Clare Byrne's Weekly Rites

in all my weakness

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:40:00 +0000

I saved a bumble bee stuck between my upstairs window and the screen during this week's rite, or at least I hope I did. I caught it with a tupperware bottom and a wedding invitation top and set it free outside, where it zoomed off so fast I couldn't see the direction. It may smell different now, though; it could be torn apart at the hive.

It is that all-stakes queen-bee-of-the-summer-time: time to live, time to die, time to get torn apart limb by limb with bumblebees and dragon flies and raspberries and blackberries with their formidable thorns. Daisies are in bloom, Queen Anne's Lace; the droning choir of insects plays nightly. It is a time of birthdays - friends, sisters, mothers, grandmothers. It occurs to me that every dance, every show, every rite I do tries to get at this time, with its re-occurring majesty. There is no loss. There is only gain out of loss - over and over. What a relief. It's not that Jesus invented resurrection, he just did it dramatically. It's not that goddess-cultures don't have rebirth, it's that god-cultures believe in endings, necessitating out-of-nothing renewal. The truth is that life is always behind the scenes, working away, ready to come back - or wait a little longer, until the right time. Lastly, nature plays in strength but even more in weakness. Weakness takes the glory in the end. Our sisters in all their forms prove this to us over and over.

This is my last weekly rite. I've been doing these rites every week now for five years and four weeks: a total of two hundred and seventy-two. There's completion of the collection at this point, though their work is only just begun. So, read back, read again, read over, read under. Watch with eyes open, watch half-lidded, watch with eyes closed. Listen. Sing. Dance. Play. Rite. The plot continues to thicken. The story isn't over, but all there.

without words

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:36:00 +0000

I am cursing my creative process. At the same time, I know it is all I can do. There is a Martha Graham quote in her autobiography Blood Memory, the caption for a picture of her, late in life, sitting with her feet up in the house seats of a theater, looking frail and vulnerable. It says, "The pauses between rehearsals in a theatre are the most agonizing. All you can think of is where you failed." This is the image in my own mind this week.

time

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 01:37:00 +0000

The new mantra is, "You can breathe at any time."

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 22:57:00 +0000

Yesterday I finished watering the garden at noon, in the midst of two weeks of no rain, in the midst of a hot humid spell. It is the solstice! And the sun holds forth in this do-se-do upon which the world turns. I feel the yoke of it, the bend, the stakes, the leaning out and squealing as I round the carousel on the best horse, ring in hand, tossing for my fortune. It is the time of spheres, of all things shining and beaming - of round flowers with four, five, one thousand petals, of faces, smiles, yellow, sunflowers, chamomile, and poppy. And balls of every sort. This is the apex of all games. Here, so subtle, so invisible, one contestant cedes way to the other. The ball shifts to the other court.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 00:36:00 +0000

12:00 noon! Dragonflies out! See first one of the year appear on the horizon with a boom of thunder. It zooms over me. It banks, dives, ascends, reverses, zig-zags and circles over the garden.

Then another appears and they race each other, these two experts, these two daredevils, high flyers - taking deadly aim, taking no nonsense, taking charge. They say, ma'am, we'll handle everything from here on out. They show you exactly what they can do: fly right up and look inside you. They see everything but remain discreet. Intimate but distant. Supernatural stars.

dog me around

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Back from New York City and bewildered by the Vermont summer acres sprouted up and out past recognition all around me, obscuring everything. By unfamiliar acres of my body. By conjunction of the two landscapes, and how the tube between - with dry or steady or suddenly surging intravenous drip - creates alternating vacuum and pressure. I could wilt like a dehydrated sprout or burst like a dandelion pod and fly away, or just drift on the platform waiting for the train. I'll keep my suitcase packed with one white dress.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:26:00 +0000

Exhausted from doing-ness. Too much stuff to do, even, especially, in this summertime. I'm not rejuvenating. I'm killing myself over the garden - the garden! And these summer dance shows. Why am I doing it all? I could buy groceries and do yoga and have time to read and sit and be. This has always been a problem, making these big projects to accomplish.

These insistent misdirections. It's like a tangle of yarn - going every which way, back on its path, sideways, zig zag, to get to the end. Looped over. Passing by itself again and again. It's like not knowing if the water trickling out of the tap on my toes in the bathtub is very hot or very cold. It's like not knowing when I pluck the guitar string if the note is flat or sharp. A state of confusion in a state of frenzy. That just about sums me up.

But what it comes down to is, the water is hot and it's cold. The note is flat and it's sharp. The yarn, string, thread, ribbon is going this way and that way, the right and the wrong way. My incomprehensibility of this - which William Burroughs says a notable linguist says is a fault in the English language, an incompatability of opposites, the insistent "or" - is my main problem. A fine problem to have.

This week I'm in New York City performing in an improvisation festival with new and old friends. Here I am in my sister Julie's apartment in Brooklyn with some other new and old friends.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:03:00 +0000

My friend Hiroyuki Ito visited last week, a wonderful time. Among many great conversations, one thing he said has stuck with me. I'm not sure why. Maybe because he was relating it from personal experience, or because I haven't considered the scene from this angle so much.

He said that even until the very end of our lives, all of us creatures - people, cats, dogs, and all the rest - have such a strong, pervasive appetite for life, until the moment of death. The very last inhalations are desires, for savoring the qualities of the air at that moment - the particular smell, taste, feel of it. Life is about living, and worth living until the very end. It is worth witnessing that living-ness through and through. This appetite is precious, buoyant, our deepest cause for hope.

Look here to see some of Hiroyuki's photography work.

Sustenance

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Sat, 19 May 2012 15:50:00 +0000

We may think it's borders guarded by machine guns and dogs, political totem poles like the President of the United States, infrastructures like plumbing, electricity, phone lines, internet signals - that hold the world together, but actually, it's the songs of Joni Mitchell. Wherever her songs ring out - on reel to reel, record, cassette tape, compact disc, online, video, ipod, ipad, iphone, and alive - they do strong sustenance, feed the universe out of ever-full drawers, keep things from falling apart, keep patterns just enough in healing, in tune, in peace, in pleasure, out of despair. It's Joni. If I didn't truly believe this, I wouldn't believe anything.

In this week's rite I'm working to generate some energy - some swinging, shaking, drumming, falling, holding energy - to help along a friend and former student, Dan Yablonsky, who's been in a biking accident. I'm breathing, moving, praying for a full recovery! Dan created a wonderful dance piece this past year, "Non-Mechanical Tools of Human Advancement" with a filing cabinet.

So with that, and a little help from Joni, via Prince - Dan, this is for you! And also for all those watching over you - holding, healing, keeping you in their minds and hearts, near and far.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 11 May 2012 02:30:00 +0000

No to heartless intellectual dances.
No to blankfaced dances.
No to unfeeling dances.
No to self important process.

No to commentary on self important process.

No to snobbery about style.

No to schools of thought.
No to trends.
No to marketing.
No to awards ceremonies.
No to respectability of the art form.
No to denial of gender fucked-up-ness in dance opportunities.
No to denial of one's own contributions to the problem.
No to status-advancing venues.
No to grant proposals.
No to powerful presenters.
No to social networking.
No to ego.
No to no ego.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:00:00 +0000

I love artists who speak from and to a whirling uncontainable imagination; who craft their art around rolling many-textured mysteries; who through their art attempt to be with these inner and outer landscapes.

state of the artist

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:57:00 +0000

I've heard word from a number of my female artist friends about the writing from whole hog a few weeks back. It's comforting to hear that it strikes a chord.

My friend Joyce Lim sent back a great offering - Diane Ragsdale's post from State of the Artist, a conversation sponsored by the the McKnight Foundation in Minnesota. While I am battling my younger-self demon, who upbraids me for shifting, for getting older - Ragsdale is suggesting a paradigm shift. It's useful. It could even make this particular demon vanish into thin air - or split like a potato, or peel like an onion.

Ragsdale points to Charlie Leadbetter and Paul Miller's 2004 pamphlet "Pro-Am Revolution," which states that it's not helpful or accurate for artists who create work on a professional standard to be devalued for under-achieving some illusory money-based "professional" standard. It points to the vitality of thousands of professional-standard American artists who spend their lives' emphasis on their art, but who also work other part-time or full-time jobs. Such artists by current paradigms are often considered amateurs, failures, or both, since they are not fully financially supported by their art-making. Leadbetter and Miller suggest a new title for this kind of artist, "pro-am," and positive perception of their position and contribution to American society. I'm not crazy about the title, but I like the sentiment.

John Lennon also responded to me, when he was exactly my age, in a 1980 article titled "John Lennon: Must an Artist Self-Destruct?" from Robert Palmer's posthumous collection of writings, Blues and Chaos. Palmer interviewed Lennon and Yoko Ono as they were preparing to release Double Fantasy, a shared album and return to creative and public work after five years of reclusion. It came out only a month before Lennon was killed.

Lennon said,

"Is it possible to have a life centered around family and a child and still be an artist?...In a way, [Yoko and I are] involved in a kind of experiment. Could the family be the inspiration of art, instead of drinking or drugs or whatever? I'm interested in finding that out."

"You know what I listened to for the past five years? Muzak! For the chores I was doing around the house, it was perfect. I know people are going to say, 'Oh, that's because he's got to be forty and got soft.' Well, it might be that; it's irrelevant to me. The attitude is that when you change when you get older, there's something wrong with that, but the world is stupid enough as it is; if the young were running it, it would be really dumb. Whatever changes I'm going through because I'm forty I'm thankful for, because they give me some insight into the madness I've been living in all my life."

Of course, someone must lead the opposition. And in this week's rite, a young Lou Reed from The Velvet Underground steps up to the plate.

air plant

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:31:00 +0000

Humans dancing detail nature's abiding interest, and pleasure, in movement and vibration. I like to think of us as a evolutionary riff on epiphytes, those air plants that don't attach to soil - draw support from structures around them - and draw sustenance from the very air. Nature asks in its human experiment, "How many different kinds of movement, in how short a time, can we manage here? Let's dance!" But, really, no such thing as natural or "pedestrian" movement - a concept that some contemporary dancers, myself included, seem to like as a concept. Natural for whom? Under what emotional state? What time of the year? When was your last joy? When was your last pain? Who's moving through you? In this week's rite, it is 6:30 in the evening, still early spring, and Martha is moving through me on some errand into the maze. Theses overblown dramatic gestures seem very natural, in this moment.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:51:00 +0000

There are some acts you commit in this life that don't grow easier by the remembering. They grow more incredible, more spectacularly ludicrous, harder to ration. Perhaps because in retrospect you gasp and see the huge hairpin or the complete derail they constituted. Or you've become someone so else from the person who did that. Or because you have more empathy. You feel it much more, on all sides.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:28:00 +0000

I have a pretty new niece, Laxmi Sade, latest addition to canopy of angels-on-earth. She's a Sagittarius like me, so she has a bow - pink - and she's wearing it in her hair these days. I'm aiming mine to shoot down rhyme from the firmament. There are flocks and constellations passing over all the time.

She wears this astonished look, her mother says - constant shock, two big bug-eyes lolling at everything around her. My ears feel that way now. I'm flabbergasted. I'm floored. I'm flummoxed. Like I've never heard this Eagles song before, like I've never really listened this Elton John song before, like I've never perceived this Fleetwood Mac song before - the way the drum hits on the "1 and", like a thump of a hard brush against soft flesh. My ears have been opened; I'm a believer, a wholy catholic believer. There's no impulse toward discrimination at a moment like this. I don't even know what that means. It is just a wondrous world of sound, raw and alive and emotional. It is so palpable and beautiful, the stakes are so high, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

bird song

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:21:00 +0000

This year, I've really gotten to see the finches go from their winter to spring feathers. The males get yellower and yellower, regular gangs of eight to ten jostling for position at the thistle feeder. Blue jays and chickadees too, the chickadees with their new spring call. Robins on the grass with plump poetic redbreasts. Sparrows too, and even an Eastern Phoebe wagging its tail from a distance. It's still early spring, as everything knows, despite the ridiculous heat wave a week ago. Serviceberry trees are about to blossom, the vibrant red fringe of red maples is covering the hillsides - look, it won't last for long! It's still early, early spring, and raining now. Good for my radishes if they weren't frozen by the cold snap.

The tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden is the skill, the compliment, called imitation. It's our downfall, perhaps, but also our game of praise, a beautiful thing. We may imitate - and innovate - our way to oblivion. Or, our oblivion has nothing to do with anything we do. But surely our songs and dances will live on, hoboing their way across the universe, potent crystallizations of vibration infused with intention - and will be heard as the best messages. The stars will feel and absorb, go "ah!" Smile. It's familiar stuff, but crystallized through such strange funny birds.

photograph

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:11:00 +0000

I've always been susceptible to songs and their lyrics, but it's getting ridiculous these days. Country songs are the worst, they're so unapologetically manipulative; their whole motive seems to be to twist my heartstrings. The Darryl Worley one where the singer finds an old friend at the bar after he gets word that the guy ran out on his wife - the friend complains about the car and the washing machine broken down, three kids and the baby's fussy, his mother's health failing, no work this week, bills unpaid, and the coup de grace, he's just found out that his wife's pregnant again. The singer simply calls to the bartender for a round of drinks, and says, let's celebrate! He sings in the chorus:

"Sounds like life to me, it ain't no fantasy
It's just a common case of everyday reality
Man I know it's tough, but you gotta suck it up
To hear you talk you're caught up in some tragedy

Sounds like life to me, plain old destiny
Yeah the only thing for certain is uncertainty
You gotta hold on tight, just enjoy the ride
Get used to all this unpredictability
Sounds like life to me"

It knocks some sense into me, too, and opens me up to life! It's how he manages to turn the perspective around so fast; those u-turns are something else, man, about song-writing.

This week it's been Jackson Browne flooring me. I'm in the car driving, just minding my own business, when a Jackson Browne song comes on. He nonchalantly puts together a little rock and roll, a little folk, some country, a bit of blues, even some syrup. I don't mind a little syrup. But it's his words that get me - succinctly making a clear, detailed picture. The way he surprises or completes me at the end of a line.

I've been reading my way through a book on Delta Blues singers, writing down all the names. I'm trying to listen to a song or two from each one on Youtube and take notes on who I want to go back to. Some draw me in more than others, but all are deep. The simplicity and complexity of the words - I can't begin to make calculations, can only just listen, hear how, yes, words that rhyme mean the same thing, as someone said somewhere. Or how a word or short phrase conjures a vast pool of reflection or history. How a word suggests further, deeper meaning - involving expressedly the sounds it makes - about which nothing more can be said in words.

whole hog

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:09:00 +0000

I had a conversation with a dancing friend from New York City recently; she was saying, "when we were there, at that age, where did we get this presumption about artists that it was all or nothing - that you had to completely devote yourself, or completely throw in the towel and admit failure?"

For one, I think it's New York, but I'm not reproaching it. People go there and other cities to do art because they want to be inundated with a lot of art. I went and wanted to be overwhelmed with dance, to risk drowning, to see if I could swim strongly. Full submersion, full baptism, a beautiful holy thing; I was incensed, driven. Surrounded with strongly swimming and strongly drowning people, it's exactly right. Also oceans, smoke-clouds of different people - gay, small, boy, colored, big, straight, white, girl, neither, both, all, mad, joyful, rebellious, funny, serious. The rebelliousness is important - the shove back against normality, and a big group of people shoving. It's exciting and motivating. It gave me structure when I needed it, when I was young.

Young people should go whole hog. Madly full-fledged. No holds barred. Now, I don't dance by recklessly flinging myself around, or at least not as much. But I remember liking how that felt and how it looked, and judged people who were precise and economical with their energy use. Now I really dig containment, stringency in movement.

So my growing-older dance self is changing. Dance is everywhere, not just in artists and artwork. I don't need the masses to motivate me or a city to give me structure. The devotion tempers. It does not lessen. Or, necessitates a re-evaluation of quantity as a value system. Even Pina, in the movie I just saw, which makes me proud of contemporary dance even though I walked out on every damn BAM Pina show when I was in New York - even Pina Bausch sitting behind her desk all those years, rarely getting up to dance in new works herself, channelling through her dancers, smoking her cigarettes - is a milder, more moderate expression. You are forced to allow the economizing, the seasoning of energy.

My younger self calls me Traitor, Failure, Sell-Out, Fade-Out. There is a particularly horrible tie to gender here - all the older NYC women choreographers my younger self silently mocked, was sure I'd never be - the not-fully-recognized ones, but in still the community, still doing their thing - in small venues, in what I thought were outdated styles, to insignificant audiences of friends, as if this was ever not true of experimental dance. My young self levels her gaze at me. The funny part is, I don't even live near those venues anymore, and even if I did, they are or will soon be closed, or will evolve into hot exciting venues, or new venues will open down the street. All the points of evaluation shift, but it's amazing what my demon holds onto, far longer than they exist in reality.

About that young demon, Clare - I guess you're touching, in a way, how I carry you along with me, like a younger sister. Maybe, even though you seem kind of negative, you serve a purpose, now. And I would never discount the possibility that there's a whole new realm of art I'm about to go whole hog on.

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:04:00 +0000

Precipitation: something to think more about.

The parts of your art that that keep raining, falling, or whirling, for no good reason - ones that refuse to lay down, even when you have every reason to let them go, think they are superfluous - those are messages, maybe not for now, but for later.

I have a feeling that what we are doing when we make art or rhymes is unwinding the yarn, thread, ribbon, toilet paper - then rewinding it back the other way on its ball, spool, coil, or roll.

This week's rite is from Weston Priory, in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

guitar body

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:50:00 +0000

The truth is, you can't control how people think of you. Part of shame is trying to shape others' regard, when powerless to do it. Remembering this again recently, for the one thousandth time, has been liberating.

what is ____________

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:48:00 +0000

all your clothes off and standing very still
opening your hand to reveal a dead bird
sores on your mouth
ankles swishing under a long skirt
hairy armpit
the shelf above the jeans
telling what you did to your wife
being laughed at by the kids in school
your journal read by your lover
reading your lover's journal
a blush on your cheeks
talking too fast
truth out, finally
silence
emotional collapse
utter calm
resolution of the problem
freedom to proceed
freedom to stay
nothing, emptiness

intimations

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Intimations of spring, this morning - after a rainy night, the ground is mostly bare. Thirty-five degrees and chickadees and bluejays calling at the feeders. I saw a flock of robins by the roadside the other day, after seeing hundreds of them stretched across the whole university the day before. I read in my bird book about how robins winter often in the north "in flocks of thousands" - indeed. It's complicated, feeling spring coming - yes, joy, but also an uncomfortable flush - "am I up for this?" For all the energy and effort of it.

Our local rag says that Vermont by the year 2050 will have the climate of southern Georgia. So we are catching the last, the last of the creative cold before it vanishes from the face of the earth - just barely in time. This is one destiny, one sign, for me; I also must find a way to get my birthright from the Boy from the North Country himself. Time spent with robin's-egg-eyes helps, for sure, but there maybe be more to grasp, to attain, to help me on my way. Maybe coming in unexpected surprising ways. Must be open to that, and step into the way of opportunity. Perhaps I have some energy to do it. Even if it won't be perfect, even if it's a silly risk - it's time to step onto the tracks, jump on the train, ride the energy and effort of those blinds.

becoming

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:57:00 +0000

Can barely grasp this - but the edges of things are in a constant process of becoming the things next to them. The tips of trees are becoming the sky; the tops of mountains are becoming the clouds; the tips of my fingers are becoming the air, or the guitar strings, or the soil, or your hand, or the water. Fish are becoming ocean. Sand is becoming sea and sea is becoming sand. Rock is becoming water and water is becoming rock. Ice is becoming air and air is becoming ice. My thoughts are becoming manifest, and my dance, my music, my image, my body are becoming symbol, becoming thought. It is all most becoming.

So this emphasis on the distinctness between things, while useful for philosophers and capitalists and politicians and even for artists at some points, becomes less useful for mystics and family and community and artists at most points. And the emphasis on the individuality, the uniqueness of all things, is not contradicted at all - once one sees that uniqueness and connectedness are compatible.

The oneness of all may seem like a radical oversimplification, most of the time - but it is an illuminating truth that many people - religious, scientific, artistic - report experiencing, at some point. Perhaps it exists only in fractional moments, one-hundredths of seconds - those moments when it is also possible to slip through to other dimensions, manifest spoons out of air, all at once, rather than in stages of becoming, or move a whole spaceship with a lift of your hand out of eight feet of slimy tropical water on a planet light years away.

folk art

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Folk art/music/dance: can't really be defined, but it's good and tasty. Like pie - humble pie- eaten by everyone.

vespers dance

noreply@blogger.com (Clare Byrne) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:14:00 +0000

St. Rose is the patron saint of florists and gardeners. St. Vitus is the patron saint of dancers. St. Clare is the patron saint of television. Hank Williams is the patron saint of song writing and hard living.

This week I gravitate back to all of them, and Saint Emily Dickinson, patron saint of unto-selfness with unexpected triumphs, right in the midst of my gluttonous Feast of Saint Bob Dylan, patron saint of authentic mask-wearers.

This, today, sent from Emily:

I shall keep singing!
Birds will pass me
On their way to Yellower Climes-
Each - with a Robin's expectation
I - with my Redbreast -
And my Rhymes -

Late - when I take my place in summer -
But - I shall bring a fuller tune -
Vespers - are sweeter than Matins - Signor -
Morning - only the seed of Noon -