Breath + Heart = Art: Sep 11, 2010

Amy Greenfield

Finding Amy Greenfild’s work is like discovering I’m not alone on an island, there is actually a historical context for my expression as a dancer on video. She has been doing this since the 70’s! I am humbled and inspired.

     These two pieces reminded me of something I had been thinking about. My aesthetic as a dancer in any medium seems to be about my body in relationship. The primary word being in. I am someone who needs to get in the water, needs to hug the tree and if there is a hole in the tree, then I will get in it. I want to feel with my whole body what ever it is. I had to walk threw the glass that fell in my living room. Years ago when I had a mace can in my purse, I decided I had to smell it…
Amy in these two videos fully explores being in the mud and in the currents.
     There is a way that the medium of film seems to be able to capture not only that the body is in something separate from itself, but it can also show the times when the lines become more blurred, those moments when I am not separate anymore but the other is now in me, I am not moving it, it is not moving me but some other union of movement is happening.
     Amy has named her blog to perfectly express this, “cinemabody’s blog. “ Here is what she says about it.
“It’s not cinema about the body. It’s cinema which is the body. And how the expression of the body as cinema can give kinesthetic vision to all that we can’t see and generally regard as separate from the body, but which I see as coming through the body – Cinema Of The Body And Spirit.
     At some point in the Tides video, the footage turns upside down, Amy on the top of the screen and the ocean under her. To me that captured the moment when one is playing in the ocean long enough and all of a sudden you are the ocean, who’s on top who’s on the bottom; like in those moments of love making when my lovers nipple is in my mouth and now it is also my own nipple, one body undulating in the same river. We do have these experiences in our lives; how thrilling to see Amy capture that.

Element from Amy Greenfield on Vimeo.

TIDES HD from Amy Greenfield on Vimeo.

To see more of Amy's video's follow the Vimeo link or uTube her.

To see Amy's blog go HERE
And HERE is the blog that inspired my search for more about Amy

What Lives in this River

Photos from The Santa Fe River, New Mexico, between Camino Carlos Rael and Siler rd.
July 25th 2010. To see the whole series as a slide show go to FLICKER (there's more)

To see photos of cars used for river erosion control in other places scroll down a bit.

River Revelations: Worthy as a dead skunk

After a storm i was walking in the dry river bed with a friend when we came across the skin of a skunk. Wonder if the river skinned it? It had rapped itself snuggly around a branch. It was going to dry real nice. So i continued to check on it every so often, thinking that eventually i might take it, teeth and claws were still in tacked, really a great find.

I went out again a few weeks later after another storm, I was looking for the skunk when another woman came along and asked what I was doing. I told her about the skunk; she new exactly which one I was talking about. We decided this last storm must have taken it. She started talking about how she wished there wasn’t so much garbage in the river. I couldn’t help myself, I blurted out like a playful puppy, “oh I love all the garbage, I bring home treasures almost every time!” And I pulled out of my pocket the one I had just found. About an inch long piece of meddle with the words “worthy” on one side and “in” on the other. She said, “indeed!” Before we parted she thanked me for changing her way of experiencing the garbage and our river.

Now if I could only cultivate that kind of compassion for my own internal garbage, see it as beautiful. I think that’s what the river was trying to tell me that day, “it’s all worthy, inside is worthy, not just what you see on the outside.”

Check this out, found the definition of skunk medicine

LINK "SKUNK - brings us an awareness of self-respect. When we fully accept who we are and learn to express the essence of ourselves, without ego, we attract those who share our path and repel those who don't. Skunk medicine is the original "Walk your talk." It is about developing a good self-image. In brings increased sensuality spiritually, sexually, psychically."

oh and by the way, the Native word "Shikako" or "skunk place" is recognized as the origin of the name "Chicago" my birthplace. Wild onions grew all over that area. Wonder if that shikako smell will just never wash off?

sorry only had my cell phone camera for this photo of the skunk

Erosion Control

Old cars have been used for erosion control along the costs and rivers all over this country, here are some other examples:

Found this at http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/the_evolution_of_erosion_control/19039/

this is along the Flathead River in Montana. Its a great article of a man who remembers helping his father put the cars along the river in the 1950s as an errosion control experiment, "Once in the water, if the cars held, they became a sturdy part of the bank, resisting the river’s strength in ways soil couldn’t. If they didn’t hold, they became an odd sight, drifting down the river like some metal Montana hippo."