A few days ago I posted a vocal piece, with a soundtrack, The Wall. Tonight I sliced, cut, layered -edited some footage I'd shot a few weeks ago- to make a video to accompany the audio.
I spoke that piece directly into a mic after I had finished a difficult yoga set and rested before beginning the Sodarshan Chakra Kriya, a Kundalini Yoga meditation which I find most challenging. I made a mala out of 16 rose quartz beads, strung and knotted with silk thread, bracelet-sized really, to aid me with the counting of mantra in the meditation, another story I will tell soon with photos.
In the meantime, here is a still of the title, which I showed only at the end of the video.
Woman with Bird, 33cm xc 40.5cm, 13" x 16", acrylic, graphite, acrylic inks on archival paper, 2011. It may be finished; it may not. It was a sketch for another piece but may hold its own. I photographed this in full sunlight and then adjusted the colours. The paints are iridescent, so they catch the light more than this photo shows.
She insisted, when we began, that it not look like her - and it doesn't, although it does a little. I only spent half an hour drawing her, and should have spent longer. I feel perhaps the word is blocked, not sure, that drawing is more effort, which might sound odd to those who knows my work, but things aren't breaking through in the way they used to.
So I persist, and wonder when the energies will, once again, shift; they always do.
While I sound quite depressed, I think I am actually facing the wall now. Before, I wouldn't look at it, or acknowledge it. It's invisible, but wholly impenetrable.
It cannot be cracked, splintered, knocked down, for I've tried all this and more; it can only be burnt.
Like karma, though it is not like karma because there is no cause and effect. No lesson. Rather, irrational, what we can never fully know. It sounds like glass, but it's not. There isn't anything it's like except for an impenetrable, invisible wall. There is no reason for this, none at all. Kafka's trial.
the wall of resistance the impenetrable wall the wall that is invisible that is everywhere around me the wall of permanence try to imagine no wall I cannot I have lived behind this invisible wall I have flung boiling water at it I have attacked it with hammers I have attempted to pierce it with the lasers of my consciousness the wall stands tall higher than I can climb deeper than I can fall the wall is real the wall is karma the wall is what I cannot surmount I can touch the world
That's not all of it, but it still made for a midi track longer than the recording. I did a lot of things to the midi track to make that background, which came out the way I had hoped in the end.
While the voice may be a little flat (I was lying flat on my back), I went with this recording because it suits the words.
Whether I add this to a video I haven't yet conceived, I don't know.
