Dorsal Practices - Murky Back Thinking by Emma Cocker

In progress Dorsal Practices — Murky Back Thinking is a collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer-artist Emma Cocker, for exploring the notion of dorsality in relation to how we as moving bodies orientate to self, others, world. How does cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude shape and inform our experience of being-in-the-world? The dorsal orientation foregrounds active letting go, releasing, even de-privileging, of predominant social habits of uprightness and frontality — the head-oriented, sight-oriented, forward-facing, future-leaning tendencies of a culture intent on grasping a sense of the world through naming and control. Rather than a mode of withdrawal, of turning one’s back, how might a backwards-leaning orientation support an open and receptive ethics of relation? How are experiences of listening, voicing, thinking, shaped differently through this tilt of awareness and attention towards the back?

PART 1

EXPLORATION PERIOD: 23 March - 14 April 2022

FOCUS/PRACTICE: The focus during this period was on the experience of back-ness, with reference to prompts that we had distilled from the conversational transcripts (See also Exploring Scores/Prompts II).

We each undertook this exploration separately over the period. Below are some of the individual exercises / scores / questions / prompts that we used for activating the exploration or that emerged through the enquiry.

PART 2

EXPLORATION DATE: 14.04.2022

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Conversation-as-Material (I) as a shared practice. The focus of this conversation practice was the preceding period of exploration (between 24.03.2022 - 14.04.2022).

STRUCTURE OF PRACTICE

Speaker is not visible (masks camera with tape), listener has back turned, active listening.

1. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]

2. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]

3. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]

4. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]

5. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]

'SCORE' FOR CONVERSATION PRACTICE

- Take a moment to tune into the chosen object/focus of exploration – this could involve a period of recollection, or looking back at notes, sketches, wordings that relate to the object/focus of exploration, or by noting/drawing/diagramming.

- Connect and try to stay connected with your direct experience.

- Feel free to speak before knowing what it is that you want to say – thinking through speaking.

- Feel free to speak in single words, partial phrases, half sentences, and thought fragments.

- Allow for vulnerability and embarrassment – for wrestling with, stumbling and falling over one’s words.

- Consider different speeds and rhythms. Allow for silence.

- Approach listening to the other as an aesthetic practice.

PART 3

INTERIM PERIOD

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Transcription and distillation of resulting text through marking/highlighting, undertaken separately.

EXERCISES/SCORES

Transcript Prompts 14.04.2022

It’s interesting because I think it’s been hanging in the background like a guilty sort of thing

I should have been doing these last weeks. I think one of the things I really noticed was almost how challenging it was to have such an open frame of exploration in a way, this notion of perhaps, what happens, what emerges through happenstance. And then, I think, what I was doing, I was kind of looking for the right conditions almost, having this idea that I needed to make a special time or a special place and not finding the space or time, so stalling and not getting started with something. Maybe I’ll come back to that. So, there was a broad feeling of overwhelm, of the openness of this perhaps but also the breadth and the wealth of all the prompts that were kind of gleaned from the transcript. There were so many that it was kind of almost impossible to know where to start, so I kind of didn’t in some senses. I think what I’ve noticed these last weeks is the places where it’s been very active as a practice or where the sense of dorsality has been activated is in this anti-dote mode.

Because I have felt very busy, and really leaning into the next thing all of the time. I’ve noticed it mainly when I have been going on a walk between one thing and something else, and noticing. Even my physical demeanour feels like it is leaning forward, almost like a caricature of rush somehow. And then to just think of this activate the back, activate the back, or drop back or drop into, at times it felt like it was dropping back into a slowness, so something between dorsality and slow it down, slow it down, stop hurrying but I think there was also this sense of the dorsal and the present. This dropping down and gravitational pull into the present and out of this lean. But I suppose what has struck me, is almost a kind of sadness in a strange way that the places where I am activating the potential of the dorsal is in this antidotal counterbalance kind of way, a kind of remedy or yes kind of salve, for what I can recognise in my experience as hurriedness, or haste or urgency. So it’s almost kind of used very much in this counterbalance way but not explored in and of itself. So it feels as if how I am using it, it’s kind of like this phrase of a case of bending the straw the other way, I can recognise there being too much of a certain kind a frontality in my experience and then the dorsal becomes a measure for working perhaps against that even. And I was thinking a lot about how it might be then to explore it much more affirmatively, in its own terms, in its own right as an exploration, as a space of curiosity. And what kinds of conditions might I need for that. So some of my reflections have been around, are there certain conditions needed for dorsal practising and what are they, or is dorsal practice itself, does it create conditions. You only need to start practising it and the conditions appear in a way. And this kind of dilemma, I’m waiting for the right conditions but really I just need to make them. If I start, the conditions will appear. I don’t need to wait really.

There’s a lot in what you were saying, like last time, trying to think, lots of threads to go into. There’s something about time, something about the dorsal and frontality and their relationship with past and future. You mentioned about dropping into the present, and I think how I’ve taken it, because these times I’ve noticed my nervous system is a little bit of a jangle these last couple of weeks and I was thinking even the noticing of that, is linked with a dorsal practice. And also coming into the perhaps, or through the doing or through what is happening to notice something. I can somehow appreciate that sense of the dorsal, not falling to it as a … or sometimes I get the sense it’s resisting forward motion, and in a way it doesn’t need to resist, doesn’t need to have a sense of retrograde, or pulling back, but more perhaps allowing in of the dorsal, even if into very jangled nervous system or need to rush. So there’s a link with time. Activating also sometimes feels like, okay! I just need to focus, put the switch on, but I think the inability to do that these last few weeks, I have had to let it seep in quite gently, which also makes it a kind of sense, of sometimes there’s a full focus on that and it does feel more like an activation, a pulling of attention to it, but perhaps there are these other modes, when it’s easier to have it a little bit in the background, and to allow it come in gently, even to a small degree of something. Which perhaps then brings it more into, um, means you are practising it all the time, sometimes more consciously than other times, which feels quite exciting in a way, because then it really does have this possibility to evolve, or change, yes change things. And then the other day I noticed, even though I wasn’t doing it, this word perhaps, I just loved having this word with me, perhaps. I didn’t even unpack it much, but it was interesting, when you brought it up last week, it was an immediate sense of oh that is really lovely. You used this other word last week, delightful. There was something really exciting and lovely about it. And then this per through the doing of. This happen-stance. Stance as in standing. To happen. I think there something very …it’s all wrapped up, a lot of things wrapped up in a word. We talked about it before these sometimes in-between or throw-away sentences, or a word that is often avoiding some sort assertive statement, putting in some uncertainty or doubt. It gives a different sense of or opens up a different kind of territory of thinking and feeling through something.

It's hard not to again not want to look at my notes. There were many things you were saying that really triggered some of the things I was thinking about. I think that idea letting the practice or letting the attitude of dorsality seep into life felt a very present reflection and I think one of the things that I was, I suppose mulling over, this blurry line between art and life. at times I think the emphasis as we’ve moved from I guess a kind of concrete explorations of lying, rotation, transition …. into this perhaps, the perhaps, also felt like it was a move into a more explorative sense of movement practice, that made me feel quite nervous in a way, made me feel wow, I don’t really know how to inhabit this, I don’t feel like I have a kind of enquiry-based movement practice in the sense that I think I was thinking of it very much as a kind of artistic research practice, a kind of creative movement practice and so some of my reflections have been around, is it to explore this as a creative practice in those terms, so seeking a movement vocabularly that is opening up into something, new forms, new modes of movement or is there something to do, or the more of leaning towards movement as an arts practice, and then thinking about life, and what is it to locate it more in the life part, part of this blurriness between art and life. And thinking very much of dorsality in terms of, attempting to change habits really or kind of transform habits or work with habits, and in particular habits that are really engrained. So this kind of very subtle practice of transforming ways of living, ways of life habits of life that might have become more frontal in their tendency. And thinking about this idea of trying to install new habits. So actually, in some senses that felt like this was less about a curiosity in new forms but really trying to stick with something, just stick with the one thing. Not to even attempt to follow the impulse of something into new directions but to kind of just very, very patiently keep coming back to the same thing as a way of trying to transform a pattern of being or behaving. So it felt as if there were these two quite different kinds of modes really that I could recognise, or even in the decision which of the two am I activating or which am I leaning towards. One felt as if it was this almost like sacred precious time of practice, that was quite bracketed, like studio time, or designated time for exploration, where experience and practice would become amplified, so there’s qualities of absorption and immersion and amplification and on the other hand there was much more integrative, like integrating practices into life, whenever it came to mind, not having a designated time, but doing it when it came to mind, really integrating this sense of dorsality just into every day experience whatever it was. Not special spaces, or special conditions, or special movements or explorative movements, or art but just into the fabric of daily life. And maybe there’s something in the relationship between these two modes I am interested in.

I have been travelling on the train a lot these past weeks, up and down, into Cornwall, London and Brighton and I do remember when we first started on this idea of dorsality and linking it with a kind of connection to travelling backwards on a train rather than forwards and that quite nauseous feeling, or I get that feeling. And I think because I was travelling on a train again, and I try and do it now deliberately now, so I am not, so I am deliberately not sitting facing the direction to where I am going, so there’s a stronger sense of departure than going-to. And I suppose, because I was on a train, I was revisiting what that was and this more … the sense of leaving and moving away and what’s in front and kind of - it sort of expands and reveals itself rather than going to, racing towards a kind of vanishing point. So I suppose … that’s where I took the … there’s something perhaps, when you are leaving or going, I felt a mix of travel excitement and going to and also nostalgia, so an intermingling of different things and the relationships between which way you are facing, where you are going, and the relationship with those two places and the travel between and together with that, I was also going somewhere where I wasn’t prepared, maybe I was thinking to bring that idea of the perhaps and the dorsal as a kind of space of uncertainty and how I might familiarise myself with that, just be in that space of not quite being prepared, not quite knowing what will happen, or how I will deal with the situation. It’s a kind of diversion. No pun intended. Because of some of our exercises like lying, twisting, transition, and we also talked now of walking, we do these … but I’m quite passive in the train so there’s a different sense of direction, and force and speed and how the body is present in that, being taken elsewhere. So maybe with the train, I’m trying to work my way through … there’s a number of metaphors somehow in train travel, which means the train is somewhere where I can reflect on those things. Travelling on the train is a kind of in-between space, opens up a space for working, thinking, drifting.Yes, rather than actively working with the body. Hmm.

When you were talking about the sense of dorsality, and a kind of willingness to just enter that space of unpreparedness, be with feeling unprepared, it really resonated with me. Today, I do these deep listening sessions with another person, and I was talking a little bit about the experience of busy-ness and how at times when I’m really busy it just feels as if there’s no space for anything and it’s kind of quite dead, a deadening experience, there’s no real contact with being alive. And I was talking about like a kind of weighing scales or trade-off between on the one hand a sense of being alive and .. like the busy-ness was bound up with this sense of preparedness and the risk of not being in that kind of momentum would be somehow failing or not succeeding or not being prepared or even not being ready or not doing something as well as expected. So there’s a lot around expectation and fulfilling expectation but the cost was aliveness and it was quite an interesting point to come to in this conversation. My experience in these days trying to activate or dropping into this sense of the dorsal has somehow got some quality of acceptance within it or just letting things be a bit more, like letting go of some of those pressures and expectations, actually I think particularly of professional life in some ways, letting go of some of the pressures of a certain way of being and behaving, in order to drop into an experience that actually if life, is much more alive. There’s loads of things bound up in that. One of them I suppose is not quite pleasure, but the idea of pleasant sensation has come to my mind, well not to mind, it has come to my experience, come to my body. I think before we’ve talked about pleasure, but it’s not felt pleasure but there’s been this experience of dropping into the back and a sense of this pleasant sensation of easefulness and relief, like some kind of opening, but pleasure would be too strong to describe it in a way. One of the things I was exploring was I suppose this habit that if I think of the back or if I attempt to practice the dorsal mode, there’s this habit or tendency or preconception of slowing, its slowing it down, its dropping back into a stiller slower way or really seeing slowness or stillness as the antidote to this hurried frontal way of being. But in these last days I was trying to maintain a level of speed so a lot of the practice has been through walking and trying to just kind of see what happens with velocity and speed but still in this dorsal orientation and there’s something really lovely just about how the limbs kind of just swing, like particularly around the shoulder girdle, I like to just really let my shoulders drop and walk so my limbs are moved through the momentum of the walking but not at all in a hurried way. It just felt so thoroughly pleasant, not like pleasure like I was grasping at it but just really easeful. So I was moving a little bit between, the feeling was hurry and I was actively trying to move into this dorsal register so I was kind of experimenting between dropping back into the hurried mode and then falling back into this dorsal register and it was such a different experience - around the limbs really - like the limbs in the experience of hurriedness felt very contracted and immobile almost, like the whole body sort of stiffened and felt like it was completely leaning forward and then as I was falling back into the dorsality, there was something around the pelvis area that felt very fluid and loose around shoulders and just the feeling of the arms swinging with walking just felt really lovely, really pleasant, really fluid, really liquid. So there was something about just noticing that actually, and the things you were saying about whether noticing is itself a dorsal practice I could sort of see that actually. One of the areas for me is just noticing sensation and there are times in this, in the speed of activity, I am not even noticing the sensations whether they’re pleasant or unpleasant or neutral or anything else because there’s such a kind of goal or destination to get to. And maybe there’s something in noticing itself having a pleasant quality to it irrespective of whether what’s noticed is pleasant or not, that just noticing has a positive affirmative dimension. And I think I was also turning over this sense of relation between awareness and exploration or noticing and exploration and a lot of my sense of the practice was very much in the register of noticing or bringing awareness to experience that was there. What constitutes exploration? Maybe I am underestimating or diminishing what that exploration is in a way, like maybe I have a conception that exploration has to somehow be expressive or kind of bigger or more experimental – and there is exploration even in the micro, which feels very important. Saying this out loud I think

I really have some preconceptions around movement practice and what exploration means in that context, and that it should be visible, a visible movement practice. I think now thinking about this much more in terms of micro movement and micro-sensation and micro-transitions actually feels a much more transformative area of testing I think perhaps for me.

I’m bringing to mind now the score that you’d invoked by Steve Paxton, Small Dance and how subtle that is and what a range of complex and simple explorations are happening there and why is it that I think it needs to be something more gestural or visible or amplified. Maybe there’s something to do with what is the nature of amplification. What are my preconceptions actually around what some of this might involve? I’ve not thought about it like that at all. Some of the practices I am conceiving of as awareness practices are actually explorative in that they are moving in and out of certain states to see what changes or what is transformed. But I’m not calling it exploration which is interesting and what would it mean to call it exploration and to recognise it as that. Hmm.

Umm, the micro, and the Small Dance, Paxton, the micro and the micro-articulations of the joints, which in a way come from the back and the spine being perhaps quieter in that supportive way. It’s also fascinating how the legs support and move the body and the arms have a very different kind of articulation and set of possibilities. This idea of the micro, that allows the complexity to become more tangible or feelable and therefore maybe there are some things that aren’t, well, what’s visible from the outside, I suppose that there’s a quality that comes into the body which is visible but it’s not through a shaping or particular form. The small dance is sort of or offers a transformative possibility. And I was also thinking about listening and seeing and reorganising of the senses and that our sense of gravity is also a sense. We talked about that before. Your story of walking and the articulation of the arms and the legs, an integrated movement, where everything is finding a way to all work together. We call it tuning into the back but also the body is kind of tuning into its understanding of how things are organised, the hierarchy of what needs to happen. Also its understanding gravity and how you can to work with that to walk joyfully fast or saunter or move in another ways. Its almost then that in that doing rhythms and pulses and different relations between the body and the breath that in moments like all come together and make sense. It also made me think in relation to the micro, I was listening to someone talk about someone they are working with who is hard of hearing. And the difference between listening through the ears and the idea of listening more as in picking up resonances and frequencies in and from the space around. And this woman was talking about if she has her hearing aids in, she hears sounds and noises whereas the frequencies to which she is usually very sensitive to are simply not there for her. And when she is without her hearing aids, she senses these frequencies and knows even when someone is or comes up behind her because she feels the whole atmosphere change. She knows people are behind her even though she cannot see them. For her those two mechanisms are two different kinds of listening, through the ear, skin or nervous system or just the sensitivity to that everything is vibrating. She said she can’t seem to have both, one or the other, which I find very interesting and I was wondering about this idea of sensing vibrations of bodies, objects, or anything really, the street, other people, dogs. We are perhaps less consciously aware of that. Even the things that we see or hear might distract us from that very subtle sense that we do have but that which is often very underneath. Talking about the micro, made me think of micro-frequencies, like we are kind of sensing machines, you can pick up static, air circulating, tiny vibrations of any different things. A sense of being among, being one of those vibrating things. I think that’s quite a … For me perhaps this is a different kind of relationship to the dorsal, more a sense of locatedness, idea of …. Or how sight locates us and how sound locates us, in a way sound locates us perhaps even more with what’s happening behind or how far away something is how. But there is another kind of locatedness through vibration being present. So I suppose I was struck by the dorsal feeling much more linked to listening, we talked about this before, with the ears on the side of the body. And that actually there are other kinds of listening or ways of understanding how one is orientating. It’s nice. It’s almost. It’s quite interesting this idea of exploration, with the exercises, activities, note taking and interesting how it can become less and less, it might have a .. or maybe its is a similarity when if you start somewhere you open up this other territory and go a bit deeper and then another territory and deeper and things get into smaller and smaller details, but perhaps there is also something about less and less. There’s some kind of relationship between micro and less, which is interesting. And the other thing I have been thinking about, I think triggered by that idea of what is not retrograde, not wanting to return, to trace back. This idea of turning over and over rather than go back to, coming into a situation, yes and I think some of our tasks are quite interesting in this way because we come into a kind of familiar place.

That’s interesting, as you were talking there was so much in my mind, we have a little pause there and it all kind of evaporates. Yeh, let me try and tune back in. There was something about this less and less and the micro, and this sense of subtlety that feels as if there’s something there. Ah no it was something around the senses actually as you were describing this sense of vibration and resonance that it feels, my experience feels as if in the dorsal mode, you know we were talking about the limbs of the body in cooperation or the body in cooperation with the environment and my feeling is that the senses feel much more cooperative in the dorsal mode whereas perhaps in the kind of the typical frontal mode, we’ve talked about the sight dominating, where actually kind of the senses having this directional dimension to them searching or seeking actively moving towards a sort of, kind of maybe kind of sympathetic system and parasympathetic system, there’s something

Even the with the senses that can have this dimension of the nervous system, busy and active and doing. But it feels as if the senses are almost identifiable as separate modalities in the frontal mode. In particular there are certain senses that dominate, so sight dominates and also language dominating in a certain kind of way. Language not quite a sense but a sort of cognitive. Maybe they’re not senses but kinds of cognitive capacities, maybe that’s a way of thinking about it, that certain kinds of cognitive capacities or modalities dominate in the frontal mode. This kind of visual orientation and a linguistic organising or sense making.

And in the dorsal there just feels as if there are registers of sight and language that drop back into a more equal footing with the other senses of touch and listening. Or I was thinking of much more a kind of global experience, its harder for me to differentiate the one from the other, I feel much more like a sensory being. Ah maybe this is this more like sentience. It feels much more like an experience of sentience in a way. And then I think do I really know what sentience means. I don’t think I really do. There are so many words I want to look up. Like earlier you were talking about delight, delight is such a strange word, delighting, what does this mean, what’s the light in that, but then there’s this de, this kind of unlighting. I kind of feel like a desire almost to kind of dive into some of these terms. And this sense of sentience or being, I think we talked before about this differentiation of doing and being and the frontal having more to do with doing and the dorsal being more of a sense of being. And today when I was practising there was something about the frontal having more of a sense of identity to it in a way and the dorsal having more of a sense of subjecthood, or subjectivity, So I was thinking about, this kind of relationship between identity and subjectivity. And subjectivity just felt as if there was almost less of the identifiable me in it, but much more alive at the same time. Like really paradoxical. Almost like, if there were obstacles towards my practising a dorsality, it’s actually identity more often than not or habits of ways of being that have got some kind of correlation to formulation of an identity - and self-consciousness I think also that comes with some of that identity formation. And subjectivity just feels really liberating, a real sense of like being a being that is alive, that’s free of all those habits of life that accumulate over time and very, in these practices especially very alive in the sensations of exploration and sort of unhindered by habits of identity, or at least, that feels a bit utopian in a way, but that there are moments where it just feels as if there is a glimpse of that perhaps, of this kind of pure being , joyful actually , I think particularly in this weather. Like earlier today there was a moment, I think I was recalling the score where you were talking about imagining the hand or a palm at the shoulder blades and leaning back into the palm, and there was a point when the sun was on my back and part of the sun was on my skin, and it just felt wow it’s been such a long time since I felt that sensation of warmth, warmth from the sun and this leaning back into the palm of the sun in a way. And just really very immediate and kind of bare of, bare of identity somehow, just very sensory, or cooperative I think, a sense of the cooperative dimension of it of feeling part of all these vibrations you were talking about and all of these resonances,

And whether there is that sense of identity kind, it feels like it binds you up in a bag that is separate from all of the rest of life, it has much more of a sense of a contour. I think that the dorsal releases that contoured sense of being to a much wider sense of participation of forces and agencies. And quite scary in a way because of that, this sense of sort of really letting go, I’d gone for a walk and taken some of the scores with me and I was sat reading a couple of them on a bench. And there was one you had written which was letting go of the weight, becoming part of the horizontal world and all the confusion of being held and in letting go. And wow, this this sense of confusion in this just letting go of your edges in a way. Really beautiful, almost like an emotional confusion of spaciousness that’s a bit frightening but really liberating at the same time. And that sensation happening very much in waves of opening into that sense and then maybe contracting back into more of a sense of form or a body or self-consciousness or thought even. My notebook would come out and it would contract back into some form of language organisation And then maybe open up again and this kind of pulsing dimension of the practice of opening up and then maybe solidifying.

I love that image of the palm of the sun between the shoulder blades. It was interesting while you were speaking, especially in that last minute I could sense I wasn’t listening, or that in the listening I was thinking I might not have anything to say anymore. In the turns of 5, 5, 10, 10 all the words and images that accumulate and at the moment the palm of the sun between the shoulder blades is such a strong image, it’s drawn me to look out of the window. Umm. Identity. There are certain words in the English language I have a kind of blind spot. Subjectivity, this word, whenever it comes up, I never really understand what it means so it was very nice to hear you talking about it in relation to identity and different modes and modalities. You called it participation, those modes of ahh I am part of the things that I hear rather than full of myself. There was something very interesting to navigate this word you were talking about in a particular context. A word that for some reason won’t settle in my mind, and always throws me off, a kind of glitch in my circuit. I’m trying to …sorry … the sense work in a different way… I am trying to make little mental notes, to go through and see what is sticking in my mind. Another image of these soft eyes, not not seeing, but seeing otherwise, seeing differently, seeing, not that there are different things to see, but that perhaps seeing is not dominant, as you said, that in being dominant it’s not participating, and when its participating it means there is a softer quality, scanning, because its co-operating with the other senses. It’s actually quite fascinating, cooperation which then creates a different sense of participation, which puts us absolutely just amongst the other things. Hmm. For me I find that also gives me more of a sense of a more animal-human. And I enjoy that as well, a sensation of animal-human, and is really a relief from the social, the job, or judgements of where you should be, or how the world sees you, it’s a much quieter, and more fun actually, a more fun way moving around the world which is more akin perhaps to animals, or to children or moments of being in the studio or creative conversations or walking on a sunny day. I’ve been reading something, someone pointed me to it, Katherine Hayles Unthought, and I keep reading a few sentences over and over, it’s around a cognition that still happens but there is a lot more unconscious cognition than was first thought and this is also shared with many other forms of life particularly animals, which also creates a kind of space of being more alike than other things, or being more animal-human and that there are many more things going on than we are conscious about. And I’m wondering if there is a link there with the dorsal, and perhaps there is a quieter micro-sensing with which maybe we are getting a glimpse of what is normally not conscious – I’m not sure, but I think there is something in there that links it with the dorsal. It’s actually quite funny I am still with this frontal image, a linguistic sense-making and there are moments like this that words just slightly umm , I’m kind of thinking aloud, like I want to tell you about what is on this wall, about this room, that I’m looking out of the window, and I think appreciating the setup we have now, with the covered camera for me and you with your back to the screen.

I really enjoy it as we do a series of them, and maybe there are points where some of the things we we wanted to say have been said and then there’s this spaciousness and silence. It’s just a delight actually to listen in a way that I can’t really think of other contexts where that would happen like that. You know the sense of the silence, or the not yet coming of language would very easily be filled by somebody, myself probably if we were facing one other and having conversation. Back-to-back, the way we’re doing it, it’s just very easy to let that space, it might not feel like it as a speaker, to really enjoy being in that space actually. And you know when you were talking about the sense of being able to sense somebody’s vibrations, there’s just such a very tangible vibration of this kind of almost like formless thinking as its just about coming into words and the space that that occupies, that I don’t think I notice in other contexts. Probably because it, the space gets filled or it would be awkward, it would be very easy to ask a question or to prompt or whatever and here it just feels very precious actually, to witness that edge between the not yet finding the language and coming into language. Yes, precious is I think quite an adequate term for that. And maybe that is that sense of this dorsal language is attentive to that edge. You know it kind of I don’t know, probably now sometimes the sense of the rush to find language or to say something fills the gap too quickly and there all these other half thoughts that are swirling around. It made me think of the kind of the murkiness, the murkiness of the thinking that we’ve talked about before and just really giving it the time to come in its own way. And what a pressure, what a pressure there is under normal life circumstances to kind of articulate swiftly and efficiently. Ah yes, there was something there about this efficiency. I’d written down this word efficiency today and I think my association with efficiency is rather utilitarian, so as I’m talking of language I feel it’s about getting to the point quickly, not deviating, not taking tangents, being straight to the point. So my association of efficiency is joyless, it’s very stripped of joy, stripped of sensation, and kind of direct and pointed but in the practice the sense of efficiency was very different. It was about removing the obstacles that get in the way of spontaneous fluid movement. And efficiency was much more like spontaneity or - I feel like I want to look this up as well, it’s interesting isn’t it, its making me curious about several words today. Like subjectivity, I mean I said this word, and I think do I really know what I mean when I say this. Maybe sometimes the word comes quick, it comes too quick almost for what it’s trying to say. It’s a short cut language often that misses the complexity.

It's interesting that you brought up this word efficiency because it was the bit today, I was transcribing from last time and you had been talking about efficiency, also of removing of obstacles, or having things, to somehow strip things away, the things that don’t need to be involved, which is a clearing the way. You were also talking about conversation and meandering, trying to remember what the other had said and the evaporation of the things so quickly and you had talked about this sort of noticing that you can’t get to it directly and that you have to go around another way in order to get there. It came up again now. These half thoughts, these thoughts that aren’t yet formed, they sometimes don’t get a chance to form as something else perhaps then that is already known or understood can push them away because that’s what gets said. It’s interesting how language or how thinking and speaking are working together and this idea of common languages, so yes, there are these short cuts so we are not always going back to every – I quite like this idea that everything would have to be somehow unpacked and there was no short cut language, but then we would just be somewhere else in our evolution if that happened. But it also makes me think that short cut languages that we agree that we do understand that and probably so many misunderstandings much is misunderstood without us knowing or also creates an interesting, or maybe they reveal themselves but sometimes those misunderstandings come with us for a long time and maybe never get revealed. And maybe that doesn’t matter. Interesting. How language, is fully involved in aboutness of, talking is about. I quite enjoy how we can fall back into a kind of talking through, a thinking through the process, talking about thinking through the process. It’s sort of fascinating, In a way you’re trying to sort of follow what’s happening and speak it as it happens and speak about what’s happening. There are moments where the thinking and the speaking and the reflecting and the circling around are folding back, in and out.

Transcript Prompts 14.04.2022

It’s interesting because I think it’s been hanging in the background like a guilty sort of thing

There’s a lot in what you were saying, like last time, trying to think, lots of threads to go into. There’s something about time, something about the dorsal and frontality and their relationship with past and future. You mentioned about dropping into the present, and I think how I’ve taken it, because these times I’ve noticed my nervous system is a little bit of a jangle these last couple of weeks and I was thinking even the noticing of that, is linked with a dorsal practice. And also coming into the perhaps, or through the doing or through what is happening to notice something. I can somehow appreciate that sense of the dorsal, not falling to it as a … or sometimes I get the sense it’s resisting forward motion, and in a way it doesn’t need to resist, doesn’t need to have a sense of retrograde, or pulling back, but more perhaps allowing in of the dorsal, even if into very jangled nervous system or need to rush. So there’s a link with time. Activating also sometimes feels like, okay! I just need to focus, put the switch on, but I think the inability to do that these last few weeks, I have had to let it seep in quite gently, which also makes it a kind of sense, of sometimes there’s a full focus on that and it does feel more like an activation, a pulling of attention to it, but perhaps there are these other modes, when it’s easier to have it a little bit in the background,and to allow it come in gently,even to a small degree of something. Which perhaps then brings it more into, um, means you are practising it all the time, sometimes more consciously than other times, which feels quite exciting in a way, because then it really does have this possibility to evolve, or change, yes change things. And then the other day I noticed, even though I wasn’t doing it, this word perhaps, I just loved having this word with me, perhaps. I didn’t even unpack it much, but it was interesting, when you brought it up last week, it was an immediate sense of oh that is really lovely. You used this other word last week, delightful. There was something really exciting and lovely about it. And then this per through the doing of. This happen-stance. Stance as in standing. To happen. I think there something very …it’s all wrapped up, a lot of things wrapped up in a word. We talked about it before these sometimes in-between or throw-away sentences, or a word that is often avoiding some sort assertive statement, putting in some uncertainty or doubt. It gives a different sense of or opens up a different kind of territory of thinking and feeling through something.

It's hard not to again not want to look at my notes. There were many things you were saying that really triggered some of the things I was thinking about. I think that idea letting the practice or letting the attitude of dorsality seep into life felt a very present reflection and I think one of the things that I was, I suppose mulling over, this blurry line between art and life. at times I think the emphasis as we’ve moved from I guess a kind of concrete explorations of lying, rotation, transition …. into this perhaps, the perhaps, also felt like it was a move into a more explorative sense of movement practice, that made me feel quite nervous in a way, made me feel wow, I don’t really know how to inhabit this, I don’t feel like I have a kind of enquiry-based movement practice in the sense that I think I was thinking of it very much as a kind of artistic research practice, a kind of creative movement practice and so some of my reflections have been around, is it to explore this as a creative practice in those terms, so seeking a movement vocabularly that is opening up into something, new forms, new modes of movement or is there something to do, or the more of leaning towards movement as an arts practice, and then thinking about life, and what is it to locate it more in the life part, part of this blurriness between art and life.Andthinking very much of dorsality in terms of, attempting to change habits really or kind of transform habits or work with habits, and in particular habits that are really engrained.Sothis kind of very subtle practice of transforming ways of living, ways of life habits of life that might have become more frontal in their tendency. And thinking about this idea of trying to install new habits. So actually, in some senses that felt like this was less about a curiosity in new forms but really trying to stick with something, just stick with the one thing. Not to even attempt to follow the impulse of something into new directions but to kind of just very, very patiently keep coming back to the same thing as a way of trying to transform a pattern of being or behaving. So it felt as if there were these two quite different kinds of modes really that I could recognise, or even in the decision which of the two am I activating or which am I leaning towards. One felt as if it was this almost like sacred precious time of practice, that was quite bracketed, like studio time, or designated time for exploration, where experience and practice would become amplified, so there’s qualities of absorption and immersion and amplification and on the other hand there was much more integrative, like integrating practices into life, whenever it came to mind, not having a designated time, but doing it when it came to mind, really integrating this sense of dorsality just into every day experience whatever it was. Not special spaces, or special conditions, or special movements or explorative movements, or art but just into the fabric of daily life. And maybe there’s something in the relationship between these two modesI am interested in.

I have been travelling on the train a lot these past weeks, up and down, into Cornwall, London and Brighton and I do remember when we first started on this idea of dorsality and linking it with a kind of connection to travelling backwards on a train rather than forwards and that quite nauseous feeling, or I get that feeling. And I think because I was travelling on a train again, and I try and do it now deliberately now, so I am not, so I am deliberately not sitting facing the direction to where I am going, so there’s a stronger sense of departure than going-to. And I suppose, because I was on a train, I was revisiting what that was and this more …the sense of leaving and moving away and what’s in front and kind of - it sort of expands and reveals itself rather than going to, racing towards a kind of vanishing point. So I suppose … that’s where I took the … there’s something perhaps, when you are leaving or going, I felt a mix of travel excitement and going to and also nostalgia, so an intermingling of different things and the relationships between which way you are facing, where you are going, and the relationship with those two places and the travel between and together with that, I was also going somewhere where I wasn’t prepared, maybe I was thinking to bring that idea of the perhaps and the dorsal as a kind of space of uncertainty and how I might familiarise myself with that, just be in that space of not quite being prepared, not quite knowing what will happen, or how I will deal with the situation. It’s a kind of diversion. No pun intended. Because of some of our exercises like lying, twisting, transition, and we also talked now of walking, we do these … but I’m quite passive in the train so there’s a different sense of direction, and force and speed and how the body is present in that, being taken elsewhere. So maybe with the train, I’m trying to work my way through … there’s a number of metaphors somehow in train travel, which means the train is somewhere where I can reflect on those things. Travelling on the train is a kind of in-between space, opens up a space for working, thinking, drifting.Yes, rather than actively working with the body. Hmm.

When you were talking about the sense of dorsality, and a kind of willingness to just enter that space of unpreparedness, be with feeling unprepared, it really resonated with me. Today, I do these deep listening sessions with another person, and I was talking a little bit aboutthe experience of busy-ness and how at times when I’m really busy it just feels as if there’s no space for anything and it’s kind of quite dead, a deadening experience, there’s no real contact with being alive. And I was talking about like a kind of weighing scales or trade-off between on the one hand a sense of being alive and .. like the busy-ness was bound up with this sense of preparedness and the risk of not being in that kind of momentum would be somehow failing or not succeeding or not being prepared or even not being ready or not doing something as well as expected. So there’s a lot around expectation and fulfilling expectation but the cost was alivenessand it was quite an interesting point to come to in this conversation. My experience in these days trying to activate or dropping into this sense of the dorsal has somehow got some quality of acceptance within it or just letting things be a bit more, like letting go of some of those pressures and expectations, actually I think particularly of professional life in some ways, letting go of some of the pressures of a certain way of being and behaving, in order to drop into an experience that actually if life, is much more alive. There’s loads of things bound up in that. One of them I suppose is not quite pleasure, but the idea of pleasant sensation has come to my mind, well not to mind, it has come to my experience, come to my body. I think before we’ve talked about pleasure, but it’s not felt pleasure but there’s been this experience of dropping into the back and a sense of this pleasant sensation of easefulness and relief, like some kind of opening, but pleasure would be too strong to describe it in a way. One of the things I was exploring was I suppose this habit that if I think of the back or if I attempt to practice the dorsal mode, there’s this habit or tendency or preconception of slowing, its slowing it down, its dropping back into a stiller slower way or really seeing slowness or stillness as the antidote to this hurried frontal way of being.But in these last days I was trying to maintain a level of speed so a lot of the practice has been through walking and trying to just kind of see what happens with velocity and speed but still in this dorsal orientation and there’s something really lovely just about how the limbs kind of just swing, like particularly around the shoulder girdle, I like to just really let my shoulders drop and walk so my limbs are moved through the momentum of the walking but not at all in a hurried way. It just felt so thoroughly pleasant, not like pleasure like I was grasping at it but just really easeful. So I was moving a little bit between, the feeling was hurry and I was actively trying to move into this dorsal register so I was kind of experimenting between dropping back into the hurried mode and then falling back into this dorsal register and it was such a different experience - around the limbs really - like the limbs in the experience of hurriedness felt very contracted and immobile almost, like the whole body sort of stiffened and felt like it was completely leaning forward and then as I was falling back into the dorsality, there was something around the pelvis area that felt very fluid and loose around shoulders and just the feeling of the arms swinging with walking just felt really lovely, really pleasant, really fluid, really liquid. So there was something about just noticing that actually, and the things you were saying about whether noticing is itself a dorsal practice I could sort of see that actually. One of the areas for me is just noticing sensation and there are times in this, in the speed of activity, I am not even noticing the sensations whether they’re pleasant or unpleasant or neutral or anything else because there’s such a kind of goal or destination to get to. And maybe there’s something in noticing itself having a pleasant quality to it irrespective of whether what’s noticed is pleasant or not, that just noticing has a positive affirmative dimension. And I think I was also turning over this sense of relation between awareness and exploration or noticing and exploration and a lot of my sense of the practice was very much in the register of noticing or bringing awareness to experience that was there.What constitutes exploration? Maybe I am underestimating or diminishing what that exploration is in a way, like maybe I have a conception that exploration has to somehow be expressive or kind of bigger or more experimental – and there is exploration even in the micro, which feels very important. Saying this out loud I think

Umm, the micro, and the Small Dance, Paxton, the micro and the micro-articulations of the joints, which in a way come from the back and the spine being perhaps quieter in that supportive way. It’s also fascinating how the legs support and move the body and the arms have a very different kind of articulation and set of possibilities. This idea of the micro, that allows the complexity to become more tangible or feelable and therefore maybe there are some things that aren’t, well, what’s visible from the outside, I suppose that there’s a quality that comes into the body which is visible but it’s not through a shaping or particular form. The small dance is sort of or offers a transformative possibility. And I was also thinking about listening and seeing and reorganising of the senses and that our sense of gravity is also a sense. We talked about that before. Your story of walking and the articulation of the arms and the legs, an integrated movement, where everything is finding a way to all work together. We call it tuning into the back but also the body is kind of tuning into its understanding of how things are organised, the hierarchy of what needs to happen. Alsoits understanding gravity and how you can to work with that to walk joyfully fast or saunter or move in another ways.Its almost then that in that doing rhythms and pulses and different relations between the body and the breath that in moments like all come together and make sense. It also made me think in relation to the micro, I was listening to someone talk about someone they are working with who is hard of hearing. And the difference between listening through the ears and the idea of listening more as in picking up resonances and frequencies in and from the space around. And this woman was talking about if she has her hearing aids in, she hears sounds and noises whereas the frequencies to which she is usually very sensitive to are simply not there for her. And when she is without her hearing aids, she senses these frequencies and knows even when someone is or comes up behind her because she feels the whole atmosphere change. She knows people are behind her even though she cannot see them. For her those two mechanisms are two different kinds of listening, through the ear, skin or nervous system or just the sensitivity to that everything is vibrating. She said she can’t seem to have both, one or the other, which I find very interesting and I was wondering about this idea of sensing vibrations of bodies, objects, or anything really, the street, other people, dogs. We are perhaps less consciously aware of that. Even the things that we see or hear might distract us from that very subtle sense that we do have but that which is often very underneath. Talking about the micro, made me think of micro-frequencies, like we are kind of sensing machines, you can pick up static, air circulating, tiny vibrations of any different things. A sense of being among, being one of those vibrating things. I think that’s quite a … For me perhaps this is a different kind of relationship to the dorsal, more a sense of locatedness, idea of …. Or how sight locates us and how sound locates us, in a way sound locates us perhaps even more with what’s happening behind or how far away something is how. But there is another kind of locatedness through vibration being present. So I suppose I was struck by the dorsal feeling much more linked to listening, we talked about this before, with the ears on the side of the body. And that actually there are other kinds of listening or ways of understanding how one is orientating. It’s nice. It’s almost. It’s quite interesting this idea of exploration, with the exercises, activities, note taking and interesting how it can become less and less, it might have a .. or maybe its is a similarity when if you start somewhere you open up this other territory and go a bit deeper and then another territory and deeper and things get into smaller and smaller details, but perhaps there is also something about less and less. There’s some kind of relationship between micro and less, which is interesting. And the other thing I have been thinking about, I think triggered by that idea of what is not retrograde, not wanting to return, to trace back. This idea of turning over and over rather than go back to, coming into a situation, yes and I think some of our tasks are quite interesting in this way because we come into a kind of familiar place.

That’s interesting, as you were talking there was so much in my mind, we have a little pause there and it all kind of evaporates. Yeh, let me try and tune back in. There was something about this less and less and the micro, and this sense of subtlety that feels as if there’s something there. Ah no it was something around the senses actually as you were describing this sense of vibration and resonance that it feels, my experience feels as if in the dorsal mode,you know we were talking about the limbs of the body in cooperation or the body in cooperation with the environment and my feeling is that the senses feel much more cooperative in the dorsal mode whereas perhaps in the kind of the typical frontal mode, we’ve talked about the sight dominating, where actually kind of the senses having this directional dimension to them searching or seeking actively moving towards a sort of, kind of maybe kind of sympathetic system and parasympathetic system, there’s something

And in the dorsal there just feels as if there are registers of sight and language that drop back into a more equal footing with the other senses of touch and listening. Or I was thinking of much more a kind of global experience, its harder for me to differentiate the one from the other, I feel much more like a sensory being.Ahmaybe this is this more like sentience. It feels much more like an experience of sentience in a way. And then I think do I really know what sentience means.I don’t think I really do. There are so many words I want to look up. Like earlieryou were talking about delight, delight is such a strange word, delighting, what does this mean, what’s the light in that, but then there’s this de, this kind of unlighting. I kind of feel like a desire almost to kind of dive into some of these terms. And this sense of sentience or being, I think we talked before about this differentiation of doing and being and the frontal having more to do with doing and the dorsal being more of a sense of being.And today when I was practising there was something about the frontal having more of a sense of identity to it in a way and the dorsal having more of a sense of subjecthood, or subjectivity, So I was thinking about, this kind of relationship between identity and subjectivity. And subjectivity just felt as if there was almost less of the identifiable me in it, but much more alive at the same time. Like really paradoxical. Almost like, if there were obstacles towards my practising a dorsality, it’s actually identity more often than not or habits of ways of being that have got some kind of correlation to formulation of an identity - and self-consciousness I think also that comes with some of that identity formation. And subjectivity just feels really liberating, a real sense of like being a being that is alive, that’s free of all those habits of life that accumulate over time and very, in these practices especially very alive in the sensations of exploration and sort of unhindered by habits of identity, or at least, that feels a bit utopian in a way, but that there are moments where it just feels as if there is a glimpse of that perhaps, of this kind of pure being , joyful actually , I think particularly in this weather. Like earlier today there was a moment, I think I was recalling the score where you were talking about imagining the hand or a palm at the shoulder blades and leaning back into the palm, and there was a point when the sun was on my back and part of the sun was on my skin, and it just felt wow it’s been such a long time since I felt that sensation of warmth, warmth from the sun and this leaning back into the palm of the sun in a way. And just really very immediate and kind of bare of, bare of identity somehow, just very sensory, or cooperative I think, a sense of the cooperative dimension of it of feeling part of all these vibrations you were talking about and all of these resonances,

I love that image of the palm of the sun between the shoulder blades. It was interesting while you were speaking, especially in that last minute I could sense I wasn’t listening, or that in the listening I was thinking I might not have anything to say anymore. In the turns of 5, 5, 10, 10 all the words and images that accumulate and at the moment the palm of the sun between the shoulder blades is such a strong image, it’s drawn me to look out of the window. Umm. Identity. There are certain words in the English language I have a kind of blind spot. Subjectivity, this word, whenever it comes up, I never really understand what it means so it was very nice to hear you talking about it in relation to identity and different modes and modalities. You called it participation, those modes of ahh I am part of the things that I hear rather than full of myself. There was something very interesting to navigate this word you were talking about in a particular context. A word that for some reason won’t settle in my mind, and always throws me off, a kind of glitch in my circuit. I’m trying to …sorry … the sense work in a different way… I am trying to make little mental notes, to go through and see what is sticking in my mind. Another image of these soft eyes, not not seeing, but seeing otherwise, seeing differently, seeing, not that there are different things to see, but that perhaps seeing is not dominant, as you said, that in being dominant it’s not participating, and when its participating it means there is a softer quality, scanning, because its co-operating with the other senses. It’s actually quite fascinating, cooperation which then creates a different sense of participation, which puts us absolutely just amongst the other things.Hmm. For me I find that also gives me more of a sense of a more animal-human. And I enjoy that as well, a sensation of animal-human, and is really a relief from the social, the job, or judgements of where you should be, or how the world sees you, it’s a much quieter, and more fun actually, a more fun way moving around the world which is more akin perhaps to animals, or to children or moments of being in the studio or creative conversations or walking on a sunny day. I’ve been reading something, someone pointed me to it, Katherine Hayles Unthought, and I keep reading a few sentences over and over, it’s around a cognition that still happens but there is a lot more unconscious cognition than was first thought and this is also shared with many other forms of life particularly animals, which also creates a kind of space of being more alike than other things, or being more animal-human and that there are many more things going on than we are conscious about. AndI’m wondering if there is a link there with the dorsal, and perhaps there is a quieter micro-sensing with which maybe we are getting a glimpse of what is normally not conscious – I’m not sure, but I think there is something in there that links it with the dorsal. It’s actually quite funny I am still with this frontal image, a linguistic sense-making and there are moments like this that words just slightly umm , I’m kind of thinking aloud, like I want to tell you about what is on this wall, about this room, that I’m looking out of the window, and I think appreciating the setup we have now, with the covered camera for me and you with your back to the screen.

I really enjoy it as we do a series of them, and maybe there are points where some of the things we we wanted to say have been said and then there’s this spaciousness and silence. It’s just a delight actually to listen in a way that I can’t really think of other contexts where that would happen like that. You know the sense of the silence, or the not yet coming of language would very easily be filled by somebody, myself probably if we were facing one other and having conversation. Back-to-back, the way we’re doing it, it’s just very easy to let that space, it might not feel like it as a speaker, to really enjoy being in that space actually. And you know when you were talking about the sense of being able to sense somebody’s vibrations, there’s just such a very tangible vibration of this kind of almost like formless thinking as its just about coming into words and the space that that occupies, that I don’t think I notice in other contexts.Probably because it, the space gets filled or it would be awkward, it would be very easy to ask a question or to prompt or whatever and here it just feels very precious actually, to witness that edge between the not yet finding the language and coming into language. Yes, precious is I think quite an adequate term for that. And maybe that is that sense of this dorsal language is attentive to that edge. You know it kind of I don’t know, probably now sometimes the sense of the rush to find language or to say something fills the gap too quickly and there all these other half thoughts that are swirling around.It made me think of the kind of the murkiness, the murkiness of the thinking that we’ve talked about before and just really giving it the time to come in its own way. And what a pressure, what a pressure there is under normal life circumstances to kind of articulate swiftly and efficiently. Ah yes, there was something there about this efficiency. I’d written down this word efficiency today and I think my association with efficiency is rather utilitarian, so as I’m talking of language I feel it’s about getting to the point quickly, not deviating, not taking tangents, being straight to the point. So my association of efficiency is joyless, it’s very stripped of joy, stripped of sensation, and kind of direct and pointed but in the practice the sense of efficiency was very different. It was about removing the obstacles that get in the way of spontaneous fluid movement. And efficiency was much more like spontaneity or - I feel like I want to look this up as well, it’s interesting isn’t it, its making me curious about several words today. Like subjectivity, I mean I said this word, and I think do I really know what I mean when I say this. Maybe sometimes the word comes quick, it comes too quick almost for what it’s trying to say. It’s a short cut language often that misses the complexity.

Notion of perhaps, what happens, what emerges through happenstance. To just think of this ‘activate the back’, activate the back, or drop back or drop into, at times it felt like it was dropping back into a slowness, so something between dorsality and slow it down, slow it down, stop hurrying but I think there was also this sense of the dorsal and the present. This dropping down and gravitational pull into the present and out of this lean. Almost a kind of sadness in a strange way that the places where I am activating the potential of the dorsal is in this antidotal counterbalance kind of way, a kind of remedy or yes kind of salve, for what I can recognise in my experience as hurriedness, or haste or urgency. So it’s almost kind of used very much in this counterbalance way but not explored in and of itself.

To explore it much more affirmatively, in its own terms, in its own right as an exploration, as a space of curiosity. And what kinds of conditions might I need for that. You only need to start practising it and the conditions appear in a way. I’m waiting for the right conditions but really I just need to make them. If I start, the conditions will appear. I don’t need to wait really.

Something about time, something about the dorsal and frontality and their relationship with past and future. Dropping into the present, - it doesn’t need to resist, doesn’t need to have a sense of retrograde, or pulling back, but more perhaps allowing in of the dorsal, let it seep in quite gently. Perhaps there are these other modes, to allow it come in gently, because then it really does have this possibility to evolve, or change, yes change things.

This word perhaps. And then this per through the doing of. This happen-stance. Stance as in standing. To happen.

That idea letting the practice or letting the attitude of dorsality seep into life, mulling over, this blurry line between art and life. We’ve moved from I guess a kind of concrete explorations of lying, rotation, transition …. into this perhaps, the perhaps, also felt like it was a move into a more explorative sense of movement practice. How to inhabit this -seeking a movement vocabulary that is opening up into something, new forms, new modes of movement or is there something to do, or the more of leaning towards movement as an arts practice, and then thinking about life, and what is it to locate it more in the life part, part of this blurriness between art and life. Thinking very much of dorsality in terms of, attempting to change habits really or kind of transform habits or work with habits, and in particular habits that are really engrained. This kind of very subtle practice of transforming ways of living, ways of life habits of life that might have become more frontal in their tendency. Thinking about this idea of trying to install new habits. So actually, in some senses that felt like this was less about a curiosity in new forms but really trying to stick with something, just stick with the one thing. Not to even attempt to follow the impulse of something into new directions but to kind of just very, very patiently keep coming back to the same thing as a way of trying to transform a pattern of being or behaving.

One felt as if it was this almost like sacred precious time of practice, that was quite bracketed, like studio time, or designated time for exploration, where experience and practice would become amplified, so there’s qualities of absorption and immersion and amplification and on the other hand there was much more integrative, like integrating practices into life, whenever it came to mind, not having a designated time, but doing it when it came to mind, really integrating this sense of dorsality just into every day experience whatever it was. Not special spaces, or special conditions, or special movements or explorative movements, or art but just into the fabric of daily life. And maybe there’s something in the relationship between these two modes.

A kind of connection to travelling backwards, deliberately not sitting facing the direction to where I am going, so there’s a stronger sense of departure than going-to. The sense of leaving and moving away and what’s in front and kind of - it sort of expands and reveals itself rather than going to, racing towards a kind of vanishing point. A mix of travel excitement and going to and also nostalgia; an intermingling of different things and the relationships between which way you are facing, where you are going, and the relationship with those two places and the travel between and together with that. Going somewhere where I wasn’t prepared, to bring that idea of the perhaps and the dorsal as a kind of space of uncertainty and how I might familiarise myself with that, just be in that space of not quite being prepared, not quite knowing what will happen, or how I will deal with the situation. It’s a kind of diversion.

A kind of in-between space, opens up a space for working, thinking, drifting. A kind of willingness to just enter that space of unpreparedness, be with feeling unprepared. The experience of busy-ness and how at times it just feels as if there’s no space for anything and it’s kind of quite dead, a deadening experience, there’s no real contact with being alive. The busy-ness was bound up with this sense of preparedness and the risk of not being in that kind of momentum would be somehow failing or not succeeding or not being prepared or even not being ready or not doing something as well as expected. So there’s a lot around expectation and fulfilling expectation but the cost was aliveness. Letting go of some of the pressures of a certain way of being and behaving, in order to drop into an experience that actually if life, is much more alive.

There’s this habit or tendency or preconception of slowing, its slowing it down, its dropping back into a stiller slower way or really seeing slowness or stillness as the antidote to this hurried frontal way of being. I was trying to maintain a level of speed, trying to just kind of see what happens with velocity and speed but still in this dorsal orientation. The limbs kind of just swing, like particularly around the shoulder girdle, I like to just really let my shoulders drop and walk so my limbs are moved through the momentum of the walking but not at all in a hurried way. It just felt so thoroughly pleasant, not like pleasure like I was grasping at it but just really easeful. Trying to move into this dorsal register so I was kind of experimenting between dropping back into the hurried mode and then falling back into this dorsal register and it was such a different experience - around the limbs really - like the limbs in the experience of hurriedness felt very contracted and immobile almost, like the whole body sort of stiffened and felt like it was completely leaning forward and then as I was falling back into the dorsality, there was something around the pelvis area that felt very fluid and loose around shoulders and just the feeling of the arms swinging with walking just felt really lovely, really pleasant, really fluid, really liquid.

Just noticing sensation. In the speed of activity, I am not even noticing the sensations whether they’re pleasant or unpleasant or neutral or anything else because there’s such a kind of goal or destination to get to. And maybe there’s something in noticing itself having a pleasant quality to it irrespective of whether what’s noticed is pleasant or not, that just noticing has a positive affirmative dimension.

What constitutes exploration? Thinking about this much more in terms of micro movement and micro-sensation and micro-transitions actually feels a much more transformative area of testing. How subtle that is and what a range of complex and simple explorations are happening there and micro-articulations of the joints, which in a way come from the back and the spine being perhaps quieter in that supportive way. A transformative possibility. I was also thinking about listening and seeing and reorganising of the senses and that our sense of gravity is also a sense.

We call it tuning into the back but also the body is kind of tuning into its understanding of how things are organised, the hierarchy of what needs to happen. Its understanding gravity and how you can work with that to walk joyfully fast or saunter or move in another ways. Rhythms and pulses and different relations between the body and the breath that in moments like all come together and make sense. The difference between listening through the ears and the idea of listening more as in picking up resonances and frequencies in and from the space around. There are two different kinds of listening, through the ear, skin or nervous system or just the sensitivity to that everything is vibrating. This idea of sensing vibrations of bodies, objects, or anything really, the street, other people, dogs. Talking about the micro, made me think of micro-frequencies, like we are kind of sensing machines, you can pick up static, air circulating, tiny vibrations of any different things. A sense of being among, being one of those vibrating things. There is another kind of located-ness through vibration being present, more linked to listening. And that actually there are other kinds of listening or ways of understanding how one is orientating. How it can become less and less - if you start somewhere you open up this other territory and go a bit deeper and then another territory and deeper and things get into smaller and smaller details, but perhaps there is also something about less and less. There’s some kind of relationship between micro and less. Not wanting to return, to trace back.

My experience feels as if in the dorsal mode, the limbs of the body in cooperation or the body in cooperation with the environment and my feeling is that the senses feel much more cooperative in the dorsal mode whereas perhaps in the kind of the typical frontal mode, we’ve talked about the sight dominating, where actually kind of the senses having this directional dimension to them searching or seeking actively moving towards a sort of, kind of maybe kind of sympathetic system and parasympathetic system.

Cognitive capacities, maybe that’s a way of thinking about it, that certain kinds of cognitive capacities or modalities dominate in the frontal mode. And in the dorsal there just feels as if there are registers of sight and language that drop back into a more equal footing with the other senses of touch and listening. A kind of global experience, it’s harder for me to differentiate the one from the other, I feel much more like a sensory being. Maybe this is this more like sentience. It feels much more like an experience of sentience in a way. And then I think do I really know what sentience means. You were talking about delight, delight is such a strange word, delighting, what does this mean, what’s the light in that, but then there’s this de, this kind of unlighting.

This sense of sentience or being, I think we talked before about this differentiation of doing and being and the frontal having more to do with doing and the dorsal being more of a sense of being. There was something about the frontal having more of a sense of identity to it in a way and the dorsal having more of a sense of subjecthood, or subjectivity. If there were obstacles towards my practising a dorsality, it’s actually identity more often than not or habits of ways of being that have got some kind of correlation to formulation of an identity - and self-consciousness I think also that comes with some of that identity formation. And subjectivity just feels really liberating, a real sense of like being a being that is alive, that’s free of all those habits of life that accumulate over time and very, in these practices especially very alive in the sensations of exploration and sort of unhindered by habits of identity, or at least, that feels a bit utopian in a way, but that there are moments where it just feels as if there is a glimpse of that perhaps, of this kind of pure being , joyful actually.

Imagining the hand or a palm at the shoulder blades and leaning back into the palm, and there was a point when the sun was on my back and part of the sun was on my skin, and it just felt wow it’s been such a long time since I felt that sensation of warmth, warmth from the sun and this leaning back into the palm of the sun in a way. And just really very immediate and kind of bare of, bare of identity somehow, just very sensory, or cooperative I think, a sense of the cooperative dimension of it of feeling part of all these vibrations you were talking about and all of these resonances. There is that sense of identity kind, it feels like it binds you up in a bag that is separate from all of the rest of life, it has much more of a sense of a contour. I think that the dorsal releases that contoured sense of being to a much wider sense of participation of forces and agencies. And quite scary in a way because of that, this sense of sort of really letting go,

This sense of confusion in this just letting go of your edges in a way. Really beautiful, almost like an emotional confusion of spaciousness that’s a bit frightening but really liberating at the same time. And that sensation happening very much in waves of opening into that sense and then maybe contracting back into more of a sense of form or a body or self-consciousness or thought even. This kind of pulsing dimension of the practice of opening up and then maybe solidifying.

Another image of these soft eyes, not not seeing, but seeing otherwise, seeing differently, seeing, not that there are different things to see, but that perhaps seeing is not dominant, as you said, that in being dominant it’s not participating, and when it’s participating it means there is a softer quality, scanning, because its co-operating with the other senses. It’s actually quite fascinating, cooperation which then creates a different sense of participation, which puts us absolutely just amongst the other things.

But there is a lot more unconscious cognition than was first thought and this is also shared with many other forms of life particularly animals, which also creates a kind of space of being more alike than other things, or being more animal-human. I’m wondering if there is a link there with the dorsal, and perhaps there is a quieter micro-sensing with which maybe we are getting a glimpse of what is normally not conscious.

It’s just a delight actually to listen. You know the sense of the silence, or the not yet coming of language would very easily be filled by somebody, myself probably if we were facing one other and having conversation. Back-to-back, the way we’re doing it, it’s just very easy to let that space, to really enjoy being in that space actually. The sense of being able to sense somebody’s vibrations, there’s just such a very tangible vibration of this kind of almost like formless thinking as its just about coming into words and the space that that occupies, that I don’t think I notice in other contexts. Here it just feels very precious actually, to witness that edge between the not yet finding the language and coming into language. Precious is I think quite an adequate term for that. And maybe that is that sense of this dorsal language is attentive to that edge. It made me think of the kind of the murkiness, the murkiness of the thinking that we’ve talked about before and just really giving it the time to come in its own way.

What a pressure, what a pressure there is under normal life circumstances. There was something there about this efficiency. I’d written down this word efficiency today and I think my association with efficiency is rather utilitarian, so as I’m talking of language I feel it’s about getting to the point quickly, not deviating, not taking tangents, being straight to the point. So my association of efficiency is joyless, it’s very stripped of joy, stripped of sensation, and kind of direct and pointed but in the practice the sense of efficiency was very different. It was about removing the obstacles that get in the way of spontaneous fluid movement. And efficiency was much more like spontaneity. A short cut language often misses the complexity.

You had been talking about efficiency, also of removing of obstacles, or having things, to somehow strip things away, the things that don’t need to be involved, which is a clearing the way. You were also talking about conversation and meandering, trying to remember what the other had said and the evaporation of the things so quickly and you had talked about this sort of noticing that you can’t get to it directly and that you have to go around another way in order to get there. These half thoughts, these thoughts that aren’t yet formed, they sometimes don’t get a chance to form as something else perhaps then that is already known or understood can push them away.

I quite enjoy how we can fall back into a kind of talking through, a thinking through the process, talking about thinking through the process. It’s sort of fascinating, In a way you’re trying to sort of follow what’s happening and speak it as it happens and speak about what’s happening. There are moments where the thinking and the speaking and the reflecting and the circling around are folding back, in and out.

PART 4

16.05.2022

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Reading as distillation

- Reading practices using the conversational transcript from 14.04.2022 as source text.

- Take time to tune into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

Moving between 2 practices:

Reading (Noticing Attraction) – Have the transcript to hand, allow gaze to be soft and glide/roam the pages. Practising simultaneously. When a word draws your attention speak it outloud. Allow for overlaps and also silences.

Conversation-as-material distillation – Have the transcript to hand.

When the time feels right read aloud some of the words and phrases that have been highlighted - these could be single words, phrases or a cluster of sentences. Or alternatively, identify words and phrases live and read them aloud.

(1) 5 mins

(2) 15 mins

Backwards. Pulling. Articulation. Conditions. Forces. Resisting. Immediate. Attitude. Subtle. Amplification. Silence. Dropping. Subjectivity. Easefulness. Unconscious cognition. Designated time. Located-ness. Willingness. Vibration being present. Affirmative dimension. Jangled nervous system. Bringing awareness. A kind of willingness. That allows the complexity to become more tangible. The score where you were talking about imagining the hand or the palm at the shoulder blades and leaning back into the palm. Turning over this sense of relation between awareness and exploration, or noticing and exploration. Other ways of listening or understanding how one is orientating. There are qualities of absorption and immersion and amplification. And on the other hand, there is something more integrative, integrating practices into life. Or I was thinking of a much more multi-modal experience, it is harder for me to differentiate the one from another, I feel much more like a sensory being. This idea of sensing vibrations of bodies, objects or anything really – we are perhaps less self-consciously aware of that. As if in the dorsal mode, the senses of the body in cooperation, the body in cooperation with the environment. The senses feel much more cooperative in the dorsal mode, whereas perhaps in a typical frontal mode, we have talked about sight dominating. It feels as if the senses are almost identifiable as separate modalities in the frontal mode. This idea of turning over and over, rather than going back to. It becomes harder for me to differentiate the other from the other. I feel much more like a sensory being, and maybe this is more like sentience, it feels more like the sense of sentience in a way. Allowing in of the dorsal, even if into a very jangled nervous system or a need to rush. So there is a link with time. It is around a cognition which still happens but maybe on a more unconscious level. The kind of willingness to just enter that space of unpreparedness, being with the feeling of being unprepared really resonated. The murkiness, the murkiness of the thinking – just really giving it time to become in its own way. A sense of leaving and moving away from what is in front, it kind of expands away rather than going to. Racing towards a kind of vanishing point. I suppose that is why I took the sense when you are coming or going, a mix of excitement, an intermingling of different things. There is something about efficiency. This dropping down and gravitational pull into the present and out of this lean. An efficiency which was more like spontaneity. Almost a kind of sadness in a strange kind of way, that the places where I am activating the dorsal is in this antidotal, as a counterbalance, a remedy, yes, a kind of salve, for what I can recognise in my experience as hurriedness and haste or urgency.

Bending. Navigate. Micro. Efficiency. Drop into. Stiller, slower. Dropping back. Leaning towards. Stance. Experience. Dorsal. Travelling. Dive into. Amplified. Sensing. Immersion. Through vibration. Happenstance. Liberating. Notion of perhaps. Cooperative. Being. Traveling. Joyful. Sensation. Configuration. Murkiness. Association. Unpacked. Fascinating. Activating. Circling around and folding back in and out. A sacred precious time of practice. Sense work in a different way. Not special places or special conditions or special movements, but just into the fabric of daily life. The sensation of warmth, of warmth from the sun, leaning back into the palm of the sun in a way. Letting go of all the weight, becoming part of the horizontal world and all the confusion of being held and of letting go. A kind of located-ness through vibration, of being present. This idea of sensing vibrations of bodies, objects, or anything really – we are perhaps less consciously aware of that. Not retrograde, not wanting to return, not wanting to trace back. This idea of turning over and over rather than going back to. Coming into a situation, I think that some of our tasks are quite interesting in this way because they come to a kind of familiar place. Talking about the micro, of micro frequencies, like we are kind of sensing machines, you can pick up static, air circulating, tiny vibrations of different things, a sense of being among, being one among those vibrating things. Turning over this sense of relation between a sense of awareness and exploration and noticing and exploration. The sense of the practice was very much in the register of noticing, being aware to experience that was there. What constitutes exploration? And this word – perhaps. This per- through, the doing of, this happenstance. Stance as in standing, to happen. The micro and the micro articulation of the joints which in a way come from the back, from the spine, being perhaps quieter in that supportive way. Dropping into this sense of the dorsal has somehow got some quality of acceptance within it, or just letting things be. Letting go of some of those pressures and expectations, letting go of some of the pressures of a certain way of being or of behaving in order to drop into an experience which is actually much more alive. To mechanisms – there are two different kinds of listening, through the ear and through the skin or nervous system, that sensitivity to everything that is vibrating. This idea of the micro which allows the complexity to become more tangible or feel-able, and there are some things that aren’t, well, what is visible from the outside. There is a quality which comes into the body which is visible but is not through a shaping or a particular sense of direction. A different kind of relationship to the dorsal, more of a kind of located-ness, how sight locates us, how sound locates us. In a way, sound locates us even more with what is behind or how far away something is. This kind of very subtle practice of transforming ways of living, ways of life, habits of life that might have become more frontal in their tendency. And this idea of trying to install new habits. The sense of the dorsal somehow has some quality of acceptance within it – just letting things be a bit more, letting go of some of those pressures or expectations. I was going somewhere where I was not prepared. Maybe I was thinking to bring that idea of the ‘perhaps’ and the dorsal as a kind of space of uncertainty, and how I might familiarise myself. Just being in that space of being unprepared, not quite knowing what will happen. We talked about pleasure but not a felt pleasure, but this experience of dropping into the back, and the sense of a pleasant sensation of easefulness or relief, some kind of opening, but pleasure would be too strong to describe it in a way. There is this spaciousness and silence, just a delight actually to listen and the sense of the silence or the not-yet-coming of language which would easily be filled by somebody if we just facing each other and having a conversation. To activate the back, activate the back, drop back, drop into. At times it felt that it was dropping back into a slowness, something about, something between dorsality and slowness. Slow it down, slow down, stop hurrying. But there was also a sense of the dorsal and the present, this dropping down, this gravitational pull to the present, out of this lean. And I suppose what has struck me is almost a kind of sadness in a strange way, that the places where I am activating the potential of the dorsal is as this antedotal counterbalance. Back to back - to really enjoy being in that space actually. The sense of being able to sense someone’s vibration, a very tangible vibration of this kind of almost formless thinking, as it is just about coming into words and the space that this occupies. I am thinking about this idea of trying to install new habits, actually in some sense that this was less about curiosity about new forms but really trying to stick with something, stick with the one thing, to attempt to not even follow the impulse of something into a new direction. Just very patient, coming back to the same thing, as a way of trying to transform a pattern of being or behaving. Just really very immediate - kind of bare, bare of identity in a way, just very sensory and cooperative. A sense of the cooperative part of it, feeling part of all these vibrations, all these resonances. In terms of micro movements, and micro sensations and micro transitions. It actually feels a much more transformative area of testing in a way perhaps for me. There is another kind of located-ness through vibration. Being present, the dorsal feeling much more close to listening with the ears on the sides of the body. There are other kinds of ways of listening and understanding how one is oriented. This kind of exploration – how it can become less and less. Another image of these soft eyes – not not seeing but seeing otherwise, seeing differently, not that there are different things to see but that perhaps seeing is not dominant. As you said, in being dominant it is not participating, and seeing participating means that there is a softer quality of scanning, because it is cooperating with the other senses. Between awareness and exploration – a sense of the practice that was very much in the register of noticing or bringing awareness. What constitutes exploration? It was much quieter and more fun actually – a more fun way of moving within the world, more akin to animals, or children, or moments of being in the studio or in conversation or in walking on sunny day. And the limbs of the body in cooperation, or the body in cooperation with the environment. And my sense is that the senses feel much more cooperative in the dorsal mode. Whereas perhaps in the typical frontal mode, the sight dominates. Whereas kind of the senses having this directional dimension to them – searching or seeking or moving towards. Also shared with other forms of life, particularly animals, which also creates a space of being more alike with other things. Or being more animal-human. And there are many more things going on than we are conscious about, and I wondering if there is a link there with the dorsal. Perhaps, there is a quieter, micro sensing, where you are getting a glimpse of what is normally not conscious – I am not sure. It feels more much like an experience of sentience in a way. Delight, delight is such as strange word. What is the light in that? And then there is this de- this un-lighting. There is something around the pelvis area that felt very loose, and around the shoulders. And just the feeling of the arms swinging when walking felt very lovely, really pleasant, really fluid, really liquid. There was something about just noticing but actually noticing itself as a dorsal practice, I could sort of see. And the relationship between going somewhere … where I wasn’t prepared and to bring this sense of the dorsal as a space of uncertainty and how I might familiarise myself with that. Travelling backwards and that quite nauseous feeling, and I think that because I was travelling on a train again I am deliberately not facing the direction that I am going, so there is a strong sense of departure, than going to. A sense of leaving and moving away, and what is in front kind of expands rather than racing towards a kind of vanishing point. There is something about when you are going – a mix of travel excitement and going to, but also nostalgia, intermingling of different things. And the relationship between which way you are going – the relation of two places and the travel between them. And these soft eyes, not not seeing, seeing otherwise, seeing differently. Not that there are different things to see, but that perhaps seeing is not dominant. I suppose that there is a quality which comes into the body which is visible, but it is not through a shaping or a particular form – the Small Dance offers a transformative possibility. It is actually quite fascinating – a cooperation which creates a difference sense of participation which puts us absolutely just among the other things. And I find that this gives me more of a sense of a more animal-human.

PART 5

16.05.2022

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Fields of Association

Fields of Association

- Tuning into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

- Each selects a cluster of single words to explore through conversation and etymological exploration, live within the conversation), as a field of association.

(1) 3 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(2) 3 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

(3) 5 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(4) 5 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

So I am going to put micro in. Micro-organism. Micro-second. Micro. Word forming element meaning small in size, hence microscopic. In science, indicating a unit one millionth of the unit it is prefixed to. Oh, that’s interesting. So a micro articulation is one millionth of normal articulation, for example, of the shoulder joint. Attic form of Greek smikros "small, little, petty, trivial, slight," perhaps from PIE *smika, from root *smik- "small". Mica – a type of mineral in the way … mica as in crumb or bit or morsal, grain. It is bringing a sense of the material, we often think of micro as scale. This idea of small, I like this idea of the one millionth, which in a way really brings it into this very very tiny, what we are experiencing in the sense of the micro, it is not even perceptible, or in certain conditions would not be perceptible. It is linked to be able to notice … a grain of salt, mica. It is linked to these many words, like microbe, micro-biology. I suppose looking into a microscope, microscopic – being able to see or sense what is normally visible, what is normally invisible. Thinking of the microscopic as well. Also with this relationship to bio-, to biology and we have been talking around movement and how that biological system, the biological systems of how the body is moving, it is quite interesting. Perhaps in relation to the techno-biological body of David Wills … so it is also a prefix – micro-manage, micro-instruction.

So perhaps as an adjective meaning possibly. Per-hap. Per-hap. From the mid fifteenth century, per or par meaning "by or through". See per. And then the plural of hap or chance – see happen. Per-chance. Perhappons "possibly, by chance" is recorded from late fifteenth century. Per meaning forward, by extension, in front of, forward. Per. Through, during or by means of. Hence, through or in front of. So through chance, or through happenings, what happens, to come to pass, occur, to happen by chance. Yes, happening. It happens to be as a certain way to say is. Hap – to come to pass. Chance, fortune or fate. Interesting – there seems to be a connection to this notion of befall. So to occur, about to fall. To happen or to befall. To happen or come to pass – exactly the same in the sense of the hap, to happen or to come to pass. To come to pass or to befall. To come about, to make or cause. To cause to fall, by happening. Going back to this per-chance – maybe, possibly, perhaps, all these uncertain words. Yes, maybe, this is an interesting word. Often written as two words – something that may be or may happen. Yes, may. May – to be able, to have power. To be able to have power. Maybe – to have power to be.

We talked last time about nostalgia. Nostalgia – from 1720. A morbid longing to return home to one’s native country. It can be a severe home-sickness, almost to the extent of a disease. Homesickness – from home and woe. From Greek, algos "pain, grief, distress". And nostos "homecoming". To reach some place, to escape, return, get home. And there is a PIE *nes- "to return safely home". Old Norse. Sanskrit. Sanskrit – approaches, joins. Something around recovering and around healing – so it is an Old English genesen, coming from German ganisan "to recover, to heal”. And this word, in french, nostalgie is found a French army medical manuals. So yes, there is a kind of pain. Also to look up, ah, a transferred sense (the main modern one) of "wistful yearning for the past" – this is quite late, recorded by 1920. So coming up a lot in french literature which transformed it into a longing, a longing for a distant place, which also necessarily involves a separation in time. Ah, so this is interesting in relation to time, so time, so longing to be in a place that you feel distanced to. Nostalgie – ah, this is moving into the pain area. Also related to -algia, algos "pain," algein "to feel pain," of unknown origin. Oh that is interesting, also related to alegein, to care, to care about and to feel pain. So just go back, this idea of homesickness or longing. This idea of home as a dwelling place, an abode, also a sense of to make oneself at home, linking up with a sense of familiarity, of homing. To establish a home or going home, action of going home. Maybe while I am here I will switch into this other word, otherwise. Contraction of Old English phrase oðre wisan "in the other manner", and from other and wise. Otherwhere. So otherwhere, elsewhere, otherwhat, something else. Wise, wise, a way of proceeding, manner. So this is different from wise as in Old English wis "learned, sagacious, cunning; sane; prudent, discreet; experienced; having the power of discerning and judging rightly. To see and hence to know, so this idea of seeing, and being aware, cunning, there is also this otherwise which is more of a noun, a way, a way of proceeding. A manner, fashion, a custom, a habit, a condition.

I wanted to look at both spontaneity and also delight, somehow as having a connection. It is interesting – spontaneity is next to mechanical. I don’t know whether this is because them being somehow the opposite. So mechanical – pertaining to machines and their use. Spontaneity – a native formation of spontaneous. Occurring without external stimulus. From the Latin, spontaneous, willing of one’s own free will. Of one’s own accord, acting of one’s own accord. This is interesting, I think I might of expected something more time based in it, like immediacy. Then this latter part, this -ity part of spontaneity, a word forming element meaning the condition of quality of. This is interesting – the condition of quality of something. Yes, dorsality, of course, this condition or quality of being dorsal. Yes, all these other examples – anonymity, atonality, accountability, ambidexterity. This is also interesting in relation to the conversation around the left and the right. This ambidexterity as a way of not being one or the other. This ambi- - both, on both sides. Ambi- ¬word forming element meaning both or on both sides. Ambi- around, ambiguous, yes, ambidexterous, this sense of ambivalence also. I am not getting distracted. I want to look at delight. To have to or take great pleasure in. Allure, delight, charm. Delight, also from delicious. Spelled like delite, that is interesting, until the sixteenth century. And the modern unetymological form is from the influence of light and flight. The association of lightness within delight is a modern unetymological addition, then, it is not connected … but the notion of the delicate comes in. Delightful – sensitive, of things delightful, alluring. To allure, to entice. From de- away. This is interesting, not de- as in un- or not, but de-as in away. Actually, this is nice in terms of delight, de-light, no etymologically, but to de-light, like away from the light. It also makes me think of the murkiness and the shadows that we were talking about, so delight as a movement away from the light. De- as a word forming element, the Latin de- down, down from, off, concerning down, off, down to the bottom, totally, completely. But it also has this function of undoing or reversing a verb’s action. Not, do the opposite of, undo. So these two dimensions of it – de- as in undoing or reversing and the opposite of undoing, and also of away, down, away from. This undoing of light or a movement away from light or a movement towards the shadows.

Perpetuating. Sensation. Between. Reveals.

Seeing. Listening. Dorsal voicing.

Gravity and grace. A call for rotation. Unseen. Unknown.

Intrigues. Perpetuated.

Mouth, skin, eyes. Surfaces. Surveying contact.

The twist, the resistance. Twisting feels more like what happens, turning is a possibility.

Voice as a kind of listening.

Transition between. Something about. Releasing. Uncertainty. Mutual.

Periphery. Blurring. Listening. Dissolving. Shadowy spaces. Belowness and backness. Behindness. Beneathness.

So paper-like, so fragile – it is touching, there is a touch to it.

Allowing the front and the back to cooperate more - the qualities of thinking that are connected with the front and the back to cooperate more.

What’s involved and what doesn’t need to be involved?

Thinking of the body as a field of cooperation.

the back seeping around the sides of the body

Letting. Turning. Ways of. Listening. Allowing things. Pleasure of cooperation. Surrender. Becoming other.

To complicate. To unsettle. Orientate differently.

Stilling. Settling, Leaning. Unraveling. Transition.

messy and murky - there is some murkiness in the back

Already in the thing. Movement. Coming next. Attention.

Voicing. Anatomical. Thinking.

Behindness has different qualities of uncertainty. What’s unknown and dark has a lot to do with fear. And there is an excitement in fear.

A sort of oblique or indirect sense of listening, a sense of periphery, the sides of what can be heard. The sense of the back seeping around the side of the body or holding the experience of the body in a kind of envelope of experience.

GRAVITY/ BREATHING

[Exploring] breathing and gravity, it’s also a sort of conversation. They are forces. This conversation of the breathing and gravitational force, a conversation between two different motions.

[Tuning] into this relationship between holding on and fighting gravity, and the dropping and the sinking and letting myself be held.

How much am I following, allowing myself to follow gravity?

Working with the forces of gravity.

Using the different kind of momentum in which gravity gets worked with as a certain kind of force.

Playing with gravity and being willing to yield into gravity.

Duet between the skeleton and gravity.

The experience of this back breathing, being able to soften into a sense of the breathing into the back and awareness of the breath.

Gravity gets worked with as a kind of force, a quality of relaxing or letting go or releasing.

There is something to do with protection and exposure, working with the forces of gravity and the possibilities of rotating the spine, bending the spine, leading or letting another thing lead.

Trying to activate an antidote to that next, next, next, with a sense of not having gravity acting on the body.

Working with the forces of gravity and the possibilities of rotating the spine, bending the spine, twisting at the waist.

Aware of my feet on the floor — this invisible line of gravity, of a vertical axis.

Gravity and grace — dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling.

Something about the dropping back, not necessarily back, but letting go, dropping something that let’s something else move up and out, how the force of gravity allows the expanse of the body.

It’s also to do with a kind of receptivity to the pull of gravity, to just let the body be willing to work with gravity rather than just tensioning all the time, always tensioning against gravity.

This sort of pull of gravity on the way down and the push of the body back to come to standing.

Playing with gravity, being willing to yield into gravity.

Gravity acting on the body. Somehow a different orientation, a relationship to gravity. There is a kind of releasing into gravity, a releasing of weight. And the sense of not having gravity acting on the body.

SUPPORT/CONTACT

[Exploring] feed-back from floor or wall, feed-back from surface, [the] desire for feedback from another person, a counterforce.

Letting myself be held. Can I let myself be held, and what can I let go of, and what can I surrender? Releasing and surrendering and letting go of some of the holding. [Letting] the sense of contact show up, gradually contact shows up.

The relationship to the floor as a plane of contact.

Sensing of the weight distributed … something reconfigured, a connection to the world. To be low down. Sensing the beginning of the touch and the not touch.

Sensing in contact: what does it open up for me?

[Exploring] a sense of force or pressure against which to push; some kind of force or resistance against which to push with the back. The dynamic of a push and a pull — a force that you are working with.

FRONT/BACK – BEYOND BINARY

Tuning into the back, softening the front, softens the front, it allows front to drop back, expectation drops, time drops, or body drops into another sense of time, eyes fall into the body, front falls back.

What is it to be upright? [Becoming] aware of the sense of frontality [and how] experience is shaped by [that]?

[Noticing] the movements that happen in the stillness of just standing. All these resistances to not move, to let the body move but not to move. Forces acting on the body pulling, holding, releasing.

[Tuning] into what arises, or what unfolds, once you have let go, so for it not only to be about this undoing of uprightness, but actually, just to really tune into what unfolds or what opens up as an experience in its own right, if you really settle into that.

[Getting] closer to a sense of the agility of the back, rather than its stillness or static-ness. [Exploring] the fluidity or the movement of the back. How to get beyond [dorsality] just being about not being upright but actually to really see what does it actually do on its own terms. What can be sensed otherwise?

The back as not opposite of the front, not falling into a binary. Where does the back end or begin? Not even [being] about back-front.

Taking care of the transitions — the side-ness of one’s operations.

Attention to the transitions. Dissolving this binary between the front and the back. Opening up a space between the front and the back as a site of a different kind of investigation.

Between discipline and curiosity: dissolving of the binary between front and back, or even between discipline and curiosity. What would be the sides of discipline and curiosity, what is the transition space between discipline and curiosity and how to activate that?

Allowing the front and the back to cooperate more, and the qualities of thinking that are connected with the front and the back to cooperate more. Rather than it being this either/or, exploring the possibility of cooperation. How do these various modes of experience and of thinking experience cooperate within the whole experience of thinking?

Recognising the mutual relationship with the front and the back. Bringing a quality of backness into the front.

Exploring the line between the front and the back as graded, blurred. Dissolving of those differentiated categories.

Activating this side space that is neither up nor down, nor front nor back, but is really looking at a range.

How can exploring the middle point or halfway open up a different kind of register of sensation and awareness? This kind of middle point or middle range that’s neither fully back, nor fully front, nor fully open nor fully closed. There’s this range of experience that falls a bit outside the parameters of language or the tendency in language to fix things as one or the other.

To really explore the participation of the thoracic spine in movement and in being in the world.

This pleasure of participating - to make the movement happen.

BACK-NESS

What is a back, what’s the back then? Is it all these points of contact or the anatomy of the back itself? Rolling a little to the side — is that still the back if it’s in contact with the floor and are the backs of the heels the back. If we are talking about the back, what does it mean really?

How might I start to activate the back in its aliveness, as a field of live experience, living experience rather than this resting passive inert sort of space?

Sensing of a horizontal plane.

[Exploring] the back as a sort of gateway into a proprioceptive capacity, a way of practicing that capacity, or nurturing that capacity. Nurturing one’s proprioceptive capacity, and what kind of being and thinking and observing comes from that as a ground?

[Exploring] a sense of active passivity; passivity as active and dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling.

[Between] protection and exposure.

[Between] spine, back and behind.

[Exploring] the back as a kind of density and the depth of the body. Where does the back begin/end in terms of the interior of the body? Sensing of the unseen surfaces of the body.

[Attending] to those zones that are somehow concealed or hidden or not accessible or unknown in a way. [How does] the less known have the capacity to support or hold a certain kind of experience?

FOLDING

To really tune into what opens up or what unfolds as an experience in its own right.

This coming into down — the crouch, the folded down, further down into hands and knees … and that has more animal-like sensations. A different relationship going into the back.

Folding without putting the hand down, not worrying about falling over. And then this coming into down, and all these images of women, old and ancient images of the crouch, the folded down.

Twisting feels more like what happens; turning is a possibility. I am thinking about twisting and sometimes you see a fold on the skin. What appears on the skin or in the folds and surfaces?

A complex system somehow of unfolding, bending, twisting, and physically working. Initiating different kinds of spirals and twists in the body, a complex system somehow of unfolding, bending, twisting, and physically working with that in the transition.

Fold / Unfold

Allowing the back to have its own agency, to really tune into what unfolds or what opens up as an experience in its own right.

This coming into down, the folding down, the crouch, this coming down further to hands and knees.

ATTENTION/LISTENING/LOOKING

[Exploring] a different kind of gaze, a different kind of gaze: almost like the liquid of the eye is dropping back into its orbit, into the actual socket.

Releasing expectations and particularly habits of control which also are habits of the eyes in a way.

Letting things arrive rather than reaching out. To do with non-grasping. If you do take the attention more into the back, just letting things come, letting things arise or arrive. How to let things come, but only be how to activate a quality of passivity that is also very alert and active.

Listening from behind it also activates the body. The difference between a narrow focussed concentration, through the eyes to a certain extent and this wider peripheral more expansive experience or awareness.

Paying attention to within a much bigger sense of awareness of the wider surroundings.

What does taking the awareness into the back enable?

[Letting] the eyes get used to being in a more back-oriented way.

[Relaxing] the eyes — to take the attention back.

Expanding the range of awareness — not only towards three-dimensionality, but also towards 360 degrees. There is all this unknown terrain that is just here. This sense of 360 awareness. [Exploring] in terms of an external aspect, then bringing the awareness much more into the sense of the three dimensionality of the interior.

Eyes: open/closed – exploring the materiality of the eyes. Exploring how when they are opening, when they are open, they don’t have to see or understand. Light just falling in - staying soft and blurred. Scanning. Blurring. What happens when the eyes drop back or when some attention drops away?

The sense of the blur — looking through the kind of gap of the eye, slight slant of the eye.

Taking this idea of the blur, the not fully focused, these out of focus edges, the blur, the not-yet-in-focus.

Am I really experiencing the sense of the back or am I just thinking about the experience of the back. Is this a direct experience, or a thought I am having about experience? [Exploring this transition]

Activating a more three-dimensional sense of listening or certainly a sort of oblique or indirect sense of listening, a sense of periphery, the sides of what can be heard. Listening often allied very closely with is being looking at, as if it’s at the service of sight, in the service of frontality. Tuning into, activating listening from the perspective of the back, but also from the sides: an oblique diagonal kind of listening.

Eyes touching the surfaces of things: a sense of scanning, a different kind of possibility with the eyes.

Disorientation / Orientation

Attuned Attention Arrive

Time Twisting

Nuance

Scanning

Different combinations of tending towards seeing and listening, a different kind of spaciousness which has a different kind of imagery — dark rather than light, low orientation, low as in not social or not language based, a link with low as in behind.

TIME

Exploring the front and the back and how this can create different sensations of duration and time.

How to activate the back as a dynamic field — the sensation of time, how this can create different sensations of duration and of time.

Something about feeling able to rest in the situation or being able to reside in the situation, or being able to reside, to lean back, taking time. Something about taking time.

Expectation drops, time drops, the body drops into another sense of time.

A sense of dorsality — moving away from the future in a sense, a sense of time going backwards, going back in time.

Taking time actually, there is something about taking time.

Leaning into the unknown future

FIELD OF FORCES / COOPERATION/RESISTANCE

[Noticing] all these different forces and resistances and limits to the material body.

[Between] standing up and walking, between standing and folding forward — noticing how complex it is, and all these things of bending and curving and dropping and lifting and turning and all these shifts of weight. Slowing that process down, but not slow motion.

Leading or letting another thing lead.

Reconfiguring how we are moving brings attention to these pulls or forces that act upon us or can be activated or isolated.

An idea of delay, what starts a turn or a twist, what is later, spiral, delays that happen.

[Shifting] the place of where the movement is orientated from.

[Noticing] all the asymmetries of the body that emerge.

Symmetry/asymmetry: if things are too symmetrical they can become or feel more passive. Asymmetry feeds back into the body — stimulates to understand. It keeps working the mind’s interest, it intrigues. Maybe it triggers some self-generation, the moving that self-generates the body or reminds the body it is a body.

Tending towards right or left. Bodies are not stable - there’s a tendency to lean a little this way or that way, forwards, backwards.

Walking backwards: to operate differently has to be reconfigured. Unraveling of the habit - a surprisingly fresh perspective, shifts your perspective. Operating anticlockwise. Moving backwards, taking the joints in the direction that they don’t very often travel in. How does this shift of orientation within the body affect we move through the world and the way that we perceive the world? The awkwardness of the opposite, the awkwardness of moving the limbs opposite to habit. Exploring the possibility of pleasure in this.

The dominance of walking as our dominant movement orientation through the world and all these different possibilities of swimming and crawling and dragging the body — and how this activates different kinds of configurations and relationships of the body, and different kinds of sense.

Letting — Liquid — Leaning

Working Ground

Restlessness / Stillness

Renouncing Habits

There being just enough pressure or just enough resistance to bring something into formation.

Exploring the space between reactive gestures and creative response.

A field of cooperation. Pleasure of cooperation. The pleasure of the cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment.

The sense of the cooperation of the body, what’s involved and what doesn’t need to be involved. Thinking of the body as a field of cooperation.

How do these various modes of experience in the thinking cooperate with the whole experience of thinking?

Stripping out or exploring the possibility of stripping out anything that doesn’t need to be really involved but on the other hand it was to do with testing the potential within that movement.

Reconfiguring how we are moving brings attention to these pulls and forces, that act upon us, that can be activated or isolated. And those kinds of associations of non-movement and passivity and inaction — trying to complicate or unsettle the sense of the binary between the back and the front.

Confronted with the instability of balance.

Very simply what the body has to do, or what breathing has to do in order to balance on one leg, or move backwards, or orientate differently.

Shift the balance, recalibrate the balance in a way

LANGUAGE/VOICING/ARTICULATION

Dwelling in this space of the not fully formed, residing in this space of the not fully formed … not having to force it into formation, not even to do with forcing it into language. Still a speaking, [not] without any words, but feeling like there was a way of residing in that differently.

[Drawing] on this well of unformness: to come from that space and to really try and bring something into experience, not into experience because its already in experience, but bringing something into articulation, [into language].

[Exploring] voice as a kind of listening, a kind of voice that can drop, a more thinking, drifting, experiential voice. Relax into a sense of listening to oneself. A kind of voicing like speaking to oneself, listening to oneself. This dorsal listening to oneself.

[Playing with] voicing, a dorsal voice as a way of holding open a space, as part of listening.

To explore a sense of unseen, or unknown in relationship to the voice.

[Letting go of the] pressure of projection. Dropping into the body — voicing that feels like it has the lungs behind it somehow, or the organs behind it.

Letting the thoughts just come rather than feeling the pressure to speak. Leaning back or spending time or residing in thinking, or even memory. [Voicing] into a void, a thinking-aloud. Leaning back into thinking, listening to one’s own thinking, a thinking that emerges through the voicing. This listening-thinking-voicing. Take a moment. The sense of connection with the voicing, the air, the breath.

Taking attention to the sides of language, to the grey areas of language.

How?

Maybe there is a kind of voice that can drop, something to do with a more thinking, drifting, experiential voice. How I might bring voicing into this, opening up spaces — also taking this, my body here sitting?

How do these various modes of experience in the thinking cooperate with the whole experience of thinking?

How voicing a dorsal voice creates spaces or is part of listening — a sort of softening?

How do we move through the world, and how does this shift in orientation affect how we move through the world and the way that we perceive the world?

How are our ways of moving and being in the world shaped by how we move and be in the world?

Reconfiguring how we are moving brings attention to these pulls and forces, that act upon us, that can be activated or isolated.

Reconfiguring how muscles and joints and things connect with each other – unravelling of the habit, it shifts your perspective.

How do these binaries create a field, a dynamic field?

How can we also listen from the sides?

How can we just see, and let light come in? Letting light come in, letting things arrive rather than reaching out.

How weight changes — resisting, dropping, settling, sinking … it almost goes so low that you can start to float.

How the chair and the body become a kind of chair-body thing?

How to let things come, to activate a quality of passivity that is also very alert and active?

How do we lean into some part of what we have experienced, or what we know or what we think we know or get retriggered or reconnected?

How might that passivity be active and dynamic and alive and vibrant and full of feeling?

How might participation of a fuller range of the body, change the sense of connection and what worlds start to emerge in a way?

Further Questions

Really trying to nurture a proprioceptive capacity - what kind of being and thinking and observing comes from that as a ground?

What does it mean if I keep my attention in the back while doing that?

Where does the back begin in terms of the interior of the body? But where does the back begin, and where does it turn into the interior of the body?

What would be the sides of discipline and curiosity, the transition space between discipline and curiosity and how to activate that?

What is it to talk or even to think from the back-ness? What is it to talk or even think from the back, a different kind of thinking?

What is participating that doesn’t need to participate? Does thought, does thinking, always need to participate in action? And what does the thinking-participating-in-action do?

Can I let myself be held and what can I let go of and what can I surrender?

With more attention does a different kind of experiential sensation shows itself?

What gets lost or what falls away in our capacity if we are not careful, out of habit or ease or sometimes inefficiency?

Am I really experiencing a sense of the back or am I just thinking about the experience of the back? Is this a direct experience or a thought I am having about experience?

What am I guarding my back against? What is it not allowing for, by not having this space around the back, for thinking in a way?

Do I really know what it is to be upright?

What starts a turn or a twist — what comes later, spirals, delays that happen?

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