what they desired on them.  I put them in a big bowl, drew out a few one by one, and then improvised on what was written.  Imagine this one:  I desire unlimited sex with multiple partners with no social consequences.  That was a doozy!  I haven't performed in public for probably 20 years and surprisingly I really enjoyed myself.  The poems spoke to me and the improv was great fun.  As I danced I remembered the feeling of every part of my being coming together - body, mind, emotions, spirit - this is what I always loved about it.  As I danced I felt my spirit rise above the audience and settle on them in a benediction of gratitude. 

 

Final week

It's hard to believe that this is the final week.  We are all trying to live in the present, but are pretty dismayed about the prospect of returning to the "real world".  Here is a picture of my day today:  yoga in the morning with Devavani and Sasha, downloading pictures that Devavani took around the property including numerous pictures of a banana slug that was the pinnacle of Devavani's walk with me yesterday, she even took a video of it.  Lunch with some residents, sitting around catching up on what everyone had done that morning.  Work in my studio after lunch, finished choreography to a poem by Pireeni with music by Ari and worked on some new phrases for my project in September in Long Beach.  Pireeni came to see the dance, talked with her about possibilities for future collaborations and performances.  She brought a CD of a project she did with her husband Colm, an exceptional musician. Titled Bridge Across the Blue it teamed poets and musicians from different cultures that normally do not work together.  We listened to a track where she sonorously read her poem in Dravidian (Tamil), English and ended in Gaelic (Colm's native language) accompanied by Colm's haunting music that marries Irish and Indian raga music.   Simply beautiful.  Dinner prepared by chef Dan - delicious vegie stir fry with tempeh.  Afterward walk to artist barn, take out my drawing material and begin sketching the landscape.  As it get darks outside, I return to my studio and listen to the rest of Pireeni's CD.  Is it any wonder I'm dismayed about the loss of all this time and interchange with others?  

Incubation

Take this image: a string seems to be unraveling from her body.  It is like a skein of silk looping out, unfurling as if her being was made of cloth and she sees that the fabric is made of a billion tiny dancers – each one of them now pirouetting, moving, leaping, tumbling – out of sync with each other – the central timing, cadence, rhythm falling apart.  That's from Devavani Chatterjea relating to immunology. A poem by Pireeni Sundaralingam that's so visual and kinesthetic that I see it in my mind's eye.  Music by Ari Frankel that spans from text integrated music to driving, pulsating energy to achingly beautiful.   Mechanized flip charts by physicist Jim Crutchfield that spin out patterns that leap, twirl and glide.  A 3- D vortex that you enter and become the center of by geologist Dawn Sumner.  Dreams visualized in drawings by artist Meredith Tromble will eventually be placed in the 3-D vortex.  I take the image, I have the poem, the music is on a thumb drive, I look over and over at the flip charts, I enter the 3-D vortex, I see the dreams.  I talk and see and listen to all of these scientists and artists, and the information incubates inside of me.  I don't know when or how it will come out, but fertile ground is being laid.  Like the fog that rolls in in the morning, eventually clearing to a breathtaking view, creation awaits.  This is the magic of this residency.

Plumbing art and science

Last night we had a discussion with the artists and scientists about art/science collaborations - what they are, do they work, who’s interested in them, etc.  Lively for sure.  The jury is out about these collaborations - 2 of the scientists think most scientists aren’t interested or don't care, 2 think scientists gain more from such collaborations than artists do.  All the artists seemed interested.  So I guess it’s a matter of finding the right scientists - no big surprise.  But we all agreed curiosity is the motivating force for both scientists and artists.

Immunologist Devavani Chatterjea and I have been talking about a melding of our practices.  I asked her to write down some images of the process of immunology, and when she gave them to me I asked for her to make them more pictorial.  She came up with a picture/story that is a wonderful script for a dance.  Meanwhile she came to my studio and did a movement exploration session with me.  So we are reaching some common ground that can be built upon.  Devavani suggested that to get a true idea of what she does it would be good to come to her lab for a period of time (week?) and not only observe but participate, and for her to do the same coming to rehearsals with me.  She teaches at a small college in Minnesota, so it's not exactly close, but doable.  We're having fun playing with different scenarios and she's adding more story images.

Today I'm meeting with chaos/pattern formation physicist Jim Crutchfield.  In his presentation to the group he talked about how he makes objects to help him understand the theories he's working out.  He showed this 3 column flip chart that has physics symbols on the face of each card that is in each column.  It's mechanical so he can turn it on and the cards all flip at the same time.  The most amazing patterns emerge - I of course immediately saw the potential for a dance based on the patterning of the flip chart. So we're meeting to determine if the patterns can be mapped out in a way that will enable me to work with them to put bodies in space.

In the end it doesn't matter to me whether or not most scientists are interested in working with artists, I just need to find the ones that are.  And they're out there.

Creating at Djerassi

Today I pulled out Carl Djerassi's (the founder of Djerassi) autobiography to browse.  I read the chapter where he talks about his daughter's suicide and how he subsequently founded this artist residency program in her honor.  She was an artist and among other things struggled with the commercial art scene.  He talks about the artists that have been here - both highly acknowledged ones as well as many who have not received public recognition- and the work that they created that only could have come from their residency here.  It got me thinking what I could create that was specific to this residency.

I decided that I would draw the contours of the landscape, what I could see from my studio and from the artist barn where my studio is located.  I put aside feelings of not be able to draw, and just tried as best I could, using pencil and paper.  I came up with a reasonable approximation.  I then mapped out my drawing in words that I could use to construct movement.  Here is the map:

Map of the horizon from my studio: in 3 movements

Movement 1:  walk - slight rise - small dip - small rise - big dip     Terrain

Movement 2: Blip (tree) - space - big block (trees) tapering down - space - blip - space - 2 blips - small space - small blip - smallish space - 2 blips - medium height block      Vegetation

Movement 3:  level line - disappear - long line of very slight undulations - disappear - shorter line with slight undulation    Horizon

I began working on the first movement today.  We'll see where it leads.

My Spot

I believe I have found my favorite spot on the Djerassi property. Cube in Redwood Stumps by artist David Nash, set amidst the forest.  It is so peaceful here, enveloping one like a golden-green cape with brown threads strewn through.  It feels old, but there are new shoots pushing through the dirt.

I have come here to read one of residents artists, Pireeni's, poetry anthology Indivisible - contempoary South Asian American poetry.  Why don't I read poetry at home?  I think it's because you can't read poetry fast, you have to chew it slowly and like a cow re-chew it to find it's essence or even to find some meaning.  But it's succinctness and brevity is refreshing - just enough cool to water to slake your thirst.  And no more.  You have to slow down to the cadence of the words, even if they trip and slide quickly you have to be able to catch and hold them.  Poetry for me isn't life in the fast lane and that's probably why in my no-time-for-many-things everyday life I don't read it.  But here, it's a gift that I'm unwrapping with care, taking pains not to tear the fabric of the language.

Maps

I'm consulting the map before I set out for my walk.  Yesterday I mapped out the structure of my dance Neighborhood Stories.  I'm thinking about all the people throughout history who have been map makers.  The explorers who drew amps of unchartered land.  The astronomers who mapped the skies.  The scientists who map the body and brain.  But maps aren't static.  If one part of the brain is damaged, another part can be developed to take over the function ordinarily associated with the damaged area. Or brain signals can get scrambled and there is malfunction like synesthesia.  Remarkably at our first Friday night dinner one of the residents had two guests at dinner who both had synesthesia.  The woman of the couple, who were married to each other, had all 5 senses involved, which is rare.  I couldn't imagine how she could cope without sensory overload.  You could be seeing and tasting at the same time, or hearing and kinesthetically feeling, smelling and seeing colors.  She told me they diagnosed her as a child when she came to school one day and asked if the teacher could hear the song that the grass was singing.  Whatever multiple combinations occur, she's always being bombarded with sensory information.  Must be like a constant drug hallucination.

Are we intrinsically driven to map out things to give order to our lives and the universe we live in?  If we didn't map, would we perceive life as chaos?  Humans are not comfortable with chaos, though chaos exists throughout, not only our planet but also in the universe.

Tools

Feeling stuck in my studio I decided I had to go for a walk.  The minute I started walking thoughts began jumping around and colliding.  I walked to the gate where I got lost before and saw that if I'd only pushed open the gate I would have been so close to my studio.  Argh!

So these are the thought crowding my brain as I sit on a redwood stump in a forest that feels centuries old with ferns scattered like bits of lace and the sun filtering through sentinel trees that reach up forever to the sky.

Last night one of the scientists, Curt, gave us a presentation of how he looks at art from a chemical viewpoint, analyzing the types of paint, surfaces, colors, etc.  He gave us the chemical composition of some paints used in famous paintings and where they historically have been derived from.  I was particularly interested when he said he is now looking beyond Western art to other cultures to examine the materials they use and how they have stood the test of time.

I am drawn to masks of different cultures and particularly to totem poles.  In British Columbia and Alaska I have gasped at the magnificence of these poles, standing in clusters or as a solitary witness. They are astonishing.   The elements have taken their toll on them, particularly because they are in wet, rainy climates.  Some list like drunken guardians, some are partially decomposed.  The ones that are painted are faded and weathered.  I asked Curt if he knew what kinds of paints they used, presuming they were derived from nature - plants, insects, etc.  He didn't know but said the key to retaining the color would be the type of sealant they used, and there were a few that could be made from natural materials.  It would be interesting not only to know what was used, but if certain tribes used certain materials or if it was shared knowledge.  Also do present-day totem carvers follow the old ways or use newer materials.

I've been exploring tools with collaborators Michael Masucci and Kate Johnson, using tools as one of the connecting themes in our recent project Fly By.  Scientists and artists both have a set of tools that we use.  In Fly By we used a flying camera as a metaphor of sorts for the Hubble telescope.  The Hubble offers us views of the cosmos that we would not otherwise see.  The flying camera (mounted on a drone) gave audiences views of the dancers (overhead, circling them from different angles) that an audience would not ordinarily see.

Tools can offer immortality.  A painting can exist for centuries i.e. the cave drawings in France, the sarcophagi in Egypt.  The images from the Hubble presumably can survive throughout time.  The dancer's main tool though is the body, which is not immortal.  Dance can be preserved through digital documentation but it is never the same as when experienced live, unless it is specifically made for film.  It is a live art because it involves an exchange of energy - between dancers and between dancers and audience.  That energy is not captured as a living, breathing thing on video.  Dancers learn of impermanence, of constant change, of loss, it defines their art.   Because the body is the tool and the body deteriorates.  That is both its beauty and its tragedy.

Lost #2

Determined not to be cowed by my first hike, I started out again this morning, albeit on a safer route. My thoughts turned again to lost - being lost, feeling lost.  We live in what we think is reality, but the Eastern mystics maintain it is an illusion.  Pierce the veil of maya, or the illusion of reality, and you see it for what it is - an illusion.  Or maybe we are living on multiple plains of existence, as proposed by string theory.  We can be lost on many levels and not even know it.

The corollary of lost is found.  When we're lost we don't know how to get from where we are to where we want to be. When you're lost in a physical space, you want to find the way out, or home.  But when you're lost mentally, emotionally or spiritually, what do you want to find?  What if you don't know where you want to be?  That's the terror of being lost - what if you're never found, if you can never find out where it is you want to go to.  Years ago a therapist told me that I had to be OK with living in uncertainty, to just be able to be comfortable in that space.  It's a matter of letting go and again (as in my other post) just being.  I think this comes more naturally to some people than others.  It's more of a struggle for me personally than in my art, somehow I've learned to live more in uncertainty when art is concerned.

One of the most striking things I learned about dark energy is that it is pushing galaxies apart at an accelerated rate.  The universe is in a constant state of expansion.  Taking this to its conclusion, I imagine a time, in the very long future, when people will look out from this planet and see nothing with the naked eye- no stars or heavenly bodies in the sky.  Will they feel lost in space, moving through a black universe with nothing else visible except images taken by satellites?  Or will they be so centered in themselves that the external reality is unimportant.  I suppose they would have to pierce the veil of maya to arrive at that space.

Whimsy

whim-sy (hwim-zee)

noun

1.  capricious humor or disposition, extravagant, fanciful, or excessively playful expression

2.  an odd or fanciful notion

3.  anything odd or fanciful, a product of playful or capricious fancy

Yield to whimsy is the motto of Djerassi.  I've always been attracted to whimsical artists - Miro, Kandinsky, Calder.  There's something childlike and magical in their work -playful.

I wouldn't say my work is whimsical, but I am interested in exploring how to make it so, imbue it with a sense of play.  I think I myself have lost that and become too serious.  How can I loosen up in a way that isn't too uncomfortable.  Because you can't force whimsy, you can't make playful happen, can't jolt it out of you if you're uncomfortable.  It has to just move out, like a child.

So I'm taking baby steps.  Dancing around my studio to music and just letting the movement happen, not judging if it's good or not.  Not wearing a watch, which is like a third arm to me.  My wise and wonderful friend just wrote me "white man's time will give you stomach cancer," which she was told by an indigenous elder.  And not writing one single grant while I'm here - something I haven't done in I don't know how long.  I usually write grants every single weekend of the year.  Again my wise friend said "let the universe work on granting you things now."  So I'm going to try and be open to that.

I'm inviting whimsy in, leaving a space in my being for it to enter and swirl around.  I'll see what happens.

Lost

Today I started out eagerly on a hike, a simple 5 mile loop that progressed from grasslands on the top of the world where I could look out and see all the way to the ocean - if it wasn't fogged in - through a forest and back to my studio.  I saw some very cool art along the way that past residents had placed along, amidst and semi-hidden on the trail.  I was breathing in the fresh air and thinking how extraordinarily lucky I was.  When I came to a fork in the trail, a sign with HOME on it directed me in the right direction.  A second sign, again on a fork, directed me.  Or so I thought.  I had a rudimentary map with me provided by Djerassi with all of the artist installments on it, how hard could it be to follow the trail?  Hard enough for me apparently.

After the 2nd HOME sign and the fork, I walked downhill until I reached a locked gate with a fence around it.  That couldn't be right, it didn't seem like I should climb it, why would they have a gate on their own property?  There are several other properties that abut Djerassi, so I naturally assumed this was one of them.  I climbed all the way back up the hill and searched again.  Clearly the sign pointed the way I went, but there was another fork in the road, so I followed that.  It took me to what I thought, and still do, was an artist creation.  I kept walking, the trail stopped.  I looked for another trail and saw one so followed it uphill.  At some point I was keenly aware that I was walking through poison oak, not good.  I had a bout with poison oak a few years ago and it wasn't pretty.  How could this be the trail?  I passed a large dead bird, looked like a huge turkey, though how in the hell a turkey could be around in a fairly isolated forest puzzles me.  I wasn't about to stoop and make sure what kind of bird it was, needless to say I wasn't overwhelmed with joy to see it.  So I retraced my steps back to the HOME sign and went the other way, which was all uphill.  That didn't seem right, so I went back.  I walked around and around that area for I think at least an hour and a half, checking and rechecking that damn map.  Then I stood at yelled "Help, I'm lost!" to nobody - over and over.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I hate to get lost.  It brings up all kinds of feelings - vulnerability, stupidity, out of control, frustration, impatience.  I hadn't reached fear yet because I knew I could retrace my steps - all up hill mind you - but I didn't want to go back.  Forge ahead, that's what we all want to do.  No luck.  I'd started out at 8:30, it was now 11:30 and I did the #1 no no for hikers - I had no water with me.  I was getting pretty thirsty by this point.  So I started back, retracing my steps. Defeat, but at least I knew I'd get back before dinner.

After putting special liquid on my clothes and skin to hopefully get all the poison oak oil out, I am sitting here contemplating the idea of being lost, metaphorically.  As an artist I am often lost, not knowing in the middle or even beginning of a piece where I'm going.  Usually I trust the process and just plug on, letting whatever comes out come.  I've learned to let go of trying to steer a project in the direction I think I want it to go and let it instead just go.  That's when it works the best.  I'm not always successful, but I can see the wisdom in it and try to let it direct me.  But I can't do that in real life yet, and certainly not today.  So maybe it's time to try applying some of my artistic process to my real life and see where it takes me.

Time

The gift of time becomes evident when you step out of your familiar routine.  Time approaches the fluid state, evolving from the linear progression in which we normally view it.  I have been given the gift of time while at a residency at Djerassi, the time to "just be".  What does it mean to just be, to let whatever bubbles up be the impetus for any actions that proceed from it, to be as comfortable sitting gazing out at a landscape as in "doing" anything.  To let go of expectations, plans, "shoulds" and everything else and try and connect with that kernal of inner being.  That is my quest at Djerassi, to listen, to pay attention and to let go.  My mind is churning at it's usual speed and I am trying to find a slice of silence.  Within that silence is the key to my residency.

On a whim this morning at breakfast I picked up a book about an artist I knew nothing about - Naomie Kremer.  Don't know what drew me to this book, but it held a treasure trove.  In a commentary about Naomie's work, written by Eleanor Heartney I came across this:  "In his 1888 treatise Time and Free Will, French philosopher Henri Bergson provides a remarkably prescient description of ... perception.  He delineates two ways we experience time.  One is the ordinary perception of linear time, leading in a straight road from a remembered past to an anticipated future.  Bergson sees this as a flawed perception, because it treats time as another species of space.  He contrasts this with "duration," a more nebulous and mysterious notion.  Duration, or lived time, is the experience in which time and space, past and future are fused with the continual present.  Bergson likens duration to the perception of dance, where prior and future movements are implied at every moment in the sweep of the performer's gesture.  Thus, instead of making the present disappear, as happens when the linear experience of time rushes us along a prescribed path from past to future, duration creates a consciousness of our unity with the dynamic nature of the world."

I happen to be talking too another artist, Doni Silver Simons about a collaborative project.  Her work is greatly concerned with time also.  The confluence of all of these seemingly disparate elements related to time is at once both astonishing and completely natural.  This is what I imagine can happen when we just have the time "to be".