Healing Modern Ailments: A manual of poems for performance
Both Witch and Artist possess the ability to imbue material with magic and meaning. Her spells, her art, are summoned from the intangible into the physical world in an altered state of consciousness, by a force for which she is sometimes feared. Fluid, formless, free, she lives amongst us, inside us. She is a solitary practitioner, yet she belongs to a universal mind for whom the craft is a part of everyday life.
This collection of performance texts is the descendant of the work of such spirits: Alison Knowles' sensitive yet incisive Event Scores (1965), Pauline Oliveros' spontaneous yet ritual Sonic Meditations (1971), and traditional folk and Neoplatonic Witchcraft’s occult beliefs and practices. The performance ‘spells’ remain simple and succinct, like Knowles' Scores, using language to prompt tactile behaviour while evoking an attitude to perform it with, akin to Oliveros' Meditations. They are a comparative study of the points of alignment and moments of divergence between Fluxus and Witchcraft. Like magic, they hover over the boundary between these two realms, the literal and the figurative, the profane and the sacred, refusing to commit to either.
The poems (delineation and genre are blurred in the proximity of the occult) also serve as practical texts, to be performed to oneself whenever adverse the effects of modern ailments are felt. They offer solace and gentle guidance when the simple work of keeping alive is the hardest; dragging the body from place to place, cleaning its teeth, washing its clothes, tending to its gut, its skin. The feeding, the dishes, the pleasures rare and out of reach.
The spells induce the healing of these ailments by redirecting energy through different mediums and symbols, re-contextualising and re-enchanting otherwise forgotten mundane actions, ideas, and objects. They encourage experimental interaction with and perception of the world, inviting an alternative connection to nature, to the city, and to oneself.
The poems prioritise the present, the process, the possibility. Patience. Wholeness. One is at once the audience, the creator, and the participant. They value the transformation and appreciation of an existing over the creation of a new. The success of these spells is not quantified by final outcomes; there is no definitive solution, no ultimate form to attain. There is only the attempt. They defy form and border, always welcoming variation, reinterpretation, the unexpected, the disdained. They inhabit the space between right and wrong, the real and the imagined, the mundane and absurd. They should be repeated as needed. They will only happen once.
For eradicating indecisiveness:
Gather as many lavender leaves as you have options.
Write the options down, one on each leaf.
Place them under your pillow.
Remove some leaves as you go to sleep,
And some as you wake up.
The remaining leaf is your answer.
For the passing of time and mortality:
Draw back the curtains of a window facing south.
Stand there in your temporary body,
Tiny, fragile, hopeful.
Feed it with lemon tea,
With a toothful of honey.
For a moment, the deep world gazes back
With glistening eyes.
For destructive sentimentality:
Obtain the gifted bar of soap that's only soap in theory,
Never used or touched,
Almost lost its scent.
Carve a spiral into it.
Put it in your pocket.
Find a swimming pool, a lake, a pothole after heavy rain.
Lie on your back in the Waters of Time.
Let the current carry you back to the beginning.
Once the soap has dissolved,
You might be free.
For not knowing who you are:
Wake up seventeen minutes before sunrise.
Light a mauve coloured candle.
Sit in silence, in the semi-dark.
Listen to your breath.
Listen to the birds.
Ask them politely what they think:
Half-asleep, they forget birds aren’t supposed to speak.
List their replies.
Before you leave,
Leave a palmful of pumpkin seeds on the windowsill.
For repelling a bad decision:
Out of blue grapes and toothpicks,
Create a small dog.
Whispering in his ear,
Disclose what it is you want to do.
Eat him.
Sit quietly for 5 minutes.
For the undone dishes:
Pretend that you are giving your children a bath.
Gently grip their slippery porcelain bodies.
Sing to them.
Tuck them in with your best tea towel,
Kissing their foreheads,
Stroking their cheeks.
Be quiet, they’ve fallen asleep.
For feeling bedridden:
So at home in your sorrow-and-skin-soaked sheets,
Grieving a thing you cannot name.
Stretch as if you emerged from the womb for the first time.
Enjoy the scents of wet soil, orange, oregano.
Consult your favourite book,
Or your favourite mother.
Or just let the day pass like a sad dream.
YOU DID NOT INVENT SADNESS.
NOTHING IS INVENTED,
ONLY DISCOVERED.
For taking oneself too seriously:
Go to the produce aisle of the grocery store.
Observe the sheen of the persimmon, the speckled pear.
Select and purchase your favourite fruit.
Return home.
Dress yourself as if you, too, were that fruit.
Walk around your room as if you were that fruit.
Make the noise that the fruit would make if fruit could make noise.
For feeling too young:
Find a mirror.
Start an argument over the dish soap or the laundry.
After three minutes, exclaim: “Let’s agree to disagree.”
Run away.
Run a bath that almost boils your skin.
Get in.
Speculate for twenty minutes.
Eat a large tablespoon of sauerkraut,
Or 4 sundried tomatoes (less effective).
Accept that one day it will hit you, maybe.
For feeling too old:
Prepare a cake mix in a large metal bowl.
Chop in pecans using your teeth,
Like a nutcracker, or an oversized squirrel.
Once baked,
Top with cherry frosting and one green candle.
THERE ARE NO RULES, ONLY QUESTIONS.
Why does the moon change its shape?
How does the ocean not fall out of the seashell?
For when you have no one:
Combine rosemary oil and dried yellow petals.
Rub the mixture on your hands.
Press your thumbs into your eyelids.
Pretend that they aren’t your thumbs.
Realise that you can never be truly alone:
You will always have yourself,
And the ghosts of every bug that died on your windshield.
For an inability to shower:
Patiently wait for the rain to come.
Forgetting the umbrella on the kitchen table,
Go for a walk in it.
Feel it wash the moss from your armpits,
The chanterelles from between your toes.
If you find a snail on the path,
Move her onto a leaf in the grass.
Remind her to look after herself.
Smell the soil, the wetness of the sky.
For addiction to an electronic device:
Find a stone that almost fits the contours of your palm.
Fill a bowl with sand, dried peppermint, salt.
Under the forgiving eye of Nature,
When the moon is full,
Remove the SIM card from the device.
Eat a green apple, sliced horizontally,
As you use your almost-perfect stone
To pulverize the mixture.
EVERYTHING YOU CONSUME IS MEDICINE.
For waiting for sleep to arrive:
Boil an egg in the middle of the night.
Eat it in bed.
A moon,
Salty, small, and soft.
Hum each time you breathe out.
When the next day comes,
The next day comes.
For when it feels not real:
Get on the Underground at just past the Rush Hour.
Breathe deeply.
Feel the hot metals, the grease, the dust coat your alveoli evenly.
You are here.
Find a stranger who’s eyes you recognise.
Look her until she notices.
Hold a mutual gaze until she looks away.
Get off at the next station,
Brushing past her gently.
IF YOU REMAIN PROTECTED,
YOU CANNOT LOVE ALL THE WAY.
For mourning the ailing planet:
Surrender.
Let the Sun warm your shoulders,
Burn your skin,
The bridge of your nose.
Let its rays touch your fears and burn them down to ashes.
Let the wind disperse them back into the dirt,
Through which the trees run
As fast as they can.
Don’t you know how large the Sun is?
That it can hold it all?
Don’t you know that you don’t have to?
INTENTIONALITY
Meditated.
DUALITY
Duet. Dichotomy.
ALCHEMY
Language. Poetry. Transforming meaning through transposition between realms.
PRACTICE
Human activity. Situational. Strategic. Embedded in a misrecognition of what it is really doing.
RITUALISATION
As practice is situational and strategic, ritualisation is typically engaged with as a practical solution to a specific circumstance. Ritualisation is the liminal space between ends and means; it orders, rectifies, or transforms through the manipulation of relationships between matter. Traditionally, ritualisation distinguishes and privileges certain actions in relation to other, more quotidian, activities. It appreciates the differentiation in the performance of sacred and profane activities, giving rise to a sense of the sacred ‘by virtue of its sheer differentiation from the profane’ (Bell 1992, p. 91). Ritual practice’s repetitive, performative nature gives it the innate capability to either reproduce or reconfigure existing dynamics of power. Bell (ibid., p. 81) refers to this as ‘redemptive hegemony’. The modern ritual practices performed in one’s day-to-day should therefore strive to be mystical, inventive, meaningful, and congruous with both the sacred and the profane. In doing so, one subtly renounces and disrupts dominant and damaging hegemonic systems.
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Grimassi, R. (2000) Encyclopedia of wicca & witchcraft. Woodbury: Llewellyn Worldwide.
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Knowles, A., Heartney, E., Monk, M., Montano, L., Ehn, E., and Marranca, B. (2002) ‘Art as spiritual practice’. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 24(3), pp. 18- 34.
Oliveros, P. (1971) Sonic Meditations. Baltimore: Smith Publications American Music.
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