Speak to me from inside words
of the verse born to bloom before
it dies. I want to hear the fullness
of that nothing.
Here, before
Response, waiting
Tag: call and response
Pairings
Reciprocal rhythms
The ears to those petitions we would not say aloud were in the leaves and these trembled above us, murmuring response in chorus.
Dreams of Us
In birdcall fields.
Sometimes I dream of following deer past abandoned gold mines on paths overgrown with oak and eucalyptus, with manzanita in bloom, in a dew-slick early morning where birdcall is so thick I can’t help laughing, calling back. Hi birds! And what is going on? as they continue and the widening thirst of this overstretched heart can’t help but hear what follows as a kind of answer, singing Us, us! Hey girl, look at us! Hubris, sure, but such is the lens most readily available to my kind. If I were someone wiser, an owl maybe, I would use sound to trace the silhouette of the tiniest among us as though to call it out, that form, from someplace just behind the center of an ancient hunger. Then I could stop asking what is going on because no answer could match my songsight.
Catalyst
A body in motion.
There is a large megaphone. The artist has a question. Is it possible to turn every cell in a chosen direction and if so, what if? What if we all––did?
If the forest is an archive of breath, who keeps things in order? The trees are silent, but not the wind and not what flies and calls between the limbs.
Here is a study in the movement of these bodies answering a call. What does it mean to be here now, together? Meanwhile, trees listen.
***
Inspired by Sioban Burke’s article in the arts section of yesterday’s New York Times (“A Choreographer Who Merges Art, Activism, and the Natural World”) on the work of Emily Johnson. Italicized phrase appears in a recent performance.