I'm spending 6 weeks working at Christchurch Cathedral in honour of giving voice to questions over Lent. This is not a coincidence. Throughout my time in my original home in Virginia, I found myself face to face with the most difficult parts of my psyche. The questions were coming too quickly and, as I have made a pact with myself to pay attention to the difficult moments in my life, I have spoken with things that I have until now not understood or wanted to address about myself.
Here are the words we use as a starting point for our questions at the Giving Voice workshop coming up on Saturday: What questions do you need to ask? This moment will be a time of call and response; part of the call will be external, though part will also come from within you. An internal call is an act of faith - creating space and resonance in your body to allow the question somewhere to grow. What are the questions you cannot ask? Are there questions you can verbalise, or things that can only be sent out by your body to the Universe or to the deepest self and universe inside of you? What are the questions you can ask? Give space to those. Let's search for the elusive questions, knowing that the season of Lent gives us a time to reflect with full knowledge that hope is in the pipeline. Until then, we must come to rest with the difficult things that must be asked.
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in the late morning i arrive here and make music. then i stay until late at night. this is my domain.
i am living on the top floor of a four-storey building. when i return home through the fresh evening air, i climb stairs that slowly get narrower and narrower with each flight until i reach my door. it's just next to the door that takes you into the rundown attic and up onto the roof.
i dwell where the birds fly; i see their flight change path before joining me in my flat. i have two large views of the mountains surrounding the city and at night i hear the daily celebrators fixing their bodies after a day's work, intermingled with the beautifully deep bells ringing from gothic cathedrals. i sit on my balcony, drinking a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or a peculiar mix of rhubarb, grape, and pickle. tonight, the old fortified hill was lit up with a saturday night party from the top of schlossberg. there once was a castle on this unnaturally high, raised hump in the middle of the city. napoleon had it dismantled brick by brick as a symbolic gesture when he conquered that height; for him, knocking it over wasn't enough. tonight the tower on that hill was lit up in multiple colours. i gazed at it for awhile, enjoying the breeze, the moment, the stillness, the knowledge that i'm in the right place. i stepped inside for a second, and when i returned, there were chimes ringing from the hill and the lights went off. midnight. time for day to go out. after many times of preparation / perpetration, i arrived hier, to temp home no. 1: lothringerstrasse, basel, switzerland. yes, i was served a proper cup of tea at london gatwick airport when my friend & collaborator jenn came to keep me company during my layover. yes, i took a foot ferry across the rhine on certainly the best intro to a city: fred frith's listening walk (european sound-absorbing tarmac, silent water that eventually became aural all over the place, the quiet phrases of duck conversation). and yes, you heard correctly - i accidentally ended up in basel during the uefa cup final with thousands of liverpool supporters.
und, ja, ich bin HELLA jet lagged, as summed up in skeletor's crying eyes at basel münster: |
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