Live to Sea (Psyche Films)

 

How an elite surfer followed the wave of his dreams back home to the Baltic Sea

Even for those who have never stood on a surfboard, it’s not hard to imagine the exhilaration of the sport – the immediacy of fear-tinged thrills, the might and weight of the seawater, the wonder of moving with and across waves. And when surfers describe the feeling of freedom, the connection with nature and the camaraderie that they find in their pursuit, most of us can probably come up with our own analogous experiences, even if they’re less obviously adventurous or skilful. The short documentary Live to Sea offers a rich sense of these and other aspects of surfing, but another theme also pulses through the film and transforms its story into one that resonates in unexpected ways.

Freddie Meadows, the Swedish surfer at the centre of this saga, speaks frequently of his dreams, not just in the sense of aspirations and objectives, but also as something akin to visions. To be sure, this more mystical strand of dream is inseparable from his primary goal, which is to find the rare and elusive waves in the Baltic Sea that can challenge and excite a professional surfer. But he has a curious turn of phrase – ‘dreaming myself into all these places’ – that he tends to use to describe a kind of imagining that lets him see what he has not yet found. That something so intuitive and internal is central to how he seeks those waves gives his striving the shape and valence of the classic hero’s journey.

The film follows the archetypal quest narrative described by Joseph Campbell in 1949, from ‘The Call to Adventure’ to the eventual ‘Return’, via a period of training in Portugal, international surfing competitions and a period of illness. But it’s the emotional journey of Meadows in relation to substantial physical and psychological obstacles that ties his story to the grander narratives that are so familiar in literature and mythology. This is not to say that the story itself reaches the heights or profundity of epics such as Gilgamesh, The Odyssey or Parzival, but there is compelling psychological grist swirling within this extreme sports documentary. While the imagery of Sweden’s rugged coastline and the mysterious swells of the Baltic have a palpable power on screen, it’s the internal undertow of Meadows’s dream-questing that can move us to consider our own paths to self-development and self-knowledge.

Live to sea | Psyche Films

Northumbrian Sequence IV (by Kathleen Raine)

Let in the wind,

Let in the rain,

Let in the moors tonight,

 

The storm beats on my window-pane,

Night stands at my bed-foot,

Let in the fear,

Let in the pain,

Let in the trees that toss and groan,

Let in the north tonight.

 

Let in the nameless formless power

That beats upon my door,

Let in the ice, let in the snow,

The banshee howling on the moor,

The bracken-bush on the bleak hillside,

Let in the dead tonight.

 

The whistling ghost behind the dyke,

The dead that rot in the mire,

Let in the thronging ancestors,

The unfilled desire,

Let in the wraith of the dead earl,

Let in the dead tonight.

 

Let in the cold,

Let in the wet,

Let in the loneliness,

Let in the quick,

Let in the dead,

Let in the unpeopled skies.

 

Oh how can virgin fingers weave

A covering for the void,

How can my fearful heart conceive

Gigantic solitude?

How can a house so small contain

A company so great?

Let in the dark,

Let in the dead,

Let in your love tonight.

 

Let in the snow that numbs the grave,

Let in the acorn-tree,

The mountain stream and mountain stone,

Let in the bitter sea.

 

Fearful is my virgin heart

And frail my virgin form,

And must I then take pity on

The raging of the storm

That rose up from the great abyss

Before the earth was made,

That pours the stars in cataracts

And shakes this violent world?

 

Let in the fire,

Let in the power,

Let in the invading might.

 

Gentle must my fingers be

And pitiful my heart

Since I must bind in human form

A living power so great,

A living impulse great and wild

That cries about my house

With all the violence of desire

Desiring this my peace.

 

Pitiful my heart must hold

The lonely stars at rest,

Have pity on the raven’s cry,

The torrent and the eagle’s wing,

The icy water of the tarn

And on the biting blast.

 

Let in the wound,

Let in the pain,

Let in your child tonight.

 

(Kathleen Raine in: The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine)

 

Thoughts on the Winter Solstice 2020 (by Tom Hirons)

Here we are, at the solstice, then. Me, I'm weary and dazed. Who is not weighed down by the year just past? Who is not looking to the future with trepidation?

I don't know what's ahead of us. We slip further into the chaos of ecological desecration. Covid. War. Corruption. Foolishness of all the wrong sorts.

But, this is my solstice news: whatever shape your life has made, you have the right to joy in this world. Whether your road to here has been one of sweet delight or not, you have a right to joy. Sometimes it will take years, but sometimes it happens in a moment. The tower falls; the pain rings out in your body; the voices all around clamour for attention; the needs are always too many... And yet there is the possibility, as everything breaks around you, of joy.

One day, perhaps soon, you will be dead and all your joylessness will have been for nothing. Do not waste the chance you have for joy and find yourself at death's threshold, suddenly awake as you die.

I live my life with one eye in the gutter, soaked in darkness, in the belly of a bear; my other eye observes the light from stars both near and far, and sees a world of radiance. I'm not going to hide the bad news: there is so much that is terrible & broken. But, in the midst of this inferno of a life, here is a doorway.

In the still moment of solstice, I'm standing in that doorway, with my hand reaching out. Come through.

Yes, everything is burning. Yes, disease and poverty and the trauma and grief and all the bloody shame of so much life and love wasted, yes. All of it. Oh, it burns. If I could cast a spear or a stone into the eye of that which makes it so, I would. I cannot, and no one that I know can.

But, I know one thing: This joy in the dark is the antidote to the crippling despair, the one that eats us when we've gone beyond grieving. All the demons tremble to witness it, because it cannot be undone or broken or sullied. It is the stuff of heaven, and it is your birthright.

Here I am, then. Standing in the doorway as the timbers and tiles crash around us and the fire billows and roars. Come through. Risk it. Step forward.

What the hell have you got to lose?

The Christmas Truce of 1914: A Heartening Story of Humanity in the Middle of War (by Maria Popova)

 A symbolic moment of peace, grace, and humility amidst one of humanity’s most violent and disgraceful events.

In December of 1914, a series of grassroots, unofficial ceasefires took hold of the Western Front in the heat of WWI. On Christmas, soldiers from an estimated 100,000 British and German troops began to exchange seasonal greetings and sing songs across the trenches, some even walked over to their opponents bearing gifts. The incident became one of the most heart-warming displays of humanity in the history of human conflict and was dubbed the Christmas Truce.

Depiction of the Christmas Truce of 1914 by artist A. C. Michael, originally published in the Illustrated London News on January 9, 1915, with the caption “British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches.”

From the trenches, a 19-year-old British private by the name of Henry William Williams — a man of confounding contradictions himself, who would go on to become one of the most lyrical nature writers in the English language, an early admirer of Hitler, and an opponent of the Second World War — wrote to his mother on Boxing Day:

Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o’clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a ‘dug-out’ (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, & exchanged souvenirs, & shook hands. Yes, all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvellous, isn’t it?

This lovely short film captures the story and spirit of this symbolic moment of peace, grace, and humility amid one of history’s most violent and disgraceful failures of humanity.

Simple Gifts-6 Heartwarming Holiday Stories - December 25th, 1914 - YouTube

THE HOLY IN LOSS (by Toko-pa Turner)

 

At this time of year, there is a great deal of emphasis placed on birth and the coming of the light. But the Solstice is really Nature’s season of rebalancing between life and death, and new life is never possible without a darkening, a sloughing off.

 

What makes this season holy is the act of casting off that which, with little to no guarantee, will set us on a new course. Like winter, Nature’s death field closes in on us with its cold and dark promise to claim all that isn’t thriving. It isn’t unusual to resist this process. We may find ourselves trying to prop up the old way, lifeless as it may be, in an attempt to reanimate the ill-fitting, limp, and even destructive, because at least it was familiar. 

 

But as reluctant as we may be, the holy act of this season is trust. Even as the old things are being cast off, torn away, or leaving of their own accord. Even as disappointment, heartbreak, and fear are rearing up on all sides. Something better for our well-being is marshalling itself below the cold ground. And the sooner we can conclude our old attachments, the sooner the new way will be made visible.

 

One of the great inhibitors to movement in this life—> death—>life cycle is the belief that things didn’t work out because you did something wrong, or that you weren’t good enough. That the loss, whatever it may be, is reflective of your failure to be worthy in some way. And I think there is value in combing through our experiences to see if you’ve behaved in integrity. But at what point does this combing become perseverating? When are you twisting yourself into a pretzel to make something work when you could be giving it “a good death”? When are you mounting resistance to change when you should be respectfully concluding old attachments?

 

This is where the discerning acumen of the “inner yang” (in all genders) is extremely valuable. This is the part of us that can take a step back and differentiate between what is being projected onto us, and what we know to be our own truth. In a tsunami of emotions, it can be excruciatingly hard to know the difference between someone’s projection or judgement about us, and our own knowing. Introjection, is when we take that projection as our own. It might behave as an inner dialogue, “I’m doomed to fail,” or, “I am irresponsible,” or, “I’m difficult to be around.” When we allow this to keep us from life, we are, like characters in fairy tales, under the dark spells or enchantments of those in power over us. We ate that poisoned apple – and it put us into a deep sleep of inherited belief.

 

To break these spells, we must first become aware of them. In dreamwork, we can expose the narratives that are operating compulsively in our lives and begin to re-story ourselves out of the places we feel habitually trapped or stuck. But in order to move into our next life cycle, there is almost always a sacrifice to be made.

 

You may have heard me say before that sacrifice was originally meant, “to make sacred.” At this time of year, on the threshold of dark and light, we are being called to sacrifice those things that we may have loved dearly, but that are ready to leave, or be left by us. And we must do it without knowing what lies ahead. In that free-fall between things, a small, almost inaudible voice asks us to believe. 

 

As ruthlessly as death sweeps in to dismantle what’s familiar, life always follows. It brings vitality and growth to the fallow regions of our lives. Just like wild herbs appear in depleted soil to give it nutrients, it is the way of nature to remediate. Our job, like the soil, is to submit to this mysterious process. To trust that, even as the old form is decomposing, a new form is coalescing out of sight.

 

During these holy days, I invite you to consider where stagnancy and insufficiency may have set in to your life. What relationships, habits, identities, or projects, are taking more from you than they should be giving. Is it possible they are are trying to release you? Are they worth salvaging, or will the sacrifices they should be instead eroding your well-being? 

 

As you contemplate these questions, try to listen for something holy calling out from under your confusion. Can you give your trust to this still inaudible call?

 

With all my love for your courage,
Toko-pa  

 The Holy in Loss | Toko-pa's Official Website (toko-pa.com)

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How the acrobat and choreographer Yoann Bourgeois plays with gravity and time (a Psyche film)

 

‘There’s a moment when a child chooses a direction, as part of growing up, and that is a step that I never managed to take. Fortunately, I found the circus, which allowed me to remain undisciplined.’
– Yoann Bourgeois

There’s a curious contradiction in these words from the French acrobat, choreographer and director Yoann Bourgeois. Given his accomplishments and talents, what a lack of direction and discipline looks like for Bourgeois is rather unique. He’s expert in using trampolines in inventive, poetic, circus-inspired contemporary dance. He’s won numerous awards. He’s presented his work in prestigious venues. His performances have drawn comparisons to the slapstick skills of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Squaring his achievements and abilities with his own description of his work becomes easier when we look at some of the recurring themes of his choreographies. Striving, stumbling and falling feature prominently, often to simultaneously pathos-filled and comedic effect. At the same time, he’s fascinated by physical forces and how bodies interact with them, an interest he calls ‘research that doesn’t have an end in itself’. If there’s no definitive aim of this ongoing experimentation with movement, it manifests as something magnificent: human forms that seem momentarily freed from gravity, that fly, float and touch down in beguiling ways.

Whereas his primary productions are meant to be experienced in person, in situ, the short film Clair de lune by the French filmmaker Raphaël Wertheimer uses tools of cinema – camera angles that shift perspective, editing that accentuates the music’s contours, a stark black and white palette – to explore elements one of Bourgeois’s most celebrated choreographies, La mécanique de l’histoire (The Mechanics of History). Adapting that work into a one-man performance set to Claude Debussy’s beloved composition Clair de lune, Bourgeois draws out the theme of childhood and time. Describing his collaboration with the French pianist Alexandre Tharaud, whose rendition of Clair de lune graces the film, Bourgeois says, ‘To create – to be creative – is to draw a door on the wall, and then open the door. Clair de lune opens this door wide to transport us to a time where time doesn’t pass. That’s why we become children again when we listen to this music.’

Although the film Clair de lune is an abstracted interpretation of a childlike experience of time, Bourgeois’s idea here perhaps resolves some of the oppositional tension in his account of his work. In a sense, by becoming hugely adept at moving through space and interacting with objects, he has figured out how to retain a child’s engagement with the world, one in which stumbling and falling amount to learning, in which repetition is about exploration, and in which just about anything – including trying to get to the top of the stairs – can be a game.

Choreographer: Yoann Bourgeois

Director: Raphaël Wertheimer

Pianist: Alexandre Tharaud

Clair de lune | Psyche Films