Life in The Crotch

We’re finding our stride now 

Learning rapidly
Intimately
Who each of us really are
Even if I couldn’t tell you anything much about any of our ‘real lives’

Intense sessions peppered with brief moments of respite to
Inhale water
Pass water
Forage through our bags for ubiquitous nut reservoirs

Jump on the trampoline

Each day is unimaginable even as the schedule becomes routine
It would seem strange
Were I not already accustomed to erratic moods

In fact I find myself in a strange liminal world
Where behavioural patterns I have learned to be wary of
Become
Meet
Explorative learning opportunities I am encouraged to seek out

Because here, these discoveries
These questions
Are intentional
Are devised

We are conducting research

Devised experiences
Researched awareness

Observation

We are learning how to see
As if we didn’t know how before

The other night I thought to myself – I am learning to reanimate some of the colours I gave up when I took the little pink pills back into my life, when just getting by was not worth the colours I couldn’t even see anymore anyway

Observation
Analysis
Empirical Data

–

From 7am Saturday till 7am Sunday this past weekend
We watched life at the Six Point intersection known as

The Crotch

We do this because our assignment is to
Recreate twenty four hours in the life of a public space

We sit for hours in Starbucks while old men shuffle past and life flows
We sit at the bar while the drunks around us profess Bro Love

Writing it all down in our notebooks

Did you catch the direction of the snow?
How long are the lights?
When did the bike guy show up?
He’s cruised around the square like five times
Check it out, he doesn’t even have a bike seat
Just a padded rack over the back wheel
Look how melting snow changes the way people cross the street
I imagine the beautiful bird’s eye view time-lapse of the
Pedestrian Intersection Flow

We spend the week trying to recreate this intense
This detailed
Fragment of the world

Wait, what’s the angle of that street
No no the bus stop is further back
Wait, the door’s on that side
Then I’ve been walking through the glass window

People have different levels of commitment
Of interest
Of artistic flexibility

I want to do an exercise to develop our collective agreement
To find a physical language to inform
How When Why
We move through the space

The collective prefers focusing on establishing the more intimate moments
And I must follow
Because how is it helpful
If I decide
I Don’t Agree and therefore
I Won’t Participate

But I must work with my frustration
I must practice letting ideas go
As I know the majority of us do
It’s not hard to spot

We present almost before we realise we’re starting
No time for the
Classic Hollywood Inspirational Speech

We actually have a nice flow
An arc
Things happen
Then it’s done, finished

“Tell me
Why did you decide
Before you even started
That it was going to suck”

Cue:
Litany of excuses
Time
Lack of this and that and those and these
But none of this matters
Though all of it valid
We had done well
Better than we expected but

When we laughed from the sidelines
When we stood there slouching with arms crossed

We told those watching
That it didn’t matter
It didn’t count
We tainted the good work we did
By forgetting
To leave all the shit at the door and
Individually
Collectively
Deciding

Right, this is what we’ve got
So I – We – are going to
Give it everything

–

When we put on the neutral masks
As we have now for the past week
We are betrayed by our bodies

I am betrayed by my body

Our fears
Our pretences
Our walls
Our stories
Are magnified
Spotlit
Technicolour indicators for all to see

Me?
I reveal my doubt
I physically show the smile I wear
To negate the chance you might point at me
To preemptively excuse my work before I even know how it will go

“Tell me, why did you decide, before you even started, that it was going to suck”

Right
Because it’s not a disaster
Because we’re not pointing at each other
Unless
Unless it’s to say

“Oh look, isn’t that interesting
What that person did
How they just did that thing
Isn’t that fascinating to see”

Observation
Analysis

• Physically strengthening my core puts me in direct contact with my injuries
• Neutrality exploration puts me in direct confrontation with my quick fix life solutions
• This scientific analysis of performance feels very similar to the methodology I’ve encountered with CBT
• the problem does not exist – just as I seem to be finding my way through life, finally, as a person who has ‘some shit to deal with’ rather than a victim with a neon Crazy sign so too in performance we are processing the idea that there is more to the work than the work itself. Indeed, the interesting thing to watch is beauty despite the struggle – life regardless of the ‘shit to deal with’. Find your way, ‘How you can’
• Reality vs Clarity – there is a french word that’s been thrown into the ring. Juste. The idea that it doesn’t have to be real to work it just has to be… well, juste. With this also comes the idea of an Economy of Movement, of eliminating noise, bringing us right back to the idea of finding our individual and unique neutrality

Bringing us right back to this idea of doubt
Of belief
Of flying

Of trampolines

Nourbol says
From here you can fly

Literally, he means
Don’t jump right at the end of the track
Because you will fall through the crack

When we were kids we would go cliff jumping
I was always more terrified than I let on
(So I always thought, maybe my body gave me up even then)
I was terrified because you had to start your jump
Just a bit before the edge
If you wanted to get that good push
If you didn’t want to slide down a rock face
Mentally you had to be flying out into the void
Over the clear blue water
You had to leave it all behind
Commit totally
Because if you don’t you might as well watch from the boat
No one wants to watch from the boat
Metaphorically at least

Besides, just as we observed over hours and hours in
The Crotch
We all exist together
Despite
Because
Regardless
Of any and every thing
We hold our stories in our bodies and
We are all uniquely the same

Isn’t that interesting?