Mourning Surf

Rosalía recently made a performance out of stillness for her LUX show – in which she lay motionless for two hours enmeshed in a flowing white gown that resembled bedsheets - creating a meditative, immersive piece for deep listening.
 
I always tell my students, “Stillness is a movement,” meaning that stillness belongs to the repertoire of movement available to us. Stillness is intentional – it is not the same thing as simply being motionless, because stillness is alive, it has breath, it is a gesture suspended between moments.
 
I’ve been horizontal a lot this holiday. Some of it was not feeling well but mostly it was and is, exhaustion – a weariness that seems to have no end. As I embraced laying down, I started to think about what it means to be horizontal and how the word horizon is at its core: Horizontal comes from Greek kyklos or “bounding circle.” It refers to a boundary – specifically the line that appears to separate the earth and sky.
So to lie down is to align yourself with the horizon—where the world curves away from view and your body becomes parallel to what is visible, echoing the lie of the land or sea itself as it stretches toward the edge of sight. As I lay down, I imagine myself joining that gesture of stillness and expanse for the horizon is not where things end, but where they open to what lies beyond.
Wishing you a restful and restorative beginning to the new year! ❤️

When the loss of your husband also means the loss of your creative partner: I met my husband Jim in New York City in 1998 while I was an artist in residence with the theatre company Mabou Mines. I was busy creating an evening length showing of short plays by Samuel Beckett.  From the very beginning I recruited Jim to help me run lights and set up my projector. I had rented a bench from outside Il Bucco for the weekend of my show, and he and I carried it 14 blocks to the theatre! Later Jim designed beautiful postcards for my shows and he never missed a performance. He became not only my most trusted confidant and collaborator, but my greatest supporter. Jim would beam with pride after one of my performances and talk excitedly with people after the show about how I had put it together and what was behind the images and movements. Jim was an incredible painter and craftsman, he played classical piano…Scriabin, Mompou, Brahms…and he deeply appreciated theatre and dance. Some of our most memorable and intimate experiences were spent watching performances – together in the dark, in complete awe.
 
I have been involved in some creative projects recently and I have dearly missed his voice, his guidance, his encouragement. Without Jim I have struggled to figure out how to be, let alone how to create. My creativity was linked with his spark for so long that without him I can’t find traction. Composer Louis Horst once told Martha Graham that, “Every artist needs something to lean against.”
 
Speaking with a friend she reminded me how much Jim loved supporting my creative projects – she told me that it was evident that Jim was 100% committed to nurturing my creativity. Wow. He is no longer here to make postcards or have late night talks about dramatic structure, but I dwell in the memories, the lingering love. ❤️ 📷 sitting at Jim’s piano Tribecca 2001

These photos are not from the news coverage of Sept 11, 2001, they are photos taken by my late husband Jim, from our home in Tribeca as the Towers came down. Our neighborhood was blanketed with ash and paper and Jim, really had not understood what was happening until he walked outside our apartment. Today I’m remembering the thousands of people who died that day and the many who have died since then: first responders, workers, residents, those who hauled away the wreckage…those who helped rebuild. So many lives lost, and countless lives forever changed. ❤️