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Entries in dance (84)

Wednesday
Jul012020

Juke

My Cadiz, Spain experience sang of Juke, an African word meaning wicked or disorderly in one language.

It also meant a building without walls in the Congo. For American Blacks it took on sexual connotations and a type of dance.

It may have also described jute - a rough fiber made from the stems of a tropical Old World plant used for making twine, rope, or woven into matting - fields and jute workers visiting makeshift bars. Juke joints were bars with dance floors and back rooms for gambling and brothels. Shake your moneymaker.

 

Your Mask Eats Your Face

To juke was to lead a wandering life, have intercourse. To go in, jam and poke. Whorehouses. From the 1930’s on Delta blues players played juke joints, passing the music from generation to generation. Juke boxes were invented in 1927.

Nothin’ but the blues, everybody’s talking ‘cause talk is cheap.

Hard field work prisons, slavery, life, death, love, loss, leaving and living the blues with a feeling.

It was nothing but the blues talking.

While living, singing, and playing harp blues in the key of C, I trimmed long fingernails down to the quick brown fox jumped over the fence. WYSIWYG. Small slivers of enamel snow spiraled into air floating to cobblestones.

It was a clear truth after three days in the Sierras on narrow Roman passages, chopping and climbing in ancient forests removed from civilization’s discontent.

People moved fast and furious in Cadiz. I sensed their malcontent maladjusted wild crazy freedom from being closeted, closed in, no sky, no air, stoned frustrations manipulating mainstream desires down ways and means with cause and effect in the big city.

It was all a relative reality in the absolute reality and most of my relatives were dead.

Their grounded headstones decorated with names, ages, epitaphs collected dust living with memory.

Weaving A Life (V2)

Wednesday
May272020

Experiment

Create like a god, order like a king, work like a slave

Work like you don’t need the money

Love like your heart’s never been broken

Dance like nobody’s looking

I am a short story

You are a novel

 Her Zen like awareness

Stoic serene

Shamanic wisdom seeks wisdom

Wabi-sabi

Everything I do is an experiment

Create happy little accidents

There are no mistakes in art

Art is what everything else is not

Laughter medicine

Spill letters words phrases sentences

Chinese financed damns block flow

(One damn on the Nam Ou River north of Luang Prabang)

+

Sell electricity to Thailand

Lights are on and nobody's home

Lao suffer land fish loss

Environmental damage, economic stress

Downstream in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam

60 million people struggle to survive

Rapid spray...fresh air skin laughter

After she stopped crying

The lonely woman

Killed herself

Where is my face, said her mask

Eating her face


Waif on her own walks along Mekong

In a flow state

Bare structure angular momentum

Ballet dancer on point

Permanently poised

Dance energy sways hips

Shift down all the days walking a gentle rolling

Wu-Wei

    Live your story

Welcome to Earth

Grow Your Soul

Thursday
Nov212019

Dance

“We climbed up. We descended,” said Zeynep breathing through her shamanic mask.

“Is it carved from tribal memories?”

“Masks are symbolic manifestations in diverse cultures. Mask dance is a ritual, worn in a dance trance. Wearing a mask you become the thing you fear the most, your essential nature. Masks hide a human’s consciousness of fear.

“Dance is about process, becoming from stillness, from nothing. Shiva symbolizes the union of space, time and destruction. Dance is ancient magic. People seeking transformation wear masks representing gods or demons. Dance is the incarnation of energy from the source. We are from the source. Have courage to wear your natural face mask. The entire universe is a vast theatre. Death does not exist.”

“Humans evolved their ability to scheme and deceive behind masks,” said Lucky. “How do they manifest compassion and love without projecting guilt and shame on others while wearing their mask?”

“That's an eternal life quest,” said Z. “It requires daily practice and letting go of ego. Cogito ergo sum. They think their mask is reality. It's not. It’s artificial, an illusion, a myth, a projection of their fear.”

“What's your greatest fear is an essential quest-ion. We become the thing we fight the most. Our true self,” said L.

“My greatest imaginary fear is not experiencing truth and bliss beyond the self, passion and cravings,” said Z.

“That’s Nirvana. You break down before you break through. Authentic people confront their shadow. They evolve as a higher being. Scared, conditioned masked ones project their fears and insecurities onto others. It’s a survival behavior, a defense mechanism to avoid being honest and real. To avoid facing their mortality their darkest fear in room 101 the last room you want to enter, they deceive themselves. They lie to themselves and others avoiding the truth. They mask their pain. Truth is painful. Pain and suffering are different. Pain is a sickness leaving the body. Existence is suffering.”

Desire - Attachment - Loss - Suffering

Desire creates suffering. Kindness is a healing energy.

Your mask eats your face.

“Two critical elements of social intelligence are humor and curiosity. Do you remember James Joyce going into exile with silence and cunning?”

“Yes. He knew how to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist. He said, ‘everything I do is an experiment,’” said Z. Exile is a form of suffering.

“So it is. Survival and creativity are raw instincts. Self awareness separates humans from lower life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies-anemone fish eating animals and androgynous androids in the deep subconscious.”

“Writers lie for a living. We make stuff up. We write it down. We treat our mental illness every day. We have stories, poems and adventures to finish we haven’t started yet.”

“Imagined or invented conversations and episodes,” said L.

“Literature is a tool for unveiling, not obscuring the truth. It’s the best way to make fun of people.”

“Literary fiction expounds historical truth.”

“I prefer healthy doubt to certainty. I am more interested in traces than object. My notebook is essential,” said Z.

“We are the only animal who laughs and the only animal who knows they will die. We die every day. We imagine our death, our mortality. This fills some with dread, psychological neurosis, paralysis and lack of purpose. For others it’s a release joy and a dance. To live one has to die at least once. Once you die you realize how to live. Freedom is unconditional.”

“Freedom is an absence of choice. Are you a clown? Perhaps a clownfish?” L said.

“Look in your dream mask mirror. You get the face you deserve. Not all the clowns are in the circus. Let’s dance.”

“When you're looking good you're feeling good and when you're feeling good I just live to see your face.”

“We are wise calm lunatics whether we dance or not so we may as well dance. Let’s invent the world. Let’s invent reality. Wisdom-mind of intent not the emotion mind of fire & water.”

“I’m with you. We were born dead and slowly came to life.”

Flame your life.

The Language Company

Sunday
Mar312019

Dance

My life dance is ambiguity, acceptance, independent detachment and creative imagination.

Dance is isolated yet cooperating and independent. I believe in the magic of dance.

When you dance for a fleeting moment you feel alive.

What do I see? I see a circle of movement, a connected unity, language in space.

There are five rhythms in dance.

You start with a circle. It’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.

Then you have a line from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.

Chaos is next, a combination of a circle and line where male and female energies interact.

This is transformation.

After chaos is the lyrical. A leap. A release. This is air.

The last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.

I’ll dance until I die. What is life?
 Dance.

Nepal

Friday
Mar222019

Along Mekong in Laos

After she stopped crying
The lonely Chinese woman
Killed herself
Being the survivor/victim
Of the one child genocide policy
Afraid to lose face
Afraid her parents will lose face
Afraid her dead ancestors
Eating in sense lose face
 
Where is my face said her mask
Eating her face

 (or)

 Waif on her own walking along Mekong

In a flow state
Bare structure angular momentum
Ballet dancer on point
Permanently poised
Dance energy sway hips
Shift down a gentle rolling

Wu-Wei

Grow Your Soul

Bhaktapur, Nepal