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