my first thoughts lead me to two main areas of enquiry;
What, as a writer do i bring back from this liminal space?
What mirrors can be found between shamanic reality and the virtual?
To explore these ideas i i will travel to mexico to participate in a three week shamanic practitioner course in the san luis potosi desert. i will then spend some time traveling around the ancient cities of the maya. The mayan culture has long held great fascination for me; because of their shamanic worldview, because of their highly sophisticated language and calendar system and because of their apparent interest in the time we live in now.
i am currently in LA where i have been preparing for my journey to mexico and where i have been exploring the dream time of the city. what relevance does the liminal hold in the information age? how does the dreamtime manifest in contemporary culture? how does the media effect our dreamspace? what worlds do we walk between? nature/technology, dreaming/waking, real/simulation, abundance/decadance, democracy/surveillance. these are some of the conflicts that inform my work and inspire me to explore this context.
the documentation of this project will be in the form of my writings and feild recordings from mexico as well as photographs and drawings of my journey. i have already begun a practice of recording my dreams and experimenting with automatic writing within the context of the city, specifically LA, which i shall also post here.
i have in mind that this project will evolve and take direction spontaneously. journeying is about letting go and following your imagination and i hope this is something that is reflected on all levels of this work. i am aware that this area of investigation has a huge literary history preceding it. my reading on this subject has been incredibly varied over the years and spans from William Burroughs to quantum physics to the Tibetan book of the dead! i will include a bibliography of sorts in the books section but i would like to also stress my attempts to not "overwrite" this experience.
"imperceptibility,indiscernibility, and impersonality- the three virtures. to reduce oneself to an abstract line, a trait, in order to find one's zone of indiscernibility with other traits, and in this way enter the haecceity and impersonality of the creator. one then is like grass: one has made the whole world into a becoming because one suppressed in oneself everything that prevents us from slipping between things"
-Deleuze quoted in "Out of this world, Deleuze and the philosophy of creation" Peter Hallward 2006
"the air inside the pot appears to take on the shape and volume of the pot"
-Sri Nisargadatta Mahara, from "i am that"
follows a collection of my dreams and automatic writings from LA..
1.
what comes out is birthed in void or in my cells or captured @ random from passing thought clouds outside myself. or myself is turned inside out and smeared on the walls or dragged through the streets as i fly above the tops of trees and buildings. simultaneously here. in green armchair sun streaming through the glass casts shadows across the page. iam pen iam paper i am written iam warm inside and glowing. full and empty. poured out, held within. i am all things. i am my limitations. i am cynical indifference and poorly referenced. i am everything i've ever read and everything i've ever dreamed. i am seeping out of my skin diffused in the empty spaces that write the proportions of things.
2.
writing writing writing here we are again with pen in hand. why is it we always write in straight lines? i'm sure my thoughts don't start out that way although they seem already ordered before they hit the page. how fast do they travel? faster than the speed of light? is it dark in my brain or when those flashes of illumination come are there really lights inside? the sun warm on my skin and i wonder if those rays come out the other side? do my insides feel the warm glow? i think so but when i think of myself in here i think of a cave, dark and hollow and safe. maybe i have just been hibernating and will come out some day.
