[-empyre-] Next Time

[Sondra Fraleigh]

Dear skin participants, Michele and David,

I've had similar thoughts concerning the continuity of movement as we live it, as we are commensurate with it. I wrote about this from the position of measurement - how do you measure movement - a long time ago (1987) in Dance and the Lived Body. Here are some more musings, and thanks to you both for taking me back, and forward. A short essay with a title:
Next Time and Pain in Death and Music

Much of music is countable – periodicity really - in more traditional contexts. But in another sense most of music is countable. When the work is finished we know how long it is. It seems to have a beginning and an end, even if the composer doesn't signal this.  I studied dance with Merce Cunningham within his Cagian musical units framework. We threw dice to determine where the next movement would go, and sometimes drew papers out of a pile with seconds scrawled on them. The next movement would be 10 seconds or 15, etc. It would be a unit not a measure. (Yet, we use this word "measure" to designate a musical unit in traditional musical contexts, those scores that don't look like rocket blue prints.)

I became involved in my own thoughts about movement and the meaning of NEXT. If the next movement would be 15 seconds, how many parts would that involve? What is a next movement? Will it have many nexts in it? Should I measure my next in the stated unit, or in microseconds, or conceptually in terms of the anatomy and shape of the movement, as in a slow lift of the left arm for 15 seconds? Or might I be standing, falling, whirling, dipping, and doodling for 15 seconds. Would all of this be one movement – just one next - or would each new conceptual,  kinaesthetic, or imagistic impetus be a dividing factor?

 In my study of music, I was accustomed to beats as measuring time and movement. Now we were working with seconds – clock time – which seemed more abstract to me. With beats, I could actually go faster or slower if I changed the metronome. I could also be a bit liberal about crossing over the time of the beats, rubato and romantic, if you will. Or, yes this would be it; I could ignore the music and let the dance ride on top of it. Yeaa! I would determine the shape of the time/movement,  and how to inhabit it.


 I finally decided that “one movement” was whatever I as the choreographer decided it was. I just needed to be able to communicate to others and myself what the “next movement” would entail. I was after all the choreographer. What power! As a woman, I knew no other power to equal it. Then I became an author – but that is another story. Deconstruction took care of my authority, eventually. My deconstructive friend told me romance was dead. I told her I didn’t want to live in a world without romance. How dull….. Etc.


Movement it seems to me is ongoing and depends a lot on the standpoint of the experiencer. Didn’t Einstein teach us a lot about that? There is no inertial perspective. We are already and always in motion ourselves. I like to start with the idea that I’m already in motion when I dance. The dance never ends. I see this clearly when I step outside my door and admire the red cliffs of St. George Utah. The desert seems so still here, but I know it is not. When I go to Snow Canyon and lie down on my belly and press my cheek to the soft orange blossom, rose sandstone, I feel and absorb the dance. But I can do this through my eyes as well as my belly. If I leave the stage or the environment of the dance, meaning-filled moments continue, and I'm still in motion with everything. Well, how about stillness then? Is it a fiction. I crave stillness.


Now why would movement that continues after the designated time for the “so called dance” be called dance? I appeal to my circular mind for an answer. I have a female mind that is constantly in multitask mode. My mind is not linear. I just know this. I have to put post-its all over the house when I write saying “Sondra stick to the subject.” This short essay just for you is a good case in point!


I did give myself some relief from the pain of linear writing in the essays and poetry of Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion. My publisher rejected it for years, and when they finally decided to publish my all-to-personal account of the intersection of dance and metaphysics, the American Dance Festival picked it up as a text for their dance students because it is not linear, even if much of it is hopelessly academic and existential – too much for undergraduates. The idea was that dance students don’t like to write, so maybe they would be inspired by my stories to morph their personal stories into their examinations of dance. It has had some success with those who are verbal learners as well as kinaesthetic. I’m sure most of them just put it aside. It’s a festival after all. They want to dance.


This is a soaked corpus collosum way of saying why I think we are the dance happening at this moment. Movement is always meaningful, and always expressive (to use an old-fashioned word that Merleau-Ponty liked), always communicating something. Merleau-Ponty has helped me say in several ways why movement always carries expression and meaning, why movement is commensurate with body/self/mind/you/me/psyche/culture/universe/cosmos. Maxine Sheets Johnstone wrote so convincingly about the primacy of movement. I want to say that dance, music, and all of the arts are part of this primacy. Even sleeping, we dance. Sleep is a beautiful and sometimes disturbed expression of quiet breathing (hopefully) and thrashing movement. Sleep is a dream dance. Airplanes aside, I like to fly, which I have trouble doing outside of sleep.


Death is a dance that I want to experience also – in time – beyond time's boundaries and pain. I believe that death will excavate my pain body, releasing patterns that hold memories of angst and helplessness, as these are also time-bound. Music moves behind death. It distills love and pain. I can’t see music, but nonetheless it moves through me, just as the cosmos does. Music is not about hearing for me, it enters my soft-skin, kinaesthetically. I know I will hear Dave Brubeck playing “You’ll Never Know Just How Much I love You,” when I cross over into a dimension of time that I cannot yet fathom, and my memories scatter to the wind.

Sondra 


On Oct 25, 2011, at 10:57 AM, David Hughes 19 wrote:

> Oh Michelle, you have been reading my mail! 
> 
> You have read what I wrote with great insight. Thanks for that. Thanks for
> the psycho and critical - analyses.
> 
> There is an engine that powers itself. The more you use it the more energy
> it produces and provides. The more you exhaust the more you replenish.
> Isn't there a figure in John Barth about exhaustion and replenishment?
> 
> If you expand in one direction the motor provides the dark energy needed
> for that expansion. If you stop, if you are ninja-like, the motor stutters
> down and shuts off  and then it is difficult to start the motor again, to
> start moving again. There is the ninja-like unorthodox and the tank-like
> unorthodox, I think. I think I am constitutionally, temperamentally, the
> latter. 
> 
> So the universe comes to a halt. It regroups and expands again knowing how
> to stop before it blows itself apart.
> The universe is wiser than I am. I did not know when to decelerate and stop.
> Regroup and expand again.
> 
> So my universe exploded. I'm kind of waiting for the big crunch. But there
> was no big bang. There was just always movement in all directions.
> Enough of this pretentious expanding of the metaphor in all directions. Like
> a balloon it will surely explode!
> 
> Again, thanks Michelle.
> 
> David
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> [mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Michele Danjoux
> Sent: 25 October 2011 15:06
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] the first story of deceleration
> 
>>> How do you drive at top speed on all lanes at once? On all tracks?>>
> 
> Yes, I would say that it is not something one can sustain for any great
> length of time and indeed leads us on the road to nowhere (or back to Go at
> best) don't you think?
> I mean the very laws of physics would make this type of forward propelling
> travel not possible, unless of course we drive a very wide vehicle that
> spans all lanes, fast, aerodynamic but at the same time tank-like,
> indestructible and with a hard outer shell with special invisibility cloak
> to avoid the surveillance of the cameras. Perhaps it is better to move
> stealth-like,  ninja-like, specialising in the unorthodox.
> 
> Erin Manning in her book 'Relationscapes' comments that there can be no
> beginning or end to movement, stating that:
> 
>>> Movement is one with the world, not body/world, but body-worlding.>>
> 
> In her writings and philosophies, she gives significance to the
> preacceleration state, which I like very much. We have not really discussed
> this so much here in our conversations, although perhaps it has been
> implied, the state before acceleration, where 'energy flows through the
> body'... Of course, this would also mean then that there should be a
> pre-deceleration state, a phase happening inside our bodies/minds prior to
> slowing down.
> 
>>> radical deceleration that was forced on me by illness>> (David Hughes)
> must have its pre-states and warnings, frustrating slow vehicles
> (agricultural traffic), preventing us from travelling at the speeds we would
> like, indecisiveness (Dales or Peaks?) poor decision making, mistakes and so
> on...
> 
> I am sad to hear your story David and can partially empathise since I know
> what it means to push things a little too hard, a little too fast, not
> feeling inside our bodies what is really happening, delaying...and not
> taking heed of the potential consequences, or the place where this over
> rapid and perhaps spasmodic impulsive movement might take us.
> 
> 
> Michele
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au on behalf of David Hughes 19
> Sent: Tue 10/25/2011 8:02 AM
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: [-empyre-] the first story of deceleration
> 
> I suspect that Johannes asked me to contribute to this discussion less
> because of my considerable experience of working from and with opposing
> energies and forces (dynamic tension, isotonics and isometrics) than because
> of the radical deceleration that was forced on me by illness.
> 
> 
> 
> Think of it like this.
> 
> 
> 
> The First Story of Deceleration:
> 
> 
> 
> I am travelling with my family from Lincoln to the Belfast ferry at
> Liverpool.
> 
> We decide to go the scenic route
> 
> Through the Dales. Or is it Peaks?
> 
> We are forced to a crippling slowness behind agricultural traffic which has
> hit the roads very early that morning.
> 
> In the Dales. Or is it Peaks?
> 
> We swerve into the ferry terminal and take a wrong lane to the check-in.
> 
> Our passports are taken. We are asked to leave the car.
> 
> Our car is searched.
> 
> The embarrassed young man comes out with our passports.
> 
> He arrests me.
> 
> I have a number of speed camera tickets which I have not paid.
> 
> They have gone to court.
> 
> I have not gone to court.
> 
> I am to be disqualified.
> 
> I am not to drive for 18 months.
> 
> I am radically decelerated.
> 
> They take me to a van.
> 
> They take me to a custody centre.
> 
> I sleep a night in their cell.
> 
> I am transported back to Nottingham.
> 
> The judge says. Bring Mr Hughes into the body of the court.
> 
> The warder says, that's rather unorthodox your honour, I have to ask my
> superior.
> 
> This is my court, not your superior's. Bring Mr Hughes into the body of the
> court.
> 
> I say to the judge:
> 
> When my son was born I tore around Nottingham buying stuff for his nursery
> and for his mum. I wasn't paying much attention to speed cameras.
> 
> Yes the offences are grouped rather closely together, she agrees.
> 
> Then I had this radical deceleration, I tell her, I couldn't decide which
> lane to follow. They were all closing down, I wove between them. I got to
> the check in. What am I saying. I was in but I got checked out. I got
> chucked out.
> 
> 
> 
> How do you drive at top speed on all lanes at once? On all tracks?
> 
> I don't know. Not even in retrospect.
> 
> 
> 
> Really. It's no joke.
> 
> 
> 
> David Hughes
> 
> 7.55. 25.10.11
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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