So what I thought we would do is start
with instead of the usual introductions,
I asked our presenters some questions about their bodies.
And so that's how I'm going to introduce them.
This is Don.
This is what she likes to eat for lunch, iced tea.
Her legs are warped, the condition of her heart
is expandable and malleable.
[LAUGHTER]
Looked like putty.
Duriel likes to eat for lunch something raw foods, arugula
salad preferably.
Her legs are muscular and friendly.
This word is part of her gratitude is less possibility.
I love how writers can't just choose one word.
We got Doug Kearney.
He's going to present next in the lineup today.
What he likes for lunch, things wrapped in tortillas or pittas.
If it's pittas, he wants fries on the side.
Totally with you.
When you must energized, this was the question.
He says this will sound sad but when
I'm in front of people, that's not sad to me.
It's a very LA thing.
I'm only alive now in front of you all.
And he is a werewolf and a family man.
Once again, cannot choose one word.
KJ over here.
Likes khichdi for lunch.
Khichdi
Khichdi.
What's khichdi?
It's an East Indian stew.
East Indian stew, I think I like that too.
What is the condition of your heart?
Her heart is a surprising fathomless nocturne.
Hmm-mm.
Took four words.
He said her legs are her best weapon.
So true as we saw last night.
Julie Carr, for lunch, not much, she's
on the dawn iced tea train.
When are her feet most comfortable?
When touched.
And what word might be plastered on her chest?
Mother.
Beautiful.
Ronaldo, let's see.
He eats nothing for lunch but I usually want carbs, streams,
and protein, so matter of fact.
His legs are long and pointed as we also saw last night.
And the condition of his heart is responsive.
Beautiful.
So last but not least, Julie Patton.
Likes for lunch, anything she can wild craft.
The condition of her heart is imploded
and her feet are most comfortable in water hill.
Yes, me too.
Beautiful.
So what I did was I sent them some questions
which not everybody got but I sent them a lot of questions.
But probably only going to have time for five,
I mean, three of them.
And then I'd invited them to use their bodies
or use language or respond in any way
that they feel most appropriate.
I also have written the questions
on my arm just in case they forgets or later you
want a question, feel free to describe my arm
and we'll do it.
Also, I just wanted to say when Annie first told me
about this panel, I instantly thought
and I was wondering what you might think about this too.
When I don't have paper and pen, how does that ever happen?
But sometimes it happens, I always
use my hand on my leg to write it out and remember it
that way.
And my friend, Christy Maxwell, she
actually uses the muscles of her legs.
She tweaks them in like a pattern.
That is fascinating to me.
But I just thought that might be an interesting thing
to think about what you do when you don't have paper and pen.
So here's our first question, and whoever
wants to get up and speak first, just give me the icy.
So where in the body does your writing begin its habitation?
[INAUDIBLE] just show us.
No.
I don't know.
I can't show you.
I actually feel slightly alienated from my body
and I feel as if I'm always trying to re-access it.
So there seems to be, if I were to prepare it for writing,
I would go for a really long run or lift
some weights or something in order to really feel it.
So I feel as if I'm constantly struggling
to connect the writing to the body in some way.
There's for me a disconnect and I'm always
trying to re-enter that space or that physical matter.
Kind of similar.
I don't feel the alienated but I feel like I actually
made a conscious separation because having been a dancer,
everything started with, ended with, was grounded in the body,
and there was a kind of way that for me that became oppressive.
And so when I finally didn't identify as a dancer anymore,
it was a huge relief to not think where in my body
or what is my body or how is my body or is my body
OK then things like that in the process of making something.
But as I was thinking to try to answer the question,
I thought my jaw.
That there's a kind of will in the jaw that
has to do with desire.
At least that's how I experience,
it has to do with desire, like a kind of urge energy
to move forward into writing and it's like huh.
And so that seems like it's here and maybe
that has to do with speech and like the desire
to say something.
But I was very glad to not have everything grounded early
on the pelvis, which is where it is and dance
and to actually not have to be there.
For me, it's oftentimes the ear because I'm triggering off
of things I've heard usually more often things that I've
seen.
I mean, the thing I've seen might make
me think about writing a poem.
But it's not until a bit of language
warms its way into my ear in a really sonic way that
really drives me to sit down and try to make something.
Just to be able to hear certain words
clatter together or certain phrases
from different reference points clatter together.
So for me I think it's largely the ear which is hard to type
with.
I have to disagree with Julie Carr about dance music
being naked only in the belly or the pelvis
because I think dance comes from all parts of the body
and as a dancer and also a poet, I
feel like where I have a tape my writing, is in the space.
And the space sometimes is inside my spine
and I think about the spine as the connection between my head
and body because there is no separation if I look
at that center line of my body.
And that as a fluid quality of my body,
the spine is where I can access the idea of reflexive knowledge
to bringing an idea from my experience that's
held a little bit more contained in my brain.
But there's always that connection back
to the sensation of, what am I doing with my body?
I'm breathing, the physiology of my body.
And in that, there's the poetics as well as
the movement of the body.
So that's what I would say.
That's a challenging question to answer in a straight form
because I think it depends on what I'm doing.
I'll say it's my whole body, but also it's outside of me
coming in through everything at the top of my head.
My feet in contact with the Earth
is a very important channel for me.
I feel as much in my feet.
I don't make a distinction between hands and feet
really because I think one transfers to the other.
And walking is, for me, is my religion in a sense.
And so being in contact, moving and that sense of line
and with also feeling, like it's not about the Earth being flat
but picking up deeper roots and the same thing
goes on this way.
But I have an obsessive amount of energy
in my hands as a result because it constantly
coming in contact with matter and material
to make the pliability of the word and plasticity of things
and grounding energy.
In order to do what I do, meditation,
which can be walking meditation or any kind of meditation
has been key for me since I was 11
because I don't want so much to express myself with something
that's larger or beyond me than includes me so that it brings
in other forms of information.
But in many ways I'm a sculptor and if people
come in my dwelling spaces and they
are like, why isn't that in an art exhibit or this and that?
Because I make sculpture all the time coming across small things
and it's almost like my hands are leading me.
They just have to feel and then the language
comes in relation to that.
But in the old days, I used to put on the ground
large sheets of paper and get in them and then throw ink.
And so I don't decide anything.
And it's just getting still enough to listen and respond.
I don't know if I made any sense.
You were all about flow.
I am.