SHE SAYS (It's all in his head)

'I tell you Stella, he's getting madder by the day.What makes me say that?  just listen to the latest rubbish he's going on with. I heard him for myself, just last night, he was talking to his old mate Denis.What exactly was he telling Denis? Well Stella, I'll tell you word for word what he said.

THE WHOLE STORY
'She's got to be bloody jokin mate! I'll wring his scrawny bloody neck, if I ever get near enough to him. The sneaky little swine that he is! Tryin to take my missus off of me! Me! mate! No, no, I haven't had a drink for days mate, so it can't be passed off as as you put it, hallucinations! Hang on just a minute mate, just let me tell you the whole story, then you can form an opinion, and I reckon what's more it will fall in my favor no less. Now just listen to me.

'SHE SAYS ...Oh you're making a fuss over nothing she says, when I fronted them both. Nothin she calls it? bloody nothin! A man walks into his own home and finds his missus flat out on their conjugal double bed, with his so called best mate bendin over her, the slimy, skinny little bastard. 'I fainted'  she tells me, all prim and proper like, and then she goes, 'He was good enough to help me onto the bed. I didn't know where I was', Well neither will he when I'm finished with him. No sooner were those words out of me mouth, than the shifty little snake in the grass runs for it. I after im!.

Mate, there's a dirty big iron bar that I keep propped up at the back door in case of intruders, havin had a premonition some years ago, that somethin was afoot, well there was somethin afoot alright, it chose that moment to fall on me big toe! I fell to the ground like a log. Agony! There's no word for describing the pain mate. I had to call an ambulance to get to emergency. No the missus doesn't drive, never has mate. Me whole foot is in plaster, they reckon it'll take weeks ta heal. Hang on Denis,

 I'm back Denis, can you believe that! she asks me if I want a cup of tea! How can a man think of cups of tea with worries like this runnin through his flamin head, how I ask you? Are you still there Denis? Denis?.'

'You're asking me what happened then Stell,? Well, I gather Denis hung up Stell, he always does, otherwise, I reckon the old boy would rave on and on all night. I'd better hang up too Stella, I can hear his lordship hobbling in on his crutches, and he hates me being on the phone, he reckons I'm always talking about him behind his back, telling people he's mad. My turn to ring you next time Stell, bye.'

Tushie   22/3/12

THE DEATH SONG RROJECT

About eighteen years ago, I began a three month course of, 'Body Voice Work' it was called the 'Death Song Project'. Perhaps what I've written is not the wording I read when I first saw the course advertised. It seems, things are like that for me. At the time they are occurring, it is everything, when it's finished, it is finished. However  that's not quite the case either, because eighteen years later I'm still doing that work, with the same people. However, the terrain and the expression of that original darkly- watery- wavy place,  have bloomed into a land of calm and fruitful living.

Very early in the Body Breath work, I felt compelled, to express the tidal wave of emotion that engulfed my body. Sound was the expression that opened a way. Not soft sounds, or pretty sounds, not sustained and melodic notes, not breathy or raspy sounds, rather my sound was a long sustained scream, only interrupted, by the slow suggestion of another movement, a movement that eventually took my awareness to different parts of my body. But, to begin with, I felt that my body was a large gray impenetrable concrete block..

 The concrete block had been an image in my mind's eye for as long as I could recall. Now I felt myself to be the heart of the image, and I began to scream  in rage and terror at my isolated state. I screamed in fear and rage as I crouched there in my buried, airless tomb. One day during a session, I'd crumbled to the floor, the teacher knelt beside me and asked, 'Where are you?' I pointed to a picture another student had cut out and pined to the white washed concrete wall. "There! I'm there!' I said.  The picture was the face of a dead baby, surrounded by rubble in some war torn part of the world.

Early in the work, creative expression, appeared and helped rein in some of the flood of energy. The expressions came in the form of writing, and art works.  And so began my my journey out of  the prison. I floated, trudged, clawed and crawled my way out of the life long mire of destruction. Exhausting as the avalanche of energy was, to finally know I was alive was a miracle. The struggle out of the hideous terrain, continued for years. I don't know when the terrain changed, but again, it came in the form of creative expression. The key to my prison was creativity! For me to believe that, was as hard, as it was to look inside the prison of the block of gray concrete that contained an almost dead baby, with barely enough breath to survive.
                                     (To be continued)
16/3/12   Tushie

I FEEL

I was doing a course. When or what the course was, doesn't seem  important now. It was then. We had a project to present, anything we found interesting was acceptable. My project came by way of a report on the evening news. It came to me by way of a feeling. I should say feelings. There is, a dictionary
of my feelings. My body is the book.

The report was about a woman in another country. The report was horrific.

I felt a sense of enormous grief on hearing the woman's story. Along side of the grief was a sense of  despair, powerlessness. Then almost unconsciously, I began to express the grief in my project. There were no words? or maybe a few. There was movement and sound.

I draped myself from head to toe in black material. Sound came out as a  wailing, raucous roar. The movements? I don't know, or I can't recall?. Feelings and sounds felt to be molded into one torn, gut wrenching breath of expression. At the end of the course, the scene was filmed and presented along with other student's work.

At the preview of our pieces, the volume for mine was completely out of balance with the others. I felt panic. I cringed inside at the rawness of the sound. I wanted to run away. And did. As I ran into the hallway, a woman working in the next room, collided with me, she said, 'We can't have that sound filling the whole place like this!' I could hear and feel, the same panic in her.

Months later, someone said to me, 'I saw a performance piece at an exhibition, it was very like yours. Only, this woman showed her face, and she was beautiful and so was her song.'

Not until now, have I been able to articulate to myself, considered sharing with myself, the feelings, the images, the form  the expression, my project took.

The news report said, 
'She was bound hand and foot. He sliced off her earlobes, nose, blinded her, slashed her with a razor and knife.

 She was pregnant. She survived.'

A year or so later, a journalist wrote
 'Her head is shrouded in a white cotton veil. Her veil slips when she reaches down to her baby daughter.'

Fourteen years or so later, I write
The aching lump is still in my chest, it claws up into my throat, and the scream continues. Some days I barely feel it, some days it's just a whisper of breath over the vocal cords, other times, it threatens to choke the life out of me. Lunacy and the lump, play a catch me if you can game, and my willingness to endure, continues.

'Ashes and Jewels'  by  Trish

This picture is an aspect of the same project, combining, found objects.  The heart of the work is filled with jewels, that have flowered out of the ash.

Tushie   5/3/12