What I have been thinking and trying to write about by Celeste Miller

As we know, the MAPs are supposed to be a faculty member working with students in the faculty member's area of research.  Our actions and conversations are really helping me in my task: to write about this stuff.  Here is this week's writing.

ACT I

The Body/Mind Schism (perhaps it’s a first world problem?)

But it’s dangerous.

Or

Thinking about my artistic practice

as part of the discussion of transparency of aesthetics.

Before we even begin.  I love this project,  check it out. What do you think?

“The Ghana ThinkTank”

The Ghana ThinkTank

Now, to begin.  Maybe.

Prologue

We (I acknowledge my world: USA and the generalizations are this mainstream society)

We live in the Supremacy or Authority of the Mind over the Body,

and the other binary suggestions that support this schism.

This affects me. 

It devalues most of the work I do,

the way in which I do that work.

I believe it limits our human capacity.

I want to do something about it.

I dance to do that. (Create, teach, investigate)

These are some thoughts. These thoughts are the actions (practices)  that are foundational to how I participate in the world: making work, teaching/learning, being a human

Background: This past Spring, I was reading across disciplines. (As usual) 

Particularly, these readings came into contact with one another:

Jonathan Miller Lane, “Towards an Embodied Liberal Arts Education”

And the Dewey essay we would use for our workshop, “The Problem of the Liberal Arts College.

Along with, “Eye and Mind” by Maurice Merlau-Ponty

Introduction to “Creative Arts and Medicine” by Cheryl L. McLean

“Can Poetry Make Better Doctors” by Joanna Shapiro and Lloyd Rucker

“Reflections on the humanities in medical eduction” by Martyn Evans

Reading these with three students for our “Medicine and Humanites” MAP/Independent Study project.

Maile and I came up with the following Petal Diagram based on the language used in the different readings/disciplines, that described the mind/body divides.

Here is our Petal Diagram:

Interlude:

Unpacking my Practice as a series of aesthetic choices that affect the work

This

(This act of writing onto the page at this moment in time)

This

(to put into words, on the page, some notes on the continued explorations of the integration and coexistence of these (at first glance) binaries.  Dualities? 

This is how I am trying to put into words why I make work, use dance, the way I do. To illuminate the choices I make, the why.

To express my ideas about a move towards an integration and coexistence of these notions, rather than an oppositional relationsip.

Ideas about avoiding the problem of binaries in the first place,

(where inevitably one becomes more important than the other.)

(How they are valued in our personal lives, community lives, global existence?)

(How do we give away power?)

What if we see them NOT as oppositions.

But rather to find integration. 

To find coexistence. To not have to stop and “name” when we flow from one to the other.

AN INTERVIEW: CELESTE INTERVIEWS CELESTE.  WE WILL CALL THEM ‘CELESTE’ AND ‘ME’

CELESTE: When you are working on a choreographic project – or just anything for that matter, from teaching to parenting, from writing to building ensemble – do you think consciously about these kinds of binaries?

ME: When I am working

and it is working

 (the thinking, the writing, the making, the teaching/learning),

 I am in “flow”, I am moving with ease between what could be noted as the noted binaries.

I am moving with ease, and not categorizing when I am where.

I am accessing, accessing, accessing full capacity of my nervous system (of which the brain is a part), my sensorial systems, my emotional/spiritual/logical systems etc etc

I feel lucky(?) blessed(?) rich(?) because I practice/have spent my life practicing living in these places.  I can find fluidity between e.g. body/mind, logical/intuitive, head/hand.

In a sense, my training (technical and artistic) has prepared me to be able to do this.

I am comfortable (well, not terrified…) to be in those spaces.

CELESTE: What do you mean “not terrified”? 

ME:

Well, I don’t want to suggest that is always easy, or “feels good”, or you know.  It’s hard.  I get frustrated, frightened, tense – but I can keep accessing all these different ways of thinking.  The word thinking bothers me.  By thinking I include thinking in and through the body, not just a head trip.  But I encounter so many people who are uncomfortable when they are asked to think in their bodies, be in their bodies.  Some dismiss the embodied as non-essential, unreliable, not the Real Stuff.  After Jonathan Miller-Lane’s keynote at Grinnell, (Jonathan is the author of “Towards and Embodied Liberal Arts Education) After the keynote he was swarmed by students and faculty, so interested to know more.  However, there were the nay sayers.  One student said, “Well, if you are into that sort of thing…”  “That sort of thing.”  That is an oppositional/dismissive stand I have encountered over and over and over for so many years.

CELESTE: I know that you have developed many techniques and tools for helping people into their embodied thinking, and that that is the purpose of this writing you are trying to do.  But before we talk about that, tell me more about why you think we need to access all the petals on your Petal Diagram?

ME:  It is about resources.  When one door closes another opens, or when the door closes a window opens.  If I can’t figure something out by approaching it through one means, I can use a different kind of thinking to approach it.  This is why I love studying outside of my field – immersing myself in Evolutionay Biology for example, or Economic Theory.  I just read an interview with playwright AinGordon and he talked about the amazing things that happen when people move outside of their discipline/speciality.  He was talking about problem-solving with people bringing their unique perspectives from their disciplines:

“A lot of it has been about making the disciplines deal with each other, making the disciplines offer to each other the knowledge that they have in their specificity and showing how it applies to someone else, and how it expands the thinking of people in other disciplines to hear the tools and terminology used to solve the same problems.”

When trying to come to agreement, Gordon said, “Wait a minute, this is going wrong because we’re trying to all agree on it. We don’t have to agree. We have to jump off each other’s investigation and refract it and add another way of investigation.”

Veanne Cox in A Disaster Begins, written and directed by Ain Gordon. Photo by Jason Gardner

I love this idea.  It is not necessarily that I want us all to “agree”, but I want to be present as you try and problem solve using your tools.  Because then I learn more ways to think about things.  And I want to share the tools I have about the multiple options I have for thinking (embodying) because I believe they are an under utilized resource in most lives.  Due to our public education system that has systematically removed these kinds of thinking from our education.

CELESTE:

(Interrupting. CELESTE doesn’t want ME to go off on the State of Education in the US.  A topic she knows Me will go on and on about)

You don’t mean this just in a surface way, do you?  You talk about “choreographic thinking” as a skill that can be mined, nurtured and developed.

ME: Yes, there is this great book, “Thinking in Four Dimensions” that devotes itself to the notion of choreographic thinking as a very specific means of intellectual engagement (embodied).  In order to take seriously (though laughing is serious business), to take seriously, to value that Intuition (for example, one Petal) intuitive thinking, is a real and viable Thing, and we have to do more than just have a momentarily intuitive moment and be done with it.  We need to be in situations – I prefer improvisation and composition as the tool to manufacture those situations – where we get to practice, reflect and build that skill, in this case “intuition”.  I think every petal in the Petal Diagram takes time to develop as a skill.  We are perhaps over trained in, say, Logical thinking and less trained in Intuitive; more trained in Concrete and less trained in Abstract.

CELESTE: This shows up in your performance work.  Is this part of your “non-narrative narrative” notion? 

ME: Yes.  I create work to function on conscious and subconscious levels.  But, as an audience, if you are not used to hanging out consciously in that subconscious stratosphere you may be frustrated by a piece that is saying, “Here.  Take this image.  Let it explore itself in and of you. Be comfortable in no “right or wrong” interpretation.”  I do have very specific intent in the creation of each moment of my work; from the individual words to the way the gestures line up with those words, with intonation, vocal and body choices. I want to communicate the ideas that I set out to investigate, but like Gordon talks about – what is interesting to me is if I lay out a set of ideas (through movement, text, sound and imagery) and the audience brings all the layers of themselves to those ideas and sees something new, brings their own meaning to the experience.  So in the combination of artist/audience, in the covenant that the artist and audience make with one another, something that neither one could make on their own, happens.

CELESTE:

“Covenant” is the word that Bob Leonard used for this artist/audience agreement, isn’t it?

ME: Yes.  I used to say the “contract” between artist and audience, but I like “covenant.”

CELESTE:

This is a lot to digest for today.  Do you want to finish out with anything?  Tangential or not?

ME:

Two things. 

One: Scientist Neils Bohr credits his insight into designing the model of the atom that we use today with his study of cubism. “Bohr’s discerning conviction was that the invisible world of the electron was essentially a cubist world.”   “As Bohr said, ‘When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.’ Ordinary words couldn’t capture the data.”  So he turned to cubism to help him out, because “cubism shatters the certainty of the object.” 

Alexander Calder

Source: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_future_of_science_is_art/

ME: I can’t wait to read more about the  “Ghana ThinkTank”. Giving voice to the third world problem-solver who is successful in solving problems in their community, and asking for their response to solving a first world problem.  Could the first world be humble enough to realize not only do they not have all the answers, but our solutions are often misguided and inept.

CELESTE: Your eyes have that far away look, now what?

ME:  I am thinking about Joanna Russ’ “How To Suppress Women’s Writing”.  

Which is a funny, sarcastic book not only about women as suppressed writers, but marginalized people in general.  Which is a phrase that has been coming up in our conversations, "voice for the voiceless"

CELESTE: Okay.  You need to stop for now.  Go brush Schmoo.