PGR Meeting on Ralph’s Crossing Threshold / Thesis of the Dead
and we had a PGR meeting on this day
TRANSCRIPT:
Regan, Riordan
started transcription
Regan, Riordan
0 minutes 3 seconds0:03
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 3 seconds
Let me let me I'm gonna forget.
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Michael Bowdidge
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Michael Bowdidge 0 minutes 3 seconds
Oh, sorry.
Michael Bowdidge 0 minutes 4 seconds
Go on.
Regan, Riordan
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Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 4 seconds
I'm gonna forget it if I don't ress it.
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 8 seconds
So the mossman.
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 10 seconds
Yeah, the Mosman scared the **** out of me because it seemed like it was this ghost that was stalking everybody. And just I remember at the time being like, well, what's the point of this?
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 19 seconds
Why would there be a universe where there's just like a ghost that stalks you and is like, everyone's gonna ******* die if there's nothing you can do about it?
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 26 seconds
Or was the point that he was supposed to do something about it and he didn't figure it out in time. And then, like, what kind of moral is that to a story?
Regan, Riordan 0 minutes 35 seconds
And now I think it's like if they knew how to engage with the Mothman directly and have, like, if they just sat down and talked to the ****** ******, he probably would have told them exactly what to do so.
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Michael Bowdidge
0 minutes 46 seconds0:46
Michael Bowdidge 0 minutes 46 seconds
Mm hmm.
Regan, Riordan
42 minutes 30 seconds42:30
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 30 seconds
OK.
Potter, Roy Claire
42 minutes 31 seconds42:31
Potter, Roy Claire 42 minutes 31 seconds
It's shorter than that, yeah.
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Michael Bowdidge
42 minutes 32 seconds42:32
Michael Bowdidge 42 minutes 32 seconds
Three to four for practice, isn't it? Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Potter, Roy Claire
42 minutes 33 seconds42:33
Potter, Roy Claire 42 minutes 33 seconds
Yeah, yeah.
Regan, Riordan
42 minutes 35 seconds42:35
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 35 seconds
Really short for all that, OK.
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Michael Bowdidge
42 minutes 37 seconds42:37
Michael Bowdidge 42 minutes 37 seconds
To be honest, it goes over a bit.
Michael Bowdidge 42 minutes 39 seconds
I it's probably not the end of the world, you know.
Potter, Roy Claire
42 minutes 41 seconds42:41
Potter, Roy Claire 42 minutes 41 seconds
Yeah.
Regan, Riordan
42 minutes 42 seconds42:42
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 42 seconds
OK, well in here to like, I feel like we should have a whole separate meeting about this maybe. But like, because this is where the alternative like citation approaches come in.
Regan, Riordan 42 minutes 57 seconds
And I I spent like all the time since getting the news about Ralph, like reaching out to various other teachers of mine, because now I'm all of a sudden kind of like, oh, I see now where this is going to come in. And this is going to come.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 8 seconds
In and this is going to come in and like there's some nontraditional methods.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 12 seconds
That that are going to be a part of this, including the dieta.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 17 seconds
You know ayahuasca like I'm being alone in the jungle for a month.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 23 seconds
Like there's gonna be some things.
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 27 seconds
With different citations and that'll just be a weird meta brain melting precisely.
Potter, Roy Claire
43 minutes 34 seconds43:34
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 34 seconds
Yeah, I think.
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 35 seconds
I think it's an exciting part of the project. I think because it's a real challenge to categorisation.
Regan, Riordan
43 minutes 43 seconds43:43
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 43 seconds
Yeah.
Potter, Roy Claire
43 minutes 44 seconds43:44
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 44 seconds
In on the terms of the Academy, which is what I really like about it.
Regan, Riordan
43 minutes 49 seconds43:49
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 49 seconds
Yeah, yeah. Well, it is a fun kind of like. Oh, yeah. How do you like them citations?
Potter, Roy Claire
43 minutes 55 seconds43:55
Potter, Roy Claire 43 minutes 55 seconds
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm all about that.
Regan, Riordan
43 minutes 59 seconds43:59
Regan, Riordan 43 minutes 59 seconds
Yeah. And I do think that's like a big part of this project that's felt like important all along. Just the kind of like, I don't know, when bringing, like the trickster element into that as well. Like, this is funny. These things we feel like we need to do.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 5 seconds44:05
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 5 seconds
Hmm.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 15 seconds44:15
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 15 seconds
As humans, to prove stuff that, like mushrooms, have been telling us since the beginning.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 19 seconds44:19
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 19 seconds
Mm hmm.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 19 seconds44:19
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 19 seconds
Of time. Like, OK, cute. You want a citation?
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 22 seconds
Here you go.
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 23 seconds
This is literally what I heard from a mushroom. So.
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 29 seconds
Yeah.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 29 seconds44:29
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 29 seconds
Right, Roy. Then on that note, I've got a buzz off to my next meeting.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 33 seconds44:33
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 33 seconds
Yeah, me too. OK.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 35 seconds44:35
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 35 seconds
I will send you that list of links and stuff in a second.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 38 seconds44:38
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 38 seconds
Thank you.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 39 seconds44:39
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 39 seconds
Lovely catching up with you all.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 41 seconds44:41
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 41 seconds
You too, great, and you might.
LG
Laura Gonzalez
44 minutes 41 seconds44:41
Laura Gonzalez 44 minutes 41 seconds
It's really good to see you.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 43 seconds44:43
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 43 seconds
You might get the transcript, Roy.
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 45 seconds
So if you do, can you just send it to me?
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 47 seconds44:47
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 47 seconds
Oh yeah, sure.
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 47 seconds
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no bother.
Regan, Riordan
44 minutes 49 seconds44:49
Regan, Riordan 44 minutes 49 seconds
OK.
Potter, Roy Claire
44 minutes 50 seconds44:50
Potter, Roy Claire 44 minutes 50 seconds
Take care, guys. Bye.
LG
Laura Gonzalez
44 minutes 51 seconds44:51
Laura Gonzalez 44 minutes 51 seconds
Take care, guys. Bye bye.
Regan, Riordan
stopped transcription
*(Important) Transdimensional treasure hunt
Kit is speaking. Distinctly if not directly distinguishably. I see xem clearly, transported back to when I was living at Jill’s house last summer, walking up to the zoo to draw animals with the fresh scent of the jungle in my nostrils, hapé caked at the corners, talking to xem on time-delay over voice note, feeling unworthy of xir precious last Earthly energy. I was called to upload xir voice notes to Otter and I have a new perspective now, and am now not in shame but humbled and so grateful, xe clearly did sign up for this multidimensional mentoring thing, part of me keeps trying not to believe, but I can’t not.
The seeds were planted then for the Maya theatre project, I didn’t quite understand it then but now it makes all the sense in the world.
It’s not about me and my art. That was a little-kid part that wanted to be seen, all the exiles who didn’t get to live their dreams, and the ones who want to give dad the finger; I was letting them steer, and they needed to get it out of their system, but I’m becoming so grounded in that not really being my purpose.
My dharma is about helping people reconnect to themselves, each other, and the Earth; rediscover their own indigeneity; and find their expression.
This is why Kit, this is why I met Sophie and she offered me this opportunity at the devising workshop. This is part of the call of Meso- and South America: because the land that is cracking open my heart and transforming my soul must be held in sacred reciprocity, and I want to give back, and maybe this is how I do that—by helping people transmute their pain the way I did as a kid, turning it into theatre; putting their pain up on the stage to speak its name and be trans-formed, keeping their history alive like a secret through oral tradition when the oppressors took the records from them and got it twisted.
The Rabinal Ache is performed at the end of February, and there are groups trying to revive and preserve it; I think this is what Kit’s ex-wife was doing, but xe never gave me her name that I can recall, or her organization. I think it might be mentioned in one of xir writings; Laura just remembers that her name is Tamera. I am on a mission.
This is fun. Like a transdimensional treasure hunt, following the trail through scraps of transdimensional memories, dreams, and reflections.
Like another labyrinthine late-nineties adventure-PC game, Treasure Quest, that sucked me into its atemporal Neptunian landscapes as a kid.
I was feeling called to a similar cultural production in Colombia, I think, that someone was asking for help with through the Wisdom Keepers Patreon. I felt called to reach out to them; having just found out that I was accepted to the ArteSumapaz residency in Colombia (!!!!), this all seems to be lining up…
One of the stated goals of my exhibition for the summer residency, and a driving principle: “To engage with surveillance and archiving through the lens of consent, inclusivity, and radical subjectivity.”
THE MORE RADICALLY SUBJECTIVE, THE MORE UNIVERSAL IT GETS
From my notes last summer, reading Kit’s thesis:
(I’m not positive what’s me and what’s xem, the styles and subjects are so similar, but I think I’m the italics only)
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
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 xe know xir prescience when xe 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?
…
Criteria for ethical practice:
first, drawing frameworks from the cultural system itself (i.e., from Lukumí and/or Palo, rather than a European ritual framework);
second, maintaining the respectful distance necessary for ethical intercultural practice, with attention to the tradition’s transcultural nature;
third, taking a position of radical subjectivity from within the ritual system (vs. the position of a performance practitioner borrowing from world ritual culture as though it were a palette).
Safety: discussion of techniques in cultural ritual context and how they are different in this modified form; 2 participants stay lucid in case someone needs help; consensual approach where performers can stop when uncomfortable
performers were given mirrors charged w spiritual energy so they could stop/control the flow
DUDE WTF!! THIS WAS LITERALLY THE IDEA I HAD AND THEN I THOUGHT PEOPLE WOULD THINK IT WAS STUPID - to do a ceremony/ritual on stage as part of a one person show (then six months later, I did do it…)
Both Mendieta and Kantor are part of the mis-en-scène they create. Mendieta’s body is indelibly burned or otherwise imprinted in many of her more famous works, like a ghost. Kantor is present, sitting to the side of the playing area, serving to remind the spectator that the performance one is seeing is through Kantor’s point of view. This radical subjectivity interwoven into their work makes the ritual nature of their work likewise entirely subjective.
The viewer, or the spectator, is not an active participant, or witness to an authentic rite, but is instead watching someone else go through an elaborate rite.There is a spiritual dimension here, but it is just out of reach. This creates a tension where the viewer or the spectator or the audience is left to resolve their own subjective experience.
“New mestiza” = identity formed by crossing borders
“Many ways to cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the normal” - overlapping and intersecting the experience of Chicanas on US/Mexico border
Mestiza consciousness is a new form “characterized by a unique awareness of the functions of power that construct this form of subjectivity … [where] those who are constituted as abnormal transgressors have gained a tolerance not only for duality but for multiplicity and ambiguity.”
“Her thinking resists binaries that structure dominant ways of knowing, including subject-object, normal-abnormal, and English-Spanish”
Trans* resists being bound by any conception of gender and sexuality even as it claims them–it is quantum, inherently paradoxical, a particle and a wave at the same time, all genders and none at once. It becomes one intersection when you observe it and then rejoins the rainbow wave like the monks that dissolve into rainbow bodies
I share Anzaldua’s “preoccupation with the inner life of the self, and with the struggle of that Self amidst adversity and violation; with the confluence of primordial images; with the unique positions consciousness takes at these confluent streams; and with my almost instinctive urge to communicate, to speak, to write about life on the borders, life in the shadows.”
KIT CROSSED THE BORDER TO THE OTHER REALM, RICHARD CROSSED THE BORDER TO THE OTHER REALM, AND THEY BOTH WROTE ABOUT BORDER-CROSSING AND NEO-MESTIZ(X) IDENTITY BEFORE THEY SLIPPED THROUGH THE PORTAL
WHAT DOES THE TRANSDIMENSIONAL MESTIZ(X) IDENTITY LOOK LIKE? THIS IS TRANS* AS EMERGENT ARCHETYPE, THE BEING THAT CAN INHABIT BOTH LIVING AND DEAD, SPIRIT AND MATTER AT ONCE
Richard, from “The Crossing”:
“Their children were, or would be, mestizos, part of a new and burgeoning race re-populating Mexico after its 16th-century apocalypse; by this time, the Spanish invasion and its wave of alien plagues, such as smallpox — along with war and its cousin, famine — had killed all but 2 million of Mexico’s 15 to 30 million native people.” (p35)
“just as the Manso and Jumano increasingly melted into the Apache, so did the Spanish and European into the newest race in the world: the mestizo, that uniquely Mexican fusion of native and European (namely Iberian) bloodlines. But genetics aside, the culture that developed here on the high Chihuahuan desert would be decidedly different than its predecessors, growing into its sparse and harsh environs — just like the mustang.”
“But most importantly, it was during this period that distinctions between races began to fall away. The Belgians, Germans, and other Europeans, for example, melted into the thousands of other Spanish subjects. They learned the languages and customs of their ruler and fellow settlers alike. The native people often spoke Spanish now. White, European men frequently married and settled down with native women, Pueblo and Manso, and many of the newest generation of adults and leaders were known as coyotes, mestizos, and ladinos. Coyote was just another word for half-breed; mestizo was the mix of European and native blood; and the word ladino was adopted from faraway Spain where it was employed to label Spanish Jews. Some were Black men, slaves freed to become soldiers, who married into the Pueblo culture or took Tlaxcalan wives: women descended from the original Mexican indigenous troops who helped conquer New Mexico.
This budding tradition of intermarriage was, of course, inherited from the Native American people — who would marry into other bands and tribes altogether — as well as the Spanish, who had intermarried with Jews and even their greatest enemy, the Moors, at least between wars. El Paso represented a turning point in American history, in sharp contrast to the English colonies of the East Coast: here and in the Southwest, color and creed were not obstacles to toiling together, fighting together for survival, nor even to that most sacred human sacrament: marriage. In the English colonies that would come to dominate the American story, however, nothing could be further from reality. From Massachusetts southward, the English tradition of dividing whites from everyone else — especially Black people — was the norm that would rule the day. That part of America was enmeshed in the original sin of slavery from 1619 onward, along with segregation and seething hatred. Intermarriage, even with Native Americans, was rare and roundly scorned. As historian Jennifer Agee Jones wrote of the English colonies:
While settlers may have had the opportunity, very few such unions took place in the colonial era. Powerful psychological barriers prevented most Europeans from marrying Indians. That the Indians were "wild" people without knowledge of Christianity convinced many that marrying them was dangerous to one's soul. Other newcomers felt less constrained by cultural boundaries and easily shed the trappings of their culture to marry the native way. To colonial officials, such actions provided evidence that the wild land and its inhabitants were a temptation to those struggling to maintain godly communities on the frontier. Such renegades served as a symbol of religious and cultural degeneration that could ultimately undermine colonial endeavors.
Because intermarriage would have proven a means of assimilation between the two groups, its absence underscores the most irreconcilable divisions between Europeans and Indians. The attitudes that prevented Europeans from marrying the natives were the same attitudes that governed most interactions between the two peoples in the seventeenth century. The failure of the two groups to marry one another was one component of a larger failure to cohabit peacefully in seventeenth-century North America.” (p 140-142)
“For much of its three centuries, the El Paso region had been part of a multicultural society of Europeans, mestizos, and Native Americans as part of either Mexico or New Mexico, both politically and culturally. Indeed, there were frequent movements to break away from Texas and become part of New Mexico, or even to form a new state altogether. But now the long arm of segregation reached from Reconstruction-era Texas to the Rio Grande. The laws of Jim Crow twisted a society centuries in the making, dividing it by hue of skin, color, and language.” (p301)
LA POCHA NOSTRA ALSO TALKS ABOUT THIS—I just reached out to Balitroníca yesterday
To honor Kit means to learn:
"Xe": is used as the subject pronoun (e.g., "Xe is going to the store") - "zee"
"Xir": is used as the possessive pronoun (e.g., "That's xir book") - "zeer"
"Xem": is used as the objective pronoun (e.g., "I saw xem at the park") - “zeem”
"Xirs": is used as the possessive pronoun (e.g., "That book is xirs") - “zeers”
Examples:
"Xe is a talented artist, and xir paintings are beautiful."
"I met xem at the library, and xir was very friendly."
"That is xirs car, and xe drives it to work."
"I saw xir yesterday, and xe said the book was xirs."
Voice memo from Kit, 6.20. 24 / LISTEN
Uh, hey, there, hey there. Ferdinand, hey, there. Um, hey, this is kit calling. Um. I'll try to keep this like short ish, um, but yeah, I just wanted to touch base and stuff and say hey. And, yeah, it was great talking earlier today. And, oh, God, you didn't talk too much at all. That was really interesting, um. And it's a really good, really good for me to hear, like all of the different, you know, like the different contextual information and stuff like we said about, about what the kind of work that you do and the kind of work that you're looking looking to do. Um, and so I was thinking, I was thinking further about it too. And there, there are a couple couple of books of auto theory that you probably know about, that might be really relevant to me. That may be or may not be relevant, I'm not sure, but one I was thinking, of course, you probably know the writing of Paul Preciado. It's P, R, E, C, I, A, D, O, and I, he's a trans mask. And actually, his testo junkie is amazing. I mean, I read it, I didn't understand it, you know, it was one of but I got a lot of it. It's super, super, way over my head. And so, so, so smart and so brilliant, but in a way like he makes himself his own practices research project, as he talks about about transitioning and things and all of the different pseudo pharmacological empire and all of this deep state kind of fast. It's just fascinating as hell. And if you haven't come across that, it might be nice to take a look at too. I always like, I always go back to to his order, or la frontera Borderlands, because I think I'll think a lot of times when people talk about auto theory, they start with, with, what's her face with Nelson? About Jenny Nelson, is that her name? But the Argonauts, which is book I really, I really love, because she called it auto theory, even the first, although Paul Preciado actually called it that first in French. Either way, it doesn't matter. I think Gloria anzaldua and a lot of the, a lot of the Chicana activist writers of the 70s, and also black writers like, Oh God, what Audrey Lord writing about her own breast cancer, like all of all of those writers are already like in that, in that zone, like sub alternate identities, and talking from different, different identity formation places, and finding the ways of articulating that, and in The process, inventing new, new ways of, you know, talking about the impossible thing that we're all trying to talk about, that kind of thing. So I anyway, there were, there were those. There was another one to God. There's just so many things that pop popping into my head. I just feel like there's so many different resonances with what you're doing and the kind of stuff that I'm really interested in. So it just makes me want to want to want to want to be involved, how, however, I can, even if it's for a very short time. But I was also thinking yes about Anne Boyer, who has a book called the undying that you may know of, and that's about her own experience with breast cancer. So I'm just because, I'm just thinking, because you were talking about writing about illness and the hell healthy body and the sick body, and those things are, are pretty fascinating places to go once you open up everything. And I feel like in a project like this, it's kind of nice to open up all of the, all of the, not, not cans of worms, because no one really wants to open up a can. I don't want to open up the can of worms for any particular good reason, but just to give yourself permission to talk about the things that you want to talk about, if that makes sense. Um, and talking about the body, I think is necessary to, like, engage with the ideas of sickness and stuff, blah, blah, blah, you know, like all that kind of stuff. And then, you know that. But her book, the undying was one I started reading at the beginning, one I understood before the doctors did. I think that what I had was cancer, and that it wasn't a good one, and it wasn't going to be one that was that was curable. Hers was curable, it turns out, fortunately. But the way she writes about that experience of being, you know, a feminist body, in feminist spaces, and kind of continue. Doing the work that Susan Sontag did with her own writing on breast cancer, course, and then, and then AIDS and HIV and all that stuff. They're all kind of like it's tied together. And these are things that I've been drawing from a lot, a lot lately. Yeah, and I know a little bit more, I guess I don't know. I, yeah, I wanted to mention, like, so just with my own experience with gender, I mean, I always knew that was something else. So identify as non binary, and that didn't really come into play, like, publicly, in a public way, until, actually during the pandemic, and kind of part of what inspired it is that, like a few years before the pandemic started, when I moved here to the UK, I had a had a conversation with Eliana, my kid, who's 24 now, and they were like, it would have been like 17 then, and we went out for we celebrate Festivus from Seinfeld. And so what we do is we go for a cigar on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Eve Eve. And we used to call it father daughter cigar day. And then this one year, Ellie said, Can we rethink the terms of this arrangement and the terms of this relationship, and rethink the idea of, like, father daughter, um, and I knew what they were getting, and I was like, Yeah, of course. Oh my god. Oh my so, because I hadn't, hadn't realized that, um, that they had started identifying that way and had experiences with, you know, like, lots of like, like best friends, one best friend that I grew up with, and then my best friend in the world right now, watching, watching her go through a transition in kind of a massively public way, too. So when Eliana was like, hinting that, that that was going on, was kind of like, Oh, my God, of course, yes, um. But then the more I got to thinking about it, like I would tell, tell people about my kid and say, yeah, yeah, my kid is non binary. They take away, they and she and I, you know, I got, God, I wish I feel like we missed the boat, like our generation, because I'm 57 now. And that, you know. And I would say, I would tell my friends like, God, I mean, if there was an extra box that I could have checked when I was, like, 16, I would have checked it or 14 or 12, like I knew. I always knew that there was something different. I just didn't know that there was a box, like another box that I could check. So it was sort of like, like my my kid, that generation, is the one that gave me permission to be the person that I always knew I was. I just didn't have a language, language for it, and didn't so that opened up a whole, a whole thing, and so I don't my big thing, I guess, just an art in life in general, is really it's always been about permission. And in retrospect, the places that I've learned the most is when I get out into that deep water that David Bowie talks about, where you can't feel the bottom anymore, is when you when you get to that, that space, and realize that what, what you need is permission to be there and and that that's the space where, where you get to become the next thing that you get to become. And then the work starts, starts to, you
know, really take take on it some. It's visceral, visceralness, I guess I'd say, Yeah, so my background is mostly theater, and not so much visual, although I use a lot of visual stuff, and I'm
very influenced by it, but, like, mostly theatrical, but then a lot of ritual, because I'm initiated in these different, different, different, I guess spiritual traditions you call them from that come from Central Africa and West Africa into the new world. I know you've heard of like like Santeria. We call it Lukumi in the circles of your call it re, taking back, taking back the name, because synthetic is kind of a colonial name, because it adds the saints into these, these African ideas of deities. And then they're, they're not very Catholic. They just kind of look at some people practice it differently. But I tried to anyway, that's a very complicated conversation as well.
I got interested in ritual through Well, I've always been interested in ritual. This is a little bit long, okay, I won't say too much more, because there's I could go. Forever.
I've always been interested in ritual. When I was 25 or 26 the woman I was married to was working on her doctorate, doctorate, Tamara. Anyway, her name's her name's Tamara, and she was working on Mayan theater, and got interested in Mayan theater in 1993 9419 93 and decided that that would be something that she would want to write about. And she wasn't sure why or how, and she knew she wanted to work in Chiapas, because there were a lot of a lot of her mentors had done work there in in southern Mexico, the poorest state in the highlands, where it's where it's really cold. And anyway, as she got interested in doing this, you probably know, like in 1994 the Zapatista revolution started. And so that really kind of kind of gave her work a focus. So we went there in like 1995 96 and spent like a good five months there, and then returned several times. But doing that like I got to see communities in action. And actually this, that's the subtitle of her book, or enacted communities, communities action, and saw how these theater companies that were writing old Mayan myths that had been basically colonized out of people through through centuries of violence that they were re reinterpreting or reinscribing, inscribing them theatrically and just watching how that, you know, that idea that like watching a bunch of like little kids rushing up to a stage because the people on the stage look like them, and they have, you know, complex gender identities that they that they also have and the same skin color and are speaking the language that they speak at home. When I saw that that kind of thing happening, it shifted how I thought about theater, and gave it like an extra idea about about pulse. So the pulse for me was chasing after these different kinds of experiences I had, which were not so much in a Mayan context, because I'm not Mayan, but through these, like, African based systems, which they're like, you know, like probably hundreds of 1000s of practitioners, like in New York and LA and many in Phoenix. So, so been around it, and once I started looking into it, I kind of fell through, I guess, sort of like a rabbit hole, like Alice in the rabbit hole, and things started to make sense. And so in a lot of these, like different there's different ways of dealing specifically with the dead and ancestors and connecting to ancestral lineages. And that's a way to that's like the way of approaching divine. And like that the Divine is in your body. Now you know that, that kind of thing and that we all, we're all made of nature. We have all of the elements that are floating, it's, you know, and on all about that kind of stuff. So that was another thing that made me groove like, so like, the ritual on the site I did, I knew about theater, and then I got super interested in technology too, and just thinking about technological spaces of like represent like screens, and how the screen like the what do you call it? Just the screen. What's the word for the screen? I can't think of another word for it. Where you project a video is the space of ghosts, or the spaces of the dead, or the space of these kinds of things, and making work that's, like, super intimate and that kind of stuff. So anyway, that's a little bit more about me. And just to give you a sense of, like, kind of, kind of where I'm coming from with, with all those things. And so, yeah, I guess I just Yeah, I just hope, I hope that I say things that that might be helpful, and I'm really happy, happy to listen to, of course. Yeah, anyway, I probably can't do like, a jillion messages like this, but I'll send, I'll send as many as I can if we're ever talking and that just sounds great to me. So it was really, as really a pleasure. I think the work that you're doing sounds super interesting, and I think you're looking in some very, very interesting directions. So I can't wait to see what happens next anyway, yeah, have yourself a great Solstice, and good luck with this. With this next full moon. I hope it's soft and easy and and just you know, full of joy and healing and all those good things. All right, thank you. Lovely meeting you.
Kit voice memo 6.29.24 / LISTEN
God, hey, hello, hey. God, yeah, your messages are great, so excuse me, there's no way that I can possibly answer everything I want to say. I would want to say, like, 1000 things from 1000 different directions at once.
God, yeah, exactly. It's very similar, like, in terms of synchronicities and all that, all that stuff, same, really similar wavelength. I'm just super I'm super grateful that that it all worked out like this, then that that Chell and Michael were able to to figure out that this, this would be a really, a really good match. Um, yeah, I think that for me, if, if sounds, sounds right with you, just keep communicating like this is great, and occasionally do a zoom, but I'm talking like this in the mean and it for the time being, really works well, mostly the immediate moment, because I've got all these people coming like so my mom's here, then she leaves, and then my ex, who we've done all the different travels, and Mayan Theater, which so many things to talk About with that. Oh my God, when we lived in the office, and she'll be here staying with me and my kid, and they'll be here for a few weeks. So we're going to be kind of like last time we were all together in the house, we were getting divorced. So this will be a very, very different kind of thing, a very different kind of experience now. So that's going to be really good. And then after that, there's like, another friend coming who's going to stay for a week, then another friend coming first thing for a week, and then another ex who's going to be coming and staying for a couple of weeks, all that kind of stuff. And so there, like, little breaks in between things, but mostly there's going to be people around. Like, what really did keep you company, kind of, it's also sort of like, kind of going with, like, not really sure how much, how much time there is. It could be months. I hope it's months. I hope it's many, many, many months. But it's it's also to keep an eye on on me, because I've had, like, yeah, the seizure. And they thought the other thing was a mini stroke, but I talked to my doctor a couple days ago, and she thought that it probably was not a mini stroke, which is more of the of the seizure just kind of playing itself out because of what happened. This is ridiculous to say when you get a brain tumor and when it starts doing doing a brain bleed, which, yeah, anyway, so that's my life. God, at least I can laugh about it. It's, it's so it's so absurd, and it's so funny and so so strange and so interesting to just because, like all the, I don't know, the neuro, neurological things I think connect to spiritual things and a brain on fire, like, literally, and all that kind of stuff is pretty, pretty pretty interesting. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure curious about all the different things that you've had, especially the stuff with with the with the pelvis, and the Mayan magic and and those different kinds of cosmologies. And I'm curious about all that stuff too. So, real quick. So you asked something about initiation, and if you thought it was necessary to be initiated into certain things. And I don't know, of course, I don't know, but I would say, like, like, for me, it was really important, because I was in my 20s, and I was wandering aimless like a cloud or whatever. And I had had a mentor who turned out to be a little bit crazy, but also very, very wise at the moment, and thought that that what I needed to do was to find the path and to go deep into it. So I did. And Santeria is not necessarily like a like a light path. I'm usually like vegan or at least vegetarian, and it's not necessarily one that's like, you know, cut out for vegans or vegetarians. If you know how these, like Earth religions work the mind stuff works similarly to in terms of of life and all that kind of stuff, which, of course, I've got, I've got problems and issues with, but, but I've done all the different, all the different kinds of ceremonies and stuff that are involved with that so but, but it for me. Me going deeper into something was really good. It was a very good grounding thing, and that's where I live, like my soul is in that, as in that the Orisha grabbed me, the spirit grabs you when you fall down, that kind of thing. That's That's what happened to me with that, and it led to unimaginable worlds, which I'm sure, I'm sure you're familiar with. And I think all the paths do that, and I don't know, yeah, if initiation is in the is in the cards, then it's just in the in the cards. And you'd be probably know it already or not. And it's not necessarily always, always necessary. I think it's often not necessary. And in fact, in terms I've seen lots of people that have been recommended to get initiated that I don't really agree with some of the decisions that some of the godparents I've seen make in terms of that particular path. Anyway, that's a whole nother issue. But yeah, any specific questions? Cool. And as you allegwa, the Trickster spirits, stuff like that, God, it's not forever about everything. So, yeah, I don't know. Let's just keep talking. Let's just keep talking like this. It's wonderful. And, yeah, anyway, I should cut this short, because I've got to go have dinner with my mom, because we haven't actually gone out to dinner since, since she's been here, because life is so strange now that's doing something as casual as going out for dinner is unusual, if that makes sense. So anyway, that's what we're gonna do, because we're coming to the end of the trip and thought it would be a proper thing or whatever. So anyway, I'm gonna eat vegan food by for whatever that's worth. Anyway, I just send it. Send you all the best hope. Hope you're having a wonderful day. Let's, let's, yeah, let's keep talking like this. That's cool, and yeah, and we'll keep sending messages back and forth. And it's extraordinarily fun, and it's really, this is really enlivening me and giving me a place to focus, and just kind of thinking about in terms of, like, mentorship. Maybe I've said this before that I kind of, I always see it not as like, you know, there's not like a grand master or whatever, we're following gurus and all that kind of bullshit. It's just that sometimes someone is like, maybe gone, like, around a different kind of corner, and knows a little bit a little bit more about that kind of corner, and can tell you something about that. So I hope I'm helpful and that way, but you're sure to teaching me an awful lot too, and I think it's just kind of fascinating a life path. Somehow, how interesting. We just have interesting, interesting people find themselves traveling in parallel dimensions without even realizing it. So anyway, all right, so happy whatever day it is, the Friday or Saturday or Sunday or whatever, and look forward to talking soon you.
Suicide-adjacent, the inner lesbian, theatre as salvation
It comforted me deeply when I listened to a podcast yesterday that said Jung kept a loaded revolver in his nightstand just in case all the visions got to be too overwhelming.
I also listened to a Jungian perspective that said isolation is part of this process of receiving, but it does kind of make you crazy. You need to touch in with the world of forms and materiality. Volunteering with ecstatic dance has become that grounding for me; they are my family, and it’s a place where we have altered-state experiences, yet my responsibilities are very grounded in 3D: sweep the floor, plug the lights in, fill the water jug. And now, hand out my cacao informational leaflets, N’oj coming back around.
It’s a tricky one, that isolation. You need some of it to do the work, but it’s also one of the shadows I fear most, the unstoppable death force: the one that wants to get me alone and kill me. The one that has been working subtly on me ever since high school. But the way I transmuted it then was the same as now, I guess, turning it into research and performance.
It was coming out when I was in Austin, because there are no such thing as accidents, just parts of yourself trying to get your attention. On the wall of this housesit are three posters with “2010” emblazoned boldly across the top. The year that I had five “accidents” and turned the first car I had so proudly purchased into a mangled wreck of metal, as witin so without. The only one I had sober was going to see Stephen, where I spun out on the Texas highway and everything turned so slow-motion that I was able to see perfectly clearly that I was about to die, and I had nothing to show for my miserable life, but the good part was that I realized for the first time in that state that I wasn’t ready to exit stage right. I spun across five lanes of traffic and somehow came to a stop on the opposite side of the road facing backwards, and had managed not to hit a single person or even blow out a tire. I got a huge fine, but I survived.
The suicide feeling came back for the first time since I actually tried to do it, three years after that accident, on the train in London last Friday night. But the beauty was that I was able to see the effects of my medicine and healing work n action, because I actually was standing on the edge of it, peering over, from the observer position, watching it all unfold. Knowing I wasn’t really going to act on it. But man, did it come a lot closer than I was comfortable with.
It was prompted by going into an old pattern, one I thought I had cleared: thinking I had feelings for a cis man, because I felt like I needed someone to save me from myself. And it came along with a harsh lesson: that you need to be careful who you share things with.
They keep this shit esoteric for a reason. Tell the wrong people, and they’ll call you crazy.
He told me, gently, that not only were the feelings not reciprocated, but he was worried about me. For a few days, this only deepened my victim mentality. Just like when I was a kid, I doubted myself; I forgot I was a shamxn, because I didn’t know how to share what I was finding in a way people would understand; because the wrong people saw it, as happened when they read my journals and took my books away as a teenager.
There’s nowhere to hide when they get inside your mind and make you gaslight yourself.
But this time, I remembered.
And I realized the whole thing had been triggered by realizing that I actually was attracted to Jade, that mystical bearer of cacao, the queer owner of the ethical metaphysical store with whom I had been divinely connected, whose aunt has offered to sponsor my UK visa. The only other person I’ve ever heard of who is having high-dose cacao experiences; a healer who has learned from Indigenous teachers.
And very much a binary lesbian, like those who told me I wasn’t one of them. Like the ones I was told I would burn for being attracted to, my first memory of self-gaslighting.
Dave assigned me te creation of a 10-minute play in December, because I had to get it out of here, he told me over sad, tired, too-yellow eggs in the cafe of the quirky building across from the theatre, where downstairs it was perpetually Christmas, and once a year the rest of the world caught up with it.
There’s something poetic about that. And it makes me think of Lala’s, the bar of forever Christmas in Austin, Texas, where you could still smoke indoors, and I sucked on American Spirits and thought that Jeff was the answer to my anomie, and decided to leave Stephen before he came back from the holidays.
The play, we decided, would be about self-gaslighting. He told me he also wants to hear more about channeling. I told him that I had an idea for a one-person show where I would basically just do my morning practice in front of people with a more coherent through-line. I thought nobody would care about this. But he loved it.
I do think one of the people I’m channeling is McKenna.
Ha! The song that just came on shuffle has a chorus saying: “Help me to name it.” That’s the thing, innit?
So, before I realized that I was gaslighting myself again into thinking that I was attracted to a cis man who would save me from my own madness and self-destruction and forgot I was a shamxn who had a crush on an astral-traveling lesbian—and a Kame nahual, of course, because I am in love with the death and resurrection—I got into that dark place again, that part of me was trying, as it has been my whole life, to isolate me from my art and the queer spiritual friends who understand, and I stood at the precipice of suicidal ideation and peered over the edge. But I realized it was happening, and that’s why I was sitting on that train having this realization.
I knew I needed to go to the theatre. And I’ll be damned, I was redeemed by a play about a couple of gay Peruvians called “Jeezus: The Musical,” which contained everything from astute observations of South American politics to resurrecting the lord and savior by fellating a crucifix, and the music was catchy and the actors engaging and I was totally captivated, and all those dark thoughts fell away, and I knew I needed to put my pain and joy and stories onstage.
I waited around until they came out of the dressing room and gushed and asked if I could send them some scenes, and they said yes.
Then I read them and felt like they were a disastrous half-conceived mess, so I still haven’t done it.
But it’s a start. The first step is awareness.
——
Transmission transcript: Suicidality
More suicidality. It's all connected. I love when things just start to make sense, listening to this yangian life, yeah. Young was also haunted, slashed comforted by thoughts of suicide, images, the things he was receiving from the other realm were so overwhelming, he didn't know how to ground them, interpret them, make sense of them, land them, and he kept a loaded revolver in his bedside table, just to remind himself that if it got to be too much, he could end it all. That's exactly what I've been going through. But I've been alive things feel overwhelming that seem easy to other people, and I don't see another way out, except to be saved by a man or put myself in the ground. And how sad is that, and how much power Am I giving away to that. But that's what's happening when I was being brought back to Austin's wanting for a reason, because they also say in this podcast that when people start having quote, unquote accidents, that's the suicidal self trying to get out, that's the unstoppable death or trying To finish the job, it's the beginning. You start paying less attention. You start being less careful. You start by just kind of not fearing if it happens. And then it works. All the
times I crashed my car. I mean, I knew I was possibly trying to die, but to see here, it spelled out very sobering. There are a lot of ways to kill yourself. Some are less confronting.
LISTEN:
Insatiable
Holly Regan reflects on theit struggles with insatiability, exploring themes of trauma, addiction, and the search for love and identity. They discuss their experiences with alcohol, sexual encounters, and artistic suppression, linking these to past abuse and the need for validation. Holly describes their transformations into different personas—artist, mystic, and alcoholic—and the trance-like states they enter. They acknowledges the severe abuse they endured, the gaslighting, and the societal shaming that contributed to their behavior. Holly also touches on their journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and the realization that they are a shaman, emphasizing the expansive nature of the universe and the time available for personal growth.
Transcript here
Summary:
Insatiable Hunger and Emptiness
- They describe a feeling of insatiability, always needing more to fill an empty void within themself. - They mention the fear of the bottom being empty and scary, reflecting their inner emptiness. - They discuss how they make themself into whatever they need to get love, even if it means taking rather than giving. - They talk about the monstrous impulse that awakens every morning, comparing it to a beast that never feels satisfied.
[...] Action Items:
Forgive myself for not going to art school and quitting theater. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Reconnect with and apologize to the younger versions of myself (Assignee: Fiona)
Transmute the trauma and shame I've experienced, especially around my sexuality and identity. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Embrace the creative, spiritual, and authentic parts of myself that I've suppressed. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Speaker 1 reflects on their creative process, discussing the symbolic use of letters and the deeper meaning behind their art, which includes themes of breaking free from cycles and ending a relationship. They recount a transformative experience involving a conversation with their mother, which led to a realization about their purpose in creating art. This realization was further solidified by witnessing a performance that resonated deeply with their identity and struggles. Speaker 1 also shares a profound revelation about their ability to perceive the dead, which they had previously suppressed, and expresses a newfound desire to document and explore these visions, recognizing them as a unique form of communication and a significant part of their identity.
Action Items
Draw the faces the speaker sees when they close their eyes and record the stories of the dead.
Transcript:
The word y, u, W, A, U, wait, W, A, y, u, written clearly. It's like the title of a magazine written in block letters at the top of an exhibit or I've created with art pieces of letters that were never sent to mark sending messages and some secret code about how we get out of the cycle of samsara, things that are casual, but they're also they're me telling me him, I'm not getting back together with him.
They're like these stylized letters, or like letters written on an old 1950s postcard from Hawaii, I'm saying Like you're never gonna see me again. Kay, by
mm, what if it's the part of me that thought they needed to be saved from men and saved from myself writing this letter to say you'll never see me again. I love that, that that feels like that could be true, and that could definitely be an art project too. Pat's is 12. He drowned. He's a redhead with freckles, and I see his head bobbing above the surface before it goes under. I feel like he contacted me when I was a little child, but I didn't know how to interpret it. All of a sudden, things are pouring in from the astral. I actually really unlocked something, and it crystallized, because I was talking to mom. Isn't that interesting. So I need to only talk to her when I've only had when I've already figured things out, I think for a while, because somehow in that, yeah, like I it's a good time to talk to her when I'm crystallizing things. I am supposed to share what I'm learning, but I'm not supposed to ask her input, and she can help me kind of connect the dots once they're basically already there, not even that. It's just like, in the act of sharing with her and some additional maybe filters she puts on or support she lends, makes it unlock, like I just got to the next level, and getting all the bells and whistles, because I realized that it was I realized that I lost the point of why to create anything at all until I was talking to her, and I realized that that's part of what made seeing that play so important, was realizing that on the train, on The way there, I didn't want to live anymore. And then I saw a couple Peruvian queers get up on stage, and I didn't tell her this part, but mime getting anally raped and sucking off not, yeah, no, not getting annoy raped and mimed getting defiled by a crucifix and sucking off Jesus and reclaiming their queer shame. And I saw my story, and suddenly I didn't feel alone anymore. I walked into that theater and I instantly felt happy, and that's why to create, and that's what I had lost, the threat of I was trying to make the thing for the sake of making the thing because I wanted my puppy to look at me and tell me I was worthy.
I don't need these men to tell me that I'm worthy. I
him seeing me, giving me the label add is actually a spell he put on me. Brewery, a sorcery. I now has become an excuse for everything.
Something like that is only helpful if it can be liberating.
He saw my pain, but then trapped me in a trance with the spell he put on me, black magic, sorcery, men always trying to tell you something's wrong with you. I
He thinks I'm crazy, but I'm a motherfucking shaman baby. Holy fucking shit. I've always seen faces when I closed my eyes ever since I was a kid, but I would kind of shut them down because they freaked me out. They're the dead. That's the dead speaking to me, Holy fucking shit. And it comes in the hypnagogic state. Oh, my fucking god, this is so incredible to realize. I gotta draw them. I gotta listen to them. I gotta record their stories. I feel like there's one called Alan. He's Asian. He was trying to speak to me. He was trying to raise his hand, or it looked like he was trying to pinch something. His dad wasn't listening. The dead have been speaking to me this whole time this way, ever since I was a little kid. And this came through some thought train as I was laying here, half awake about the play and about how the chosen children always have some kind of ability to communicate with the other realms. And I was like thinking I didn't have one. And then all of a sudden I realized it's the faces that appear to me. This is what I got to draw. This is so fucking cool.
Transmission transcript: Rebekah the temptress
Rebekah. Rebekah, now I'm in love with a girl named Rebekah. What is it about these Latin ladies? She danced with all the men at the dance today. At ecstatic she captivated all of them. I watched them. I watched her put each one under her spell was a charm her body, the dance that put them in a trance. She enchanted Lubo and Richard and Simon the DJ. She even got up behind him while he was playing, and started like fluffing him and I almost wanted to say, stop. And if it was anyone else, Richard would have told them to get the fuck out of there. But she put him in a spell too. And she put a spell on me too, but I already was, I already was in. She put a spell on me the second she looked at me. What is it with me and these Latin ladies, I can't resist. Does this make me some kind of colonist, like it just happens to be my type. But Is that racist? I feel very complicated about this. She's just oozes pure sexuality. This has nothing to do with her nationality. I'm talking just separately about her at this point, she like is sex personified. She's a goddess. She's Aphrodite. Her hips just the right amount of sculpted, the kind that makes you think that she gets them naturally from dancing, and not from doing a bunch of crunches, but she's got those little lines on either side of her stomach that were visible through the space between her Crop Top and her spandex that hugged her perfect ass, round, voluptuous, but not big, just well, but kind of big, but not really just perfect. I mean, she looked like a fucking sculpture of a goddess, gyrating those hips, her hair soft, her face suggestive without being excessive, like she's so soft as well, just tempting. And I smelled alcohol on her breath, and it reminded me of all those dangerous men that lured me in with their I don't know, some way that they were free in which I was not. And I grasped that today, and I wanted to absorb her power and be able to feel that for myself. You could like it came from a confidence, like a pure confidence. She's fucking gorgeous, and a past version of me would have been jealous and kind of hated her for it, and how does she charm these men? I wanted to learn how to get that confidence for myself, that's what I wanted. But also she's really fucking hot. I mean, I also wanted her to fluff my hair and grind on me the way she was grinding with them and we danced. But also she's perceptive, and I think she could read that I have boundaries, and also maybe she's not into trans people. I don't know we're women or whatever, but wanted her to rub all up on me like she was rubbing all up on them. But then I actually didn't, because the last thing I need right now is to be put on under another spell. I just got out of that trance. But it was interesting to watch. I mean, it was like she was just deliberately going around, charming everyone. Kali Ma, the snake charmer, getting those men under her paw. It's like, yeah, we need you on our team. So you can do that, so you can hypnotize them, so we can sneak in through the side doors of the borders and the spaces that would try to keep us out and take them, yeah. Kali Ma, be our snake charmer. We need you on our team. That's one way we can win. They'll never even see it coming. I watched each of them fall right under some magic.
