Why the Witches Matter
An excerpt from Shape and Momentum: An Insomniac’s Guide to a World in Constant Motion
I need their help with the enduring entreaties of my life:
*Pay attention to our amazing bodies and what they are telling us all the time whether through pictures in our imaginations, pain in our muscles, moving closer with enthusiasms, discomfort in the way we are sitting, eyes closing in terror or disgust, measuring the urgent need to run away from another person or problem, shaking in terror, trembling in desire, open in love of all types. These magnificent attributes of self are raising their presence at all times but are often ignored. Not the witches. They translated these tiny happenings into occupations, mostly the healing kind, but also with a willingness to cross the boundaries of what had been normalized by institutional and cultural timidness. By including writing that emerged while trying to bring witches to the stage, I am hoping readers can enjoy the mayhem, the subterranean power, and the joy in their liberation as conceived by my own midnight ramblings or those concocted by the brilliant ensemble of artists who gathered with me to make Wicked Bodies.
*While we are paying attention to our amazing bodies, we might also notice where authoritarians take their first actions of oppression. It’s physical and highly personal. Where you are allowed to go to the bathroom, when you can see a doctor and about what, who you might have intimate relations with, when and to whom you may speak in public, what medicines you are allowed to take and for what purpose, how you might clothe yourself. The witches have a history to share with you about the outcomes of demonstrating any way of living outside these prohibitions. The accusations against the witches, evidenced in legal documents left behind by proud magistrates and judges, doctrines and court cases from almost every continent, contain the attempt to reign in our relationships to our own bodily functions, as well as some of the rituals these bodies carry out in the name of healing, holding, protecting, praying, and yes, also dancing.
*Art and all its processes require of its makers an extraordinary determination to remain connected to human and mammalian practices often considered unnecessary by the central governing entities of political, educational, religious, and economic pursuits. Perhaps it is why art has survived. It’s objectively irrelevant while also remaining the prized representative evidence of our hopes. My contention is that it is less the object itself and more the manner in which it is conceived, made, held, and shared that matters. The witches
in this book reflect this belief. I brought them into existence through a long and arduous journey of artmaking that I refer to as choreography. But this kind of choreography is more than the steps. It’s true that I needed the promise of a performance outcome as the container to hold these efforts. What we learned, discovered, shared, and carry with us now is only available to me because of that endeavor. Readers might be distracted by the presence of the witches in the beginnings and endings of various chapters. It is a purposeful reminder that art is central and invisible. In this book, the witches carry that burden.
