Monthly Action May 27 2-3pm BC Legislature "the SHAME of PAIN is still a thing"

Monthly Action
When: Sunday, May 27, 2018, 2-3 pm
Where: BC Legislature (obsolete colonial structure) grounds

What/Why/How:
Performance art/activism. Radical embarrassment.
I use my naked (or semi-naked) body/self in public to express pain, improvise connections+push back against business-as-usual brutality. On behalf of the collective. Participation encouraged.

Healer, feeler, revealer. Paradigm shifter. Heavy lifter of paradox+pain. Ageing, overweight, cancer schmancerous. Recovering academic. Suburban mommy lady. Powerful+vulnerable. Privilege-user+vagina-haver. PTSD+lover of trees.

PS I've only started using the words "pain" and "trauma." Twelve years ago I started using the concept of "vulnerability" (four years before before Brené Brown's viral TEDTalk) because people would look at me blankly when I said this work emerged from pain. Now Pink is on her Beautiful Trauma world tour. There's always a Lululemonization (ie, capitalist yoga) when concepts go mainstream. So... not sure what to think except, ya, people are in CRIPPLING and SHAME-HIDDEN pain and even though pop stars are singing about it, the SHAME of PAIN in a culture of INVISIBLE BRUTALITY is still a thing.

Another Explanation for My Kids

Several years ago I wrote this letter to my daughters. I know they haven't read it.

Like many people in our culture (including myself) they don't often have the patience to listen to an explanation or even ask for one.

And, of course, I do understand that an old, chunky mother is embarrassing enough, even without parading her weirdness and nakedities around town and social media! They're also irritated, no doubt, by the thought that I might have a good reason.

Recent #uglydancing. My upcoming Victoria Fringe show is entitled Naked Ugly Dancing.

Now they are 10 and 15 and, even though I think it's still a pretty good letter, I'm going to attempt to add to the explanation.

I got Stage 4 cancer almost 2 years ago. I was really overwhelmed by a lot of things but especially working as a university instructor. I think that made me get really sick. For me, as a teacher, it was important to share certain understandings about how humans need to think differently. But I made people afraid. No one was interested in supporting me or willing to believe I had good reasons. (Does that sound a little familiar? Haha!)

An example of a difficult thing to learn that you might recognize is how in your schools you have learned about residential schools and how our Canadian government and churches hurt First Nations children very badly and caused harms to First Nations people that continue. For instance, many of those children who grew up abused have turned to addiction and abuse themselves; and, because the children were forced to speak English or French, many First Nations languages have been lost.

This is very difficult for us to understand. Because we want to trust our government and our country. We want to believe that everyone gets the chances we get.

The problems in our world are caused, in many ways, by what people believe. So when we believe we have a trustworthy country, for example, we might not look to see things that happen that are actually very harmful.

Or we might blame another group for those harms.

Unfortunately, the way we live and believe in richer countries like Canada is the cause of most of the difficulties on earth... like global climate change, poverty, weapons, war, etc. 

One example is shopping and poverty. We get many things like clothes and toys and food and things for our house. Almost everything we buy involves people in poorer places being paid very little to make it or grow it or dig up the materials for us. 

This example is very tough to swallow. Because we need some of that stuff and because our society expects us to look or live a certain way. We are pretty stuck. And there are many more examples that show how we are stuck. Another is how we need to drive but we don't want oil (which needs to be sent all over the world so people can put gas in their cars and heat their homes) to pollute our oceans and land.

I think that's why people want to believe we are nice and don't want to look at how not nice we are. Because in a way, we are not being un-nice on purpose. We are in a culture and a system that surrounds us and no one can just step out of it.

So, one of the reasons I do what I do, is to make people think about what "is normal."

I have started to do ugly dancing in the street and for my upcoming fringe show because I think of it as a kind of action to create healing. I'm dancing out some of the ugliness. For the health of our culture and my body.

I also think of it as a cultural antidote. An antidote is something that removes poison. So if there is some not nice stuff going on but people aren't seeing it, maybe doing something the opposite of normal can help remove some poisons. 

One thing about our culture that is interesting is that when women aren't young anymore, they are considered ugly. But I'm not poisonous. I'm a caring, loving person. I'm a wise person. I'm a person who shouldn't be ignored.

So if I show up as an "ugly" dancer on the street, I am doing something very non-harmful and expressive. Why should that be a problem?

A lot of my performance art is about giving people the opportunity to question their beliefs.

It's embarrassing for me too. You have no idea. But, as I've tried to tell you guys, some things are more important than embarrassment.

Blog Post Reading #4 + AnthropoScenes

Here I am reading another blog post. This post was written on March 26, 2006, the day after I did my first Human Body Project performance. It's entitled "Post-nakedness (1): support and embracing awkwardness"



Also, here are some videos from the AnthropoScene Collective's first two AnthropoScenes!

Post-nakedness (1): support and embracing awkwardness

I want to acknowledge how powerful last night was for me. It was a very profound experience to feel so exposed and yet so supported. As I looked around the room I felt many feelings. There were many more people than I expected. I haven't counted yet, but I think about 60. And what transpired was that there was a ring around me. Me in the middle and most of the participants around the periphery of the room.

It was awkward looking. All these people looking at me, silent. Me standing there naked, not "doing" anything but feeling a range of emotions--I haven't seen the videotape yet, but I think they showed. Many people looked uncomfortable to me. My clothed, conversational self would have tried to help them feel better. I felt that need last night to make things smooth (whatever the hell that is, but I feel that irritating need a lot) but didn't do anything about it. I felt exposed and freaked out and awkward.

A lot of people looked like they were feeling that way too. But one of the strongest and most meaningful feelings I had was that despite all the awkwardness all those people were supporting me.

The awkwardness was beautiful. Because I realize that if we are going to learn to love ourselves and each other, if we are going to live honestly and be true to our hearts, we are going to have to let ourselves be awkward. My fiance, Dave, asked me if there is anything I would change about last night what would it be. My first answer was that I would have been more clever. When people spoke into the mike, I would have replied in a more articulate way. But I have changed my mind and want to embrace my awkwardness, my uncoolness, my inarticulacy, my inability in the moment to speak clearly because I just wasn't able to.

A couple of people spoke hyperbolically about my courage and that made me uncomfortable. I do acknowledge that doing this took courage for me. But I felt like I was meant to do this in the sense of a calling and needed it for myself. I am very gratified that many people were moved by the experience but I feel embarrassed by being termed heroic. That was awkward for me. And, as anyone who has been in therapy knows, my embarrassment is about me (and my lingering, Canadian, female feelings of not wanting to be seen allowing myself to stand out; my false humility). I don't actually need, as my therapist would say, to take on what they said.

Another woman spoke about her "uncomfortability" and the "anxiety and tension in the room", which other people said they did not feel. I want to acknowledge all the speakers', myself included, and our imperfect ways of expressing ourselves. The people who spoke about my exceptional courage probably felt that they would need exceptional courage to take off their clothes in front of a lot of people. For me, I definitely felt brave but not exceptionally brave (I did have years of stewing this idea in my head and then months after I committed to doing it--a lot of panic got worn off). And the woman who spoke about the anxiety was probably feeling that herself.

I loved the (conversational) silence. And I loved that so many people came. And I loved that so many people stayed. And I loved that so many different types of people came. And I loved that there were men there. And it was so interesting that many people were people I didn't know. In the silence I was able to stay in what I was feeling for much of the time. I felt lucky to be--here's an awkward metaphor--the hub in the wheel of so many humans. I had the feeling of being the person who was connecting all these people. It helped me to feel supported by men and women both, and people whom I had never met. And it helped me to feel connected to and to feel like I was connecting people from many different backgrounds and ages. It was very moving.

And if there is something I regret or feel disappointed about, it is my imperfect ability to feel it all, to really take it in. I had to remind myself to breathe and remind myself to stay in my body. But, again, that is the awkwardness that I need to embrace. I'm a teacher. I know that people can only learn from where they are. I'm still learning how to feel what I feel, how to sit still in discomfort, how to connect with myself and others, how to let myself be vulnerable. I want to acknowledge how much I've worked on this and give myself credit for hanging in there. And I want to acknowledge the same for the people who were there.