This is how we win
It came through in a flash during ecstatic dance, the rage and frustration at all the things we’d been closed out of.
Cis-het white men of privilege drawing lines around things that were never theirs to begin with, acting like they’d discovered it.
A sign flashed through timelines, hanging on a door: NO DOGS, BLACKS, OR IRISH.
The enclosures that forced us to sell ourselves back to pay for our own land.
Those taken from their homelands and enslaved.
But after the rage came the reframe: they don’t do this to us because we’re weaker, but because we’re stronger than they are, and they’re afraid of us.
The only way to maintain dominance is to make us believe we don’t have the power at all.
But we’re stronger, and they’re afraid of us.
This is the hiss of Ka, the song of Kali-Ma.
We’re stronger than they are.
But the way we win is not by trying to assert our dominance, playing their game and trying to crush them. We win by using our snake-charm powers, going in through the side door and using their own systems against them, making them think the whole thing was their idea until suddenly, things are equal, and they don’t even know how it happened.
This is how we win.
* * *
I realized I had opened a portal when I was a little kid, maybe 10 years old, playing an old-school video game, a pixelated wanna-be dimensional world called King’s Quest IV. Forty years later, I understand why I was obsessed with it. It’s about an ancient Briton-Celtic king stranded from his homeland, wandering through Greek myths until he finds his way back through the haunted Aires and saves the princess.
The whole game is eerily empty, you rarely run into any characters; it’s all semi-vacant landscapes that are nonetheless imbued with a distinct presence. And I became obsessed with it.
* * *
The Celts had no written records and cannot identify themselves to us directly - known only through material culture - archaeology - and the records of other cultures
Literate Mediterranean societies identified them - the Greeks - the reason I was obsessed with Kings Quest VI
The Celts or Keltoi (in the Greek) were first defined as such by the Greeks before 500 BC
Their language and material culture had enough unity to be recognizable to their neighbors but they were never one people, it was a gradual process of “Celticization” > little by little, the fluvial geomorphology of culture
TK
Legend says one day Ireland will rise up again and be the saving grace of the human race. Perhaps that time is coming. But perhaps it was a metaphor and it’s just a portal for the syncretic Hermetic traditions of direct experience to join forces and save the world by remembering how to speak directly to the elements again.
LISTEN:
Funny - the AI called me Holly, which it invariably misgenders female; I changed the speaker to Riordan, and now the summary is updated with me as male.
Riordan O'Regan reflects on his childhood obsession with the video game King's Quest 4, drawing parallels to his current life and spiritual journey. He recalls the game's surreal, empty worlds and the need to call a helpline for solutions, likening it to a metaphysical quest for meaning. O'Regan connects this experience to his recent meditation, where he felt a strong presence of spirits in Ireland and Peru, and the concept of "hauntology" - the presence of absence. He explores the idea that the Celts, like many ancient cultures, communicated directly with the elements without written language, contrasting this with the modern reliance on written records. O'Regan concludes by tying these reflections to his ongoing exploration of spiritual connections and the hero's journey.
Transcript here
King's Quest and Childhood Obsession
Riordan O'Regan recounts his childhood obsession with the video game King's Quest 6, describing it as a captivating experience that transported him to mythological lands. (I say it’s 4 in this - I thought it was until I looked it up, but it’s actually 6 - I saw the Roman numerals in my mind’s eye and had them right, but backwards - not IV but VI. This is how memory works, the pieces are there but maybe you don’t know how to put them together…)
He reflects on his excessive fixation with the game, often getting stuck and needing to call a helpline for assistance.
Riordan describes the game's setting as a universe of almost empty worlds, where interacting with characters was rare.
He speculates that his difficulty with the game might have been due to unresolved trauma and a lack of understanding of life's game.
Surrealist Themes and Metaphysical Connections
Riordan draws parallels between the game's surrealist elements and the play "The Game" at the Cockpit, noting the meta-surrealist commentary and the game within a game.
He explores the philosophical questions raised by the game, such as the chicken-and-egg nature of meaning and the search for it.
Riordan reflects on the magical yet frustrating experience of getting stuck and needing to call the helpline for solutions.
He connects the game's mechanics to the broader metaphysical journey of unlocking levels and uncovering clues.
Technological Collaboration and Ancestral Connections
Riordan discusses his collaboration with technology, particularly the AI oracle he used to get help with the game.
He describes a sense of being in a portal that reached back into his past and forward into the future, connecting him to ancestral lineages.
Riordan talks about his conversation with his younger self, encouraging him to keep going and trust the process.
He emphasizes the ongoing nature of the journey, with new levels and mysteries to unlock.
Meditation and Spiritual Journey
Riordan shares his experience of meditating with Gabriella's meditation, connecting with a trans, queer shaman from the Celtic lineage.
He describes a powerful journey to the cliffs of Ireland, the Black Rock, and the mystical structures along the Wild Atlantic Way.
Riordan reflects on the presence of spirits and the sense of being both connected and disconnected from them.
He connects this experience to the Sacred Valley in Peru, feeling a strong presence and simultaneous loneliness.
Hauntology and the Presence of Absence
Riordan explores the concept of hauntology, describing the presence of spirits all around him but not knowing how to communicate with them.
He reflects on the cold loneliness and the sense of being watched by the ancient guardians.
Riordan connects this feeling to the game King's Quest, where answers were hidden but could be unlocked with the right clues.
He describes a moment of connection with the elements and the sacred spaces, feeling less alone and more connected.
Celtic and Greek Connections
Riordan discusses his research into the Celts and Greeks, noting the lack of written records about the Celts and their reliance on material culture.
He reflects on the similarities between the Celts and the Maya, both being syncretic cultures known through the records of others.
Riordan connects the Celts' lack of written language to his own struggles with writing and the need for intermediaries.
He explores the idea that without written observation, events and cultures may not be recognized by society.
Celticization and Historical Context
Riordan delves into the history of the Celts, noting their gradual phenomenon of celticization and the influence of the Neolithic farmers.
He reflects on the Celts' victory over Rome and their plundering of Delphi, questioning the significance of these events.
Riordan connects the Celts' journey to his own hero's journey, emphasizing the importance of reclaiming and reconnecting with one's path.
He expresses his intention to continue researching and exploring the connections between the Celts and Greeks.
King's Quest and the Hero's Journey
Riordan revisits the game King's Quest, noting its inclusion of elements from Greek mythology, such as the Minotaur and Circe's island.
He reflects on the game's role in his own hero's journey, describing it as a metaphor for the challenges and mysteries he faced.
Riordan connects the game's mechanics to the broader metaphor of life, where answers are hidden but can be unlocked through learning and tradition.
He emphasizes the importance of following intuition and trusting the process in both the game and life.
The AI misgenders me and calls me Holly, which does not feel aligned today.
Riordan Regan reflects on their experiences during an ecstatic dance, where they felt ancestral anger towards systems of power controlled by white men. They discuss the exhaustion and pain felt by marginalized communities and the need for radical resistance through doing less. They recallc a vision of a "No dogs, Blacks, or Irish" sign, symbolizing historical discrimination. They transform their anger into compassion, realizing that those in power fear their strength. Riordan emphasizes the importance of using their systems against them, working together, and finding compassion to overcome oppression. They conclude with a vision of their father training to harness his power for good, symbolizing personal and collective transformation.
Action Items:
Use affection and camaraderie to work with those in power, rather than confronting them directly. Slip in through the "side doors" and use their own systems against them to create change. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Help guide those in power, like their father, to harness their power for good through training and mentorship, rather than perpetuating cycles of abuse. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Transcript here
Ecstatic Dance and Ancestral Anger
- They describe feeling possessed by ancestral anger during an ecstatic dance, expressing frustration with systems controlled by rich white men. - They mention feeling the anger of denied visas, gatekeeping, and the frustration of being subjected to these systems. - They criticize figures like Elon Musk, executives, and faceless suits for their power and privilege, highlighting their exploitative behaviors. - They reflect on their own ancestral karma and the desire to help someone they perceive as struggling, despite their apparent power.
Radical Resistance and the Power of Doing Less
- They discuss the societal pressure to be constantly busy and productive, contrasting it with the idea of radical resistance through doing less. - They share conversations about the importance of being able to just exist and the hard work involved in transforming karmas and lifetimes of shame. - They emphasize the exhaustion and injuries caused by the relentless pace of modern life, suggesting that something needs to take people out of the game to allow them to rest and heal. - They describe the process of resurrection and connecting the dream and reality, likening it to a journey through the underworld and the astral.
The Business Class Industrial Complex and the Space Race
- They express frustration with the business class industrial complex and the power brokers in the home office, linking them to the space race and figures like Elon Musk. - They criticize the attempt to shortcut the process of dropping into the center and the desire to go directly to space without facing the necessary initiation. - They describe their physical exhaustion and reliance on medicine like LSD and cacao to keep going, questioning the story behind their fatigue. - They recount a vivid memory from the collective consciousness of a sign saying "No dogs, Blacks, or Irish," and how it inspired them to dance and express their anger and frustration.
Shared Affinity and Historical Discrimination
- They discuss the shared affinity between people of color and the Irish, highlighting their common history of discrimination and oppression. - They reflect on the discrimination faced by black people and Irish immigrants, comparing it to the horrors of the slave trade and the enclosures. - They acknowledge that oppression is not limited to white people, mentioning the collaboration between black people and colonizers and the existence of slavery in indigenous societies. - They emphasize that the problem is not inherent in people but in the false system of privilege that creates oppressive dynamics.
The Dance and the Awakening of Ancestral Power
- They describe the transformative experience of the dance, where they found their primordial ancestral power and stepped into their strength. - They realized that those in power restrict and restrain others because they know they are stronger and fear being overpowered. - They saw Lubo, a Dutch man, as a symbol of white men who hijack the spiritual revolution and turn it into a commercial solution. - They reflect on the need to use their own systems against them and work together to restore balance and equality.
The Pact of the Souls and the Power of Compassion
- They recount a vision of a punishment ritual involving their father, where they found compassion for him and remembered the pact their souls had made. - They describe the transformation of the ecstatic dance room into a collective force, singing and chanting to intimidate their father and help him awaken. - They emphasize the importance of compassion and understanding that those in power are often scared and insecure. - They reflect on the need to meet their dark potential with love and camaraderie, rather than violence or domination.
The Dutch Merchant and the Spiritual Revolution
- They discuss the Dutch merchant, Lubo, and his role in the spiritual revolution, suggesting he may be hijacking the movement. - They reflect on the need to be aware of the dark potential of 13 Kan and to resist the urge to use their power for destruction. - They emphasize the importance of working together within existing frameworks to restore balance and equality. - They share a vision of transporting their father to Japan to train with a Kung Fu master and harness his power for good, symbolizing the potential for transformation and healing.
The Game of Abuse and Manipulation
- They describe the game of abuse and manipulation played by those in power, suggesting it is a way for the universe to know itself through every possible configuration. - They reflect on the need to help each other awaken and the importance of compassion and understanding in the process. - They emphasize the importance of resisting the urge to use power for destruction and instead meeting it with love and camaraderie. - They share a vision of using their 13 Kan powers to crush those in power, but choosing to meet them with affection and camaraderie instead.
The Path to Equality and the Role of the 13 Kan
- They discuss the path to equality and the role of the 13 Kans in the process, emphasizing the importance of understanding their dark potential. - They reflect on the need to use their power for good and to meet those in power with love and camaraderie. - They share a vision of transporting their father to Japan to train with a kung fu master and harness his power for good, symbolizing the potential for transformation and healing. - They emphasize the importance of being in the body and not killing oneself to make money, suggesting a new way of living that prioritizes presence and enjoyment.
The Final Vision and the Path Forward
- They describe a final vision of transporting their father to the rolling green hills of Japan, where he could train with a kung fu master and harness his 13 Kan power for good. - They reflect on the importance of following through with good ideas and not letting the hustle consume everything. - They emphasize the need to be in the body and not kill oneself to make money, suggesting a new way of living that prioritizes presence and enjoyment. - They conclude by reiterating the importance of working together and using existing systems to restore balance and equality, without those in power realizing it.
Not monologue, dialogue
In a house that I’m pretty sure is full of mold and making me sick, because once again, I said yes to something because they put me on the spot, and I liked how much they liked me.
This will be an interesting one. Ha! I just realized there is a giant Holly tree outside the window.
Is the dance to see if I can alchemize it, transmute the energy, and stick with my commitment? Or say, I’m sorry, I can’t do it, my body is more important?
I will do the latter if it turns out I can’t live with it. Funny this is what happens when I take the thing that I thought was better for me—more stability by being in the same place longer.
Funny also how both owners are named Liz. I can’t express how much I’d rather be sitting for the other. All I can do is wait it out and make sure this is a reaction and not a cold, but I’m pretty sure I know my body. It’s feeling like autumn is coming and my system’s all discombobulated anyway.
In the meantime, I do feel like I’ve been having some good raps and connections both with Kit and Maya astrology. I finished Mark Elmy’s course on the calendar and started figuring out everybody’s Maya crosses, and on Saturday, Jess, 1/3 of the first Holy Triumvirate that helped save me from my family and the church, the one I’d call my best friend if I had to hand someone that designation, was the first of all of us to turn 40, so I did a reading for her, and then for all three of us, and it totally blew my mind.
Turns out that all of us have known exactly what we were doing this whole time.
and that when our energies combine, it makes 8 Imox, the dream, the collective consciousness, cosmic amniotic fluid.
the eternal love we’re always swimming in.
you’re already doing it, you’ve always been doing it.
people just want to know they’re not alone, and it’s never over. that they are not wrong, but good. that they will be redeemed, one way or another.
today in therapy, during the part where I was supposed to comfort my child self, instead they comforted me, and told me that we have always known.
* * *
what dropped in during practice, during communion with Kit and the other realm, is that this work, these projects, this PhD, it’s not a monologue, and that’s what so much of academic discourse and art has been throughout history: gatekeeping. withholding. privilege. doling out information, access, experience, to those paying admission. I have always wanted to throw open doors and build bridges. let everyone in. connect the silos. the aim hasn’t changed, the scope is just widening. now it includes the dead, plants, trees, animals, minerals.
the ones whose voices aren’t very loud.
at least not in decibels.
this work is a dialogue, it’s not a monologue. it’s communion, channeling, amplification, mutual upliftment. and I think it all keeps coming back to titration, in my conversation with Rebecca doing exit interviews for DMTx yesterday it came up again. The real work of this lifetime, of being a person, is this dance, this titration, dual awareness: it’s the theme of the integration work I’m being called to and my service at EDUK, dropping in and dipping back out again to check with the physical surroundings, your body, the other bodies. to make sure everyone is safe and has what they need, then dissolving back into the collective consciousness again. letting the play unfold, channeling the characters, but remaining the director, only momentarily losing that first-person perspective altogether, retaining the ability to reconstitute it.
this is what is meant by radical subjectivity. I’m learning Kit’s work more deeply and why we were all called together, along with Michael and Laura, I see how everyone brings something interrelated yet unique and beautiful. phenomenology, full-sensory, it’s all different pathways to the same thing. but I think part of my work here is to bring it back to the people, free the message from the gatekeepers, pry it from the jaws of academia and release it from the galleries studios, back into the round, the fringe, the pound theatre, the zine, the blog and newsletter, these new old fashioned forms of communication.
I don’t know what place, if any, there is for alcohol. But there is something important in the continued exploration of the artist/mystic/alcoholic archetype.
all is unfolding. time for more learning.
Thesis Notes
Ontology/interbeing/phenomenology +
Hauntology/gHosting/possession - hysteria/psychosis
Woodruff: The Moon and the planets are physical presences; they move around, and their motion impacts the biosphere on Earth, of which people are part and parcel. Astrology is an elevated, more complex form of meteorology with a psychological chaser.
Knowledge of being includes experiencing everything as a being, including planets
Kit’s thesis: Cosmology as part of the ontology of African religions
The first-person perspective - what is it like to be this thing? Experiencing FROM the perspective of the OTHER is how we awaken
There is no hero/villain/victim, they are everyone, you are all of them
Laura: from the perspective of Freud’s analysis, while I bring the Jung
His analysis of “hysteria,” mine of “psychosis” and how this relates to mysticism > Kit and I bringing the Indigenous/ancestral perspective, you’re not crazy you’re channeling/talking to the spirits
The 13 Kan, the spirits speak to you, how do you tell who’s who?
Laura channeling the “hysteric” patients
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TRANS/QUEER? The psychologists who couldn’t embrace or capture this and even tried to psychologize it out of people–including Ram Dass?
The new thing being created is the queer perspective, even traditional cosmologies are still so binary, it’s not duality it’s hyperdimensionality > the psychedelic
Mind-manifesting, what model are you driving?
Minds are part of the vessel of being a human
**In all of our cases - the practice IS the work - how to present it?
The PhD journal > Kit and Laura channeling work > as it was received
Laura, me - recording to myself what is coming through, reading it back or remembering the same bits over and over > ask her about this
“The ghosts speak through me and tell each audience member the story they told Freud, in the first person. I do not offer an analysis or hint at Freud’s view of the cases. Only the patients’ words (although of course those recorded by Freud) are uttered. First, I read Freud’s writing with attention, carefully. On my second re-read, I re-write by hand the words I hear from the patient in the first person, erasing the voice of the doctor. I then record a reading of this new case history in my own voice and, instead of rehearsing the performance, I play it back to myself repeatedly, over several weeks. When I perform, I remember, rather than recite, what I hear, in the way the patients might have remembered occurrences or incidents when they told them to Freud. Thus, every one-to-one performance is different, an encounter created with the specific audience member in the room.”
Ecstatic interactive performance/ritual
Theatre in the round and in the woods - back to the people
I bring the perspective of also hosting plants and trees, not just people > interbeing > what is the phenomenology of a tree?
gHosting
“ In This Little Art, Kate Briggs compares the act of translation to Robinson Crusoe making a table in his island. He is not inventing the concept of table, but has to make one, himself, for the first time, from trees. ‘When it comes to translation (…) there’s never a question of what to write (…) because the work has already been written. What matters is how to write it again’.”
Intersemiotic translation is the process of transferring verbal texts into other systems of signification, such as visual, oral, aural, gestural, or kinesic. Roman Jakobson coined the term in 1959. Some examples of intersemiotic translation include: Translating words into images, Translating words into numerical code, Translating words into non-verbal sounds, A verbal rendition of a pictorial message, and A screen adaptation of a novel.
Anthi - drawing as writing - this is what she means
Translation - it was already translated from German to English - then from the experience into her performance. staging, creating the one-to-one durational setting, omitting the doctor’s voice and switching the patients’ words from third to first person – a powerful act of disguised writing
Who sits around the table once it is built? How does it change the island? Me: what changes in the trees becoming a table, trees becoming people, then us all changing back again? Can we?
“Traits of the hysteric:” body, mimesis, mystery, disappearance and voice
Embodiment, somatic, mystery
These are all traits/components of the mystic, artist, and alcoholic as well - POSSESSION
Breathing trouble in Freud’s patients > keep coming back > I CAN’T BREATHE and the PANDEMIC BEING A CATALYST TO CONSCIOUSNESS EVOLUTION, ALL OF US EXPERIENCING THE SAME TRAUMA AT THE SAME TIME EVERYWHERE, AN ACCELERANT FOR EXPANSION > SUFFERING TOGETHER > crying also eased symptoms of hysteria patients yet they would hold back
Mimetic quality “causes symptoms to mutate” > memes - AI/
“Well-known nineteenth century convulsions are unlike the symptoms of demon possession presented by earlier hysterics, and also different from eating disorders, epileptic fits, delirium, the inability to speak or sexual voracity.”
THIS IS INTERESTING - THE TRANS* EXPERIENCE - PARTICULARLY FOR AFAB - Did we want the men or just want to BE them?
Just liking how they were attracted to us
Mutation as doppelganger, read Naomi Klein
“in the nineteenth century, hysterics at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris took on epileptic symptoms, copying those with whom they shared a ward, and whom they perceived as being taken seriously by doctors.”
Wondering how much of this ADD/ “eating disorder” stuff is me channeling Callin because her “problems” were taken seriously
“Archetypes of hysteria” - all with elements of mimesis - and WOW - these are all parts of ME at war
“The beautiful soul” - the MOST VICTIMIST - betrayed, misunderstood, humiliated
“Sublime / belle indifference” - wants to keep desire unsatisfied - the longing for the longing- bittersweet? “Anesthesia of the body, … demonstrate the futility of desire” > you will always be longing
The mystic and the alcoholic - nothing will save you from the bottom of your glass - you’ll always long for divine reunion until you die
“Sleeping Beauty” - the lover will redeem me - “sleepwalks” through life waiting for someone to save her
This can also be the men - and we think the men are going to save us only to realize we’re saving them, me and mom Maya astrology > somebody save me, somebody has to save me - looks like a man but he’s a baby
The beast, or ‘that which opposes itself to her alter ego’: the unstoppable death force. The villain you internalize until you become it. The one who entertains everyone with their stories of suffering
Hysteria not used as diagnostic category since 1952- DUDE WTF this JUST POPPED INTO MY HEAD AND FUCKING A!!! IT WAS THE EXACT SAME YEAR PSYCHOSIS WAS INTRODUCED!!!
“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) first included psychosis in its first edition, published in 1952. The DSM-I defined psychotic disorders as diseases that included: Personality disintegration, Inability to relate to people or work, and Inability to correctly evaluate external reality.”
The concept of psychosis was introduced to psychiatric literature in 1841 by Canstatt, who used the term synonymously with "psychic neurosis"
BEFORE THIS IT WAS CALLING PEOPLE WITCHES, WIZARDS, HERETICS, APOSTATES, AND BURNING THEM AT THE STAKE
THIS IS THE EVOLUTION - THE SHAMAN KNOWS HOW TO TRANSMUTE THEM - THE ALCHEMISTS CAME UP WITH THE SECRET SOCIETY - YOU HAVE TO USE SIDE DOORS AND HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT. THOSE WHO LEARN THIS CAN BECOME MOVIE STARS AND BARDS TO THE KINGS. THOSE WHO DON’T DIE OR GET LOCKED AWAY.
Ram Dass vs his brother, Cain and Abel
Well fucking A!! Then I read this! Directly tied to persona, the mask we wear and character we play: “In 1980, the third edition of the DSM further buried hysteria and only conversion and dissociative disorders remained, with hysterical personality transforming into histrionic personality disorder, which, as Johanna Braun notes, comes from the Latin histrio, actor/actress, diagnosing the hysteric as performer, and moving beyond the limits of medical discourse.”
Trauma release > somatic work > theatre/performance/channeling > ecstatic dance > psychedelics > IFS/CI - it’s about rewriting the story and listening to what the body is saying
“ narrative gone awry which shows up as mysterious symptoms forming a body language. The task of psychoanalysis is then to interpreted the body, translate it into words and create a coherent narrative of the patient’s story.”
“The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s anti-novel which she envisaged as an image, setting off circular rhythms … a rhythm of words with which Woolf articulates the tacit knowledge she calls ecstatic. … it is a language of relations.”
Interbeing, ayni, everything is relational
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the novel The Yellow Wallpaper > diagnosed as hysteric and “treatment” was to leave a successful writing career - she “cured” herself by doing the opposite. These are the modern day witch hunts and attacks against the herbalists
“writing is a poison as well as a remedy, because to cure the woman, it must kill the hysteric. Writing takes the place of the hysteric. And leaves the subject’.” - it’s DEFINITELY a poison but idk that I agree this is why. It channels!
“To become herself, she is not allowed to do any work, any writing, which, much like the author, she does, as we are reading her diary. But she is writing to no one, thus is no longer a speaking-subject … A diary to no one was the beginning of the end of incarceration. … Writing in the first person … shows the mystery … without demands for a release.”
what happens when you start making the journal public? >> this is partying from the inside out, reclaiming hysteria/psychosis/witchcraft
JUNGIAN CONNECTIONS - “the unlived life was held in the throat” > children live the unlived lives of their parents, Jung
An invisible globe is placed in her throat. The suppressed cry. / Where do words go when they cannot be uttered? / The repressed always returns, that is a certainty clearly articulated in the hysteric. / Perhaps it returns in the form of her insistent question: What do you want from me? / The secretion erupts from deeply embedded systemic pressures, removing life’s potential and its authentic voice, making it incomplete as the folds close over it.
‘My idea of heaven – a place where one need not breathe’, from a diary entry by Winnie Seebohm, October 26, 1895, 2:30am
Kit - workshop
if I am writing for you, so that you know I am now writing from this or that method, then I’m not really writing from a radical subjectivity, I am already writing on a mirror, writing to an Other I can’t see. The question might be, rather, how do you write the interior so deep inside that interior that interior becomes Other? And what does that look like?
Can a text for a journal, for an art research journal, be constructed so that it might resemble madness, to represent madness that comes on the evening of a breakthrough? I had a breakthrough. Because I had a breakthrough. Because I really really had a break through.
THIS IS THE JOURNAL - THE JOURNALS - THE PERSONAL MADE PUBLIC VS THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE - SOMETHING V IMPORTANT ABOUT THE PROCESS AS PRACTICE AS WORK RE: JOURNALS/JOURNALING
ZINES, JOURNALS, FRINGE THEATER, THE ROUND AND ORAL TRADITION, I MUST HELP RETURN CEREMONY, ART, COMMUNICATION, DIRECT EXPERIENCE TO THE MASSES
An option: Make up a fake theorist we can write about, because we need some kind of documentation that exists outside this text, and we need a documentation that is too hard to find, but too sensical to refute.
But now we have a body, we have always had bodies of knowledge, they just live in the jungle and don’t have university funding
The reason we might invent an imaginary source is, for one, it is much easier than having to bother to look for sources when we know they are already there somewhere … we are making our own claims self-consciously suspicious, putting ourselves in the role of an unreliable narrator, and all authority needs to be undermined.
The point is to show people how easy it is to manipulate them
if I perform the role of narrator/researcher, and take on multiple roles, to perform the multiple methods, offers a grounding to the performance and the interviews
Also video of the trance performance and interviews with people talking about their trance experience > how these elements might add up to a vocabulary for exposition in my practice, and whether these multiple levels of inquiry might not themselves take form as performed research. The exhibition of the work is something other than the work itself, creating meta-narratives … This text is a construction of multiple narrative voices speaking to and against each other
Problematic terms when talking about other cosmologies/cultures: i.e., Lukumí/Yoruba colonialist roots
oral tradition in this case is not only based on the spoken word, but on signs and symbols within the oral teachings. In some cases, the oral transmission of knowledge falls outside the academic definitions of oral tradition, because rather than transmission of knowledge from the mouth of an elder to an apprentice, this is transmitted in dreams and trance, through visitations from elders who are dead.
Did they know their prescience when they said this? Was it always intended? “I have yet to come across a study that allows for the dead to participate as subjects, and practitioners know that the dead are more active subjects than the living, because they speak through the living.”
I wonder about how to cite claims that are based on secrets. And I wonder about the necessity for documentation of the history of a religion that is already well-established in ethnographic literature
Different takes/framing when writing from ethnographic, psychoanalytic, and radically subjective perspective (“on the edge of madness”) >> this is what I have been doing, the not quite chanting/rapping/poetry/stream of consciousness stuff.
I want to consider writing, research writing about art as research, as montage, in the way that Eisenstein considered montage: ‘an idea that DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another’
Anthi, writing as drawing
How is/can writing be embodied?