An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
HERE IS THE PICTURE that is on my best friend's computer. They have a sticker of it that covers the entire back of their laptop. My best friend is the best human, my favourite. They can make anything.
They design exhibits for museums. Once we ran a festival together, where people could come to us with any idea, and we would make it happen. Dana would mostly build things out of garbage, and I would make friends with people until we had venues and equipment and space. We had no budget. We had enthusiasm and a project, and other friends who also wanted that variety of tr u e l o v e .
In the photo, Richard Hunt, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz are puppeteering Bert and Ernie during an early filming of Sesame Street. They are looking at a small screen, which shows them what the camera sees. They are concentrated on their own parts, while within this context of the separate parts being alive together. They also are alive together, joyously, aware of both the work and of each other. Their hearts seem to spill up over them, their arms raised up like that.
Once Dana told me: your true friends aren't the ones that like you when you're at your best, they're the ones who know you at your very worst and love you anyways.
I don't think anyone knows me as terribly. I don't know who I would be in this world without a Dana. Somebody different, maybe.
1] Brian J. Jones discusses this at length in Jim Henson: A Biography, 2013.
HERE IS THE PICTURE that is on the desktop of my computer. It has been my desktop for as long as I have had one. It is a picture of Jim Henson on set, looking at Kermit the Frog, who is looking back at him. He is puppeteering the frog, but still they have a relationship that to me is obvious. A love that seems obvious, a kindness and a concentration.
There is a thing about the muppets, this magical thing, where they are all defined by some terrible flaw, but somehow the puppeteers and the context and their interactions all make them completely lovable. Lovable because of their flaws, not in spite of them.
Band of misfits, maybe. But they don't feel to me like they are outsiders. To me it feels like they create an inside that rises up between them, and that also, somehow, has space enough for anybody. There's something about their special brand of being, by being monsters and different, that allows them these different rules. Like maybe you have to be perceived as a bit of an idiot, clownish, a bit immune to cynicism, at least optically, to pull off that kind of thing.
Henson was notorious for being someone who anyone on his team could approach, at any point, with an idea. They could do this excitedly. He was notorious for finding people who were excited to do something, and then for just letting them do it . He left everyone enough room to do their thing, to do it best, to bring what they wanted to bring. For the little ghost, maybe.
Henson's work is sprawling, a bit messy and experimental, not afraid of being funny or silly. It is clear-hearted, though not always that watchable. At times meandering.
1
on doing things
together
on hanging out
on belonging
Dana tells me that Steven Spielberg thinks: some things you watch to see what's going to happen, some things you watch to hang out with the characters.
I haven't been able to find that quote, but I like that thinking. I don't always need to know what's going to happen. Sometimes I wish that things wouldn't happen, so I could just keep on hanging out with something, with a person or a puddle or an idea. Sometimes I feel like that's the way to get somewhere, like time just has to pass, like I just require some kind of proximity to something to feel alive or ok or to find something worthwhile. To be unlonely, maybe. The resonant murk. A lot can happen when there's nothing happening.
2
3] Or can be experienced as such. See again Kaplan, Jonas T., et al.
It seems inevitable that every person will experience parts of their personalities as aberrations, as failures, at some point or another. It is important work to find methods of approaching connection, interdependence, and public life that support difference, and the ability to be genuine through it.
Sociological researcher Brené Brown, in a recent book about belonging, wrote:
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are (49).
The obvious trouble to this (aside from anything with the word “true” or “sacred” in it sounding a bit fascist) is the difficulty of navigating, compassionately, situations where someone being themselves poses a danger to others in the community. But difference is threat, and relating from a place of fear is always dehumanizing to somebody, and so trying to figure out these navigations is important. At the end of the day, finding forms that support belonging, thus defined, supports both the individual and the community: there is no public realm without difference, and also, loneliness is real.
3
4
4] Again, as per Arendt.
Lost Remote
online, international variety show, 2020
Variety shows are a long-standing part of my practice. I like the kind of container that they make. Typically, I get people to present things they aren’t experts in, or that are experimental or new in some way, either for them or in the context of the wider community. I try to make the atmosphere a space where the regular rules for inclusion don’t apply, and instead we follow the rules of the little ghost, the amateur, the polinary and slow time (up next).
Lost Remote is my most recent example of this, and my first attempt to bring the shape of this container online. We ran three episodes as a pilot season—I can’t say it was all successful, but it certainly had some magical moments. We modeled it on a kind of slow T.V. type aesthetic, where the goal was to create a space that felt magical and chaotic, but also like we were hanging out together. In a Henson-like move, I also really care about the loving and sincere inclusion of non-normative approaches, to be building a universe where to be different is both magical and ordinary. Beyond acceptance into true love between your team. This was difficult digitally, but I did learn some possible methods.
You can read more about the project and our experiments into slow time, improvisation, and community building here.
