FOLLOW UP ON SESSION 14: SOUNDING BODIES: 26 Mar 2022
ARS MORIENDI: 26 Mar - 27 Mar 2022
REFLECTIVE NOTES: 10 hours
Body as Archive- Sound Bath with Zeerak Ahmed
Zee presented historical information via slides, and then posed..."If sound is buried under layers of time how might we be able to use our own sounding bodies to access beyond the here and now?" Then, we took a sound bath in Zee's exquisite vocals. Initially, I wrote...then a day later refined...
SOUNDBATH
I see that
soundscapes are
connected to the
electromagnetic
force field that
surrounds our
globe, our
physical
universe
They are among the things
that connect us to the
astral plane, to our
higher self, to our
spiritual family, and to
other dimensions
My aural capacities
carry me like a time
machine through
space to the past
present and
future
My sounding body comes from
light and passes through
the ozone into the
atmosphere and as a
spiraling vortex it
enters my body
through my
crown and
spirals
down to
my heart
There it echoes through
chambers that
resonate with
rhythmic
pounding
ba boom
ba boom boom
steady drum
beats echo
back up and
spiral
out of
my ears
I hear female
voices singing
Indian rags in
the streets of
South India
bright colored
saris
wrap
their
bodies
I hear the
voice of Jai Sri
chanting the vedas
I hear Shelia Chandra
singing her magic
I hear Zee
bathing my
mind in
peace and
beauty and
love
GD
____
During a follow-up Q&A, Zee asked:
"What is the state of longing?"
"What forms does it assume?"
"What are its sounds?"
"Is it possible for words and melodies to transcend the barriers of language, time and space?"
____ _____ _____
PART II: Ars Moriendi ("The Art of Dying")
Public talk, "Death in the Age of Rationality: Playing with Death in Popular Amusements" with Joanna Ebenstein
"Anatomical Venus", "Death in the Age of Rationality", "Veloputous Panic", Mel Gordon's Cabaret Du Neant", and the connection to Andre Breton and the surrealists...
"Himmel and Holt" (Heaven and Hell, a German cabaret 1955-1957, and discussions many other European and American death-themed cabaret's were the topic.
Most interesting ideas presented...
-Death is a tragic idea in patriarchal cultures
-Death is natural and cyclical in matriarchal cultures
-Divinity is transcendent in patriarchal cultures
-Divinity is imminent in matriarchal cultures
-Consciousness does not end...(nor does it begin), connects to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious.
-Jungian quote "Look at things with a deep respect for the facts."
____
PART III: Ars Moriendi ("The Art of Dying")
"How to Raise a Ghost: Memento Mori as Contemporary Praxis" with Mia Van Leeuwen*
"Remember you must die"
"How to Raise a Ghost: A Sketchbook For the Living", the workshop's assignment, was modeled after Handbook for the Recently Deceased and The Art of Dying Well...examples given and discussed included:
-write step-by-step instructions, i.e., on how to die well, i.e., "Take a breath, imagine that this is the first one of your life. Then take a breath and imagine that it is the last one you will ever take."
i.e., "Build an alter for your things"
-write prompts, i.e., "write your own obituary"
-write event scores, i.e., "write a short story about an experience you have had with death"
*Note that the "sketches" can be poetic, humorous, ambiguous, clear, vague...whatever you like.
Next, follow your instructions or script or..., and produce a piece.
OR, do the reverse, "raise a ghost" and then write down how you did it.
To next TT Intensive session at end of April, bring both written prompt, or instruction, or script, or score, and the piece you have produced. To be continued then...
www.transartinstitute.org/intensives-20…
