My pilgrimage at Sostrup Slot
Easter Sunday. A day of celebration. It is the first Sunday following a full moon after the March equinox symbolic of rebirth and renewal a celebration of the goddess of Spring Easter to me is a day of reflection of embracing what is to come even though in this minute I have no idea what that is.
Sitting in the old beautiful library on the first floor of Sostrup Castle I have been researching, preparing for an intense new creative development of EVE2, a play that had a brief season called EVE in 2012 in the delicious Sue Benner Theatre Metro Arts downtown Brisbane. EVE had a beautiful creative team with Leah Mercer in her usual role of director/devisor, Anna Molnar as Producer, Gabby Castle as Stage Manager (with Johnny Castle as ASM), Amy Ingram as Executive Producer and Stace Callaghan playing the role of Oscar, the storyteller, matched by Moshlo Shaw who played the musician/husband. Aaron Barton created a magical set and his partner Gen Trace designed the lighting while Travis Ash was sound designer. Daniel Evans was co-devisor as well as co-ordinator of the Independent Program at Metro Arts. Because of force of circumstance, the untimely death of Moshlo, we decided to return to Eve and do it differently, wedding some of the character of the Man in the third show of The Belonging Trilogy, He Dreamed a Train with Eves voice. This idea was an offer from Travis and when he suggested this I knew it was the right direction. Travis will now devise and play Musician/Storyteller/Man and Benjamin Knapton will direct/co-devise this new version with Freddy Komp and Nathan Sibthorpe creating visual magic. We have a decent task ahead of us these next ten days.
Being here, half way round the world in a town where I know one person apart from my partner Bill, provides an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be in relationship with the world. What it means to connect to others. What it means to live deeply. I see this residency as a pilgrimage of sorts.
So today my research focuses on what pilgrimages are for I believe every artist is required to take a pilgrimage, not to achieve anything overtly, but simply to find the time to discover what they already know. A time to step out of my ordinary life in Brisbane, full of people and artists and homes and studios and rehearsals and plays and meetings and walks and galleries and and and and to STOP. What is it that I long for? And if I understand this, then I will understand what it is that EVE2 longs for: in the original script she writes that she longs to be loved. But it is far more than that. She longs to belong though she does not express it in those terms. Yet.
David Whyte, the poet who writes about the souls journey talks about our longing to belong and I think that this pilgrimage is the perfect occasion to discover what my longing is I know I have a longing for story in order to belong. But is it more than that?
In my search, I came across this poem that sat well with me as I read it:
The Spirit of Longing
Tell me, men of learning, what is longing made from?
What cloth was put in it that it does not wear out with me?
Gold wears out, silver wears out, velvet wears out, silk wears out
Every ample garment wears outyet longing does not wear out.
Great longing. Cruel longing is breaking my heart everyday
When I sleep most sound at night longing comes and wakes me
Excerpt from old Cymric (Welsh) poem
Cited in The Mist Filled Path by Frank MacEowen
If we see longing as a good thing, as a way of guiding us towards what is real, what is true, what is our calling, then I can hold it closer. And if I take on board what Phil Cousineau (http://www.philcousineau.net/_i_the_art_of_pilgrimage__the_seeker_s_guide_to_making_travel_sacred__i__18018.htm) suggests:
The call to the sacred journey your secret heart longs for wont come by expectation, will not arrive in a logical way. If you imagine that something is trying to call to you, try to practice stillness for a few minutes each day. Be still and quiet and you may be surprised what you start to hear.
If I take this on board I listen, slow down. I reach for my phone less. I turn off my computer. I hear more. I change my posture: I am alert. Awake. Present. My two feet are planted on the ground. And I walk. For all creative thoughts can come from that step after step.
Phil Cousineau also quotes Bruce Chatwin. When I first arrived in Brisbane I worked on a piece of theatre directed by Doug Leonard and our primary texts were Bruce Chatwins Songlines and Eve Langleys Pea Pickers and here I am 26 years later still working through this material. Doug had a way of selecting the most potent texts and bringing them to life.
So Chatwin is quoted in Cousineaus book:
I have a vision of the Songlines stretching across the continents and the ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song (of which we may, now and then, catch an echo); and that these trails much reach back, in time and space, to an isolated pocket in the African Savannah, where the First Man opening his mouth in defiance of the terrors that surrounded him, shouted the opening stanza of the World Song I AM.
I AM LONGING TO BELONG is the cry for millions of people displaced, lost, or superficially surfing this thing called life. Its as though many of us are caught up in a net not of our own making. We follow others rather than lead ourselves. And we do not know what our personal mythology is that is what a pilgrimage can awaken there is time to reflect on the stories, poems, journeys, relationships, dreams that make up our lives.
As I walk down the stairs in my house back in Brisbane I have written above the doorway in black Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin now. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. We all know Goethes quote. We see it on peoples fridges, magnets, shop windows, gyms, bookshops. We see it, but do we take action? Do we begin what we dream? Some of us do and others of us put it off till its the right time, or the right place I sit somewhere in between. I sometimes take action and other times I wait. I wait. I wait until I cannot wait anymore. I step out.
So I have stepped out. I am longing to belong in this new play, working title EVE2.
So I have stepped out. I am reminded of Joseph Campbells mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centres of life beyond the reach of the vocabularies of reason and coercion (cited in The Mythic Path (KIndle edition). I am here to rewrite my personal myth: to weave the raw materials of daily experience into a coherent story (The Mythic Path). To create and re-create the map of belonging.
I am quoting David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner:
A personal myth is a constellation of beliefs, feelings, images, and rulesoperating largely outside of conscious awarenessthat interprets sensations, constructs new explanations, and directs behaviour your personal mythology is a lens that gives meaning to every situation you meet and determines what you will do in it. Personal myths speak to the broad concerns of identity (who am I?), (where am I going?), and purpose (why am I going there?).