A post before singing

I should be sleeping so I can get up for my singing job tomorrow, but I've been waiting to share this quote I found in one of my favorite novels, which I read probably once a year (Immortality, by Milan Kundera). "He suddenly realized... that people saw him differently from how he saw himself or from how he thought he was seen by others.... Without his realizing it in the slightest, something must have happened to his image. Something must have happened and he didn't know what it was, and he'd never know. Because that's how things are, and this goes for everyone: we will never find out why we irritate people, what bothers people about us, what they like about us, what they find ridiculous; for us our own image is our greatest mystery."

As dancers and as people we try to control the image we put out into the world, but we can never know what it feels like for someone else to experience us. Working with my fellow dancers it seems to me that what often makes our performance distinctive is a personal quality that we don't control or define to ourselves; it just happens. There's a vulnerability in our unconsciousness of this quality, but the quality itself is invulnerable, because it's so close we can't find it, let alone change it. It matures as we mature but remains present and completely personal, like a voice. And just as the sound of our own voice resonating inside our head when we speak or sing differs from the sound others hear, however we may try to monitor the way we come across to others, we'll never quite manage it.

The passage is somewhat comforting to me as I try to deal with the loneliness of being abandoned by people I used to be close to, or the confusion of being sought out by others who seem to enjoy my company, since I don't really know why, either way. I guess I appreciate the idea that, outside of our efforts to be pleasant and considerate (which deserve regular renewal), sometimes it's something we can't understand--something that, if it irritates, can also captivate.

Who is this Patricia Storace, and does she have priestesses?

Okay, so as of this writing two out of three of my blog posts are about the glorious writing of Patricia Storace, but a) so far I've only *written* three blog posts, and 2) I swear I don't know her and have no agenda other than to point to beauty where I find it and say look, look, look! And this woman is really turning it out.
So: as I was haunting Books of Wonder, waiting for someone to ask me if I wanted a job, I happened upon her new children's book, "Sugar Cane: A Caribbean Rapunzel." This is a different world from any telling of the tale I've ever seen, musical and magical, with illustrations you want to curl up on and let them rock you to sleep. The characters are vibrant, one of them is a monkey, and lovers come together not only as archetypes but as artists. What a gorgeous thing. And, I hasten to add, all founded on sugar. Read it and hear the call of the Cult of Storace....
Okay, Leigh Ann, what are you reading?

"For there is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought"

Last week A. and I saw the Tibetan Buddhist monks of Gaden Ngari Monastery (www.gadenngari.org) add the final grains of yellow sand to an intricate "medicine buddha" mandala they'd been creating for several days at East West Books (www.eastwestnyc.com). The mandala, which if I'd been able to get close enough to see it properly I probably would have disturbed by exhaling on it, was a colorful traditional representation of one of the "subtle realms" of Tibetan Buddhism, and its creation and destruction (to symbolize the impermanence of life) were performed in order to heal and consecrate the earth. After the blowing of some very distinctive horns and much low-register chanting, the sand was swept into a little pile and carried in a vase to the Hudson to release its blessings to the world.
The demolishing of several days' intense and consecrated work (not to mention the years that presumably go into learning this art) is key, though photography is allowed, and the process and its culmination were clearly being documented. (See the monastery's website for a very modest photo gallery that shows the monks at work on a different mandala.) Throughout the process the monks meditate to maintain their sacred intention, which to me seems like a fine idea in the creation of art or even the living of life.
I myself cannot claim to have attended the ceremony with a particularly sacred intention, or to have had a "spiritual experience" by being present during someone else's. I hope, however, that my approach was respectful, and that the thought that came to me and pleased me was not completely contrary to the artists' intent: that the drab little heap of sand they pushed together on the table actually, secretly, contained the whole bright world they had painstakingly created. If the colors could have separated themselves out of the pile and organized themselves into patterns, the palaces and gardens could have risen again. While this would contradict the purpose of the mandala, and I suppose the laws of physics, something in me delighted in the idea that it was in a way possible. All the physical ingredients were there—and in a way, the knowledge that had given them structure was there, too, because it *had been* there. It wasn't the same as a pile of mixed sand that had never been a mandala; art that once existed is not as if it had never been. Whether or not the sand contained blessings that could reach out into the world by being scattered in the Hudson, it did, it seemed to me, contain palaces and gardens, as if under a spell, waiting for someone to come along who knew they were there.

Mirror, mirror...

I just read a haunting excerpt from a new novel called The Book of Heaven, by Patricia Storace (www.nybooks.com/articles/20397). It’s not specific about the country or the religion that creates the setting for the story, and I wonder whether Storace, like Margaret Atwood in her dystopian novels, combined aspects of different cultures to create a chilling but plausible fictional sect. Certainly the religious taboo against images of one kind or another is familiar enough, though the extreme to which it is taken here is fascinating food for thought. Illuminating the society from the viewpoint of an outsider who becomes an insider, Storace unfolds a whole series of insights about the senses and the body, beauty and self-consciousness, gender and culture, in just these few pages. The idea that an image might be assigned such fearful power as to be forbidden, and the reminder that the language of the body speaks clearly even, or especially, when we are not intentionally using it, seems awfully relevant to dancers (and reads well, too!), so you may want to check it out!