Ascent
Performance, farm ladders, found and bought, Assateague Island national Seashore, where we once lost my sister.
Another piece that I’m working on is a performance work, with ladders, or one ladder, for the moment. There’s a lot of secular and Abrahamic iconography about ladders, I can talk about this more in person. Usually points of access between the Holy and Unholy plane. Points A to B. A question of transversal.
Ladders; I’ve been considering ladders for a few years. Access points. Skeletal; we put our trust in them. Tree-house ladders, the fire-escape rope ones that parents kept under beds; up and, usually, down the same route. What waits at the top? For what do we ascend? Or free fall.
I remember again and again a summer day when I was really small, and we were leaving the beach at sundown, and my mother told me to “say goodby to the waves.” and I stood there, for like an hour, saying goodbye to each one, because I couldn’t decide if each wave would tell the others for me, or if a body of water was one Entity or multiple. So the sun went down and I tumbled around, getting repeatedly knocked down by each one as I considered this, swallowing salt and seaweed and more than likely bits of crabs and plastic. Eyes burning, I watched th sun go down, unsure if I’d accomplished my goal. but, isn’t that life?
Loss, fairness, failure. Fall.
So, thinking about loss, and maybe arbitrary effort, and being knocked down, and the Way Things Are Right Now. tagnations and non-access and access to the holy (Holy?) Other. The water here both supports the ladder and prevents its success. Tethered and kinetic and hopeless all at once.
Tied at the waist-- like both witches, and Prophets in the holy of holies-- one for being struck down for un-consecration, and one as a testament to the drownnedness that would prove one’s innocence-- and try to climb a ladder that I know won’t hold my weight, won’t stand up in the sand. There’s no freefall because ascension is limited and messy and frustrating and ugly.
And again-- violence, access, body, salt, probably blood. Wood. Old things that don’t sustain; arbitrary and painful effort; necessary all the same. Holiness and death; vindication in failure. my ladder or Jacob’s? Salt. Trying to decide Drowning and breath and pain in my throat and eyes and chest in Want of Something.
Ascent, in three cycles. Alone, alone, and in a trio. Trinity, triumvirate. Earth, wind, fire, breath.
In-progress as of 12.01.2020
Another piece that I’m working on is a performance work, with ladders, or one ladder, for the moment. There’s a lot of secular and Abrahamic iconography about ladders, I can talk about this more in person. Usually points of access between the Holy and Unholy plane. Points A to B. A question of transversal.
Ladders; I’ve been considering ladders for a few years. Access points. Skeletal; we put our trust in them. Tree-house ladders, the fire-escape rope ones that parents kept under beds; up and, usually, down the same route. What waits at the top? For what do we ascend? Or free fall.
I remember again and again a summer day when I was really small, and we were leaving the beach at sundown, and my mother told me to “say goodby to the waves.” and I stood there, for like an hour, saying goodbye to each one, because I couldn’t decide if each wave would tell the others for me, or if a body of water was one Entity or multiple. So the sun went down and I tumbled around, getting repeatedly knocked down by each one as I considered this, swallowing salt and seaweed and more than likely bits of crabs and plastic. Eyes burning, I watched th sun go down, unsure if I’d accomplished my goal. but, isn’t that life?
Loss, fairness, failure. Fall.
So, thinking about loss, and maybe arbitrary effort, and being knocked down, and the Way Things Are Right Now. tagnations and non-access and access to the holy (Holy?) Other. The water here both supports the ladder and prevents its success. Tethered and kinetic and hopeless all at once.
Tied at the waist-- like both witches, and Prophets in the holy of holies-- one for being struck down for un-consecration, and one as a testament to the drownnedness that would prove one’s innocence-- and try to climb a ladder that I know won’t hold my weight, won’t stand up in the sand. There’s no freefall because ascension is limited and messy and frustrating and ugly.
And again-- violence, access, body, salt, probably blood. Wood. Old things that don’t sustain; arbitrary and painful effort; necessary all the same. Holiness and death; vindication in failure. my ladder or Jacob’s? Salt. Trying to decide Drowning and breath and pain in my throat and eyes and chest in Want of Something.
Ascent, in three cycles. Alone, alone, and in a trio. Trinity, triumvirate. Earth, wind, fire, breath.
In-progress as of 12.01.2020
Copy of Ascent Three-channel protection, in-progress. .mp4
