I am a man who loves men, and I am proud to wear that uniform and fight for things like gay marriage, but I also look forward to the day when I can take that uniform off and just be me, a human being not defined by sexuality or religion or place or residence.
I have become quite obsessed with this man, the openly gay grandson of Oral Roberts, the original and most famous tele-evangelist.
The more I read, the more I do, and the more I talk, the more I realise that to dance is to be, not to create.
Language is never sufficient to describe the range and spectrum of human experience, and I am aware of the politics and currency of language, but for now, let us assume that I am a dancer.
Hijikata intentionally used words. His words didn’t always make sense, they often did not make sense, but he used them because they do have agency, and they do have power. Language is a part of the body. in many ways, butoh is an embodiment of language, just as language inhabits the body. As we frame our experience so are our experiences framed.
But words are not sufficient, and I don’t want to add to the emptiness of language, to the billions of words, spoken and written that are not mindful and do not contribute meaningfully to anything.
Meaning is subjective. Truth is similarly subjective.
How can we know?
What is a truthful connection? I don’t think that this is a real thing. What am I connecting to? A truthful inhabitation? A truthful embodiment?
How does the body lie? Does it lie in the same way that words lie. Is it the human that lies? The mind?
The body betrays the mind, and the mind betrays the body.
Or, is the body an advocate for truth?
To dance is not to create dance. To dance is to embody the body.
It is also not enough to say that the body is transforming under the influence of an image. The image does not influence the body. The body is inhabited by the image, and the image is inhabited by the body.
The body is the brain and the mind and the spirit.
The body thinks.
Octopus mind. In each limb is a brain, and in each brain there is a limb. They are connected through the tissue and the blood and the mucous and the cells. Each cell can react. Each cell can feel. Each cell can dance. The octopus has evolved separately from the human, its eyes are not human eyes. Its brain is not a human brain.
Our common ancestor was a spineless worm, swimming in a dark, warm sea. To get to the octopus, we must go back to the sea, back to the ocean, back to the water. But we can. We can spread out consciousness like the octopus so that each limb in independent and can think and feel for itself. Not the critical thought of the human brain, but the embodied thought of the octopus.
But we can’t go back to the octopus.
We must go back to the worm, and then go on a journey with the octopus. As our limbs separate from the body and the eye emerges, the brain diffuses and we feel with every inch of our skin.
It is not enough to believe.
It is not enough to be empty.
It is not enough to be dead.
It is only enough to be a body.
The world is beautiful, and the body knows it. When I see something beautiful, my stomach tightens, my body transforms and is ready to make love. It is ready to dance with the body of another. Maybe to dance is to make.
Nothing else matters but to love. Nothing else matters but to dance.
To pout, and to shrug and to fix ones hair, to pull in the stomach, to open the computer and take off the jacket. None of these things are real. To wear clothes. All that matters is to laugh and cry and shit and eat and cum.
And dance.
I dance backwards, sometimes slowly, some times quickly, and sometimes, not backwards at all. If I can dance back towards the ocean, I can dance forward to the cloud. If I go far enough in either direction I will meet the universe.
We are star people. Sufjan said it, but it is real. We are water. Water is the byproduct of the formation of stars. The universe could not be contained in one point, and so, from that first violent diffusion, came atoms and elements and gasses and masses and stars and planets and water and cells and man. Woman. Machine. Cloud.
Perhaps once we have left the body, we will gravitate together until we collapse, and explode and create a new universe.
When music makes you feel.
I haven’t been very good at this writing game recently.
I went to Seoul in December, and on the way wrote down all of my secrets.
That was such an intense experience, which I have not entirely recovered from.
I am in a weird limin. I am homeless. I am in-between jobs. In-between lovers. I am waiting to hear if my Master’s research proposal was utter rubbish or not. I feel like I cannot start living this year yet, even though it holds so much promise and potential. I have projects to do. I have things to write about.
Nathan visited us for the festive season. That was very nice. That was also very weird.
I drank a lot, told people what I thought about them, spent lonely nights walking the streets, trying to figure myself out.
Nathan left as the waters rose.
I have to go and visit an old friend today.
Time passes, and now we are in Brisbane.
And I would rather spend today by the pool.
The last two or three weeks have seen me… occupied.
I’ll use that as my excuse for not posting in a while.
Listen to this instead.
Your friend promises you that this place is real. He found it, he says, after quite a raucous night of eating a bit too much barbecued pork, and drinking just a bit too much sweet-potato wine. In fact, it is all he has talked about for weeks and if he could only remember exactly where it was, he asserts that you will not be disappointed.
The problem is, he can’t remember there being a sign on the door, and regardless, he never did find out what the place was called.
I have decided to start writing again. This decision has been precipitated by the fact that I am preparing a research proposal at the moment, and there is such a huge amount of writing associated with this task that may just waste away in the rabbit warren of email conversations and notebooks that I seem to accumulate. Some of the critical feedback I have been receiving from my supervisor, as well as my close friends and colleagues has resulted in quite a few lengthy rants on many different topics. Some of which I will unleash on the small number of people that read this blog.
So here goes.
This first article is an extension of a discussion that Nathan and I sometimes have about weather or not butoh can be seen as a form, or a style. This is also a conversation I have had with others, and for now, I think I can pretty fairly articulate my position.
NATHAN: I know this is an age-old conflict – but can you explain to me why you consider butoh a form and not a style?
