Heart Rock Art in the Santa Fe River

I don't know who is placing these rocks, perhaps it is many, sometimes it is even me.  It feels like a community art installation that is ever changing and evolving just as the river does so do we.

While it is actually the impermanence of this art that i love so much, i feel inspired to start documenting it, to somehow give it the value it deserves.  To also document sweet non competitive, with out expectation art is happening in this world.  And it just happens to be in my back yard!

to view on Flicker go   HERE

River Revealings: Heart Rocks/Love Art

Walking in the river looking for hearts
Hearts placed by another
Wondering what their story is; the first time they placed a heart was it for the mending of their own or was it from a full heart that they began to share these found heart rocks?
The first time I saw an alter of these rocks I was overjoyed, my spirit lifted, I received it as a gift.  Now when I see a new heart displayed I feel a calm smile come over me, a kind of peacefulness. 
And then I start to think about my own heart, this river has been soothing for it.  I trust what I find here and I open to it.  I trust the impermanence of nature as well as the human expression in this river.  I don’t feel any expectations, perfectionism or imposing of ideals put upon me… not even by the heart artists.  The heart rocks were always there in the river, this person just brought them forth.  Maybe I’m wrong, maybe they are trying to give us a message to love each other more?  But I guess I see it as a message from the river itself not from the human who lifted the rock out of a pile of others.
And then I feel the heaviness of my own heart, heavy & dense like some of these larger rocks.  When did this happen to my heart?  Was it always this way, was I born with this heaviness and this life has just been about awakening to my latent lack of trust.   Or have my experiences in life really caused that much damage?  Right this moment, that seems silly, my experiences are not all that horrific, as I know the possibilities of suffering that are out there.  My suffering seems so self-imposed all of a sudden.  My suffering has been for love not from hate.  And perhaps that in it self is why I feel so jaded about the idea of love as a motivation for anything anymore.  Right now art feels like a much safer motivation for life.  It seems to me we have all suffered a great deal for the pursuit of love.  Ah shoot, I was going to say, “but have artists suffered for the pursuit of art?”  Yes.  But maybe when artists have suffered for their art it is because they are really searching for love? 
I have no answers, I have no answers.
And now I laugh at myself, because it is I that created the title to my blog.  I know my need to create is connected to my heart, but I can’t seem to say it is connected to love.  All of a sudden I have no idea what I meant by that title so maybe this will be a journey to discover that. 
I know I associate breath/breathing with life itself; breath gives life.  So often I actually forget to breath, it is a practice to remember and when I do my lungs expand and there is a kind of new life in my chest cavity and around my physical heart.  This seems to allow for a lightness to my emotional self.  I find it is when I don’t want to feel that I stop breathing, on some level I am asking myself to stop living.  When I choose to live, when I choose to breath, to in hale, to nurture my physical heart, an exhale must always follow, the desire to share, to offer, to express.  Art is in my very exhale that has touched my heart.  Is that which passes around the physical heart as an exhale is that love?  Is love my art?
And now I cry….. love will not leave me alone!
I try so hard, so hard like the rocks, I try to harden this heart.  But it is moments like now, when love catches me by surprise… these rocks look so hard but they offer so much joy to each eye that looks upon it…. upon me... upon you.  So perhaps there is nothing wrong with a heart made of rock?

I thought it would be nice to do this blog in chronological order but life keeps happening, now.  So i will be skipping around a bit. 

now for a current project

Red: In the Valleys is an improvisational collaboration between Michelle Vest, Danielle Louise Reddick and myself – The Painted Ladies.  Where will the valleys take us I wonder?  In the Valleys is hopefully a preview of more Red to come from these painted ladies! 

Red: In the Valleys from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

Blue Wall

These two videos are from the series Saying Goodbye to Home




Blue Wall from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

Play with Shadows & Wind

PLay with Shadows & Wind from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

Saying Goodbye to Home

     If you have read these posts in sequence from the beginning you know a bit about my recent past, but I will say a bit here again for those who are entering now.
    I had shared a home with my life partner for nine years.  In 2005 after fifteen years she and I separated.  I new eventually I would need to leave this house I had so many associations with.  This house became a kind of vessel to hold all my grief.  In June this year I finally emptied the house to prepare to sell it and moved into town.  For over ten years I had been living a very uncreative life.  Those last nine years with my partner in that home embody the height of my feeling dead inside.
    I find it curious that as soon as all her and my stuff, (I still had so much of her stuff in there), was cleared out; it was like I could fall in love with my home again.  I could appreciate all that home and those years had given to me and an explosion of creative impulse ensued.
    I went up to the empty house on my own and started to document my saying goodbye rituals.  These two videos are part of a whole series called Saying Goodbye to Home. 
    I would like to acknowledge and thank my life coach / feng shui/ astrologist guide.  Without her coming into my home and challenging me to get rid of my x’s stuff and all un essentials, I would probably still be living up on that hill hiding from my self, life and my purpose… THANK YOU SARAH  MITCHELL!!!!!!!!

A Ritual: Goodbye to Home from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.


Entering - Light from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

Creativity

"Creativity is not a noun or even a verb—it is a place, a space, a gathering, a union—a where—wherein the Divine powers of creativity and the human power of imagination join forces. Where the two come together is where beauty and grace happens and indeed, explodes. Creativity constitutes the ultimate in Intimacy for it is the place where the Divine and the human are most destined to interact." -Rev. Matthew Fox

      
     A space to gather and feel that union... right here on this blog.  Magic is happening.
     This quote that someone else posted on facebook this morning, feels so true today after more time spent editing a video.  I can't decide if this feels like an orgasm or having a baby, definitely a kind of intimate explosion with self and (what i will call) life force.  My body is vibrating.  I love this tumbling out of different creative moments and forms from improvisational movement to photos to video... tumbling out, revolving becoming more, gaining speed.  So curious what the "landing" will feel look like?  Can it keep turning & growing?

One long Motion picture

     Some would say that I am too hard on myself, well I say I am too hard on myself, the internal judge is always after me.  But what if that judge is actually a super hero strength of determination dam it!  I am the bull after all.  What if I can’t commit to anything in this world not because I’m fucked up but because I’m committed to one true understanding in this single body, committed to knowing Love/God right here inside!

…Just a glimmer of a thought…  just saying, it could be true,   maybe…..

    a few glimmers this morning, nice shiny ones.  I was up late editing some video work (I’m looking forward to sharing, and trying to be patient).  It was probably the biggest chunk of time I have spent yet on editing in iMovie.  I ended up dreaming about it most of the night, motion divided into clips that could be stopped, cut, edited; so many clips of motion making a whole long motion.  When I woke I had a very real physical understanding of something I heard Amma saying over and over again but it took editing a video to get it.  “The past is a canceled check.”  That always felt so abstract to me, as most of what she said did.  I would sit there and inside be saying, “and, and”  waiting for the how to do that.  I think I needed this visual learning experience to be able to really see life as a movie or as a play (as they say in Hinduism).  I understood after my dreaming that all life is a creation, a  l o n g   motion.  I can choose to stop and focus any where on the l o n   or   g  of the movie.  All of a sudden one clip of the movie feels less important to me.  This is a huge relief for someone who obsesses over the past.  Now I can see so clearly that the past is only one clip, REALLY, only one… there is a whole movie to watch, get over it!  And what a gift that we have this choice, to choose what clip of my life I want to focus on.  I am the creator,  hello mano, wow!
   
Thank you guru iMovie!  Thank you bull headed woman for staying true to your self no matter what others see you as.  Dani, I’m building my tower!

Purple Iris 2

As I came to climax in my self pleasuring last night, the purple iris appeared as a ghost of a flower over a grave.  The sight of it triggered tears of grief from this body still.  When will pleasure no longer be connected to painful longings for a story of shared love lost? 

Purple Iris

     As I prepared to move out of my home this spring purple irises bloomed in my garden.  In all the nine years living there, I had never seen this flower bloom.  It felt like a farewell blessing from the garden.  I enjoyed viewing it outside for a day in all its vibrancy and then brought it inside for a photo shoot at dusk.  I was mesmerized by the depths of its color with out the sun shining threw its petals.  These flowers would be a foreshadowing of a blossoming of my own creativity in this very home where I had felt so dead for all those years (more to come).

Symbolism of the Iris

http://www.sfheart.com/iris.html

“Among the duties of the Greek Goddess Iris was that of leading the souls of dead women to the Elysian Fields. In token of that faith the Greeks planted purple Iris on the graves of women. Iris was the messenger of the gods and the personification of the Rainbow. The Greek symbolism for the iris comes down to us by word of mouth in the form of a myth that was old in Homer's day.”



http://www.livingartsoriginals.com/flower-iris.htm

“The flower symbolism associated with the iris is faith, wisdom, cherished friendship, hope, valor, my compliments, promise in love, wisdom. Irises were used in Mary Gardens. The blade-shaped foliage denotes the sorrows which 'pierced her heart.”



http://www.dgreetings.com/fragrance-flowers/iris-flower-meaning.html

“Iris is unique among all the flowers in the world. It has the best symbolic flower meanings among all flowers, and it symbolizes trust. Iris has a mythical significance as well. Iris, the messenger of Hera, was bowled over by the beauty and colors of iris and gave it its present name. The messenger was actually hailed by the people of the world for bringing the rainbow on the sky. This was because she connected the world of humans to the world of temples of the heavenly gods. The use of iris to express feelings has become rare, but it is still apt for expressing trust.
The iris flower meanings portray the importance of someone's friendship. The iris flower meanings hail the glory of truth, friendship and trust. Now, you know the best gift for Friendship day is to let your dearest friend know with a bunch of iris, how much he/she means to you. Faith is an important pillar in our life. Faith in the Almighty as well as your dear ones is best captured by iris. Tell your partner that you have complete faith in him/her by giving an iris. This would indeed be an appreciating gesture.”

this image came from HERE

A Gift to My Self

     While I am putting this blog together I can feel pieces of myself aligning and coming into view.  Is it just myself that has a hard time really “seeing” my self?  In Nia practice we can choose to take a class for different reasons, for fitness or for self-healing.  I as a human and as an artist am often fluctuating in what motivates me to act, to live, to share.  Right now, this blog seems to be motivated by my need to know my self and for healing what feels wounded.  Funny though because the more I put the pieces together I start to get this vague sense that everything is here already, nothing really needs to be healed, fixed or found.  I wonder what will motivate me then, when I really realize That!

The challenge I gift to my self in creating this blog:  Can I stay present and creative with all of who I am, with all the moods I fall into?  Can I commit to staying alive even when I feel dead?  Can I stay in motion even in the stillness?

Are you a "Dancer?"

Are you a "Dancer?"
what does that mean to you, to be a dancer?
 

As a dancer, how do you experience the world differently?


Are you a dancer if you're sick in bed and can't move?


As a dancer do you ever not want to move your body? 


How are you a dancer in stillness are you still a dancer?

This is a question i posted on facebook July 28th.  I wont post the answers again here, but please do share your own experience with "dancing" these questions.  The following was my answer...


As a child I danced characters and clowns.  To dance was an act of play and exploring possibilities, it was a way to make those that I love laugh.
As I grew a little older I wanted to dance my sexy.   To dance and perform was to be seen in ways that were not socially acceptable, and yet when I danced that on stage I was applauded. 
To be a dancer was to be seen.
Dance became a place I could get away from the pressures of school where I felt stupid and small.
To be a dancer meant I new how to capture the attention of another by the way I moved.  I learned to enchant not just an audience but also those that I desired.  To be a dancer meant I had power and control of not just my own body but my body in relation to others.
In college I became more of a “choreographer.” 
To be a choreographer meant that I created with bodies.  I created shapes, and motion.  I expressed with bodies indescribable emotions.  I captured moods and moved them.
To be a choreographer meant that I was important, I now had something to say with my dance.  To dance became political, an act of empowerment, to express all that I could not verbalize as a woman. 
Dance became a tool to change the world.  To move and express for all those who felt unheard.
To be a dancer was to be a change maker, a magician, healer, and ceremonial leader.
To be a dancer I had to be brave.  I learned how to dance into hell and dance my demons.
To be a dancer I had to be humble, to open and listen to the energy of life itself in the trees, in the ocean, in a rock, in animals.
To be a dancer I learned how to become another.  I became a shape shifter.
And, I learned how to dance with another's energy.

And then there were the years I did not dance.  Was I still a dancer?  Even though I was not moving from awareness of my body, I was still moving energy.  Although it was not called a dance, there were times I was moving others threw space in patterns and an organized way.  If dance is about expression for me then I would say prayer was my dance.  Although I was still on the outside, my heart and spirit were leaping forth like a flame with longing, or knotting into a ball with confusion or anger.   Only now looking back, can I see that this time was an opportunity to know That which dances me.  There was time to be witness to the internal dance, the essence of my emotional and spiritual self and that which connects me with all energy.  
This time I had of “containment” of physical expression enables me to start to understand this container, this vehicle that holds my flame, and the relationship between body and spirit.  And only now as I write this can I understand that I am a dancer.  My response to being “contained” for 10 years was to dance like a wild animal.  I as a dancer needed to feel That energy that I am part of in motion, in Fully expressed.  I as a dancer, need to know god, other, life itself in my body and I need to move with it.  When I dance I feel connected and alive.  And when I am alive I share and create.
    It has been important for me to see how dance has been with me threw out my life, as friend, teacher, self identity… I needed to know this because I feel myself entering another phase, and I feel frightened and uncertain of my next steps, will there even be steps?  I have recently explored my wild dance and now I feel the question arising from with in, “how do you dance your emptiness and stillness?”  Dancing so often has been about sensing fullness, either of myself or other, but where is the motion in nothingness?  I know nothing; I am looking for a way to express that, and my fear of that nothingness.   And now I know The Dance will be with me even in this. 
So for me to be a dancer means I am in motion in this life, i honor and study the motion of life in all its phases.  Or another way of saying it, I honor and study the motion of spirits journey threw the body - and I dance it. 

To see a photo documentation of my life in dance follow this link
HERE

Self Play with Video

Here are some of the first videos i shot with the intention to capture and express a mood i was in at the time. A mood that felt too dense to dance.  I was stuck in some dark mental tapes and was desperate to get out of my head & bed.  So i grabbed the camera to play.  Physically it felt like a pre migraine and i thought for sure i would get one.  After playing for about an hour i literally passed out at 8pm and slept till the next morning.
This is in my Santa Fe home in NM, a late April snow 2010.


Window Study #1: pre migraine from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.


Window Study #2 : capturing from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

Where i moved from: inside & out

     I lived in this home with my life partner for nine years.  It sat on a ridge looking over the city of Santa Fe.  It was a refuge from the world for us.  Also a kind of hermitage to recover from the chaos we experienced while traveling on tours and serving our guru, Amma.  This home holds for me a time of creative death.
     We separated in 2005, it took five more years to move out of this home.  During those five years the expansive views started to teach me how to make peace with my internal void.





see photos on Flicker here

Self Play photos #1

First time I really picked up the camera I was in a depressed mood after a summer romance ended.  I think in the back of my mind was the memory of a friend saying how he liked digital cameras because he didn’t have to be patient and hold still for one shot, it was now about capturing motion.  So I stayed in my bed, which is where I often am when depressed and just started shooting continually as I rolled around and posed.
This has continued to be a useful creative outlet in my darkest moments when this body doesn’t want to move and my emotions are ruling my life into self-destructive mode, not creative life mode.  This act ended up being one of several pivotal moments of actually choosing life = art after over 10 years of what felt like creative death.

photos taken Sept. 2009





here are the photos with some Sinéad O'Connor for dramatic effect (or drama queen).

Self Play Photo's #1 with music from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

Rubble

I dug some old writing out, starting in the rubble of my broken heart. Starting at the end of a fifteen-year commitment. Drowning in my grief I grasped at words to make sense of it all.... and i grasped at my guru who i thought could save me.  I needed to understand. 
These writings feel like one piece of the self trying to find the whole. Putting this blog together is another piece.

9-4-05

Oh God my heart hurts.

Why do I cling so desperately to this illusion of love?

Why do I need her love to feel complete?

I remember the sweet things we used to say to each other. I remember holding her in my arms till she fell asleep. I remember feeling that she is my whole world, nothing else matters; with out her I am lost.

Was none of that real? Was she lying when she told me there could be no other, that I was her perfect lover?

How can it just go away?

It means all these fifteen years were a lie, false untrue, not real?

What was it that we saw in each other, that made us believe this was true Love?

Were we so desperate that we couldn’t see the falseness?

When did my heart turn to stone, when did the day turn to night?

When did our sweet love calls turn to bitter resentments and disappointments?

When did our worst nightmare to be apart become the only solution to this endless fighting?

When did her love stop making me feel whole, when was it not enough anymore:

her lips my heaven, her smell my call home, her dark eyes a mirror to my heart of longing.

I couldn’t imagine there was an even greater love, a deeper call home.

Amma before You, I didn’t know I hadn’t found home, I didn’t know I wasn’t whole yet.

But how to let go of this dear one so that I can be made wholly Yours? It feels impossible; I’m not strong enough.

I didn’t know it was really You I was looking for in this beautiful woman.

I didn’t know it was really my Self that I was looking for in this powerful woman.

I didn’t know it was my own wholeness I was looking for in this brave woman.

I didn’t know she couldn’t give me real love?

I didn’t know I couldn’t give her real love?

I didn’t know our love wouldn’t be enough?

So who is their to blame, we were only two little girls lost without our Mother, holding onto each other. How can I judge that?

How can she judge that? How could we take it so for granted; ALL that we were able to give to each other, with just our little selves?

We came together in innocence, with all the love that we had to offer in hopes of finding healing and wholeness through our love and acceptance of each other.

It’s not our fault that we couldn’t fulfill that dream, it wasn’t meant to be.

But the dream of knowing love isn’t lost with our separation, only the dream of finding it in each other.

For we have felt the touch in our souls by Love Herself. There are no more dreams; dawn has finally come to awaken us from our slumber.

Dear God, wash me clean of this earthly unfulfilled love, disappointment, hurt and anger.

Wash me clean of longing for that Love by any one but You.

No more searching outside myself!

Make me strong Amma, I don’t know how to let go.

Give me You to hold onto, I can not survive with empty arms, with an empty heart.

I was made to Love, there is no other purpose, no other truth.

Amma without Your Love I am incomplete, my love remains selfish and small. Only you can show me that wholeness.

Searching 9/7/05

The stories told me I would need to be saved

And I could feel in my gut that this was true.

A prince would ride beside me and sweep me off my feet

I would be made whole and complete.

I new that someday I would be found and brought back to this ground.

I looked to my father; I looked to my brother for some clue,

Could they tell me who I am?

Is this new lover the one to discover?

The search went on, no father, no brother, not even my mother or lover could fill this deep hole.

But then one day I saw a bright light in the dark night.

It was not a man, but a woman.

As she galloped into my heart, her long dark hair flowing,

I could hear the drums of her ancestors calling me to her; her voice sung a lullaby to my lost soul.

The emptiness filled with the desire to be her goal.

But like a lightening storm in the night, only glimpses of wholeness would be revealed.

There were many long dark nights with no lightening insight.

While I clung to the possibility of more,

My lover became lost in her own dark storm.

Both of us lost again, alone, and cold in the rain of our grief.

Don’t loose hope, for the story does not end here. The girl must be saved, made whole and complete.

With every other possibility lost, nowhere else to search,

The girl fell down

Down into her hole.

Down, down, down low.

People dieing all around her, decomposing in the earth.

Screams of terror echoing through her own bones.

Don’t want to see, don’t want to feel!

Into her fear, all by herself,

alone

at last.

Alone with her Self, she could start to feel,

feel that all is not empty,

She started to dig, under the fear, anger and grief.

Something was there!

Not lost at all! A glimmer, a glimpse of Hope.

From behind the darkened mountains, the glow of the rising sun just appearing.

Dew drops of grace started to fall on her buried seed of love.

Not alone at all, all around her as the sun rose high into the sky, she saw new life being born from the dead bones of her past.

And there True Love blossomed, Lover becoming Love, emptiness made Whole.

Start Here

Start Here
Where I am now
Because I have to…
Put all the pieces together
Make sense of my meanderings
Catch my fleeting selves
Understand
All the burned bridges & discarded parts of myself
Look for what is at the bottom of the compost heap for the rich soil that makes me
Wholly myself
Connect to something greater
Live, Love, Create, Art