I hope this e-missive finds you and yours happy and healthy. Scroll down to see special announcements/exhibits etc… (squibs!)
SO I was babysitting for my 3 year old neighbour Janie* the other day and I say ‘you’re a silly goose!’ and she tilts her head to the side and repeats back to me ‘no, you’re a silly goose!’ which started a wee back and forth game which continued for the rest of the day.
Flashback: I am three years old and my Mom teaches at the Grade school (Primary school), St. Joseph’s in Cheltenham, PA. One of her students says to me ‘you’re a silly goose!’ and I repeat back ‘no, you’re a silly goose!’ and so the game continued every time I would visit.
The resonance of that moment 35 years ago is no less real, the thrill it gave me to find a ‘game’ with her students that we both understood. This memory adds something quite precious to the new interaction, passing onto the next generation as it were. Who knows, maybe wee Janie* will, in 35 years time say the same thing to another 3 year old girl or boy and a 70 year story continues.
I think about this as I prepare to leave Glasgow. Although I will not be departing (if all goes according to plan) till November (not putting house on market till begin September as am DIY tastic at moment in preparation), I have initiated my exit strategy. Part of this involves getting rid of most everything I own (via ebay/gifting/garbage). This is difficult as every item in my home has been carefully considered and placed; it is infused with my life.
I suppose in a way our homes become our museums, items reflecting both inner and outer journeys. And yet these things can also bog us down. The more we have the more we have to care for and the less time/energy we have to ‘look out’. The idea of boiling down my life to a solitary backpack seems positively liberating. No bills, no cares beyond myself. To travel as troubadours of times past, and placing that care, previously set for ‘my home’, into ‘our home’ – the world.
Maybe I am a ‘silly goose’ but somehow that legacy seems more real, then any object which I am prepared to release.
YES I am selling ALL my THINGS on Ebay, this includes costumes, household items, clothing and ephemera. I draw particular attention to my costumes which will be listed over next week, including the Faerie Costume, Wedding Dress, Pink Dress, Body Earth costumes and more… these are the only physical representations remaining of my performance art and will come with signed documentation of authenticity!
31 July 2011 – Broomielaw (Across from Scottish Government Building) – 9-1130am
This is not actually my last dance (as not leaving till November) but the ‘last dance’ for the film I’m making of my time dancing here in Glasgow. Would love to get as many people involved as possible. The idea is that you bring your own music and you dance your way! I will be there from 9am, we’ll aim to start filming around 930, but you can come and dance for 5 minutes or 2 hours, whatever suits! We’ll finish around 1130. If you have Facebook you can RSVP with this link, otherwise any questions email me!
Exhibition runs 06/08/11- 30/08/11 from 11am till 6pm daily.
Gallery 2, Arts Complex, 151 London Road, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE
A group show bringing together artists and performers working within the fields of movement, dance and visual art. Ranging a span of various art forms including photography, drawing, video, installation, computer technology and street interventions, this exhibition explores innovative ways of producing interdisciplinary work via a dynamic and playful use of the body.
I will be screening two films at this exhibition ‘Threads’ made with Peter Hastie and ‘On the Nature of Daylight’ made with Benoit Moulanier.
Bound to be an energized program with one of Scotland’s favourite comedy presenters, Fred MacAulay, other guests include DOCTOR DANCE, PhD, ABC easy as one-two-three.
Following said banter/exchange/repartee I will be whisked off by a specially commissioned BBC Dance Van to a (yet undisclosed) office location, where said workplace will be graced with their very own ‘DANCE VISITOR’ and yes – it COULD be you. SO listen in and hear the shenanigans and grooves as they happen on Tuesday!
AND just to remind you- still trying to raise capital for ‘SCOTLAND DANCES’ our very special dance film/happiness generator about the dancing down at the Glasgow Broomielaw. I’ve just found out they are planning on building three pubs on my dancing spot, which means, that the piece of dancing documentation is even more precious. So please, if you can, consider supporting this fantastic project.
It started some months ago when it seemed I was getting less (personal/direct) emails then I used to. I was still receiving the normal ‘e-list’ stuff I subscribe to, but the ‘real’ messages were much less then I had previously gotten. Considering I get sometimes 2000 hits per month to my website, I thought it surprising, but then again, I reasoned the change in my head as a ‘sign of the times’.
But then when speaking to my Mom on the phone, she mentioned some emails she had sent I hadn’t received. And then it transpired she wasn’t getting mine either. Again, I reasoned this to an aggressive firewall at the University she works.
This past week however two friends asked me directly if I had received emails they had sent. I hadn’t. Also an invoice I had sent had never been received. Looking up possibilities on the yahoo help site, they indicated this was down to a fault of sender – who obviously had mistyped my email. This quite clearly was not the case. So I googled ‘not receiving email yahoo’ and I found this:
“Recently Yahoo has started “greylisting extremely deprioritizing” almost every email that goes through their mail server.” (http://www.ahfx.net/weblog/107)
What!?!?!?
I have, in recent years, questioned the speed in which we have jumped into bed with new technology, ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater’ as it were. YES technology can be an amazing thing, but we also trust it far far too much. And I wonder as it increasingly encroaches upon my life and I get further and further down the rabbit hole, what it is that I’m missing in the meantime.
In this instance, how many emails have I not received? Of the dozens upon dozens of emails for work I have sent out, how many have actually been received? And how many emails have I not gotten in return. Missing out on….???
I think whilst many of us dream of such a ‘electronic holiday’ our lives are so inextricably linked into technology, it would be akin to a drug addict coming off heroin to separate ourselves. We’d need to learn or re-learn way of engaging, getting information…. We might even have to speak to people directly (!).
And as I write this missive from my laptop, sending it to you over the e-waves, and posting onto my Facebook, Twitter and Website Pages… it is with the knowledge that really none of our electronic patter means anything unless it is equally met with experiences in the three dimensional world. It doesn’t matter how many ‘hits’ you get to your website, emails in your inbox, ‘friends’ on Facebook – if we are not matching that with ‘real life’ – than we become ‘virtual human beings’.
I am reminded of the Emily Dickinson poem:
So I might just ‘switch off’ one of these days, the idea of it seems positively magical really. No email, no mobile phone… just making experiences in the here and now…. Bliss. Someday…
For now I’m giving gmail a go – so please change your contact accordingly, and if you HAVE emailed me in the past…. 6 months or more and I haven’t responded that means I never got the message, because I always respond! So try me again!
In the meantime and as a tonic to above but using technology to make it happen…
STILL TRYING TO RAISE CAPITAL FOR ‘SCOTLAND DANCES’ – only 1% of total so far…less then two weeks to go please continue to share with your contacts thanking you!!!
Things are grooving along as you’d expect in the deemingdreaming world, just last week I had two men on bicycles dance AND sing in passing as they cycled past on the Broomielaw HA! How fabulous.
Every day I love more and more the big and small things that represent the capacity for joy and connection in the world.
As you know, I’ve been working with Cultural Enterprise (they’re the arm of Scottish Enterprise that works specifically with the Cultural Industry) in pulling together a more coherent plan for the ‘Hope Dances’ book. It’s great getting some professional guidance on this, although more time involved, as it will surely result in a better book!
In the meantime and to build momentum and leading on from the Workroom Residency I have teamed with the filmmaker Benoit Moulanier to crowdfund what I like to term a film/dance/happiness generator on Sponsume, called “Scotland Dances”
We’ve got two weeks to raise over £2346.40, and I believe we can do it! (Benoit returns to France at the start of August hence timing)
Please view/share link with you friends and colleagues.
Thanking you and wishing you happiness and sunshine to your soul,
The three men sat and watched me, as they often did, seeking me out.
They sat respectfully; sometimes at a distance sometimes they’d break my dance with a shout out, one beer the richer into their day, ‘looking good sweetheart’. At times called vagrants, junkies or losers, on the mouths or in the minds of those they saw, and probably they believed that themselves. Homeless. No roof to call their own, or to share with others, sleeping rough, taking violence as a matter of course.
But they are often there, in passing with smiles and waves, and sometimes dance with me or speak with me about dance or life and they ask for nothing more.
They seem to appreciate the graceful moves the best, the times when I am listening to classical music or moving in meditative motion, they can sit for some time, perfectly still.
And it comes to me, how many experiences might they have where they are able to be themselves without the baggage? When might they interact with ‘regular folks’ without the stigma of ‘being homeless’? In the same way when I worked with the girls at the orphanage in Sri Lanka, I never thought (when dancing) ‘Oh you poor girls’, but ‘how beautiful you are’. How important that is.
Each of us has our ‘coat’ we wear, we might think that defines us – those questions that clutter our statistical forms, what colour we are, what our income is, do we have a religion, do we have any disability, what is our gender, are we gay or straight, how healthy are we, how many years we’ve lived… and whilst there are times when highlighting an inequity related to things is extremely important, we must also strive to create experiences where we can just BE with one another without the tags.
It can be difficult for many to see beyond the label.
I’ve taken to not asking what ‘people do for a living’, but rather ‘what makes you happy’?
This has proven to be both disconcerting (for those I ask) and enlightening both.
So for me, and for those men who watch, and for the hundreds who pass through my life, this is how it is. And so we are able to see each other for who we really are and life is sweet.
SQUIBS – What’s on this WEEK
4 July, 730-11pm – SPECIAL APPEARANCE by Kate E. Deeming at THE ARCHES ‘THE LOVE CLUB’
proudExposure presents The Love Club: Independence Day
Hosted the infamous New York performance artist Markus Makavellian [“A Glittering Colossus” – the Metro] step into a wondrous relaxed evening, of tea, cake, knitting, music, spoken word, celebrating the joyousness of Americanism…
7 July, 6-9pm, free, Six Foot Gallery – SPECIAL DANCE PERFORMANCE & PREVIEW OF BROOMIELAW DANCE FILMS –
as part of Preview “Best of the Degree Show”, Broomielaw Dance Films by Benoit Moulanier
www.sixfootgallery.com
HOPE DANCES UPDATE
I have recently met with Cultural Enterprise, the arm of Scottish Enterprise that helps creatives get their artistic ideas supported on a ‘this world’ level. They are now helping me to create a strategic and sustainable plan for the book. I have ‘homework’ and my next meeting in on the 13th July. I will keep everyone posted on how it goes!
Photograph by Mihai Nechita
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