Spirit's Charmers

I continue to dive deeper into Michael Lancaster's poem "Heading Old".

He wrote on Facebook that this was to be his final poem... but he continues to write.

I'm reminded that sometimes endings are not endings, but opportunities for one element to replace another element.

A transition.

A little death that leads to a new birth.

A cycle within a an endless pattern of cycles.

When we started "One foot..." in the fall, I felt as though I was in transition; within the seasons but also within my life.

Paying mindful attention during this pregnancy has reminded me that I/ we am/are constantly in transition, passing not only from one moment to the next, but shedding and regrowing as part of the journey. I marvel at how much I've shed in order to grow and, in reading and reflecting on Michael's "Heading Old", how much more shedding and growing there is to come.

Replacing.

We continue, also, to work with Paul Fejko's music. Another challenge, because his organ improvisations have always sounded so harsh to me. But his is providing a context for this journey and his sound allows us to identify a place-space within the shedding. It feels unfamiliar and yet honest and comforting. Like a new planet - like a new place to call home.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to take this process in pieces as we journey to an ultimate, possibly evening-length work. Each step in the journey allows me the opportunity to situate myself within the layers of Michael's poetry, even as I unravel and rebuild my own cocoon.

The soup of this work contains:
1. Michael Lancaster's "Heading Old" - specifically the lines:
"And now my cadence slows to bird song,
Soft, spare, vulnerable to all,
Mine to teach me a rarer, slower
Exquisite truth, the Spirit's charmers, who
Soar at such speeds as to defy vision,
Who bring passion and beauty as
They companion my slower life."

2. Some of the images that influence his writing:

3. Ellen Rosenberg's images. In these I see time, geometry of the physical body, life-breath, and echos of soft, spare, passion, beauty, companion, slower:

4. Paul Fejko's haunting sound score.

5. Four technically precise dancers.

Join us at KYL/D's InHale/ ExHale Performane Series this weekend