My last post (written some time ago, admittedly; more on that later) talked a little bit about metaphoric thinking and its relationship to trauma and narrative. I included the following Lucille Clifton poem in which the speaker explains coming across a “monstrous, unnamed baby … History”, because to me, the poem is one of the strongest examples of powerful, metaphoric narrative. In a purposefully limited amount of space (literally and linguistically speaking), the poet gives us a very spacious nugget of narrative.
i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother’s itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.
This poem offers us multiple layers of externalization (bringing something internal beyond its borders), processed through metaphor. First, Clifton, as the poet, has created the narrative of meeting History, of, in many ways, reclaiming her. Secondly, the speaker has acknowledged History not as an innate, malleable object, but as a living entity. The acknowledgement that History is living and though mothered by, independent of the speaker is almost a third level of externalized. The poem (1) creates a narrative of the encounter with History (and narrative occurs outside a writer), (2) the speaker acknowledges History as separate from themselves and then (3) clarifies History’s identification as an independent agent. Metaphor is necessary to perform such an externalization, because metaphor enlarges a truth, it is a nature boundary breaker (or more positively stated, metaphor creates enough space to build bridges).
So, why all of this metaphoric externalization talk?
The Geography of Healing project had its first rehearsal this past week in preparation for a works-in-progress showing on May 1st. I had to begin to take this from the theoretical to the practical – I had to have a script and staging.
Creating never really goes quite as planned (Étienne Maurice Falconet’s Pygmalion et Galatée)
While devising the text (based on submitted responses to The Questions) we’ll be using, I found that many responders were aware of the translation between inner and outer worlds taking place in writing. Many of the responses contained a self-awareness of the tension between internal logic and external language, the tension of personal translation. I recognized this tension instantly. When I close my eyes, I can see my pain, I know it intimately. When I try to relate this experience to others, even those skilled in listening to these translations (doctors, therapists, etc), my internal world suddenly feels frozen in comatose. Language is slow, melting, I am unsure of the territory of each sentence. And in these responses, I was seeing this tension arise on multiple levels. There was recognition that these responses may not “make sense” to the outside reader, or that they were highly specific to each person. There was also recognition within the narratives themselves that contradictory and paradoxical states were present, that language did not always serve what was happening in these imaginative spaces.
To weave together a usable poetic text, I chose to navigate around this tension, which often read as doubt of one’s own experience or telling of that experience. I wanted at least to begin in a place that while unexplored, is undoubtedly real, with a speaker who reveals their truth. The external world can be exceptionally good at causing us to doubt our own experiences and truths, it felt important to begin this process with an imagined character who recorded their journey truthfully.
Eve’s account is still forthcoming. (Michelangelo’s Creation of Eve, Sistine Chapel)
I did not actually say this in rehearsal. Because it was a scary decision to make, somehow, it came very close to something very personal for me. It felt as if I was also deciding to do this as a director/choreographer, to take a very conscious step to go from starting a process with a lot of “Maybes” and “This may not make sense to you but …” to walking into a room with a decent map, and the ability to develop it as we explore the world of the play together.
Directors/choreographers are tasked with externalizing the world of performance – its why we use visual collages (or Pinterest, since its 2014), journal obsessively, read obsessively, and spend time laying in the middle of a studio or stage staring into the grid. Our job is to know every inch of this world and to guide a team through it. In order to know it, we have to explore it first, often on a solo expedition. It’s personal, its heart-wrenching and beautiful. Sharing these worlds with others who will impact the environment is the necessary gamble we take. And as someone who spends a lot of time in her head with her pain, and her research, communicating one can often feel like communicating the other. Externalizing is grueling, and getting ready for last week’s rehearsal was a clear reminder of that.
So, in choosing to create this narrative, I found myself also choosing how to start the rehearsal process. And what I am finding in preparing for tonight’s rehearsal is the space created by this narrative, that place where my performers and I both access the world, is also space that allows me to translate the internal logic to an external language.
All of this is to say that consciously creating a narrative about process made room for me to also consciously sculpt my own process. It is my hope too that by putting their own narratives down on paper/screens, responders are able to benefit from the distance created by the act of externalizing. That the doubt of “this may not make sense …” leads to an empowered certainty that something was created and shared.
Geography of Healing 