Process and Development- for those who are interested!
This iteration of the final project was a second choice as my personal resources (time, funding, emotional capacity) became clear as well as the performance space parameters. I wanted to make something that was portable, adaptable, clever, and took people to a quick place that was easy to recover from at a group event.
Part of the inspiration: I get very nasty headaches. I have gotten them since I was about 10 years old; the earliest I remember was just before a Holiday chorus concert and I had to skip because I couldn’t stop throwing up. It wasn’t nerves like everyone thought (and apparently everyone forgot everything they knew about me in making that diagnosis as I was and still am particularly “extra”) but I would come to find out as the headaches increased directly proportionally to my estrogen levels that it was an internal disagreement I can expect regularly.
Other triggers emerged: smells, hunger, fettered rage and stress, injury that flares up with weather changes. It leads to a zany cast of headache characters that populate my daily play.
Notice that I separate the headache phenomenon from ME. The headaches, which are in reality MY nerves, my blood vessels, MY muscles, have been framed as an intrusion. An uninvited guest in my mind and at times sniffed at like an imaginary phantom by those to whom I have become unuseful (sorry- I can’t come to work today, sorry I can’t work late today, sorry I am having trouble focusing today and can’t provide resources for you, sorry I can’t match your energy today because it hurts). While my current working environment at UM is caring and accommodating, it still could feel at times like something to fight back and hide, something to make convenient for other people. I feel a sense of shame in the weakness of my nerves, a sense that it something I have to fix on my own and the return is because I didn't do the right thing. Above, when I mention that the first ones were hormone results, I can hear all kinds saying, "Why don't you take [pills]?" People have lots of helpful advice, none of it successful. Because it doesn't work for me like it works for them, the intuitive sense I have is that I am being contrary and deliberately difficult to not respond to Tylenol. Or a daith piercing. Or some "migraine" medicine. Or some essential oil...
Oddly, in the past few months, I have talked to a lot of people in pain. I don’t start the front porch pain prayer revival, but there is something leading people to me to talk about what hurts. All of us are carrying something around, trying to keep it packed down in a bag until it is convenient to deal with it, but the weight and presence follows.
What if we gave ourselves time to lie still, and interview our pain to invite it into ourselves? What if we gave ourselves time and permission to accept the pain as a part of us instead of fighting it back, holding it at a distance, numbing it silent, or just ignoring it as it screams in our ear? What would that look like?
An EDCP classmate in emotional pain recently said, “I just want stillness.” I see that in so many others, and it seems the kinetic momentum of being a part of things and society also demands we compartmentalize our pain and mask it. Pain demands our attention, and we are starving it so it gets louder and more insistent. To allow people to hold this interview and come to a roommate agreement with their pain, I want to create a still environment with controlled sound and focus. Once immersed in this environment, participants are encouraged to summon forth their pain, whatever it is (for me the constant popping and cracking in my neck and swelling at the occiput, for others things deeper and more private) and start to ask questions of it silently.
“What are you?”
“How were you born?”
“What feeds you?”
“What do you want from me?”
“Why do you hate it when I do [activity]?”
To guide the acceptance or beginnings of a realization, as some pain is too much to invite in all at once without a trained professional present, I started to visualize an up close video with a progression of images moving from visualizations of chronic pain to images of peaceful integration. Sound supports the progression, moving from a frustrated energy to something serene or still.
For example, when practicing this lately as a way to mitigate a medicine-resistant headache, as I envisioned the pulses of my heartbeats carrying away sticky yellow poison and advancing a smooth, clean purple red, I found that if felt like massaging the backs of my eyelids. Similarly, sometimes focusing on a sonic memory to drown out a din of “you have things to do!” and other neuro-noise, helps to clear the pathways. Like a mantra, but often a single line of a song or riff from some known music. (Once when I was a lot younger, it was a Sprite commercial that had some computer voice, or something, it still comes back). I couldn't think of something universal here, but in later iterations, I might offer options at the treatment registration phase of the experience. Possibly connected to the adjective choices.
For the video, I chose to manipulate images of geodes and other mineral cross-sections as they provided interesting color options, but also there was a gory-ness to the closeups that I thought represented my personal visualizations of my interior that I found so helpful.
Here you can see a Pinterest collection with the totality of the inspirational images, from the exclusively sticky green yellow period, to the geodes (incidentally, I showed the early phase of this collection to my Fundamentals of Design class at UM, and people related to it, and it also helped to humanize each other- they had later assignments to bring in images and by sharing mine that had a personal communication urgency, they had a better understanding of how to approach their assignments).
Pinterest Board Link
Part of the inspiration: I get very nasty headaches. I have gotten them since I was about 10 years old; the earliest I remember was just before a Holiday chorus concert and I had to skip because I couldn’t stop throwing up. It wasn’t nerves like everyone thought (and apparently everyone forgot everything they knew about me in making that diagnosis as I was and still am particularly “extra”) but I would come to find out as the headaches increased directly proportionally to my estrogen levels that it was an internal disagreement I can expect regularly.
Other triggers emerged: smells, hunger, fettered rage and stress, injury that flares up with weather changes. It leads to a zany cast of headache characters that populate my daily play.
Notice that I separate the headache phenomenon from ME. The headaches, which are in reality MY nerves, my blood vessels, MY muscles, have been framed as an intrusion. An uninvited guest in my mind and at times sniffed at like an imaginary phantom by those to whom I have become unuseful (sorry- I can’t come to work today, sorry I can’t work late today, sorry I am having trouble focusing today and can’t provide resources for you, sorry I can’t match your energy today because it hurts). While my current working environment at UM is caring and accommodating, it still could feel at times like something to fight back and hide, something to make convenient for other people. I feel a sense of shame in the weakness of my nerves, a sense that it something I have to fix on my own and the return is because I didn't do the right thing. Above, when I mention that the first ones were hormone results, I can hear all kinds saying, "Why don't you take [pills]?" People have lots of helpful advice, none of it successful. Because it doesn't work for me like it works for them, the intuitive sense I have is that I am being contrary and deliberately difficult to not respond to Tylenol. Or a daith piercing. Or some "migraine" medicine. Or some essential oil...
Oddly, in the past few months, I have talked to a lot of people in pain. I don’t start the front porch pain prayer revival, but there is something leading people to me to talk about what hurts. All of us are carrying something around, trying to keep it packed down in a bag until it is convenient to deal with it, but the weight and presence follows.
What if we gave ourselves time to lie still, and interview our pain to invite it into ourselves? What if we gave ourselves time and permission to accept the pain as a part of us instead of fighting it back, holding it at a distance, numbing it silent, or just ignoring it as it screams in our ear? What would that look like?
An EDCP classmate in emotional pain recently said, “I just want stillness.” I see that in so many others, and it seems the kinetic momentum of being a part of things and society also demands we compartmentalize our pain and mask it. Pain demands our attention, and we are starving it so it gets louder and more insistent. To allow people to hold this interview and come to a roommate agreement with their pain, I want to create a still environment with controlled sound and focus. Once immersed in this environment, participants are encouraged to summon forth their pain, whatever it is (for me the constant popping and cracking in my neck and swelling at the occiput, for others things deeper and more private) and start to ask questions of it silently.
“What are you?”
“How were you born?”
“What feeds you?”
“What do you want from me?”
“Why do you hate it when I do [activity]?”
To guide the acceptance or beginnings of a realization, as some pain is too much to invite in all at once without a trained professional present, I started to visualize an up close video with a progression of images moving from visualizations of chronic pain to images of peaceful integration. Sound supports the progression, moving from a frustrated energy to something serene or still.
For example, when practicing this lately as a way to mitigate a medicine-resistant headache, as I envisioned the pulses of my heartbeats carrying away sticky yellow poison and advancing a smooth, clean purple red, I found that if felt like massaging the backs of my eyelids. Similarly, sometimes focusing on a sonic memory to drown out a din of “you have things to do!” and other neuro-noise, helps to clear the pathways. Like a mantra, but often a single line of a song or riff from some known music. (Once when I was a lot younger, it was a Sprite commercial that had some computer voice, or something, it still comes back). I couldn't think of something universal here, but in later iterations, I might offer options at the treatment registration phase of the experience. Possibly connected to the adjective choices.
For the video, I chose to manipulate images of geodes and other mineral cross-sections as they provided interesting color options, but also there was a gory-ness to the closeups that I thought represented my personal visualizations of my interior that I found so helpful.
Here you can see a Pinterest collection with the totality of the inspirational images, from the exclusively sticky green yellow period, to the geodes (incidentally, I showed the early phase of this collection to my Fundamentals of Design class at UM, and people related to it, and it also helped to humanize each other- they had later assignments to bring in images and by sharing mine that had a personal communication urgency, they had a better understanding of how to approach their assignments).
Pinterest Board Link