day 5 - oh, hello again.

in spring 2008, i created a week-long residency for myself at a friends cabin in oregon. no internet, no tv/movies, no phone. the intention was to create music for a show i was working on at the time (bridging wounds: staying the course of uncertainty). it's really not quite right to call this place a "cabin" - it's fancier then any place i've ever lived. i was in no means, "roughing it."

i spent at least 50% of every day absolutely PARALYZED with fear. not fear of being alone - i'm very comfortable there - not fear of being in the woods, in a new place, without distraction, or fear of making (or so i thought), but real fear - fear for my life fear. fear of every sound i heard that i didn't make. fear of a mask on the wall. fear of certain rooms - their doors had to stay closed. it would start in that transitional time when day is leaving and night is rising. i could see it, but i couldn't. a shadow. a darkness. following me, but never quite meeting me face to face.

at the time, i attributed that experience to being something in that place and 'moved on.'

in september 2010, i started working (by myself) in studio current - a place for body-based artists to create and be and rehearse their own projects, and be part of a community that meets and shares and discusses together. i was working to release my body to movement after 5 years of dormancy followed by 5 years of trying to find my way back to it. when i look back in my notebooks, i kept using the word 'EXTRACTION.' and my movements were representative of that process too - pulling strings out of my chest, grabbing chunks of skin and offering them from my center out into the room...

there were a few times when i found that shadowy presence lurking. i didn't relate it to what i had felt in 2008. it was brief. i'm never in the space for more then 4hrs at a time.

i have since danced with this presence - in duet. and it has even been acknowledged by a collaborator...i hadn't told her anything about these experiences, and one day after i moved while she made music, she called it out in her own words - that i was dancing, in duet, with this darkness....

now, being in PROJECT: space available, i am realizing this is all the same thing - this shadow, this darkness - in my dreams, and externalized in waking life when i am in this certain creative state, facing myself - it's me. or it's a part of me. it's coming from me...

so, instead of being paralyzed with fear, i've decided to call it out. acknowledge it. speak to it. write to it. stand ready and willing to face it. dance with it.

shadow: i see you. i feel you.