<

PART 2

EXPLORATION DATE: 22.02.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Conversation-as-Material (I) as a shared practice. The focus of this conversation practice was to come together to share in response to the preceding period of live exploration (between 01.01.2021 - 22.02.2021) where we had both been investigating 'back-ness lying down' through individual enquiry. The session was structured through a series of timed activities, where we took turns to speak and listen.

STRUCTURE OF PRACTICE

0. Tuning in/Arrival - Lying-on-the-back, reconnecting with the body and the sense of practice [20 mins]

1. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]

2. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]

3. Speaking/listening: back-to-back [3 mins each]

4. Speaking/listening: Back-to-back [10 mins each]

'SCORE' FOR CONVERSATION PRACTICE

- Take a moment to tune into the chosen object/focus of exploration – this could involve a period of recollection, or looking back at notes, sketches, wordings that relate to the object/focus of exploration, or by noting/drawing/diagramming.

- Connect and try to stay connected with your direct experience.

- Feel free to speak before knowing what it is that you want to say – thinking through speaking.

- Feel free to speak in single words, partial phrases, half sentences, and thought fragments.

- Allow for vulnerability and embarrassment – for wrestling with, stumbling and falling over one’s words.

- Consider different speeds and rhythms. Allow for silence.

- Approach listening to the other as an aesthetic practice.

3a.

4a.

3b.

PART 3

INTERIM PERIOD

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Transcription and distillation of resulting text through marking/highlighting, undertaken separately.

EXERCISES/SCORES

The one thing was, I was really aware that I had lots of thoughts and things about the back, because of the previous things, that I had sort of remove, not remove, but not let cloud somehow, like starting afresh, something like that. I wrote a few little notes … I had just been lying sitting standing twisting in um... The one thing I had was a sort of relationship – sensation, imagination and shaping. Something likeby pulling attention into the back I get a sense of the shape of my back but it’s through, there’s sort a mix of it’s a sensation and an image .. something like that ….and there is a sense of the hairs on the back of the neck, it’s like an image forms in my mind although it’s from a sensation. I find that really …. And I suppose then that sense that the image I’m interested in, the lying, sitting. I did vertical, horizontal plane. Again, I have it again when I’m lying, and the floor is really my, the horizontal plane, my point, my plane of reference. Whereas when I’m standing, although I’m very aware of my feet on the floor, I’m more aware ofthis sort of invisible line of gravity, the vertical axis, which again is a sort of image in the mind, but if you think of the spine, holding these two images of the vertical and the image of what I know that the spine is curved - and all the asymmetries of the body that emerge. Simply more standing than lying. It’s interesting, Like the vertical, the idea of an axis through the body does not appear to me when I am lying, more when I am sitting, standing, with this, this invisible force of gravity, imagine. And so,my breathing and gravity, it’s also a sort of conversation. I thought the idea of back-bone, I keep saying spine but then I thought oh yes, back bone we talk about back bone but not back-bones. This …this conversation of the breathing and gravitational force, a conversation between two different motions, but there not as, they’re forces, that’s not quite right, but breathing has a sort of expanding, contracting, inhale, exhale, which, I suppose in some way has a sort of horizontality to it. And into, something like surfaces, whereas the gravity, as this invisible image of a line and/or sensation of the vertical. But it’s almost by bringing attention to the back, and the gravity and breath, they sort of highlight each other. The asymmetries of the body, my body, the confrontation with the wonkiness is hilarious at times. And also shocking at other times. Something around feed-back from floor or wall, feed-back from surface, desire for feedback from another person, a counterforce. Somehow the back wrapping around the body. A kind of double image. How the back…as though the wrapping around the body …wraps around the body …..embryonic trace of forming. The last thing, tuning into the back softens the front, ah yes, highlights the front in a different way, softens the front, it allows front to drop back, expectation drops, time drops, or body drops into another sense of time, eyes fall into the body, front falls back. A relationship with front and with facing the back. I also have some notes written down. I think to begin with I was also thinking about the transition from standing to getting to the ground. A lot of what I have been doing in this is confrontation with how little awareness I might have in some of these transitions and trying to bring more awareness to them, so I think to begin with just noticing, do I really know what it is to be upright? am I even aware of the sense of frontality that my experience is shaped by? and I realised that I wasn’t. So, it was something to do with this movement to the ground. And maybe there was something to begin with, this awareness of the forward leaning and future leaning sense of frontality that feels very present. And then I think this kind of, the coming to ground, is again sometimes to do with associations or habits. I think my experience of coming to ground has associations of letting go and relaxation and again a kind of, there’s some confrontation with my own resistance to that, actually, a kind of resistance to letting go, or a holding onto certain tension. So, a lot of the time in that first experience of coming to ground, to begin with I don’t always lie flat, I often lie in a semi-supine position, so my feet are flat on the floor. And this is also habit. It protects my back. My back is an interesting territory because of having back injuries, so I begin like this, but then I realise that having the feet flat on the ground, in the semi-supine position, still feels upright, actually, which is very interesting, it still has more of a feel of uprightness than it does of lying down. So, then I was experimenting between trying to extend my legs and feel what the air was like on my feet and actually how being on the back was also this experience of having air on the soles of the feet, and what that felt like. And then actually just laying down and sort of trying to be aware of what I could let go of, because there is a bit of pain actually to begin with when I lie down but then it sort of settles. So, trying to tune into this relationship between holding on and fighting gravity a bit really and then, letting myself be held- and a lot of work really about this, can I let myself be held, and what can I let go of, and what can I surrender and, this, I think is a big territory of work for me in a way, so it feels quite slow. And then this, yes, the dropping and the sinking. And then I think... having spent …. so, the first phase feels very much like this kind of releasing and surrendering and letting go of some of the holding and only then, I think, does the sense of contact show up. So, contact didn’t actually even feel so present to begin with and then gradually contact shows up. So, the points of contact. And again, also like what you were saying the kind of relationship to the floor as a plane of contact. And this question of what is a back, what’s the back then? Because it was like wow, is it all these points of contact or are we talking about the anatomy of the back itself? And if I roll a little to the side is that still the back if it’s in contact with the floor and are the backs of my heels the back, if we are talking about the back, what does it mean really? and if I turn my hands over so my palms are facing the floor does that make them the back then. How much does the contact with the floor shaped whether it was the back? Then again the experience of this back breathing, so only then being able to soften into a sense of the breathing into the back and awareness of the breath.  Funny how things shift by hearing someone else already or … coincide...or like ... It’s interesting because you were talking about transition. I did have some at the end. But mostly I did a bit lying … sitting... The lying, the sense of relief, of flatness. I understand what you are saying, this sense of not really feeling, it takes a while to settle, yes, I like this word settle, and to let go, it is letting go and to enjoy this I quite like this hardness, although I have a soft underground, the firmness of the ground is such a relief. A sense of weight distributed, and I think emotionally, or psychologically, just the relief from thinking, there is something that reconfigures, a connection to the world. To be low down there with the mat and the dust its nice. … I sort of notice these things that aren’t … like the curve of the neck, the back, behind the knees, those bits that don’t touch, they sometimes confuse me because I am not sure how much should touch, and whereif I can sense the beginning of the touch and the not touch, I find that really interesting, there is sort of sense of flatness which I sometimes have but sometimes I don’t, sometimes I feel like some sort of bit of corrugated iron that won’t, won’t …And how weight changes, the more I drop, it’s almost like a layer of,these words of resisting, settling, dropping, sinking, almost goes so low that you start to float. it feels like by heavy heavy heavy somehow lightness comes into the body, which in a way is also a sort of relationship perhaps with the front or up above, all that space up there. Sitting is a funny one, it’s just so much to do with work. I got really curious of the idea of sitting straight or slumping. And howthe chair and the body become a sort of chair-body thing, an idea of the back that has to be straight. The slump is really nice. And this sort of unit-thing of chair-body, I find interesting. Maybe that’s what you said with the feet soles, the feet on the ground, especially with sitting. It’s really strong going through 90 degree, not quite 90, the feet to the ankle to the knee to the hip to the up. So, the feet into the head. Two feet on the ground. Maybe that half-supine position. Soles of the feet on the ground there’s a kind of energy going up, its incredible how that upness can come through these angles.Sitting against the wall is so delicious, this back to the wall, as something giving back and also to push back which you can’t really do so much in a chair. And in the standing, I am so aware of Steve Paxton’s small dance,the movements that happen in the stillness of just standing and againI am also aware of all these resistances to not move, to let the body move but not to move. Forces acting on the body pulling, holding, releasing. I suppose the complexity keeps bubbling up, surfacing, and there’s a kind of restlessness, to let that happen but not to do anything with it immediately. I can just feel this desire to do, to move, to follow. And again confronted with the instability to balance, and the asymmetry of the body, becomes really apparent when I am standing. There is something to do with a kind of restlessness, and therefore, the body, I am sure the body wants to correct it, and sort it out. And I also had this sense, … I went down into a crouch and see to keep my feet still, and just think how I might just  … fold, without having to put my hand down, but to follow the image and not worry if I was going to fall over, and then this coming into down and all these images of women, birth, fire, all these old or ancient images of the crouch, the folded down. And then going further down into hands and knees and that has more animal like sensation of different relationship going into the back. Feeling of tail, a tail coming, and of dorsal fin and I had all these animals flying through my imagination, animal catlike, serpent, dog, lizard, fish, all there. And I remember l’animal a l’esquena - the animal on the back - somehow came back to me. And then coming back up, the power of the body that is needed from two feet crouch to just come back, it’s quite a lot. But also, the transition to stand up from this position, is huge like some rapid acceleration from one thing to another. Feels very,a strong sense of uprightness comes because of that transition, and the rootedness of the feet are emphasised because you are coming from that low down weight, having to push up, because a lot of the work has been relaxing, leaning back into, letting the body go. Then the twisting and turning is so interesting and complex. I had this thought about turning and twisting, I know they are only words. If I am turning it feels like sort of mechanical possibility. Because I have an image of the axis so I should be able to turn. Whereas the twist feels like more what actually happens, there are these different forces and resistances and limits to the material body. I wonder if turning and twisting are different things in the body. And how the head is somehow often later, with me,an idea of delay, what starts a turn or a twist, what is later, spiral, delays that happen. And then I did start to follow, because as soon as you turn the body’s off somehow, so I started to follow whether it was pushing me like this or up or into arches or bows - following the complications more than the ???? itself. It’s really nice to hear another person’s experience and I’m interested not to grasp too much, not trying to write all the notes down and to just hear it and to also come back to my own notes as well. I think I was spending a lot of time on the back before exploring some of these other movements and just trying to get closer to sensations of things. Because I can overthink things, and then try to think am I really feeling that or am I just thinking that. So, I have to get quite specific about something, so for example one of the thingsI was trying to tune into was having my eyes open or having my eyes closed when I was lying down. Trying to take the awareness to the back of the eye as if the eyes were also dropping back somehow into the head, and this was very nice actually – justa different kind of gaze, just looking at the ceiling, justa really different kind of gaze, it was almost like the liquid of the eye was dropping back into its orbit, into the actual socket somehow. I think, there were certain words that were coming to mind. And one of them was around the flatness of the back. And it was interesting that I think my experience of the flatness of the back can often feel quite lifeless, so it can feel quite inert almost, as a realm of sensation or the qualities of it can feel quite inert, and there are certain words that can loop around, static or still or lifeless or flat in a way, and I was thinking a bit about how much that might be conditioned, especially having a back injury, in terms of not leading with your back or trying to keep the back in a neutral position which is completely incorrect actually from a health point of the view of the back.  But something about what needs to be let go of in terms of certain associations and I was thinking wow what would it be like to or how might I start to activate the back in its aliveness, as a field of live experience, living experience rather than this resting passive inert sort of space which it can feel like, and I think some of this was also making me realise just the sense of the lack of embodied awareness in the back, well actually generally to be honest, but especially in my back region, it felt as if that some of this is just to do with a lack of practice experience really and not quite having the capacity at this point to really tune into some of the nuance of experience, so I got a bit interested in the sense that so much of the way that I was experiencing and thinking about the back was through a kind of undoing, like an undoing of uprightness, and it was all of this activating these kind of relaxing and letting go and releasing and loosening and stopping holding and. And a kind of move of experience that was in relation to uprightness still, or a certain idea of uprightness or a certain idea of, not just uprightness, but holding and control actually. Yes maybe that’s a good word there’s something to do with trying to get in tune with your back that was to do releasing certain expectations and particularly habits of control which also are habits of the eyes in a way. So, I was thinking a lot about how this experience of the back was shaped by it being not something. So, like the words that were coming to mind a bit were to do with the un, like the undoing, this undoing of the head-orientated, sight orientated, future-forward orientation, and to try and undo that. And letting go, surrendering, renouncing, releasing, not-ness, not not-upright. And I guess the questions that started to come from that, were also to do with what might,how might it be to try and tune into what arises, or what unfolds, once you have let go, so for it not only to be about this undoing of uprightness, but actually, just to really tune into what unfolds or what opens up as an experience in its own right, if you really settle into that, and this was something I kind of wanted to spend a bit more time with really. So, something to do with how might I be able to get closer to a sense of the agility of the back, rather than its stillness or static-ness or the fluidity or the movement of the back, and how to get beyond it just being about not being upright but actually to really see what does it actually do on its own terms, what can be sensed otherwise. And there is something to do with allowing the back to have its own agency somehow, because when I think I was also exploring a bit of movement from side to side, often the momentum wasn’t coming back from the back, it was coming from elsewhere. So, I might have moved my legs to one side, the limbs were more like the active agent and the back just followed. Actually, there’s an exercise we’ve been doing in the yoga class I go to where instead of letting the legs follow, you try and draw the shoulder and the back towards the floor first and then it’s the movement of the back that moves the legs and it sort of shifts the place of where the movement is orientated from, but from where did the movement begin and to try and positively take the movement back, into the back as an agent of movement, felt very positive actually. So, I suppose much of my associations of experience is come I think from the sense of the back having this quality of resting and relaxing and passivity in a way, which feel very positive things, but I suppose it’s also liketrying to think about the way in which the back has a liveliness and a dynamic quality, because I think it can sort of just be like a slab of body, like a lifeless slab of body that I can’t see and my range of sensation perhaps isn’t so tuned into it and so just to kind of become alert really to the possibilities of the back and I guess also in the frame of what we are talking about, that sense of sensation that comes from taking the awareness to the back of the body. And it not only being about an alternative to the front, it’s not only not all of these front-facing things, it’s actually got its own characteristics and qualities. But at the moment I just couldn’t quite, it feels like there’s a bit work to be done to there to get close to that in some ways. But the physical proximity in touch I think feels so important to that, the sense of contact, and this thinking of sensing in contact. What does it open up for me? Trying to turn towards it in the sense of what does it opens up as an experience rather than only what it is an alternative to, I felt was quite fruitful as an area of enquiry really. I’m curious speaking up a bit. It is this is interesting because it’s not to you, it releases me from the screen, like a talking not to you,the voice is now more into the room, I feel the back, my back, leaning on the back of the chair facing the screen. Kind of stops me from talking. I’m kind of aware of if I am talking what is happening with my shoulders, there’s some tension in them, something about the voice and tension in the shoulders. Making me think, I did a small exercise from an art colleague who said to draw with your eyes closed, to draw the cheek with one hand while the other hand is touching the cheek. And I did this while also talking about it and recording.And I listened to my voice and it was a voice I didn’t quite recognise from myself, it was really back, a thinking voice and it was a kind of voice where I thought I don’t mind her, whereas the frontal voice …relationship to the throat, voice going into throat going into the back into the shoulder blades, a connection. Knowing that you are there behind me is interesting. I asked the students to turn their backs to the screen two weeks ago and just breathe. And I was surprised how they all picked up on and liked it – there was a sense of not being on your own and being released, from something. It’s a very weird experience actually, listening to you actually was very interesting because I felt quite apprehensive about talking even though I knew I was just listening, so it didn’t matter anyway. It felt like there’d be no way for me to signal that I wanted to speak or a kind of reservation that I might not be heard. So, I could feel quite a lot of tension around my throat actually in this apprehension about speaking. Even now I’m half doing it over my shoulder in a weird way. I’m almost trying to curve my voice around my head somehow, so it reaches you. But actually, the experience of listening was, it felt very positive and one of the things that really came from it, was how that from a listening point of view, silence felt so much more possible, there didn’t feel any strain in silence from a listening point of view. The silence could have carried on for quite a while. And felt very okay. So, there’s something about that kind of experience of frontality that just forces such a lot of effort in a way. Made me think what kind of effort can be dropped if you take the attention away from the front to the back. It’s also interesting trying to talk with my back to the screen, because what I’m finding is that I’m talking towards the wall, and I am quite close to the wall, and it feels quite inhibiting in a way, feels like I almost don’t have enough room to be able to speak, my knees are pressed quite closely to the radiator, I never normally experience that sense of constriction when I’m facing towards the screen, but that limited amount of space is still there. It’s interesting that I don’t usually feel inhibited by having less room behind me. Actually, I often feel uncomfortable if I am in a space and there’s a lot of space behind me. I have more a tendency to want to sit with my back towards the wall. It was opening up some thoughts about that really. What am I guarding my back against when I sit with my back close to the wall? And also, maybe what is it not allowing for by not having this space around the back .. for thinking in a way. It’s interesting in doing this, it’s almost that I can’t quite get in tune with the previous experiments with the back and the floor, because there is this other experience of backness,that is overriding that somehow or feeling much more present. I’m trying …  of getting back in touch with that and it does feel quite difficult. One of the things I was struck by when you were talking earlier, was when you were saying something about the difference when you had your back to the wall, there was this sense of being able to push into the walland the surface of the wall having a sense of force or pressure against which you could push … and maybe also missing that sense of another human kind of contact of pushing, and it feels that this is interesting in this experience because there’s no resistance almost and I wonder like sometimes in conversation … I think what I was ending on there was this sense of maybe needing some kind of force or resistance against which to push with the back, and I was also thinking about that a bit in terms of, also conversationally actually, conversation has that dynamic of a push and a pull, and a force that you are working with. …  It’s interesting, now that something is removed, also there’s something in its place …but listening to you now and trying to respond was somehow complicated, I think because I was listening to you, I could nod but I am also looking at the wall, butI also have some images up here and they’re also coming in while I am digesting what you’re saying, it’s a different kind of conversation, not so much a back forth back forth. I loved how you said when you were trying to send the voice in a curve in order to reach me. It feels like I am also talking through what I can see or maybe that is coming into my words or into my voice as I am talking to you. That’s a choice though. I’m also thinking of conversation, that I have often forgotten to listen because I have noticed someone’s gestures or maybe just something else. That is a lack of concentration in one way, but it reminds me also sometimes that we are selecting, or we are distracted by something else, that for some reason has caught our attention. It’s interesting because I have had my eyes closed, because as I am looking at the wall, actually I can see the garden reflected in the wall, so it’s almost like I can sort of see forwards, by cheating in a way. I can’t see the computer screen, but it feels like I can see in that direction. I was experimenting in closing my eyes andas soon as I close my eyes, the experience of the conversation felt much closer to that of a telephone conversation, in some senses, although the sound is coming from behind me. Maybe I am trying to find devices in my experience to bring this conversation back into a register and awareness I am more familiar with, to kind of get away from the experience of having back towards the … the conversation towards you. And to try then to stay with that more, I can keep feeling this impulse of turning my head. It keeps pulling as if I wanting to turn round. I keep thinking to, not so much resist it, but to keep coming back into this experience, of trying to be aware through the back of the body. I think that’s mainly what I am wrestling with is, what does it really feel like to try and be aware through the back of the body, of this experience we are having at the moment. And what’s coming out of that’s perhaps different, or what does it open up really. Instead of trying to trick it or bypass or make it easier, can I sort of sit with the disorientation of it really. The sound coming from behind… I’m thinking … radio that happens sometimes or something on in the other room, that becomes more of an environmental sound. I suppose we have an agreement that we’re having a conversation or are trying to communicate something to each other. I can feel …it’s interesting how because you are behind me, there’s a sense of the back of the head and neck and the ears. I am coming a bit more aware of that through the conversation, I suppose it’s because it is around language and into the head, rather than the feet or the pelvis or. But actually, I feel quite relieved. I think normally this thing if having conversations, as social creatures, we sort of nod and smile and show that we’re being attentive and through the screen I find that’s very tiring. With my colleagues we’ve been talking about the performance of attention. Having to perform or make sure that someone understands we are attending. I notice if I have my eyes closed and or can release the eyes and feeling that I need to see the other person and that I actually can concentrate better on what’s being said. Or I can take it in. It’s interesting. The more we are doing this now, I am feeling a bit of tension in my shoulders and in the back of my head because it feels like I am straining the back of my head. Somehow, I am trying to get my face nearer to the screen by straining the back of my head, but if I let go of that and then try and just relax into this more. It’s interesting, what you were just saying about this performance of attention, and I know that I do this a lot, especially in zoom because we are not in the same physical presence of people, a lot of energy is invested in .. into the mirroring and affirming and wanting to really bring attention to what’s being said, it sort of strikes me now doing this, I’m not sure, it feels as though what would there be, those gestural devices that show you are paying attention. Because they take a lot of effort, they deviate from the attention that you’re bringing in a way. And this actually being able to speak and also listen without having to think of what you look like, or that someone is looking at you or you are looking at them. It does actually feel more spacious in a way. My face feels really different actually, my face feels less strained. Yes, more spacious. I felt like I wanted to tell you something about my wall. Makes me just realise how attached I might be to that kind of frontal orientation. I suppose it’s normal, these social creatures, it is where our voices come out of, there are all these other gestures, but the face says a lot about whether we are bored or excited or in love or paying attention. Maybe there was also something in there about the axis, like the impulse I could feel was reactive actually. Maybe there’s something about exploring the space between reactive gestures and more creative responses like when you were describing working with the axis lying down and physically exploring this shift as you rotate or twist, I think this is quite different to… or you were also talking previously about acknowledging the impulse to move and maybe resisting that or holding back on that. I could definitely feel an impulse to turn in that then, it was almost coming from the waist, as if there was a magnetic tilt in that direction. That could also be something to explore as a thing. Explore that transition, something to do with paying attention to where those habits are and exploring that a bit as well. It’s alsowhen you said the back is not opposite of the front, it’s not falling into a binary, or where does the back end or begin, it’s not even about back-front the screen gives a sense of back front but in our rooms it’s not like that. Yes, the sense of rotating, It also makes me think if you were to turn towards something or to turn your back on something. I know my friend used to work with a deaf theatre company, and there was this girl that if she was angry, she would turn her back on Maxi, it would be like me just ending the meeting baf and Maxi understanding, that it was a very strong gesture. And even without being deafI think that sense of having someone turning their back to you is strong .. it’s true, you don’t exist for them in that moment, that recently happened in a professional context, in the middle of a conversation. I still have a visceral trace of it. Exploring it now, when we were doing it that didn’t feel true, I could pay more attention to what you were saying in places, maybe because I was having to listen in a more concentrated way because the visual cues were not there, but I don’t feel it was that actually it felt much more like because I wasn’t invested in performing attention I could actually pay attention, without also trying to act it out. It’s not that I’m pretending to be attentive but there is something of that. I think it is something about being relieved of the performance of attention, that you can actually listen and you said something about the telephone and something of the telephone experience when you might be lying down totally relaxing, totally in your own room, you let this voice drift in. The voice comes in … sounds can come but with eyes you get drawn out, it’s a bit like the other gaze that you had, how we can just see and let light come in, scan rather than … well, it’s the function of the eyes is also to point but we also have this more scanning… Letting something come. I’ve not thought quite like you just said it now. Letting things arrive rather than reaching out. Elsewhere in my notes there werea few things that were coming up to do with non-grasping. I’m curious if that is something that starts to get activated if you do take the attention more into the back, just letting things come, letting things arise or arrive. This, working ground which would be to do with how to let things come, but only be how to activate a quality of passivity that is also very alert and active, is response. I think might be an interesting working ground, not to have a passivity that is inert, or lifeless but actually there is there’s a quality of passivity that is very alive and responsive. And not to completely flip from active grasping mode to.. a bit dead. Sometimes when I write about the back, this idea to slow something down, I get that sense of oh god that sounds so dull, but I think the sense of something that’s back that it might not have agency. But it’s not like that. For me listening from behind it also activates the body, I immediately thought I put my feet on the radiator, I’ll listen to you while l look around, it wouldn’t normally be acceptable, listening to someone and looking around, it would feel confusing, now it felt it was part of listening. Were you doing that also as you were talking? I think I was aware of the images, I was sort of playing with that a little, can I see you-image, as well as, talk. I suppose it’s just there, just letting it come in. As you are talking there, I guess I am thinking that is that the difference between a narrow focussed concentration, through the eyes to a certain extent and this wider peripheral more expansive experience or awareness and also the sense of the movement of the eyes and wandering of things, and I know I do this a lot and I am doing it now, there’s a slight uneasiness about being under guard, being watched actually, and I think with particularly in zoom we are looking at people in a way we wouldn’t probably really look all the time at someone quite like that if we were in a one-to-one conversation probably.My eyes kind of go off and it looks a bit distracted. What I am doing now feels quite different to when I was listening to you and also looking around, that felt as if it was much more about being able to hold what I was hearing and paying attention to within a much bigger sense of awareness of the wider surroundings and somehow it really enhancing it whereas sometimes if I am doing whatever I am doing now, it’s a deviation strategy which risks taking away my focus if I am not careful. It feels as though they are really different species of behaviour somehow. I know I look away a lot, I find it really hard … partly I have a stigma or something in my eyes that makes them start watering if `I stare too long…  but maybe it’s also when we are thinking that our eyes wander in a way we are dropping back into something, maybe something that is not quite formed yet, that when people start to have to think about what they are going to say that their eyes drop or start doing something else. That’s a really nice line that sense of being able to drop back into the not yet formed, I suppose I am through this and in preparation, thinking a bit about what does taking the awareness into the back enable, that feels as if that could be very significant in a way that it enables you to dwell in this space of the not fully formed, residing in this space of the not fully formed in a positive sense, not having to force it into formation, or force it into … , not even to do with forcing it into language because in the conversations with our backs, there was still a speaking, it wasn’t as if not it was without any words but it felt like there was a way of residing in that differently. It perhaps it allowed for time for, it gave permission. There was something about the pause that was different in the back-to-back or the in between. Makes me think of, I was trying to do something, I was scanning some pages, taking this idea of the blur, the not fully focussed and taking these out of focus photos, on the edges of you might know what it is or not. It was interesting in terms of the blur or the not yet in focus. That’s different, that’s a visual thing. There’s something about there just being just enough pressure, or just enough resistance, to want to try and bring it into formation. Because maybe there’s the same sort of risk that I was experiencing lying on the back that the habit would be to become wholly in it or wholly passive, or wholly relaxed andthe stimulation to try and bring a thought into formation or a word into formation would just fall away into a kind of silence or into the nana, the un again. Maybe there is something in this rotation that somehow just brings enough pressure for it to start to have to draw on this well of unformness, or to come from that space and to really try and bring something into experience, not into experience because its already in experience, its bringing something into articulation, in that space without fully turning back to the front, to somehow carry something from that formless space but not quite going back to the full front. So there’s something in the turn that’s really important there isn’t it. I wrote down as soon as there is a turn, it stimulates. Physically, and now also to what you’re saying. I suppose because sometimes the lying or the standing even though there are all these asymmetries and imbalance there’s still a kind of neutrality in it that can make things a bit dull, it can dullify and sort of become… as soon as there’s a turn, and a turn can also be… an image or  … something that just brings another possibility into what’s been set up. When I was doing some of the experiments for the enquiry lying down, I’d got my notepad on the floor, quite often I wanted to write something and for a while I was thinking ah this, I am not settling into the enquiry enough. But actually, it this did also feel quite generative.It was this not coming up to the sit but from lying, just turning to the side and writing something and then going back down into this lying position. And this might be a good way of thinking for me. In a way it means you are still, you are writing but you are still there, you can slip in and out, it’s not as though the writing becomes a different thing after. I was curious too, how to do it, how to take notes, and articulate after, in between, to find way, I could write more today about a few days ago. Also that. Sometimes I need to do lots and not write and write later, but its interesting, but I think this going in between is also …

The one thing was, I was really aware that I had lots of thoughts and things about the back, because of the previous things, that I had sort of remove, not remove, but not let cloud somehow, like starting afresh, something like that. I wrote a few little notes … I had just been lying sitting standing twisting in um... The one thing I had was a sort of relationship – sensation, imagination and shaping. Something like by pulling attention into the back I get a sense of the shape of my back but it’s through, there’s sort a mix of it’s a sensation and an image .. something like that ….and there is a sense of the hairs on the back of the neck, it’s like an image forms in my mind although it’s from a sensation. I find that really …. And I suppose then that sense that the image I’m interested in, the lying, sitting. I did vertical, horizontal plane. Again, I have it again when I’m lying, and the floor is really my, the horizontal plane, my point, my plane of reference. Whereas when I’m standing, although I’m very aware of my feet on the floor, I’m more aware ofthis sort of invisible line of gravity, the vertical axis, which again is a sort of image in the mind, but if you think of the spine, holding these twoimages of the vertical and the image of what I know that the spine is curved - and all the asymmetries of the body that emerge. Simply more standing than lying. It’s interesting, Like the vertical, the idea of an axis through the body does not appear to me when I am lying, more when I am sitting, standing, with this, this invisible force of gravity, imagine. And so,my breathing and gravity, it’s also a sort of conversation. I thought the idea of back-bone, I keep saying spine but then I thought oh yes,back bone we talk about back bone but not back-bones. This …this conversation of the breathing and gravitational force, a conversation between two different motions, but there not as,they’re forces, that’s not quite right, but breathing has a sort of expanding, contracting, inhale, exhale, which, I supposein some way has a sort of horizontality to it. And into, something like surfaces, whereas the gravity, as this invisible image of a line and/or sensation of the vertical. But it’s almost by bringing attention to the back, and the gravity and breath, they sort of highlight each other.The asymmetries of the body, my body, the confrontation with the wonkiness is hilarious at times. And also shocking at other times.Something around feed-back from floor or wall, feed-back from surface, desire for feedback from another person, a counterforce. Somehow the back wrapping around the body. A kind of double image. How the back…as though the wrapping around the body …wraps around the body …..embryonic trace of forming. The last thing, tuning into the back softens the front, ah yes, highlights the front in a different way,softens the front, it allows front to drop back, expectation drops, time drops, or body drops into another sense of time, eyes fall into the body, front falls back. A relationship with front and with facing the back. I also have some notes written down. I think to begin with I was also thinking about the transition from standing to getting to the ground. A lot of what I have been doing in this is confrontation with how little awareness I might have in some of these transitions and trying to bring more awareness to them, so I think to begin with just noticing,do I really know what it is to be upright? am I even aware of the sense of frontality that my experience is shaped by? and I realised that I wasn’t. So, it was somethingto do with this movement to the ground. And maybe there was something to begin with, this awareness of the forward leaning and future leaning sense of frontality that feels very present. And then I think this kind of, thecoming to ground, is again sometimes to do with associations or habits. I think my experience of coming to ground has associations of letting go and relaxation and again a kind of, there’s some confrontation with my own resistance to that, actually, a kind of resistance to letting go, or a holding onto certain tension. So, a lot of the time in that first experience of coming to ground, to begin with I don’t always lie flat, I often lie in a semi-supine position, so my feet are flat on the floor. And this is also habit. It protects my back. My back is an interesting territory because of having back injuries, so I begin like this, but then I realise that having the feet flat on the ground, in the semi-supine position, still feels upright, actually, which is very interesting, it still has more of a feel of uprightness than it does of lying down. So, then I was experimenting between trying to extend my legs and feel what the air was like on my feet and actually how being on the back was also this experience of having air on the soles of the feet, and what that felt like. And then actually just laying down and sort of trying to be aware of what I could let go of, because there is a bit of pain actually to begin with when I lie down but then it sort of settles. So, trying to tune into this relationship between holding on and fighting gravity a bit really and then, letting myself be held- and a lot of work really about this, can I let myself be held, and what can I let go of, and what can I surrender and, this, I think is a big territory of work for me in a way, so it feels quite slow. And thenthis, yes, the dropping and the sinking. And then I think... having spent …. so, the first phase feels very much like this kind of releasing and surrendering and letting go of some of the holding and only then, I think, does the sense of contact show up. So, contact didn’t actually even feel so present to begin with and then gradually contact shows up. So, the points of contact. And again, also like what you were sayingthe kind of relationship to the floor as a plane of contact. And this question of what is a back, what’s the back then? Because it was like wow,is it all these points of contact or are we talking about the anatomy of the back itself? And if I roll a little to the side is that still the back if it’s in contact with the floor and are the backs of my heels the back, if we are talking about the back, what does it mean really? and if I turn my hands over so my palms are facing the floor does that make them the back then. How much does the contact with the floor shaped whether it was the back? Then again the experience of this back breathing, so only thenbeing able to soften into a sense of the breathing into the back and awareness of the breath.  Funny how things shift by hearing someone else already or … coincide...or like ... It’s interesting because you were talking about transition. I did have some at the end. But mostly I did a bit lying … sitting... The lying, the sense of relief, of flatness. I understand what you are saying, this sense of not really feeling, it takes a while to settle, yes, I like this word settle, and to let go, it is letting go and to enjoy this I quite like this hardness, although I have a soft underground, the firmness of the ground is such a relief. A sense of weight distributed, and I think emotionally, or psychologically, just the relief from thinking, there is something that reconfigures, a connection to the world. To be low down there with the mat and the dust its nice. … I sort of notice these things that aren’t … like the curve of the neck, the back, behind the knees, those bits that don’t touch, they sometimes confuse me because I am not sure how much should touch, and whereif I can sense the beginning of the touch and the not touch, I find that really interesting, there is sort of sense of flatness which I sometimes have but sometimes I don’t, sometimes I feel like some sort of bit of corrugated iron that won’t, won’t …And how weight changes, the more I drop, it’s almost like a layer of, these words of resisting, settling, dropping, sinking, almost goes so low that you start to float. it feels like by heavy heavy heavy somehow lightness comes into the body, which in a way is also a sort of relationship perhaps with the front or up above, all that space up there. Sitting is a funny one, it’s just so much to do with work. I got really curious of the idea of sitting straight or slumping. And how the chair and the body become a sort of chair-body thing, an idea of the back that has to be straight. The slump is really nice. And this sort of unit-thing of chair-body, I find interesting. Maybe that’s what you said with the feet soles, the feet on the ground, especially with sitting. It’s really strong going through 90 degree, not quite 90, the feet to the ankle to the knee to the hip to the up. So, the feet into the head. Two feet on the ground. Maybe that half-supine position. Soles of the feet on the ground there’s a kind of energy going up, its incredible how that upness can come through these angles. Sitting against the wall is so delicious, this back to the wall, as something giving back and also to push back which you can’t really do so much in a chair. And in the standing, I am so aware of Steve Paxton’s small dance,the movements that happen in the stillness of just standing and again I am also aware of all these resistances to not move, to let the body move but not to move. Forces acting on the body pulling, holding, releasing. I suppose the complexity keeps bubbling up, surfacing, and there’s a kind of restlessness, to let that happen but not to do anything with it immediately. I can just feel this desire to do, to move, to follow. And again confronted with the instability to balance, and the asymmetry of the body, becomes really apparent when I am standing. There is something to do with a kind of restlessness, and therefore, the body, I am sure the body wants to correct it, and sort it out. And I also had this sense, … I went down into a crouch and see to keep my feet still, and just think how I might just  … fold, without having to put my hand down, but to follow the image and not worry if I was going to fall over, and then this coming into down and all these images of women, birth, fire, all these old or ancient images of the crouch, the folded down. And then going further down into hands and knees and that has more animal like sensation of different relationship going into the back. Feeling of tail, a tail coming, and of dorsal fin and I had all these animals flying through my imagination, animal catlike, serpent, dog, lizard, fish, all there. And I remember l’animal a l’esquena - the animal on the back - somehow came back to me. And then coming back up, the power of the body that is needed from two feet crouch to just come back, it’s quite a lot. But also, the transition to stand up from this position, is huge like some rapid acceleration from one thing to another. Feels very, a strong sense of uprightness comes because of that transition, and the rootedness of the feet are emphasised because you are coming from that low down weight, having to push up, because a lot of the work has been relaxing, leaning back into, letting the body go. Then the twisting and turning is so interesting and complex. I had this thought about turning and twisting, I know they are only words. If I am turning it feels like sort of mechanical possibility. Because I have an image of the axis so I should be able to turn. Whereas the twist feels like more what actually happens, there are these different forces and resistances and limits to the material body. I wonder if turning and twisting are different things in the body. And how the head is somehow often later, with me,an idea of delay, what starts a turn or a twist, what is later, spiral, delays that happen. And then I did start to follow, because as soon as you turn the body’s off somehow, so I started to follow whether it was pushing me like this or up or into arches or bows - following the complications more than the ???? itself. It’s really nice to hear another person’s experience and I’m interested not to grasp too much, not trying to write all the notes down and to just hear it and to also come back to my own notes as well. I think I was spending a lot of time on the back before exploring some of these other movements and just trying to get closer to sensations of things. Because I can overthink things, and then try to think am I really feeling that or am I just thinking that. So, I have to get quite specific about something, so for example one of the things I was trying to tune into was having my eyes open or having my eyes closed when I was lying down. Trying to take the awareness to the back of the eye as if the eyes were also dropping back somehow into the head, and this was very nice actually – justa different kind of gaze, just looking at the ceiling, justa really different kind of gaze, it was almost like the liquid of the eye was dropping back into its orbit, into the actual socket somehow. I think, there were certain words that were coming to mind. And one of them was around the flatness of the back. And it was interesting that I think my experience of theflatness of the back can often feel quite lifeless, so it can feel quite inert almost, as a realm of sensation or the qualities of it can feel quite inert, and there are certain words that can loop around, static or still or lifeless or flat in a way, and I was thinking a bit about how much that might be conditioned, especially having a back injury, in terms of not leading with your back or trying to keep the back in a neutral position which is completely incorrect actually from a health point of the view of the back.  But something about what needs to be let go of in terms of certain associations and I was thinking wow what would it be like to or how might I start to activate the back in its aliveness, as a field of live experience, living experience rather than this resting passive inert sort of space which it can feel like, and I think some of this was also making me realise just the sense of the lack of embodied awareness in the back, well actually generally to be honest, but especially in my back region, it felt as if that some of this is just to do with a lack of practice experience really and not quite having the capacity at this point to really tune into some of the nuance of experience, so I got a bit interested in the sense that so much of the way that I was experiencing and thinking about the back was through a kind of undoing, like an undoing of uprightness, and it was all of this activating these kind of relaxing and letting go and releasing and loosening and stopping holding and. And a kind of move of experience that was in relation to uprightness still, or a certain idea of uprightness or a certain idea of, not just uprightness, but holding and control actually. Yes maybe that’s a good word there’s something to do with trying to get in tune with your back that was to doreleasing certain expectations and particularly habits of control which also are habits of the eyes in a way. So, I was thinking a lot about how this experience of the back was shaped by it being not something. So, like the words that were coming to mind a bit were to do with the un, like the undoing, this undoing of the head-orientated, sight orientated, future-forward orientation, and to try and undo that. And letting go, surrendering, renouncing, releasing, not-ness, not not-upright. And I guess the questions that started to come from that, were also to do with what might,how might it be to try and tune into what arises, or what unfolds, once you have let go, so for it not only to be about this undoing of uprightness, but actually, just to really tune into what unfolds or what opens up as an experience in its own right, if you really settle into that, and this was something I kind of wanted to spend a bit more time with really. So, something to do with how might I be able to get closer to a sense of the agility of the back, rather than its stillness or static-ness or the fluidity or the movement of the back, and how to get beyond it just being about not being upright but actually to really see what does it actually do on its own terms, what can be sensed otherwise. And there is something to do with allowing the back to have its own agency somehow, because when I think I was also exploring a bit of movement from side to side, often the momentum wasn’t coming back from the back, it was coming from elsewhere. So, I might have moved my legs to one side, the limbs were more like the active agent and the back just followed. Actually, there’s an exercise we’ve been doing in the yoga class I go to where instead of letting the legs follow, you try and draw the shoulder and the back towards the floor first and then it’s the movement of the back that moves the legs and it sort of shifts the place of where the movement is orientated from, but from where did the movement begin and to try and positively take the movement back, into the back as an agent of movement, felt very positive actually. So, I suppose much of my associations of experience is come I think from the sense of the back having this quality of resting and relaxing and passivity in a way, which feel very positive things, but I suppose it’s also like trying to think about the way in which the back has a liveliness and a dynamic quality, because I think it can sort of just be like a slab of body, like a lifeless slab of body that I can’t see and my range of sensation perhaps isn’t so tuned into it and so just to kind of become alert really to the possibilities of the back and I guess also in the frame of what we are talking about, that sense of sensation that comes from taking the awareness to the back of the body. And it not only being about an alternative to the front, it’s not only not all of these front-facing things, it’s actually got its own characteristics and qualities. But at the moment I just couldn’t quite, it feels like there’s a bit work to be done to there to get close to that in some ways.But the physical proximity in touch I think feels so important to that, the sense of contact, and this thinking of sensing in contact. What does it open up for me? Trying to turn towards it in the sense of what does it opens up as an experience rather than only what it is an alternative to, I felt was quite fruitful as an area of enquiry really. I’m curious speaking up a bit. It is this is interesting because it’s not to you, it releases me from the screen, like a talking not to you, the voice is now more into the room, I feel the back, my back, leaning on the back of the chair facing the screen. Kind of stops me from talking. I’m kind of aware of if I am talking what is happening with my shoulders, there’s some tension in them, something about the voice and tension in the shoulders. Making me think, I did a small exercise from an art colleague who said to draw with your eyes closed, to draw the cheek with one hand while the other hand is touching the cheek. And I did this while also talking about it and recording.And I listened to my voice and it was a voice I didn’t quite recognise from myself, it was really back, a thinking voice and it was a kind of voice where I thought I don’t mind her, whereas the frontal voice …relationship to the throat, voice going into throat going into the back into the shoulder blades, a connection. Knowing that you are there behind me is interesting. I asked the students to turn their backs to the screen two weeks ago and just breathe. And I was surprised how they all picked up on and liked it – there was a sense of not being on your own and being released, from something. It’s a very weird experience actually, listening to you actually was very interesting because I felt quite apprehensive about talking even though I knew I was just listening, so it didn’t matter anyway. It felt like there’d be no way for me to signal that I wanted to speak or a kind of reservation that I might not be heard. So, I could feel quite a lot of tension around my throat actually in this apprehension about speaking. Even now I’m half doing it over my shoulder in a weird way. I’m almost trying to curve my voice around my head somehow, so it reaches you. But actually, the experience of listening was, it felt very positive and one of the things that really came from it, was how that from a listening point of view, silence felt so much more possible, there didn’t feel any strain in silence from a listening point of view. The silence could have carried on for quite a while. And felt very okay. So, there’s something about that kind of experience of frontality that just forces such a lot of effort in a way. Made me think what kind of effort can be dropped if you take the attention away from the front to the back. It’s also interesting trying to talk with my back to the screen, because what I’m finding is that I’m talking towards the wall, and I am quite close to the wall, and it feels quite inhibiting in a way, feels like I almost don’t have enough room to be able to speak, my knees are pressed quite closely to the radiator, I never normally experience that sense of constriction when I’m facing towards the screen, but that limited amount of space is still there. It’s interesting that I don’t usually feel inhibited by having less room behind me. Actually, I often feel uncomfortable if I am in a space and there’s a lot of space behind me. I have more a tendency to want to sit with my back towards the wall. It was opening up some thoughts about that really. What am I guarding my back against when I sit with my back close to the wall? And also, maybe what is it not allowing for by not having this space around the back .. for thinking in a way. It’s interesting in doing this, it’s almost that I can’t quite get in tune with the previous experiments with the back and the floor, because there is this other experience of backness, that is overriding that somehow or feeling much more present. I’m trying …  of getting back in touch with that and it does feel quite difficult. One of the things I was struck by when you were talking earlier, was when you were saying something about the difference when you had your back to the wall, there was this sense of being able to push into the wall and the surface of the wall having a sense of force or pressure against which you could push … and maybe also missing that sense of another human kind of contact of pushing, and it feels that this is interesting in this experience because there’s no resistance almost and I wonder like sometimes in conversation … I think what I was ending on there was this sense of maybe needingsome kind of force or resistance against which to push with the back, and I was also thinking about that a bit in terms of, also conversationally actually, conversation has that dynamic of a push and a pull, and a force that you are working with. …  It’s interesting, now that something is removed, also there’s something in its place …but listening to you now and trying to respond was somehow complicated, I think because I was listening to you, I could nod but I am also looking at the wall, but I also have some images up here and they’re also coming in while I am digesting what you’re saying, it’s a different kind of conversation, not so much a back forth back forth. I loved how you said when you were trying to send the voice in a curve in order to reach me. It feels like I am also talking through what I can see or maybe that is coming into my words or into my voice as I am talking to you. That’s a choice though. I’m also thinking of conversation, that I have often forgotten to listen because I have noticed someone’s gestures or maybe just something else. That is a lack of concentration in one way, but it reminds me also sometimes that we are selecting, or we are distracted by something else, that for some reason has caught our attention. It’s interesting because I have had my eyes closed, because as I am looking at the wall, actually I can see the garden reflected in the wall, so it’s almost like I can sort of see forwards, by cheating in a way. I can’t see the computer screen, but it feels like I can see in that direction. I was experimenting in closing my eyes and as soon as I close my eyes, the experience of the conversation felt much closer to that of a telephone conversation, in some senses, although the sound is coming from behind me. Maybe I am trying to find devices in my experience to bring this conversation back into a register and awareness I am more familiar with, to kind of get away from the experience of having back towards the … the conversation towards you. And to try then to stay with that more, I can keep feeling this impulse of turning my head. It keeps pulling as if I wanting to turn round. I keep thinking to, not so much resist it, but to keep coming back into this experience, of trying to be aware through the back of the body. I think that’s mainly what I am wrestling with is, what does it really feel like to try and be aware through the back of the body, of this experience we are having at the moment. And what’s coming out of that’s perhaps different, or what does it open up really. Instead of trying to trick it or bypass or make it easier, can I sort of sit with the disorientation of it really. The sound coming from behind… I’m thinking … radio that happens sometimes or something on in the other room, that becomes more of an environmental sound. I suppose we have an agreement that we’re having a conversation or are trying to communicate something to each other. I can feel …it’s interesting how because you are behind me, there’s a sense of the back of the head and neck and the ears. I am coming a bit more aware of that through the conversation, I suppose it’s because it is around language and into the head, rather than the feet or the pelvis or. But actually, I feel quite relieved. I think normally this thing if having conversations, as social creatures, we sort of nod and smile and show that we’re being attentive and through the screen I find that’s very tiring. With my colleagues we’ve been talking about the performance of attention. Having to perform or make sure that someone understands we are attending. I notice if I have my eyes closed and or can release the eyes and feeling that I need to see the other person and that I actually can concentrate better on what’s being said. Or I can take it in. It’s interesting. The more we are doing this now, I am feeling a bit of tension in my shoulders and in the back of my head because it feels like I am straining the back of my head. Somehow, I am trying to get my face nearer to the screen by straining the back of my head, but if I let go of that and then try and just relax into this more. It’s interesting, what you were just saying about this performance of attention, and I know that I do this a lot, especially in zoom because we are not in the same physical presence of people, a lot of energy is invested in .. into the mirroring and affirming and wanting to really bring attention to what’s being said, it sort of strikes me now doing this, I’m not sure, it feels as though what would there be, those gestural devices that show you are paying attention. Because they take a lot of effort, they deviate from the attention that you’re bringing in a way. And this actually being able to speak and also listen without having to think of what you look like, or that someone is looking at you or you are looking at them. It does actually feel more spacious in a way. My face feels really different actually, my face feels less strained. Yes, more spacious.I felt like I wanted to tell you something about my wall. Makes me just realise how attached I might be to that kind of frontal orientation. I suppose it’s normal, these social creatures, it is where our voices come out of, there are all these other gestures, but the face says a lot about whether we are bored or excited or in love or paying attention. Maybe there was also something in there about the axis, like the impulse I could feel was reactive actually. Maybe there’s something about exploring the space between reactive gestures and more creative responses like when you were describing working with the axis lying down and physically exploring this shift as you rotate or twist, I think this is quite different to… or you were also talking previously about acknowledging the impulse to move and maybe resisting that or holding back on that. I could definitely feel an impulse to turn in that then, it was almost coming from the waist, as if there was a magnetic tilt in that direction. That could also be something to explore as a thing. Explore that transition, something to do with paying attention to where those habits are and exploring that a bit as well. It’s also when you said the back is not opposite of the front, it’s not falling into a binary, or where does the back end or begin, it’s not even about back-front the screen gives a sense of back front but in our rooms it’s not like that. Yes, the sense of rotating, It also makes me think if you were to turn towards something or to turn your back on something. I know my friend used to work with a deaf theatre company, and there was this girl that if she was angry, she would turn her back on Maxi, it would be like me just ending the meeting baf and Maxi understanding, that it was a very strong gesture. And even without being deaf I think that sense of having someone turning their back to you is strong .. it’s true, you don’t exist for them in that moment, that recently happened in a professional context, in the middle of a conversation. I still have a visceral trace of it. Exploring it now, when we were doing it that didn’t feel true, I could pay more attention to what you were saying in places, maybe because I was having to listen in a more concentrated way because the visual cues were not there, but I don’t feel it was that actually it felt much more like because I wasn’t invested in performing attention I could actually pay attention, without also trying to act it out. It’s not that I’m pretending to be attentive but there is something of that. I think it is something about being relieved of the performance of attention, that you can actually listen and you said something about the telephone and something of the telephone experience when you might be lying down totally relaxing, totally in your own room, you let this voice drift in. The voice comes in … sounds can come but with eyes you get drawn out, it’s a bit like the other gaze that you had, how we can just see and let light come in, scan rather than … well, it’s the function of the eyes is also to point but we also have this more scanning… Letting something come. I’ve not thought quite like you just said it now. Letting things arrive rather than reaching out. Elsewhere in my notes there werea few things that were coming up to do with non-grasping. I’m curious if that is something that starts to get activated if you do take the attention more into the back, just letting things come, letting things arise or arrive. This, working ground which would be to do with how to let things come, but only be how to activate a quality of passivity that is also very alert and active, is response. I think might be an interesting working ground, not to have a passivity that is inert, or lifeless but actually there is there’s a quality of passivity that is very alive and responsive. And not to completely flip from active grasping mode to.. a bit dead. Sometimes when I write about the back, this idea to slow something down, I get that sense of oh god that sounds so dull, but I think the sense of something that’s back that it might not have agency. But it’s not like that. For me listening from behind it also activates the body, I immediately thought I put my feet on the radiator, I’ll listen to you while l look around, it wouldn’t normally be acceptable, listening to someone and looking around, it would feel confusing, now it felt it was part of listening. Were you doing that also as you were talking? I think I was aware of the images, I was sort of playing with that a little, can I see you-image, as well as, talk. I suppose it’s just there, just letting it come in. As you are talking there, I guess I am thinking that is that the difference between a narrow focussed concentration, through the eyes to a certain extent and this wider peripheral more expansive experience or awareness and also the sense of the movement of the eyes and wandering of things, and I know I do this a lot and I am doing it now, there’s a slight uneasiness about being under guard, being watched actually, and I think with particularly in zoom we are looking at people in a way we wouldn’t probably really look all the time at someone quite like that if we were in a one-to-one conversation probably. My eyes kind of go off and it looks a bit distracted. What I am doing now feels quite different to when I was listening to you and also looking around, that felt as if it was much more about being able to hold what I was hearing and paying attention to within a much bigger sense of awareness of the wider surroundings and somehow it really enhancing it whereas sometimes if I am doing whatever I am doing now, it’s a deviation strategy which risks taking away my focus if I am not careful. It feels as though they are really different species of behaviour somehow. I know I look away a lot, I find it really hard … partly I have a stigma or something in my eyes that makes them start watering if `I stare too long…  but maybe it’s also when we are thinking that our eyes wander in a way we are dropping back into something, maybe something that is not quite formed yet, that when people start to have to think about what they are going to say that their eyes drop or start doing something else. That’s a really nice line that sense of being able to drop back into the not yet formed, I suppose I am through this and in preparation, thinking a bit about what does taking the awareness into the back enable, that feels as if that could be very significant in a way that it enables you to dwell in this space of the not fully formed, residing in this space of the not fully formed in a positive sense, not having to force it into formation, or force it into … , not even to do with forcing it into language because in the conversations with our backs, there was still a speaking, it wasn’t as if not it was without any words but it felt like there was a way of residing in that differently. It perhaps it allowed for time for, it gave permission. There was something about the pause that was different in the back-to-back or the in between. Makes me think of, I was trying to do something, I was scanning some pages, taking this idea of the blur, the not fully focussed and taking these out of focus photos, on the edges of you might know what it is or not. It was interesting in terms of the blur or the not yet in focus. That’s different, that’s a visual thing. There’s something about there just being just enough pressure, or just enough resistance, to want to try and bring it into formation. Because maybe there’s the same sort of risk that I was experiencing lying on the back that the habit would be to become wholly in it or wholly passive, or wholly relaxed andthe stimulation to try and bring a thought into formation or a word into formation would just fall away into a kind of silence or into the nana, the un again. Maybe there is something in this rotation that somehow just brings enough pressure for it to start to have to draw on this well of unformness, or to come from that space and to really try and bring something into experience, not into experience because its already in experience, its bringing something into articulation, in that space without fully turning back to the front, to somehow carry something from that formless space but not quite going back to the full front. So there’s something in the turn that’s really important there isn’t it. I wrote down as soon as there is a turn, it stimulates. Physically, and now also to what you’re saying. I suppose because sometimes the lying or the standing even though there are all these asymmetries and imbalance there’s still a kind of neutrality in it that can make things a bit dull, it can dullify and sort of become… as soon as there’s a turn, and a turn can also be… an image or  … something that just brings another possibility into what’s been set up. When I was doing some of the experiments for the enquiry lying down, I’d got my notepad on the floor, quite often I wanted to write something and for a while I was thinking ah this, I am not settling into the enquiry enough. But actually, it this did also feel quite generative. It was this not coming up to the sit but from lying, just turning to the side and writing something and then going back down into this lying position. And this might be a good way of thinking for me. In a way it means you are still, you are writing but you are still there, you can slip in and out, it’s not as though the writing becomes a different thing after. I was curious too, how to do it, how to take notes, and articulate after, in between, to find way, I could write more today about a few days ago. Also that. Sometimes I need to do lots and not write and write later, but its interesting, but I think this going in between is also …

3.

It’s a sensation and an image. There is a sense of the hairs on the back of the neck, it’s like an image forms in my mind although it’s from a sensation. The floor is really my, the horizontal plane, my point, my plane of reference. This sort of invisible line of gravity, the vertical axis. Images of the vertical and the image of what I know that the spine is curved - and all the asymmetries of the body that emerge.

My breathing and gravity, it’s also a sort of conversation. This conversation of the breathing and gravitational force, a conversation between two different motions. They’re forces, that in some way has a sort of horizontality to it. Bringing attention to the back, and the gravity and breath. The asymmetries of the body, my body. Something around feed-back from floor or wall, feed-back from surface, desire for feedback from another person, a counterforce.

Embryonic trace of forming. Tuning into the back softens the front, softens the front, it allows front to drop back, expectation drops, time drops, or body drops into another sense of time, eyes fall into the body, front falls back.

Do I really know what it is to be upright? am I even aware of the sense of frontality that my experience is shaped by? This movement to the ground. This awareness of the forward leaning and future leaning sense of frontality. Coming to ground. A kind of resistance to letting go, or a holding onto certain tension. Trying to tune into this relationship between holding on and fighting gravity. Letting myself be held. Can I let myself be held, and what can I let go of, and what can I surrender. It feels quite slow … yes, the dropping and the sinking. This kind of releasing and surrendering and letting go of some of the holding and only then, I think, does the sense of contact show up. Gradually contact shows up.

So, the points of contact. The kind of relationship to the floor as a plane of contact. And this question of what is a back, what’s the back then? Is it all these points of contact or are we talking about the anatomy of the back itself? And if I roll a little to the side is that still the back if it’s in contact with the floor and are the backs of my heels the back, if we are talking about the back, what does it mean really? 

The experience of this back breathing, being able to soften into a sense of the breathing into the back and awareness of the breath. A soft underground, the firmness of the ground is such a relief. A sense of weight distributed. Just the relief from thinking, there is something that reconfigures, a connection to the world. To be low down.

Those bits that don’t touch, if I can sense the beginning of the touch and the not touch. Resisting, settling, dropping, sinking, almost goes so low that you start to float. It feels like by heavy heavy heavy somehow lightness comes into the body.

This back to the wall, as something giving back and also to push back. The movements that happen in the stillness of just standing. All these resistances to not move, to let the body move but not to move. Forces acting on the body pulling, holding, releasing. The complexity keeps bubbling up, surfacing, and there’s a kind of restlessness. This desire to do, to move, to follow.

This coming into down ,further down into hands and knees and that has more animal like sensation of different relationship going into the back. A strong sense of uprightness comes because of that transition, and the rootedness of the feet. Turning and twisting. An image of the axis. There are these different forces and resistances and limits to the material body. An idea of delay, what starts a turn or a twist, what is later, spiral, delays that happen.

Having my eyes open or having my eyes closed. Trying to take the awareness to the back of the eye as if the eyes were also dropping back somehow into the head. A different kind of gaze, a really different kind of gaze: it was almost like the liquid of the eye was dropping back into its orbit, into the actual socket somehow.

Flatness of the back can often feel quite lifeless, so it can feel quite inert almost, as a realm of sensation or the qualities of it can feel quite inert. How might I start to activate the back in its aliveness, as a field of live experience, living experience rather than this resting passive inert sort of space? 

I was experiencing and thinking about the back was through a kind of undoing, like an undoing of uprightness, and it was all of this activating these kind of relaxing and letting go and releasing and loosening and stopping holding and. And a kind of move of experience that was in relation to releasing certain expectations and particularly habits of control which also are habits of the eyes in a way. I was thinking a lot about how this experience of the back was shaped by it being not something – with the un, the undoing, this undoing of the head-orientated, sight orientated, future-forward orientation … to try and undo that. And letting go, surrendering, renouncing, releasing, not-ness, not not-upright. 

How might it be to try and tune into what arises, or what unfolds, once you have let go, so for it not only to be about this undoing of uprightness, but actually, just to really tune into what unfolds or what opens up as an experience in its own right, if you really settle into that? How might I be able to get closer to a sense of the agility of the back, rather than its stillness or static-ness or the fluidity or the movement of the back, and how to get beyond it just being about not being upright but actually to really see what does it actually do on its own terms, what can be sensed otherwise?

And there is something to do with allowing the back to have its own agency somehow. It sort of shifts the place of where the movement is orientated from. The back has a liveliness and a dynamic quality; not only being about an alternative to the front, it’s not only not all of these front-facing things, it’s actually got its own characteristics and qualities.

But the physical proximity in touch I think feels so important to that, the sense of contact, and this thinking of sensing in contact. What does it open up for me? To feel the back, my back, leaning on the back of the chair facing the screen. It kind of stops me from talking. And I listened to my voice and it was a voice I didn’t quite recognise from myself, it was really back, a thinking voice and it was a kind of voice where I thought I don’t mind her. Trying to curve my voice around my head somehow, so it reaches you. From a listening point of view, silence felt so much more possible.

That kind of experience of frontality that just forces such a lot of effort in a way. Made me think what kind of effort can be dropped if you take the attention away from the front to the back. What am I guarding my back against? What is it not

Having a sense of force or pressure against which you could push; some kind of force or resistance against which to push with the back. Conversation has that dynamic of a push and a pull, and a force that you are working with. It’s a different kind of conversation, not so much a back forth back forth. Trying to send the voice in a curve in order to reach me. 

To try and be aware through the back of the body, of this experience we are having at the moment - what does it open up really?  The sound coming from behind.… I’m thinking … radio that happens sometimes or something on in the other room, that Those gestural devices that show you are paying attention. Being able to speak and also listen without having to think of what you look like, or that someone is looking at you or you are looking at them. It makes me just realise how attached I might be to that kind of frontal orientation. There was a magnetic tilt in that direction.

The back is not opposite of the front, it’s not falling into a binary, or where does the back end or begin, it’s not even about back-front. The sense of rotating.

Having to listen in a more concentrated way because the visual cues were not there.

How we can just see and let light come in. Letting things arrive rather than reaching out. To do with non-grasping. If you do take the attention more into the back, just letting things come, letting things arise or arrive. How to let things come, but only be how to activate a quality of passivity that is also very alert and active. Not to have a passivity that is inert, or lifeless but actually there is there’s a quality of passivity that is very alive and responsive. Listening from behind it also activates the body. The difference between a narrow focussed concentration, through the eyes to a certain extent and this wider peripheral more expansive experience or awareness.

The sense of the movement of the eyes and wandering of things. Paying attention to within a much bigger sense of awareness of the wider surroundings. Our eyes wander in a way we are dropping back into something, maybe something that is not quite formed yet, that when people start to have to think about what they are going to say that their eyes drop or start doing something else. What does taking the awareness into the back enable? In a way that it enables you to dwell in this space of the not fully formed, residing in this space of the not fully formed in a positive sense, not having to force it into formation, or force it into … , not even to do with forcing it into language because in the conversations with our backs, there was still a speaking, it wasn’t as if not it was without any words but it felt like there was a way of residing in that differently. 

Taking this idea of the blur, the not fully focussed - on the edges of you might know what it is or not. There just being just enough pressure, or just enough resistance, to want to try and bring it into formation. The stimulation to try and bring a thought into formation or a word into formation would just fall away into a kind of silence or into the nana, the un again. Maybe there is something in this rotation that somehow just brings enough pressure for it to start to have to draw on this well of unformness, or to come from that space and to really try and bring something into experience, not into experience because its already in experience, its bringing something into articulation, in that space without fully turning back to the front, to somehow carry something from that formless space but not quite going back to the full front. So there’s something in the turn that’s really important there isn’t it. I wrote down as soon as there is a turn, it stimulates. Just turning to the side and writing something and then going back down. You can slip in and out.

PART 4

16.08.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Reading as distillation

- Reading practices using the conversational transcript from 22.02.2021 as source text.

- Take time to tune into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

(1) Reading (Noticing Attraction) (5 mins) – Have the transcript to hand, allow gaze to be soft and glide/roam the pages. Practising simultaneously. When a word draws your attention speak it outloud. Allow for overlaps and also silences.

(2) Conversation-as-material distillation (10 mins) – Have the transcript to hand.

When the time feels right read aloud some of the words and phrases that have been highlighted - these could be single words, phrases or a cluster of sentences. Or alternatively, identify words and phrases live and read them aloud.

(3) A more fluid exploration moving between (A) Noticing Attraction and (B) Conversation-as-material distillation. Decide fluidly when to move between one practice and the other and back again (and so on). (20 mins)

1.

2.

1.

Letting. Risks. Twist. View. Liquid. Settles. Leaning. Beginning. Grasping. Going. Axis. Undoing. Tendency. Uprightness. Overriding. Releasing. Towards. Turning. Sensation. Lightness, front-facing. Stillness. Vertical. Gaze. Gravity. Liquid. Conversation., feedback forming highlight. Low down. Working ground. Silence. Bubbling up. Asymmetry. Restlessness. Species. Stigma. Transition. Drift. Axis. Visceral. Trace. Sensing, breath. Underground. Agent. Resting. Passivity. Aliveness, pressure. Curve. Distracted. Disorientation. Pause. Pressure. Attention. Impulse. Falling. Dropping, binary. Fluidity. Arrive. Alert. Alive. Attuned. Responsive. Questions. Peripheral feeling paying attention, shape. Dropping back. Back bones. Not forcing. Time. Twisting. Habits. Renouncing. Remove. Not-ness. Unfolds. Rootedness. Releasing. Nuance. Quality. Proximity. Movement. Rotating. Towards. Reservation. Listen. Screen. Let. Mode. Turning. Scanning. Arise. Attentive. Voice. Dynamic. Performance. Back-ness. Formless. Guarding.

2.

Asymmetries of the body. There is this other experience of back-ness. Semi-supine position. This impulse of turning my head, wanting to turn around. The eyes were also dropping back, somehow into the head. This sense of rotating, if you were to turn towards something, or to turn you back on something. An image of the axis - the liquid of the eye dropping back into its orbit. Being relieved of the performance of attention, so that you can actually listen. A much bigger sense of awareness of the wider surroundings. Just letting it come in – the difference between a narrow, focused concentration, through the eyes to a certain extent, and this wider, peripheral, more expansive experience or awareness. A voice I didn’t quire recognize from myself – it was really back, a thinking voice, a kind of voice where I thought, I don’t mind her. It is not only not all of these front-facing things, it has actually got its own characteristics and qualities. A deviation strategy which risks taking away my focus. Taking this idea of the blur, the not fully focused, and taking these out of focus edges – the blur, or the not-yet-in-focus. Writing becomes a different thing after – you are writing but you are still there; you slip in and out. There being just enough pressure, or just enough resistance, to want to try to bring it into formation. I am talking towards the wall, I am quite close to the wall. A lot of the work has been relaxing, leaning back into, letting the body go. Exploring the space between reactive gestures and creative response – being able to speak and also to listen, without having to think what you look like or that someone is looking at you, or you are looking at them. Breathing and gravity – it is also a sort of conversation. Allowing the back to have its own agency somehow. To really tune into what opens up or what unfolds as an experience in its own right. Feedback from the floor or wall, feedback from surface, feedback from another person, a counter-force. This back-breathing – only then being able to soften into a sense of breathing into the back, and the awareness of the breath. It takes a while to settle, to let go. To tune into this relationship between holding on and fighting gravity – letting myself be held. Can I let myself be held? And what can I let go of? And what can I surrender? As though the wrapping around the body, embryonic trace of forming. This coming into down – the crouch, the folded down, further down into hands and knees … and that has more animal-like sensations. A different relationship going into the back. The feeling of a tail, a tail coming, and of a dorsal fin. A slight uneasiness about being under-guard. To be low down. The voice comes in, sounds can come – but with the eyes, you get drawn out. It is like the other gaze you had – where we can just see and let light come in, scan rather than. And how weight changes – resisting, dropping, settling, sinking … it almost goes so low that you can start to float. It feels like by heavy, heavy, heavy, somehow lightness comes into the body. In that space, without fully turning back to the front – to somehow carry something forward into that space, but without quite going back to the full front. So there is something in the turning. Sometimes to do with associations or habits. There is a turn, and a turn can also be an image, something that brings another possibility into what has been set up. As soon as I close my eyes, the experience of the conversation felt much closer to that of a telephone conversation, although the sound is coming from behind me. What am I guarding my back against? What is it not allowing for, by not having this space around the back, for thinking in a way? There is this other experience of back-ness. And the surface of the wall – having a sense of force or pressure against which you could push. And maybe also missing that sense of another human-kind contact of pushing. A lot of energy is investing in the mirroring and affirming, and wanting to really bring attention to what is being said. Those gestural devices that show you are really paying attention – they deviate from the attention that you are bringing. And how the chair and the body become a kind of chair-body thing. And the idea of the back that has to be straight. The slump is really nice, and the sort of unit-thing with the chair-body. A kind of move of experience which was in relation to uprightness, a certain idea of uprightness, or a certain idea of not just uprightness, but holding and control actually. I might just fold without having to put my hand down, to just follow the image and not worry if I was going to fall over. And then this coming into down, and all these images of women, old and ancient images of the crouch, the folded down. To get in tune with your back, which was to do with releasing certain expectations – particularly to do with habits of control, which are also habits of the eyes in a way. You were behind me – there is a sense of the back of the head and the neck and the ears. And I am becoming more aware of that through the conversation. This undoing of the head-oriented, sight-oriented, future-forward oriented – to try and undo that. And letting go, surrendering, renouncing, releasing – not-ness and not-upright.

3.

The limbs were more like the active agents and the back just followed. Not to have a passivity that is inert or lifeless, but actually there is a quality of passivity that is very alive and responsive. Something in this rotation that somehow brings enough pressure for it to start – to have to draw on this well of un-form-ness, or to come from that space, to really try to bring something into experience. Just letting things come, letting things arise or arrive. The working ground would be to do with how to let things come. Trying to send the voice in a curve in order to reach me. Our eyes wander in a way – we are dropping back into something, maybe something that is not quite formed yet. I can keep feeling this impulse of wanting to turn my head – it keeps pulling as if I am wanting to turn around. I keep thinking to not so much resist it, but to keep coming back into this experience of trying to be aware of the back of the body, in a way that enables you to dwell in this space of the not-fully-formed. Residing in this space of the not-fully-formed in a positive sense; not having to force it into formation, not to force it into, not even to do with forcing it into language. Because we are in the conversation with our backs. The sound coming from behind – more of an environmental sound. Maybe there was something in there about the axis – like the impulse I could feel was reactive actually. Maybe there is something about exploring the space between reactive gestures and a more creative response. I have more of a tendency to sit with my back against the wall – what am I guarding my back against when I sit with my back close to the wall? Explore that transition – something to do with paying attention to where those habits are and exploring that as well. The back is not the opposite of the front – it is not falling into a binary. Where does the back end and begin? All these animals flying through my imagination – animal, cat-like, dog, serpent, lizard, fish, all there. The animal in the back. Letting something come, letting something arrive – rather than reaching out. This working ground which is to do with how to let things come, to activate a quality of passivity that is also very alert and active. This invisible image of a line, and the sensation of the vertical. This desire to do, to move, to follow. Confronted with this inability to balance and the asymmetry of the body. There is something to do with a kind of restlessness. I am sure that the body wants to correct it. That sense of having someone turn their back to you, on you, is strong. You don’t exist for them in that moment. It is a different kind of conversation. Having to listen in a more concentrated way because the visual cues are not there. Not so much back and forth, back and forth – trying to send the voice in a curve in order to reach me. I still have visual trace of it. Corrugated. Resisting. Settling. Do I really know what it is to be upright? Heavy, heavy, heavy. And the rootedness of the feet and how the head is somehow often later with me – like a delay. What starts a turn or a twist – what comes later, spirals, delays that happen? The stimulation to try to bring a thought into formation, or a word into formation, falls away into a kind of silence. Backbone, we talk about backbone but not back bones. This conversation between breathing and gravitational force – a conversation between two different motions. There is something to do with a kind of restlessness – maybe there is something in this rotation that brings enough pressure for it to start to have to draw on this well of un-form-ness, and to come from that space and to really try to bring something into experience. Not into experience, because it is already in experience, it is bringing something into articulation. Something around feedback from the floor or wall, feedback from a surface, desire for feedback from another person, a counter force. In that space without fully turning back to the front, to somehow carry something from that formless space, but not quite going back to the full front. There is something in the turn that is really important. As soon as there is a turn, it stimulates. You let this voice drift in, the voice comes in. To do with non-grasping, letting things arise or arrive – but not to completely flip from an active, grasping mode. There are these different forces and resistances and limits to the material body. An idea of delay – what starts a turn or twist, what is later? A slight uneasiness about being under-guard, being watched. The asymmetries of the body, my body. Something about feedback from the floor or wall, feedback from a surface, feedback from another person – a counter force. A different kind of gaze – almost like the liquid of the eye was dropping back into its orbit, into the actual socket. Tuning into the back softens the front, softens the front – allows the front to drop back, expectation drops, time drops, the body drops into another sense of time. Eyes fall into the body, front falls back. Can I let myself be held – and what can I let go of, and what can I surrender? And this is a big territory of work – so it feels quite slow, the dropping and the sinking. The coming to the ground - a kind of a resistance to letting go, or a holding onto certain tensions. Back to back or in between. The feeling of what the air was like on my feet – having air on the soles of the feet and what that felt like. There is something in this rotation that somehow brings enough pressure for it to start, to have to draw on this well of un-form-ness, to come from that space, to really try and bring something into experience, into articulation. In that space without fully turning back to the front. To somehow carry something forward from that formless space, but not quite going back to the full front. And this question of what is a back, what’s the back then? Is it all these points of contact, or are we talking about the anatomy of the back itself? And if I roll a little to the side, is that still the back? Are the backs of my heels the back? If we are talking about the back, what does this really mean? If I am turning, it feels like a sort of mechanical possibility – I have an image of the axis, so I should be able to turn. Whereas a twist feels more like what actually happens – there are these different forces and resistances and limits to the material body. I wonder if turning and twisting are different things in the body? All these resistances, to not move, to let the body move, but to not move - forces acting on the body, pulling, holding, releasing. The complexity keeps bubbling up, surfacing and there is a kind of restlessness. The soles of the feet on the ground, there is a kind of energy going on. It is incredible how a kind of up-ness can come through these angles. To activate the back in its liveness, as a field of live experience, living experience; rather than this resting, passive, inert sort of place. A magnetic tilt in that direction – the sense of rotating. To do with the un- … like the undoing, this undoing of the head-oriented, sight-oriented, future-forward oriented, and to try and undo that. Coming to ground. Tension. Talking about the anatomy of the back itself. It felt that there was a way of residing in that differently. It perhaps allowed time for, gave permission for. There just being enough pressure, or enough resistance to want to try and bring it into formation. I was scanning, taking this idea of the blur, the not-fully-focused, and taking these out of focus photos on the edge of you might know what it is or not. It made me think of what kind of effort can be dropped if you take the attention away from the front to the back. That kind of frontality forces such a lot of effort in a way. There is this other experience of back-ness. Maybe it is when we are thinking that our eyes wander in a way – we are dropping back into something, maybe something that is not quite formed yet. I have my eyes closed, or I can release the eyes – I can concentrate better on what is being said. Drop back into the not-yet-formed. Back to back, or the in between. Into the back as an agent of moving, of movement. This undoing of the head-oriented, sight-oriented, future-forward orientation – to try and undo. Voice going into throat going into back going into the shoulder blades – a connection. Surrendering. Renouncing. Releasing. Not-ness. Not upright. The back is not opposite of the front – not falling into a binary. Where does the back end of begin. It is not even back/front. The screen gives the sense of back/front but in our rooms it is not like that. Residing in the space of the not fully formed, not having to force it into formation, not even to do with forcing it into language. Paxton’s Small Dance and the movements that happen in the stillness of simply standing. I am also aware of all these resistances to not move. To let the body move, but not to move. How can we just see, and let light come in? Letting light come in, letting things arrive rather than reaching out. Bubbling up, surfacing – a kind of restlessness. Trying to communicate something. Confronted with the instability of balance, asymmetry of the body. And having a sense of force or pressure against which you could push. Needing some kind of force or resistance against which to push the back – conversation has this dynamic of a push and pull, and a force that you are working with. It is a different kind of conversation – not so much a back forth, back forth. I had my eyes closed – I was looking at the wall, I could see the garden reflected in the wall. It is almost like I can almost see forwards. Releasing certain expectations, particularly habits of control which are habits of the eyes in a way. Conversation has that dynamic of a push and pull, a force that you are working with. As a field of live experience, living experience, rather than this inert, passive sort of space. My horizontal plane, my point, my plane of reference. What starts a turn, a twist, a spiral – delays that happen. Just trying to get closer to sensations of things. Embryonic trace of forming. Facing the back. A different kind of gaze, like the liquid of the eye was dropping back into its orbit.  Letting myself be held – to tune into this relationship between holding on and fighting gravity. What can I surrender? Sense of the shape of my back – a sensation and an image. The sense of the hairs on the back of my neck – it is like an image forms in my mind but it is a sensation. Aware of my feet on the floor – this invisible line of gravity, of a vertical axis. Holding these two images of the vertical and the image of what I know of the spine to be curved, and all the asymmetries of the body that emerge. The slump is really nice – this sort of unit thing of chair-body. The back wrapping around the body, wraps around the body, embryonic trace of forming. Magnetic tilt in that direction – not falling into a binary, a sense of rotating. Movement from side to side – the possibilities of the back. To do with this movement to the ground. There is something to begin with to do with this forward-leaning, future-leaning sense of frontality – coming to the ground, coming to the ground has associations of letting go. There is some confrontation with my own sense of resistance to that.

3.

PART 5

16.08.2021

FOCUS/PRACTICE: Fields of Association

Fields of Association (30 mins)

- Tuning into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate

- Each selects a cluster of single words to explore through conversation and etymological exploration, live within the conversation), as a field of association.

(1) 3 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(2)  8 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

(3) 3 mins (e.g. KBs choice of words)

(4) 8 mins (e.g. ECs choice of words)

1.

2.

So I am going to put contact in. Contact. As a noun. So from the 1620s, action, state, or condition of touching. Condition of touching – that’s nice. From the Latin contactus "a touching", a touching of something unclean, contamination. From the Latin, touching, that is quite nice. From past participle of contingere "to touch, seize,". An assimilated form of com "with, together". con- and tangere – with, together. To touch. And the PIE root is tag – touch or handle. It is nice this idea of contact and touch. Whether that is a passive or an active thing. The figurative sense of contact – a connection, communication, that is meaning from the 1800s. To make contact. Can also refer to contact as in a mechanical or electrical circuit. Contact – to bring together or put in contact, get in touch with. Contact – to contact. It is interesting when contact means a touching, when the verb becomes a noun. Contiguous, contiguous is an adjective – touching, meeting, joining a surface or border. Near. Touching. Bordering upon. Again from the root of contingere to touch upon.

So, I wanted to look at this maybe difference between inert, inertia and passivity. So inert – inertia. So inertia as a noun – that property of matter by virtue of which it retains its state of rest or of uniform rectilinear motion so long as no foreign cause changes that state. So state of rest or rectilinear motion. Latin sense of inertia has connection to unskillfulness, ignorance, inactivity and idleness, from iners (genitive inertis) "unskilled or inactive". Ah, so here inertia and inert might seem different. The classical sense of apathy – passiveness and inactivity from the English from 1822. Inert – without inherent force, having no power to act or respond. From the French inerte or directly from Latin inertem. Unskilled, incompetent; inactive – interesting how it shifts from not having a force into incompetency. Helpful, weak, worthless. So the point of there being a value is interesting. Used of stagnant fluids. Uncultivated pastures and expressionless eyes. It is a compound of in- "without, not, opposite of" and ars in the genitive sense of artis or "skill". So without art. Opposite of art or skill. See art – noun. Art, noun - skill as a result of learning or practice. So without the skill as a result of learning or practice. Also from the Sanskrit rtih meaning "manner, mode;" and the Greek artizein "to prepare". This is interesting – if you said, inert as in without preparation.

I am not sure if we have done this – I thought I would put disorientate. Disorientation. Disorientation as a noun from 1846 - deviation from an east-facing position. Ah, I see, because orient-east, deviation from an east-facing position. Confusion as to direction – see dis- + orientation. Perhaps its immediate origin in some cases is as a noun of action or state from disorientate in the 1700s. So maybe I should go first … it splits it into dis and orientation. So orientation – arrangement of a building etc, to face East or any other specified direction. Noun of action from orient. To orient – verb. Meaning "process of determining the points of the compass is by 1868, hence the extended sense of "action of determining one's mental bearings," with reference to new ideas. Meaning "introduction to a situation" is from 1942. Sense of "the position or arrangement (of something) relative to the points of the compass". Orientational. It is interesting how we use this word. I am going to go to orient. To orient. Orient or orientate. If I look at the verb – to arrange to as to face East, to take one’s bearings from the East. Literally to face the East. To orientate is to face the East. From … the Old French orient "east". Place or range. Yes, it is very much about placement and arrangement originally in reference to the East. But it can be to another direction. Something about the horizon – where the sun first appears. A point of orientation – east. And if, now, disorientate – I might jump here. I will put in settle. Come to rest. So, I suppose I put settle in with disorientate because it feels like they are somehow doing different things. Come to rest, cause to sit, place, put. Settling – also to settle, colonise, coming from the German siedeln "to settle, colonize." From c. 1300 of birds, etc., "to alight." And from the 14th century, to "sink down, descend; cave in." Settle. Descend. Also reference to suspended particles in a liquid – that’s nice. So particles settling in a liquid. And to establish a permanent residence. So around residence and living. To settle can also mean to decide. Settle, to reconcile a quarrel or differences. Reconciliation. Settle down. Become content. I am not very good at this – OK I am going to … put proximity. Nearness. In place, time or relation. It is interesting putting these words orientation, settle or proximity – they all have this sense of place or position. Proximity – the noun meaning nearness in place, time, or relation. That’s nice. From the French proximité "nearness" – that is 14th century. Also from Latin proximitatem - "nearness, vicinity," next, most direct; adjoining. And figuratively, latest, most recent; next, following, most faithful. And proximal as an adjective. This is nice – proximal, situated near the central of the body as opposed to distal, or extremital, as in furthest away from the centre of the body. Also linking up closely with … it has brought me to immediacy. Immediate, close connection, proximity. Nearly. Close at hand. Almost, all but, within a little of. And these are related – vicinity, nearness in place. Pertaining to. Neighbours. Nearness. Ah, going back to proximity. A superlative of proper, near. Near. I am wondering if I put plane in I will end up with another kind of positioning. Plane. Flat surface – simplest of all geometrical surfaces. Flat surface – plane.

Yes, so, maybe I will look at passivity. Compared to inertia or inertness. Passiveness. Middle English had passion in a sense of "fact or condition of being acted upon". Also, passabilite "capacity for being acted upon or for suffering". Passible - "capable of feeling or suffering; susceptible of impressions from external agents, capable of being changed." Capacity for being acting upon or for suffering. I want to go back to passive – of matter, "capable of being acted upon;" of persons, "receptive". That’s interesting – of matter it means capable of being acted upon but of person’s it also means receptive. Also in the grammatical sense of "expressive of being affected by some action". Capable of feeling or of suffering. Again, to suffer – see passion. The meaning of "not active or acting" is recorded from late 15c. Sense of unresisting, not opposing, enduring suffering without resistance is from 1620s. A passive verb. Passive resistance. Used throughout 19c, re-coined by Gandhi. Passive-aggressive with reference to behavior or personality characterized by indirect resistance but avoidance of direct confrontation – only attested to from 1971. Passion – this has the connotation of the suffering of Christ on the cross. Passion. Compared with affection – the distinctive mark of passion is that it masters the mind, so that the person becomes seemingly its subject or its passive instrument, while an affection, though moving, affecting, or influencing one, still leaves him his self-control. Now this is interesting – so the difference between affection and passion – but maybe this is taking away from passivity. Maybe as an opposite of that or to see how it fits … I want to look at uprightness. Oh this is interesting – if I put in uprightness first I get improbity – improbity, want of integrity, from the Latin improbitas. Improbitas. "Badness, dishonesty," – from in- "not" + probitas "uprightness, honesty," from probus "worthy, good". And it connects to prove which is interesting. Maybe I will hold fire on that. The other that comes up is rectiture – "straightness, quality of being straight or erect." Straightness, uprightness – from the Latin rectus "straight" (from PIE root *reg- "move in a straight line," "to direct in a straight line". Rightness. Upright. Erect – to face upward. Up and right. Right meaning morally correct, proper, fitting, straight not bent. Direct or erect. Literally straight. A vertical front as a noun – 1560s in the sense of a vertical front, the sense of something standing erect. And then there is the French, estante, estante, upright, from the present particle of estere – to be upright or to stand, to stand or make firm from the PIE root *sta. We have had this PIE root before – to stand, to set down, to make or be firm. With derivatives meaning place or thing that is standing. I remember this sense of epistemology. But also resistance, rest, restive, restitution, static, station. Stay. Then there was also this reside which connected to something that came up before – to remain at a place, to sit down or to settle. To sit down to settle – to rest, remain behind, linger, be left. From re- meaning back again, and sedere "to sit" (from PIE root *sed- meaning "to sit"). PIE root meaning to sit. Resting place. Seat, chair, face of a geometric solid. Heavy as well, this heaviness. Heaviness as an adjective – having much weight or importance, oppressive, slow or dull. This is interesting – from the PIE root *kap meaning to grasp. How does it connect to grasping? Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to grasp." Heave; heavy; heft. Able to hold much. Ah, so holding. Holding and heaviness. To grasp, to hold, to be large enough for, to comprehend. To have, to hold, maybe this grasping and holding. Heaviness and holding, holding.

4.