falling queens.

falling queens. solo(nosolos) (all photos Owl Eye Productions)

This project has grown so much, and it's such a joy to be inside its development. We've begun working on falling queens. v.CALI, with a few brave souls trying to get present. I feel so blessed to have had a short residency with Show Box LA, and to have had the opportunities in the last year to work with folks like Danielle Agami / ate9, Sara Shelton Mann, Amara T. Smith/Deep Waters Dance Theater, Luciana Achugar and Ishmael Houston-Jones. Each has given me tools for re-thinking the body as a transmitter of consciousness, as a vessel for the dead.

It is, at times, painful.

Yesterday in the studio I was practicing backward-movement. I was thinking about the leap over the side of the slave ship and if it is possible to re-imagine that moment in reverse. To bring the dead back on-board to be with us, now. All this moving backward, and at some point my arms were out to the side, my body was tilted, and I was suddenly, sharply, reminded of a moment shared with my friend and partner a few days before. It was a simple moment on the beach, we were running like airplanes preparing for take-off. 

Something struck me -- I mean, physically, like a thing striking one's body. The recollection of that moment and all the good feelings attached to it, but out of time. A disruption in the linear flow of time with a physicality that struck me down, and I began to cry uncontrollably. I must've cried for five minutes before I could stop. Really wailing, sobbing. Something out of time had come back into my body and disturbed me; it was beautiful and warm and utterly disturbing.

It's over.

For now. Or whatever. 

The best feedback from tonight, and maybe from all three nights of this ridiculous embodied-fugitive-spirit-trance:

When you all started shaking... and came out on the other end... that was some survival shit.

Indeed. The Darondo track is so relevant, even though I thought it was just a personal addition that I needed to feel good about making this piece in the midst of a breakup. It's actually about trying, as Anissa pointed out -- trying over and over and over again. Trying and pleading and wondering, "Didn't I do the best that I could?"

It's about what Kai Green and Jasiri X and Jessica Pierce discussed the other afternoon on Colorlines, in response to Jessica Smith's assertion that she tells her sons to watch what they say and how they dress for the sake of their own survival. 

It's about desperate attempts to get high, to get lifted, to get understood as right and to understand yourself as right in the process -- in the tradition of all pre-Invisible M(e)n everywhere. 

There's something wrong with you.

Tell me:

Baby, are your troubles dead?

You look back, you should be glad.

Sit down, and let me kiss you.

With 9 days left! Still plenty of time to push us over the edge of the campaign!

I can't express enough how blessed I feel to be in the company of ya'll. Making this small but significant goal, getting your well-wishes and shout-outs on social media, etc -- all of it expresses so much more than just a clap on the back and "Break a leg" or "Merde." It's a solid endorsement in what we are doing, which is directly counter to what the systems we struggle against do every day (best evidenced in the recent racist cases of Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander, or the 76 year old man who just shot and killed his 13 year old black neighbor). To borrow the words ofAnalena Hope, falling queens. is a performative effort to "resist the devaluation of our lives," and your support over the past month has been a vocal affirmation that yes, we do live and breathe and our breath holds all the power of our legacies of resistance. I can't help but think of a good friend who died two years ago, whose free spirit in life and in death instigated so much of this work for me, and to whose memory I dedicated this project.

Thank you to all.

Tonight's show was incredible. We danced to the point of exhaustion and then kept going. We all thought we would collapse, but we didn't. We kept going. We lost our footing and we were groaning and we were in pain, but we kept going. It seemed it would never end, and I looked back to Marie several times to see when or if she would ever stop the music, and she and we just kept going.

It felt amazing; also, awful. And then someone announced the George Zimmerman verdict and my heart sank because really who gives a shit about some art piece where we convene with our dead when actually our dead are dead and the supersystem has no interest in convening with them or us -- our dead are dead but also they are not dead because they are not murdered because there is no murder charge and there is no murderer. Our dead are just people who aren't there anymore; there is no one implicated in their disappearance. One moment they are there, walking home, and the next they are not there. Or one day they are there, walking home, and the next day they are somewhere else (a prison or other imprisoning institution) which is in the position of death. And despite their no longer being here -- despite the fact that they very clearly are here and then are not -- there is no explanation for their disappearance in any person, or in the state, or in a system.. They can not be murdered if no one is charged with murder, and then one wonders if that means they could not have been alive.

Last night was so fun! Why??! 

Something about a rush. It wasn’t our best performance but I think we all felt rather good, and that is not easy to come by.

I had crazy sex dreams last night and woke up tired, but less so than in the past week.

Got a text from Niall and I’m so glad I got to see him in  Tere O’Connor’s Cover Boy this afternoon. Like a real nerd, I had my notepad out the whole time and was scribbling things down like

Whispers — SPIRIT TALKS??, Althea and Darlene what can you do?

VIOLENCE AND LOVE

building. can still use muscle even when losing it

MUSCLING THROUGH

and so on. falling queens. has a lot to do in our 2.5 hour rehearsal before this show tonight at AUNTS. There’s more depth here that we haven’t yet punctured. There’s more to differentiate.

And I’m excited to do this again in our “home space" — in Philly — and to see what it all means there.

From The Ladies by Sara Vaughan:

Death is invisible. Now you see them, now you don't. Out of sight, out of mind. Disappeared. Spirited away. Up in a puff of smoke. Poof. But this isn't how it happens. This is always just one part of the lie. We tell it over and over. We reassure, we wail, and then we leave too. 

… 

We weep for you and you are gone we weep in the trees in the meadow in the leaves in the carpark in the skyway in the architecture in the street. We are standing in the street just standing there we are there win tens treat and we can't stop crying. 

The struggle of dying becomes the struggle of getting home.

Marie and I met today and discussed sound. This thing feels something like cohesive. Everyone else arrives tomorrow evening, and I can't wait; I'm desiring their presence and moving bodies. ...And then my parents and family friends are coming through to watch our rehearsal. I'm incredibly nervous about this, but I need to let it go. It is what it is. We're just practicing being alive, and that's what we'll be doing tomorrow.

Got into the New York space yesterday. It was incredibly useful to just be there and have a rush of ideas about how this thing is really going to look and work. And now I have a wish list for props/set.

FIVE FUR STOLES/SHRUGS

A GIANT SOFT FUR THROW/RUG (LIKE, HUGE, OR SEVERAL SEWN OR HOT GLUED TOGETHER)

LOTS OF SAGE AND INCENSE AND SOME LIGHTERS AND ASH TRAYS

SOFT COTTON HANDKERCHIEFS

A CONTAINER FOR PURE WATER (my original idea of a wash basin is not going to work)

CANDLES, AND OTHER THINGS FOR AN ALTAR:

fabric

flowers

any objects

food and meats and dishes for them

On Saturday, after some especially intense shaking / exorcisms, we read Dead Doe by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. In this poem, the legs of a doe who has died near a bus stop and is being watched by the writer transforms into two white swans. It well describes some of what we are doing, or trying to do. Dead Doe ends (spoiler alert):

And this is the soul: like it or not. Yes: the soul comes down: yes: comes into the deer: yes: who dies: yes: and in her death twins herself into swans:fools us with mist and accident into believing her newfound finery 

and we are not afraid

though we should be

and we are not afraid as we watcher her soul fly on: pairs

as the soul always is: with itself:

  with others.

Two swans…

Child. We are done for

For the first time we ran the full piece. Now I have to deal with the reality that falling queens. is about processing the manifestation of beingness, and there is nothing about that that isn't messy. Sometimes it is quiet and beautiful. Mostly awkward. What's missing are the times when it is loud and raucous, and I need that to be there.

The rewards (occasionally camouflaged), in the midst of self-doubt: 

D saying, "This is real. This is hard and I'm glad it's going to be over. And I'm glad that it's happening right now and that we will have this with each other."

A saying, "I am just realizing that this is a piece about being human together. And that's tough."

M crying in my arms.

J's repeated affirmations and very apparent openings.

M walking out on me on Day 1.

My five minutes of deep frustrated sadness, conjured as a mouth-trumpet player, and Mariana as my witness.

++++++++

I have no idea what I would be doing if I wasn't doing this exact thing right now. 

We've got a piece here. 

Mercury is in retrograde in Cancer, which means unfinished business from old relationships (and habits in those relationships) will keep rearing their frustrating little heads until July 20. One day after the last performance of falling queens. Okay.

I am emotionally exhausted. I feel the emotional weight of my friends, too, and of my dancers, and I am tired. All this adversity, though, is bringing some clarity to the situation:

We are working with the beyond-life; a crew of talented people who are down to go there with each other -- for me as much as for themselves. I have this body that can process and externalize, and there are other bodies who are excited to share this space with me and to use what we've got to imagine possible futures. All possible futures. We've got history, too. And we have love. 

I keep listening to 'The Beautiful Struggle' -- the entire Talib Kweli album. That's what I've got right now, an abundance of it.

As of today, we've also got the ramshackle frameworks of at least two scores. They are bare-bones and need serious committed work, and they are also beautiful. I need to protect these people -- I am anxious about how much protection they need and whether I'm really their man, but I think I must be -- because some of what we are doing both with our bodies and with our energies is far more intense than any of us are equipped to deal with in this space.

Browns Chapel AME Zion Church hymn choir singing with the congregation at Mt. Do Well Baptist Church.

Today was magic. I feel, oddly, at a loss for words to describe it. Only glimpses of references that point to something else, around and outside of the heaving breaths that occurred. Sweat? Spotted grey marble? A dramaturg! Wakefulness? Isolated shaking and pushing and pulling? ...I don't know.... Trust?

Today was all about trust.

This is a bad diary entry. It's poorness has something to do with what Marie mentioned on Saturday in rehearsal (paraphrased):

I can't speak to my post-life self; I can't bring it back here to me. It would be a disservice to it and its wholeness to try to force it back into my broken reality. 

We'll be speaking a lot in heavy exhales from here on out.

Really really strong rehearsal today, though I was initially saddened by everyone being late. But it was cool to have Mariana there from New York, and Marie there documenting. But still, everyone was late or had to leave early. And that is (mostly) because of life, which (in part) is related to struggle. There is a heavy sentiment of struggle amongst many of us right now. I feel weighted and slowed by it. The joy of working out a score and moving our bodies together was dampened by confronting my own inadequacy in the face of friends' and my own trauma/heartbrake/self-disappointment afterward. 

This is how I feel. I wish.