summit / maunga

no one can hear
each other
in this place

that is the question

this isn't face
to face --
this is
no way for one human being
to talk
with another

this isn't personal...
or intimate, or creative 
I'm not talking in clichè.
I'm not orchestrating a revolution --
this is the reality I perceive :
of a fear-filled framework that seeks
to other
in order to protect itself
(and yet, most dangerously,
claims to do
the exact opposite)

I saw how it holds our tangata whenua in their place
suited and afraid to sing
lest they lose their pride
to the vast white ocean that stole their waiata,
or their own dark clouded ego
found in the debris
left by the hurricane of colonisation

this is no way to talk about well-being,
sitting in a sun-deprived chamber
for eight hours of the day -- that's
talking
without breathing, 
so we're all headaches and notifications

we're not in congregation
we're neatly ordered
in order of ranking
we're all
facing forward,
forgetting
to see
each other
in our periphery,
forgetting where we came from

(the little girl who wanted to tap dance
doesn't belong here, no --
she's up on Arthur's mountain
eating wild blackberries in her zebra costume,
lanyard around her neck --
a puzzlingly incongruous puzzle)

we artists give everything
we empty ourselves
of every inch of our atoms
every molecule of our meta
and in return we receive ourselves --
that conspicuously elusive treasure
which the privileged pay thousands
for someone else to unearth on their behalf
at the end of their lives

... but if you just moved a little,
stretched your insides just a little,
heard the music rumbling
through your own skin-kissing veins,
at a decibel almost hidden from the canals of your ears --

you'd have a life
when you came to the end of your life;
you'd know how to give life
to those
who are trusting you
to provide one for them

and we wouldn't need to talk 
about well-being
or being well
we wouldn't need to make policy for it
because we'd all have access to
that shrouded privilege
of ancient buried knowledge --
the true bringer of equality :
my education my revolution --

we'd understand
the policy is already written :
it's in your skin, and in your land, and in your children

and to echo yesterday's words spoken
I'm not here to blame, or guilt, or reproach,
or claim that I'm more woke
-- because then I would be making myself an other --
I'm merely here to provoke a conversation
to make, and to offer my creation :
to allow art to do what art is supposed to do
to do what I am supposed to do
to do what people are quintessentially here to do :
to unearth and divulge the primal knowledge existing within us

to do what my country taught me -
you see
we're pioneers, where I come from
in 1893
my country taught its wāhine
to raise their voices into the ears of men --
so here I am, standing to reach their height

my country -- or at least its weather -- made me resilient --
our flightless birds taught me how to ruffle feathers,
even if I don't fly at the heights
of those privileged enough to have wings

my culture taught me to sit
my body within its land
my whenua taught me how to dance before any teacher did

and where I have only a small voice
where I must take my lunch on a different floor
lest I do what I was told I was invited here to do --
where I have only a few minutes
but also the proverbial power offered by an audience
(and we all know that with great power
comes great responsibility) --
with this voice and these few minutes
I will find the stage on which I may stand
and I will hold up my truth
and I will be heard ...
we will be heard

and I tell you :
the world is not fractured.
so stop telling us that we are broken !
we become what we believe.
so go back to your countries
and tell your people
there is goodness
and unearth that goodness in yourself
and send it out into the world
use your power to lift up, to reach out, to connect, to create

to translate your words into action
dance them outside of these walls
give them life
hear them breathe
make your language move
let it connect you in
to a new global culture
that chooses diversity over difference
and action over apathy

translate your words into action
so that together we may thrive
a new global culture
that sanctifies being alive

"The mystery of life
is not a problem to be solved
but a reality to be experienced."

- Uncle Alan Watts

copenhagen

There was a time when it all poured out of me,
            because there was nowhere else for it to go --

now,
   things are open
       and so my mouth
 speaks the words
my fingertips used to

my dreams go on
             and on
                 and on
                      and on ...

we'd both dreamed of each other
      and I saw you in him
we started talking like us
-- and there was the gentle touching of hearts,
that impossibly palpable organ
    churning through a body
          making sure we feel alive
so close and
    yet so far.








italicised words are lyrics from DUAL

"You are dancers, all of you. Life moves you. Life dances you. To dance is to investigate and celebrate the experience of being alive. Like life, a dance creates and destroys itself in every moment. Like love, it is beyond reason. Ephemeral as breath, concrete as bone, dance is made of you. You sculpt space. You write with your body in a wordless language that is deeply understood. You grace the space within and around you when you dance. Force, trajectory, inertia and recovery - dancing is a ride. A duet between your instinct and imagination. To dance is to heighten your experience of the present moment. Your body is your location. When you dance, you are profoundly engaged in being there."

- Crystal Pite, Choreographer.

"The destruction of love can be brought about most swiftly when one love constantly demands of the other, 'Do you love me? Do you really love me?' while the other, at first, replying, 'Yes, of course I do' and being met with 'Are you sure?' has no place to go but away."

- Janet Frame, The Caparthians

"Ultimately, all things are small because all things are transient." 

- Eckhart Tolle

"Western culture has confused mystery with "something to be solved", rather than something "to be serenaded."

- Helen Avery

"We live together we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception. 

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching…"

- Martha Graham

"...his hands at any rate are intelligent, they move over me delicately as a blind man's reading Braille, skilled, moulding me like a vase, they're learning me; they repeat patterns he's tried before, they've found out what works, and my body responds that way too, anticipates him, educated, crisp as a typewriter."

- Surfacing, Margaret Atwood.

assembly of Japanese bicycle

"Peace of mind isn't at all superficial ... It's the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test's always on your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working, you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself." 

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our all exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." 

- T. S. Elliot

"You believed you could transcend the body ... You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, non-physical realm. But it's only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy, you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery."

- Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."

- Lewis Carroll

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

- seen on the way home.

"I am not my thoughts and feelings, I am merely the observer of them."

http://1giantmind.org/

reversal

I have learned to love myself

and thus I find difficulty in an-other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOlAd5bG_Zk

"If you always do

what you've always done

then you'll always get 

what you've always got."

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

- Harold Thurman. 

"one more creature 

dizzy with love"

- Bukowski

"This world beats all around me but nothing here feeds to satisfy, 
so I've grown this face
perfect in disguise so you don't know what I feel each moment

I don't fit here
I feel like I don't fit anywhere

Make your first move and decide to be conscious 
and god of each moment

Let's see if I can change
I want to feel something here
but I don't wanna change

faster than I used to feel
so faster than I ever dreamed."

- Lines, Dead Letter Circus.