Who Are You?

Here I sit, awaiting words that always come when I address you. My right elbow rests on a yoga block to support my limp right hand. The back, curved, no matter what pillows I employ, squeezes my diaphragm and makes me pant. The head sinks with no support from the neck.

I describe myself to you and imagine a response. I imagine you feel a little bit of my experience. I imagine it matters. Sometimes you write and tell me it does. That sustains me.

This blog has not gone viral. I am not popular, have ceased announcing posts, have ceased social media, have mostly ceased sending hopeful links to friends and family. There's just so much out there; I can't keep up, so why should I add my voice?

My voice. I give it a try. Just a whisper. I push more air through, direct my vocal chords to draw closer to each other. For a second, a sound. More water would help but I would have to get up, and I don't feel like it. I wonder what picture to include today. I look at the video I took during the sudden dramatic squall a couple days ago. My brother is in it, narrating his own video. Do I ask his permission? Today at 10am it's already 61 degrees. Shall I comment on what that all means?

Some of you are former clients/patients; some of you are Zen students. I worry how it is for you to really see into the mess I have become. I consult my Zen teacher and he says, body exposed in the golden wind, and, nothing hidden--references to koans that upend our preferences for glamour and cover. We speak of loss and what is left. Only love. The next day he sends a link to a beautiful essay by my first Zen teacher, Merle Kodo Boyd, who just died. She wrote about the freedom (enlightenment) that comes when the bottom drops out of the bucket.

I don't really know who you are. I don't know who I am either. I just know I look forward to Wednesdays, to the surprise that comes from this creative process. As I write I hop off occasionally to play with video of my changing world. I'll share it. I'll share my changing self. May the disintegration be of use. Spring is near.

February 23, 2022

portrait

1 minute 15 seconds

For my Moving Arts Women group, who encouraged me to play with what I've got, including my thumb!

January 12, 2022

True Expression

Somewhere in my documents is a pronouncement that I'll be ready to die when I can no longer express myself. When I wrote it the line between expression and not seemed more clear to me than it does now. What is expression? What is myself? Zen koans are often simple at the absolute level but entangled at the level of detail.

Sure, I am expressing myself now, but

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Faces!

Who knew so many people were paying such close attention to CDC guidelines? It was just this morning that the vaccinated were given a mask pass, and the park is blooming with smiling faces. I walked among them with my own, breathing the lilacs, brushing the fresh green on the old trees. 

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Sculpt

I'm excited to finally offer this little 6-minute vignette of the work of the PsychoZen Mixed Messages ensemble. Here we are playing with a format that I designed from the family therapy technique of sculpting. One person begins by arranging two people into a shape that expresses a relationship between mother and daughter. It could be her own relationship or an imagined one. Then the players reveal the sensations, emotions, thoughts and desires that arise. The director modifies the flow and the sculptor continues to shift the tableau according to what is happening, what is needed. It enables us to move and shift trauma, and emerge with freedom and love. 

November 2020

Who Was We?

This 2-minute video is another expression of the complex and loving relationship between mother and daughter. My mother's death in February set in motion a process of opening to who we were together, of letting go, and of appreciating life as it is. 

I've included a passage from Jonathan Safran Foer's "Here I am." My mother and I turned out to be reading it at the same time, and when Sal Randolph asked for contributions to a collection of performances of reading, I asked my Mum to film herself. Then I read the passage she chose while filming myself. You'll also hear me reading bits from her poem, "Blue Butterfly," which I wrote about here. 

Sometimes people who see this work pity me. Please try not to. Sadness is a part of life and love. I'll take it. 

July 2020

Mixed Messages: Talk to Her

Ekin talks to her mother. The company participates. Are they supporting or hindering? 

A 15 minute set including this improvisation will be featured at Movement Research on Mondays at Judson Church. We are in good company. On the same evening, my daughter, Vita Taurke, will show her work, along with John Jasperse and Larissa Velez-Jackson. May 11th. Save the date!

Cinematographer: Traven Rice

featuring

Ekin Naz Demirok
Katelyn Atanasio
LaVeda Davis
Ara Fitzgerald
Katherine Ann Marie
Yuriko Miyake
ReW Starr

Directed by Elena Taurke

January 2020

Mixed Messages Medley, Chapter One

If you could go back and change one thing about your mother's life that would make a difference to your own, what would it be? How would it affect your life?

I'm working with older and younger women to explore this question through improvisation, to feed from it to understand each other, to confront what we transmit so we can be free. Here is a sampling from our first rehearsal. 

If it moves you please consider making a contribution so we can continue the process. Funds go to paying the players, the cinematographer, and for rehearsal space. Find me on Venmo (Elena-Taurke) or if you want to make an official tax deductible contribution, here we are on Fractured Atlas. 

Here are the cast and crew for this rehearsal. 

Cinematographer: Traven Rice

Players:

Ara Fitzgerald
ReW Starr
Elena Taurke
Barbara Thomas

Katelyn Atanasio
Katherine Anne Marie
Manatsu Tanaka
Vassilea Terzaki

August 2019

What's in a Name? Francie

Here's another example of working with what presents itself. I happened upon these umbrellas whipping around in the wind at nearly the same moment that my collaborator overheard a conversation. They came together without coming together. One minute, thirty eight seconds.

April 2019

Doing It

No, not that, though the same principles apply.

Once you have a schedule that works, that you can really trust, that you know won't leave you in a panic before the train, that will get the bills paid, that will accommodate respect for people on the sidewalk, then you can make yourself a little pocket. Maybe even a big pocket, but 

the main point is that within this pocket there is no time, no rushing, no distraction; there is concentrated attention given permission to roam. 

We are human beings above all, not just shoppers. As D. Graham Burnett said beautifully during our Urban Sesshin, our attention is being bought and sold by the richest companies in America. Google and Facebook want us to be distracted, want us to fail to focus, want us to procrastinate by buying that updated device. 

But each of us has something important to say, something to give to the world, to help us actually evolve instead of repeating the tussles of the past. Each of us has our own unique expression. We don't have to be capital A Artists, just alive.

Here is my offering for today, a 5 minute meditation on my place: