Matt makes 8-Tracks Playlists; Matt makes many 8-Tracks Playlists; he listens to sound subverting narrative and his poetry follows.  In generating this lab, I combined the image of Matt leaning against our giant record player speakers, synching his breath to the vibration, and a yogic exercise in toning the chakras.

While consonant sounds shape the container of words, vowel sounds drive the breath through words.  Thus, each word is more than just a symbol or sign; it is also a gesture. In Lab #3, we used the body as a sounding board.  In this exercise, we will use the body as a generator.

Knowledge of the Chakras is not necessary for completing this exercise, however, it can be interesting to investigate further post-practice to contextualize what your body reveals to you.  Each one of these vowel seeds coordinates with a chakra system and can be used to tone or tune in to the energy in the body.

Begin sitting in a comfortable pose where the spine can be vertical and the sit bones planted (the tuning forks of the body).  Repeat several rounds of the following sequence: OH, OOO, AH, AYE, EEE, NGG, silence.  Feel the breath and sound travel from the lowest part of the belly (OH) through the hips (OOO), into the gut (AHH), the heart (AYE), the throat (EEE), the nasal (NGG—a buzzing), and out the crown of the head (silence).  Repeat anywhere between 10 and 108 times.

Generative

Free-write for 10 minutes.  Read your free-write out loud. (Option: record your reading and blast it through an amplifier).  Listen to the vowel sounds/ the seed sounds/ the breath in your free-write.  What are you drawn to and why?  Pick a section based on its breath/sound NOT on its content/form.  Play and explore the vowel sounds in your body and on the page.  Breath and pulse—the physicality of the moment—informs the capacity for emotion (likewise, emotion informs how we will breathe).  What raw emotions, feelings, thoughts emerge as you arrange and rearrange the words in the section.  What authentic feeling emerges and do you feel safe sharing it?  Arrange the words to compose the breath score for communicating that particular feeling (don’t worry about making “sense”).  Relax into the vibration of your sound, in this moment, in this space.

This exercise is an act in subverting gendered pronouns and exposing the stereotypes/expectations that induce S.H.A.M.E. moments [Should Have Already Mastered Everything moments.] 

 The Shim Sham Shimmy is considered tap dancing’s national anthem.  It was created in the 1920s by Leonard Reed and Willie Bryant to be performed by entire crowds of people (often at the end of the night).  The “shim” refers to the fact that often chorus boys would play chorus girls and chorus girls chorus boys and sometimes even boys dressed as girls dressed as boys, ala Victor Victoria; shims were she-hims.  Expectations and stereotypes were not erased, but rather suspended—hanging, swinging, pushing gender/class/race issues into the subtext, between the steps performed.

In American culture, S.H.A.M.E. moments are often driven by the expectations not just of others perceiving the self, but, also of the self performing for others. 

Generative

List and write your top 5 S.H.A.M.E. moments on a large sheet of paper.

Put on some shoes.  

Drop in some big band/swing kids music, or if you must Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” (it works embarrassingly well for this exercise).  Scuff, shuffle, scrape, scratch, stab, slide, rip the paper with your feet.  Dance all over it.  Dance till you are exhausted.  Till the paper is exhausted. 

Gather up the remaining shreds.  

Renegotiate the words/sounds/phrases/silences/gaps.  Score or choreograph to render the text. Write the rupture, seam, or puncture. What exists in the reach?  

Remediate the list. What remains?