Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Human Body Project: Business Partner(s) Wanted

I'm dealing with a weird dilemma. When I decided to do this project, I thought of it as an art project. I thought the photos and video plus the work people did plus related work I might do would make for some kind of interesting ongoing art project, one that was also about my body changing over time.

The thing is, since the event, I realize that those things are secondary. The event was it. That was where the meaning is. And there's not a whole lot I can do to translate what transpired during the actual event. (I haven't yet had time to view the video footage, which may be the strongest translatable piece). I can write about it and document it, but I wonder how it becomes an ongoing art project or how it is even art?

As an artist one of the main requirements I've had for my work was that it provide an accessible emotional or sensory experience that stirs the viewer on a visceral or soul level. I've been a painter for years and I paint in a very intuitive manner without getting in my own way. I make decisions based on intuition, not intellect. To me, they are visual, not about words. If required to speak about them I would say that they convey deep truths about life in the sense that beauty, harmony and fulfillment exist concurrently with pain, disconnection and loss. I have sold many paintings because people do have an emotional response to them. I quit a very promising journalism career and lived on the edge (socially, financially, painting in virtual isolation, etc) for more than ten years to paint them. In other words, creating this energy has been very important to me.

And so, I carry out my idea and do Human Body Project 44. In less than 2 hours, more than 70 people in some way connected to that energy that I want to create in my art. But because we were all in that room together, all contributing our own energy, the energy was bigger and stronger than any painting or any artifact from/documentation of the event.

So, logically, it makes sense to focus on creating more events and let go of the project as an art idea since the event conveys so much more. Ever since the event my mind has been occupied with thoughts about how to create this as some kind of business. Why a business? Some key reasons: as a painter I was an idiotic businessperson. I had this idea that the work would sell itself, which in a way it did, but not enough to support me. And this is the world we live in. Money is an energy I no longer wish to ignore. To continue making Human Body Project events I need them to pay me what I need to live and function well, i.e. it has to work for my family too. I seriously think I need to take these events on tour and the sooner the better. I need a business plan and a partner or partners.

(I also have a commitment to make art from the event for the Southern Alberta Art Gallery's show, Current, in June of this year. One thing I've been considering is a straightahead, utterly non-ironic documentation, more museum than gallery.)

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Nakedness and critical mass

Since standing naked in front of a bunch of people I have been thinking about how physical nakedness is just a symbol of actual nakedness. I want to peel the layers away and clothes are a good start. But they're not the end of the peels.

I've finally had some time to look at photos from the event. I've had to confront my naked body myself. It's not like I've pored over photos of my naked self before. It's difficult, impossible actually, to dredge up love for myself when I look at the pictures. I have this distanced way of looking at them. I hurry. I wonder what I will use for the Current exhibit at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (a show of local contemporary art in the summer). I think critical thoughts about my cellulite and my posture.

Why can't I love this woman?

If someone else had done it, I think I would love that person for it and I would admire her bravery. People at the event and since the event have been very supportive. My daughter loves me. (This is one of my favourite examples of how she appreciates me: My mom has a placemat with all the Canadian prime ministers pictured on it. Not long ago, a friend was asking my then 3-year-old daughter about the people on the placemat. Who is the funniest? She pointed to Jean Chretien. Who is the meanest? She pointed to John Diefenbaker. Who is the smartest? She pointed to Kim Campbell. Needless to say, Kim Campbell is the only woman on the placemat. I take it as a personal compliment.) I have a loving and accepting partner whom I'm marrying in June. I have lots of friends. I feel love for lots of people, often just any old stranger exchanging a smile. But for myself, it's thin on the ground.

Writing about this, admitting how much struggle I go through with health/transformation, stuff I haven't written about yet... I find much more challenging than standing naked. Exposing myself, i.e. my self, feels necessary but very uncomfortable. I want to be free of the burdens of not-my-self-ness. I don't want to place too many Holden Caufieldish words on it, just what I know is not my self. Like being brittle or too nice or too chatty or too cool. And writing about it is WAY easier than just doing it in normal day-to-day life. I can write on this blog about how ill/moving through gunkish I feel and find it almost impossible to talk to anybody about it.

One of the great blessings of my life lately is to have found my intuitive energy healer friend. When Betty tells me: You're using 70% of your energy for spiritual change, so you only have 30% left. I think: Finally something that makes some kind of sense. When I say to her: It feels like my atoms weigh ten times as much as they should. She knows what I mean. When she tells me that I am doing the work of moving energy for a lot of other people, I think no frickin wonder I feel like I can barely hang on to life sometimes. How do you talk about this with a doctor? Or your family? Or almost anybody? I can't. I just wrote about it though and I feel really naked, i.e. deeply embarrassed. But it really is time for me (and all the frickin people I'm apparently working for) to carry right on through this whole awkwardness shit.

Here's a declaration of what I think is going on: something is going on with my energy. It's bigger than me. I'm part of something that is underground but is becoming more and more visible. It's called deep healing. It aint pretty. It aint religion. It aint easy. It sure aint on TV. And there aint no good pill for it. But it feels real. Everybody actually wants it. They want to feel safe in who they are.

I feel like its important for me to come out because the more I do the more I can help create that critical mass that is needed for all of us to hook into healing transformation. Cassandra wrote about the idea of critical mass at the Human Body Project 44 event in a comment on a previous blog entry. She wrote: "There was a definite need for a project like yours, and it was an experience that I didn’t really realize I needed until the event was in progress. I realized how deeply it affected me, and the many people in the room. I think experiencing it with so many people really amplified, if not created, the atmosphere. People played off on another’s positive reactions, until it built into this amazing presence." We need to create more.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Bring It On

I'm involved in a meditation group. We all met in February at a Flower of Life workshop in Calgary.

One day my energy healer friend mentioned that we were working in Merkaba energy and I didn't know what it was. She told me about www.floweroflife.org; I went to the site; I skimmed the inevitably flowery Flower of Life information because a lot of it was too looloolala for me; but when I saw that there was a workshop in Calgary I KNEW I had to be there.

On the one hand, I'm as skeptical of looloolala stuff as the next person (maybe moreso, because in my own explorations I've met so many dingbats who think they're enlightened). On the other hand, I trust my urges and after you read this, you'll know how looloolala I am myself. I have often had strong feelings that I am supposed to do something or be somewhere and it always works out.

So I went and it was very powerful. No other technique has ever made me feel quite so connected and centred. And I have not exactly shied away from trying everything--both in my quest for health and my quest for spiritual connection (which, of course, I realize now are inseperable). The sacred geometry part of the information was interesting, intriguing and hard to get my head around. I especially found the connections to ancient wise cultures (Egyptians, Peruvians and Tibetans) thought-provoking. The Flower of Lifers are also into dolphin energy, extraterrestrial intelligence and Atlantis, so it's pretty out there.

Anyway, we all met again last Sunday. Something a man said has really stuck with me. He said: "The only way we are going to change the world is through spiritual change. Political change hasn't worked. A critical mass of people is needed to shift the rest." (He meant spiritual change in the sense of energetic, core change; not in the sense of religious conversion. Don't worry if you don't know what is meant by this concept or feeling of energy, you will eventually). What he said gave me hope and validation. I realized I totally agreed about spiritual change but had never actually explained it to myself that way. And I finally understood the frustrated urgency and responsibility I feel to use my abilities to help people connect (as an artist, as a yoga teacher, as a college instructor, etc.). I always feel like I'm not doing enough because it seems so within reach. I also felt like maybe we are really doing this(!) because I know so many people (who are basically underground) who are working on healing themselves and shifting their own energy.

Many of the people in this meditation group believe that humanity is rising to a different plane. They suggest that we as humans are heading to a place where language is unnecessary. We will be so connected that our thoughts will transmit (like dolphins--I've always wanted to be a dolphin). I can't say where I stand on this theory, but I do know that during the Human Body Project 44 event or when my meditation group sits in silence or during yoga class, we are more connected to something beyond the material world than when we start to converse. Right now we have to create situations to have this connection but eventually, with enough people moving energy, maybe we won't need to. Maybe it will be part of us all. Maybe we will be able to exist materially and spiritually simultaneously.
I also came away on Sunday with a different attitude to my illness. If my illness is spiritually based, which I feel I can no longer deny, and a) if it is about teaching me something that I'm blind to or avoiding and/or b) if it is about changes taking place in my body to shift my energy, then I say: Bring it on.

p.s. I still feel sickly, flu-y, fragile, but I'm going with it better.