March 17th - Imponderabilia

As the initial excitement and adrenaline of performing this past week ebbs, I realize how the tone of my performances are shifting. Personal thoughts, and their moment-to-moment distraction, have inserted themselves into performances and reveal how the presence of mind and body are constantly at odds with one another. As thoughts assert their presence, my body slips back into habitual patterns of tension. I fall away from the richer experience of my momentous attentions. I don’t pay attention. Attention costs and paradoxically, is work that requires little effort.

I am reminded that meditation is an imponderable opportunity. As I ponder the performer in front of me - I am reminded that this exhibition can pass through me and us – sounds, people and their comments are just another manifestation of reality and I have the opportunity to be a gateway for this information to pass through the world – my world - the world spanning between the stream of our eyes. Like thoughts, each person and interaction is a fleeting chance for acknowledgment. Like thoughts to the experience of the moment, if I allow the interaction with museum patrons to pull me away from the performance I loose the potential of the next moment. I become distracted. Simply observing the person passing between us seems akin to observing passing thoughts. Observe, acknowledge and allow the next passerby the room to enter and pass between the energetic presence maintained by two performers facing one another.

This then becomes an opportunity for people to view their own interactions, not just with two naked bodies, but with themselves. Art as a mirror – that is if people choose to face themselves in our eyes and observe themselves in the process…More often then not, we seem to be not much more then a turn-style for their discomfort. They rarely make eye contact…Sometimes they acknowledge that they are passing between two very vulnerable, yet empowered people. If they are less distracted and more present, they tend to move a bit more slowly, with more intent, observing themselves and us as they pass.

…the old men who view her body with objectifying intent, the teenage girls who skip past us on the heels of their discomfort, the gay men who face me and are more intent to make eye contact, the demure well-to-do ladies who take extreme care in not touching as they pass our bodies…

We are offering these people a taste of themselves…that is if they care to be observant and tasteful. Most just seem to pass through and consume the experience like it is another snack. Most don’t even chew.