insect music

click hum click

Before I tell you about the insect music I played at the prison this past Sunday and how the guys responded, I first want to say thank you for staying and supporting as I open more fully into what is arising, after losing Glen.

I was scared, really scared, still am, to share this more erotic piece of my life that has shown up unexpectedly, but significantly.

I was sure I would lose a good chunk of you when I began writing about this aspect of myself. I armored for this loss, but it never happened, and instead almost all of you stayed, with so many of you stepping up and stepping in.

Thank you for continuing to be part of this moving forward and right along side.

~

Back to the insect music:

The guys inside are launching themselves into their dancing at a whole new level of artistry. Since the performance in January they have leapt so far forward in their understanding of improvisational dance forms, that sometimes I can’t keep up.

With this new level of understanding, I’ve started to challenge them even more with the music I’m choosing to play. I’ve always done this with them, but now I’m pushing it even further.

This past Sunday, the prompt was to add detailed gestures to their dancing.

Some of the gestures they were playing with were abstract, and some were recognizable as an action. Some of those actions indicated violence — stabbing, punching, shooting, strangling. I asked them to slow the gesture way down, almost to a crawl, if it did indicate violence. Then I asked them to not only slow it down, but to reverse it - reverse the action somehow, so that it was happening backward.

I didn’t know what I meant by that — they didn’t either — but they did it anyway, and I wish you had been there to see them dancing this backward/slow/sometimes violent without being completely clear if it was violent/ dance.

When I asked them to do it in trios, and to keep their eyes locked on each other as they did, I put on this song, for them to dance to.

The song started, and they all stood there, not moving, looking confused, until one of them said, scrunching up his face, “What the fuck is this? Insect music?” Then he looked at me, and said, apologizing, “Oh sorry Jojo, I didn’t mean to say it in that way,” but he couldn’t help himself and he said it again, “But seriously, what the fuck is this?”

I started laughing, then they started laughing, and in between the laughing, people were saying, “Insect music? Insect music? Fucking insect music!”

Once we all calmed down we started again, and I added another element for them to work with, which was to melt to the ground when someone put their hand on their back.

This is the song I played, and again I wish you had been in the room with me that day, because the greens that they wear — this didn’t matter. The tattoos that go all the way around, and also up and down. The massiveness of their bodies and the gruffness in their voice. None of this matters when they dance a dance that touches and melts because is like a heart splitting open.

That is what matters.

Listen to this song.

~

After dancing, we sat in a circle to share.

Mostly when we share, we talk about what happened that day and how it felt, but sometimes they tell me what it’s like to be in prison, and on this day, they did.

One of them said, “We’re scared of getting hurt in here. Everyday we are. But what we are more scared of is hurting someone else. If I go to bed at night knowing I didn’t have to hurt someone, then that is a good day.” After he said it, everyone nodded and looked at me to see if I understood.

I did and I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

Then someone asked if he could share a poem he had written the day before about our dance class, and of course I said yes.

The title of his poem was “Dancing with Joanna,” and the body of his poem spoke about everything I have said here, but in a more articulate and generous way.

After Glen died, I asked my sister-in-law, Alicia, to make me a quilt of all of Glen’s clothes. This is the beauty that she made.

xoxo,

Jo