Day 2: Notes

Day 2: Linda Putnam Workshop
August 14th, 2007

OVERVIEW

MORNING
1/2 hour plastique river (led by Linda)
1/2 hour Led River (led by assistants Hilary, Paul and Tanya)

LUNCH

AFTERNOON
Tom High/Tom Low
Show Image People and Word People

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MORNING

Instructions for group Seed River (15 minutes)

1. Remember your source word - the one you gave yourself after performing your haiku
2. Inhale and see that word in your mind
3. See what world that word creates for you

- Linda will come into your river to work with you on an image
- at the end of each river COME BACK so that you can be ready for you next one.
- question yourself: How many steps from the front door to the back door? Do math. Count the items in your laundry
- dont fall prey to the trance - come out all the way so you'll be available for your day and the next time you go back into the work
-trance is an ancient form and we don't abuse it
- We can use rituals to get out of trnce lie HUNKER
- imagry is what we use to create but also to go mad - we want all the artists to stay with us not freak out on their body

**** Something for the group to think about

- group is to big to carry - to much for teacher type (Linda) to carry - her limit is 16
- so we need to carry ouw energy - if you don't understand work it through before you collapse

Collapse - when the torso falls into the body, when the energy drops into the body

Q: How can I Lift a Collapse?

- lifts are hard & vunerable - you want to collapse, but that will take you out and Linda with you.

- lets keep the group going.

LUNCH
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AFTERNOON

Q: Why slip a screen? 9Why can't a wall be a wall?)

- when you work in an imaginary world - bringing in the real world will always dominant - the real world will dominate
- if you have an answer thena what will run your river? - a river is run by questions - the real world obliterates questions - as artists we are interested in what is between us and the real world - so we slip a screen

- take the image and work with that image - a skirt is just a skirt - when you slip a screen it can be whatever you want it to be

- image is effemeral

PRINCIPLE: When the image is gone, the image is gone
- slip a screen over hair, body, clothes - its practical
-screen helps you question the image - we can't do anything to make an image stay and go - all we can do is follow an image

TOM HIGH TOM LOW
(*** for reference I use TH = Tom High
TL = Tom Low for short hand)

Take a source - a judgementless source, because a source is just a place, that's what a source is, once you add judgement you're in a river & then the River begins to run.

- Tom High is the highest expression of that source
- Tom Low is the lowest expression of that source
- Tom 50 is the source - may be defined by gravity though not always

- once you figure out Tom High and To Low then you run TH - TL and back again

Tom High = 100% High
Tom 3/4 = 25% Tom Low / 75% Tom High
Tom 50 = 50 TL/50TH
Tom 1/4 = 25% Tom High / 75% Tom Low
Tom Low = 100% Tom Low

- after you have TH to TL and TL to TH you can start to add body parts
- you'll work in a progression - like a transformation swing

Tom Low goes from the feet to Tom 50 which goes from the centre and then to Tom Full which is the upper carriage/ torso

Tom 50 is when the lower body come up to the centre and the top half of the body comes down to the centre and they meet

Tom High
- is a lift
- bring the energy up to the top of the body from the centre
- like gravity

Tom 1/4 takes 25% of Tom High into the body

Tom High / Tom Low is a map and you can go anywhere in your body

Full Low goes in both directions in towards centre
Full High goes in both directions away from centre
- your always working with gravity - gravity has to be taken into account in TH / TL

the centre is expressive

You can use the 4 bodies: Open/Bound, Beautiful / Grotesque as a source

Th/Tl energy shifts are potent - energy shifts are potent
The energy in TH / TL is concentrated on centre - a finger above and below the navel

Tom High
- we can carry our deepest tragedies here - because if the lift it seems light
- when we are working TH /TL progressions you stop at neutral when your not sure where you are going

Tom Neutral is a settle into judgement

- your making and releasing tension in opposion - its never all up or all down
- never go so far away from your basics that you have to go back

PRINCLIPLE: Never go further than you know how to get back from
- a passion can only last 5 minutes - if its longer your pumping / your re-fueling

*** The artists gift is the ability to gaze at horror - and our responsibility is to refrain from inducing horror
- on a natural impulse you can only go 5 minutes - if you do go forward, KNOW THAT YOU ARE RE-FULELING - I want you to be rich and I want you to be honest, but you can't always have both

- the curse of our ability to gaze at horror is the road to the inconsolable tear

Tom Neutral is a breather - its a standing corpse - you can move it if you move into your legs

- Showing our haiku image/word/gestures is reducing one source to another source - we went from haiku to another source

Neutral is defined by your source - 50/Neutral of the progression - each 50 will be different depending on the source - there is no content

- you can talk about a mystery until the cows come home, but its still amystery - a source is a mystery
- every artist has to walk 80 / 20 - we're getting the wisdom of immortality - of way more than our little lives - but we have to remeber that we're human - immortality doesn't give a good god damn about mortality - so thats why we work 80/20

- you have to pass through 50 to go anywhere else
-instead of letting the source stop by desire let it stop by impulse

- Th/Tl can be a tool to keep the image around - remember your river had narrow banks

-@ you lift to TH or go into TL the source may have to change - a word may be altered, a gesture added to, an image given a gesture etc. etc.

- on the lift or drop in TH / TL try a word on every exhale - go in gradations up or down
-if you fight the direction, that's the actor - feel the fight
- some sources will defy neutral
-in WORD try resonators
- when your lst return to Neutral

PRINCIPLE: Play the Return

- Pay attention to the body, it will give you directions / paths to move you / images to follow / Rivers to Run

- transfering violence - the sound of the passion is the source as it goes into the diaphram - thats what we look for

Q: What happens to you as you move from 50 to 3/4 TH /TL? (or in any other part of the transformation cycle)?

- try on each exhale a word

Q: What happens if another person takes on your source? - can you learn something about your transformations?

Q: Arer you going blind in the wrok?

- one can use the gestures to hide - we all want to find places to hide - this is aplace to explore HIDE / SHOW - what we hide / what we show

- when in WORD check for resonation
- You can have a Tom High Body and a Tom Low Voice and vice versa
- keep putting the voice in the body
- be careful

- we're creating character her - a NOT - ME
-go with the ease of it
- keep your eyes open

-eyeballs can domineer an image - they can't carry the weight but it can carry the force - if eyeballs carry weight - try putting that weight in other body part - this is if the eyeballs carry off the eyelids

-when you use WORD, you can play with language
-like stops on a map - you can work with the road between the steps - the ROAD is the most intreiging part

TH / TL are the stops
- its the way the source room moves through you up and down that you need to find - not the destination
-you can articulate the road betweenTH and TL WORD by using langauge

Q: How do you get your voice to follow your body on a journey?

- in a source we have to learn to desire the source more than the expression of the source

- desire that violence more than the expression of that violence - if we can understand that we can start to choose what we want to do with it
-when we're in the heat of a passion - we hope for thought / intelligence - so we don't anililate our source

- neutralize the skull hinge in Neutral then you begin to express
- if your going for a ride TH / TL can be as vast as we are

- you can work opposing tensions, in torque
- in our work small voice is the first voice of violence - because that voice doesn't have permission and there is a fear that the body won't be able to handle it - its an indication of the silent scream - it takes more than 1 breath to express a life of violence

HOMEWORK: In Tom High / Tom Low

1. Think of your word that completed your sentence I feel____.
Inhale
Exhale
Write a line

2 Go into Tom Low - Inhale= write a second line
3 Tom 3/4 = write a third line
4 Tom 50 = 4th line
5 Tom 1/4 - 5th line
6 Tom High - 6th line
7 Tom High = 7th line
8 Tom 1/4 = 8th line
9 Tom 50 = 9th line
10 Tom 3/4 = 10th line
Tom Low = 11 th line

Bring it in next day
- if you dry up go back to the seed / 1st line