Wrapped Intention: Eleventh Week
Photo: Dennis Friedler
During my Eleventh Week at 55 Norfolk Street I traversed a permeable interface between two performance texts. I spun the last bit of the Serres text, now living as several balls of yarn, performed over the course of six evenings in the space. Meanwhile a new text, the mystical poetry of Jaime Saenz, entered transcription. I thought about these two texts, chosen for their relationship to passage, and my body as a medium for textual transformation through time and space, an instrument of energy transfer, body-to-paper. Turning the wheel of the sidewinder, I thought about this amazing coalescence. I considered as well, the opposing narratives of these two texts - one rooted in the instinct for survival through passage - the other embodying a living desire to know the wisdom of death. Through all of this, at the core of my awareness, I experienced agonizing back pain demanding full surrender if I had any hope of fulfilling my commitment to perform.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
The pain in my back intensified as the night wore on, thrusting me into an acute state of vigilance and concentration. I became hyperaware of every move, every gesture. Not impeding, but rather encouraging a wider range of movement, the pain quickened my pace and impelled me to use more of the space as I alternated between transcription in one window, spinning in the other, and winding a yarn skein in the central window of the door. The winding offered some modicum of relief as I sat on buckwheat cushions set out on the floor. There was something different about this set of engaged actions and my perception of time - my arms felt longer, especially with the spinning. I shifted my weight about more consciously, veritably dancing with the text.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
Photo: Dennis Friedler
My recurrent engrossment with souls in transit was centered on what was happening in the door, reflecting Bob's picture, and where I'd strung a long line of Serres text - the last bit of unspun paper. The paper wound its way up and around, down and around, on tension rods affixed above and below the door window. I would pull slowly, gently to release a length of paper for spinning. This created an enchanting effect as fragments of text traveled in both directions simultaneously - a sailor's tale of passage through fire and ice going both ways at once.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
Many thanks to Anna Wexler, contributor of a new performance text that I transcribed fully this Eleventh Week under great duress of pain, agonizingly liberating:
To Cross This Distance (X), by Jaime Saenz, from IMMANENT VISITOR, Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz
Translated from the Spanish by Kent Johnson and Forrest Gander
X
In the world's deep realms are great spaces
- a nothingness ruled over by nothingness itself,
which is cause and origin of the first terror, of thought and echo.
Inconceivable depths exist, hollows before whose allure, before whose haunting
spell,
one would surely and simply die.
Sounds one would surely yearn to hear, forms and visions one would surely yearn
to see,
things one would surely yearn to touch, revelations one would surely yearn to
know,
who knows with what secret yearning and coming to know who knows what.
_______
In the essential soul of the world's synchrony and duration,
buried in the abyss from which the world arose, and embedded in the marrow of
the world,
an odor can be sensed, which you will recognize at once, for you have never
known another like it;
the odor of truth, the only one, the odor of the abyss - and you will have to
know it.
Because only when you come to know it will you understand how it's always been
true that wisdom coheres in the absence of air.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
In the deepest darkness of the world, wisdom will offer itself, in the hermetic
kingdoms of the soul;
in the vicinities of fire and in fire itself, in which the selfsame fire together with air
is devoured by darkness.
And it is because no one has any idea of the abyss, and because no one has known
the abyss, nor has sensed the odor of the abyss,
that wisdom cannot be spoken of among men, among the living.
While alive, man will not be able to understand the world; man ignores the fact
that as long as he doesn't leave off living, he will not be wise.
He fears everything that borders on wisdom; as soon as he can't understand, he
distrusts
- he understands nothing outside the living.
And I say that one should strive to be dead.
To do so at all costs, before dying. One would need to do everything possible to
be dead.
The waters tell you of it - fire, air, and the light, in clearest speech
To be dead.
Love tells you of it, the world and all manner of things, to be dead.
Darkness tells nothing. it is pure silence.
One has to think of the sealed spaces. Of the vaults opening beneath the oceans,
of the caverns and the grottoes - one has to think of the fissures, of the infinite
tunnels in the umbrae.
If you think of yourself, all your body and soul, you will be the world - in its
innerness and in its visible forms.
Become accustomed to thinking intently of one thing; everything is dark.
Thus, darkness is the world's law; fire fans the darkness and goes out - it is
devoured by darkness.
I say this: it is necessary to think of the world - what is inside the world gives me
much to think about. I am dark.
I'm not interested in thinking of the world beyond the world; light is interrupting,
as is living - which is transitory.
What could living ever have to do with life; living is one thing, life is another.
Life and death are one.
Photo: Dennis Friedler
There were no mail slot contributions this night. I did have one gentleman stop, after I had ended the performance and was packing up, who donned a set of headphones, listened intently to my performance text narration, and gave me a thumbs up when he was finished.
Comments
Thanks Margaret!
Thanks Margaret!
Photo: Dennis Friedler
Photo: Dennis Friedler
i give you a thumbs up as