Migrena2X2

I used to think that I am wrong somehow

I could not understand

That I was as close as I could ever be to myself

When love grew inside of me

So did destruction

Waves of intensity, joy, and excitement

Were accompanied by silent thoughts about death

Not my own

Not terror, nor fear

But a bittersweet truth

Of no-immortality

As if it is my first lesson in a path

I learn that

Art is undoing what I know

Creation is an end as much as it is a beginning

Decay will nourish (as they say in Butoh)

Think of the dead as you rise

Think about the living in your fall

You are flowers.

​

Everything that is alive, that is precious

Experiences pain

I often think that much like

A woman’s bleeding

Even my migraines

Are a reminder

That I am a part of something

I keep sculpting this body but it falls apart

still I feel nothing or everything at once

I perform a series of rolls on your carpet

A memory of future past

Sweating bodies in limbo 

red lights lava lamp dark room highs lows

I can do nothing but 

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender

Small children sharp knives

Can’t hurt me anymore 

I am far

inside 

my armor

I keep sculpting this body but it falls apart

still I feel nothing or everything at once

I perform a series of rolls on your carpet

A memory of future past

Sweating bodies in limbo 

red lights lava lamp dark room highs lows

I can do nothing but 

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender

Small children sharp knives

Can’t hurt me anymore 

I am far

inside 

my armor

I keep sculpting this body but it falls apart

still I feel nothing or everything at once

I perform a series of rolls on your carpet

A memory of future past

Sweating bodies in limbo 

red lights lava lamp dark room highs lows

I can do nothing but 

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender to

Surrender

Small children sharp knives

Can’t hurt me anymore 

I am far

inside 

my armor

The smell of a forest after a night of rain is one of my favorites.

I go out running in the morning, there are very few people along the path

We nod and smile as we pass each other

I look to the horizon and I am reminded of an island in the south of Japan

Or another place I went running in, hoping to get lost knowing I will find my way back.

I notice that my hands are curled up in fists

As if preparing for some unknown prophecy or danger

I look at them with a smile, and the fingers unfold like a breathing flower

We were not prepared.
But if we practice the fall,

it will slowly get softer.
We will learn to be

aware of our body falling,

as it is

falling,

knowing how much time remains until we hit the ground,

and prepare our limbs

for the landing.
And when we land,

in one piece or a few, or many, 

we will trust the glue

inside of us

to bring them all together

until we recover.
And perhaps the world

will be slightly different now,

but our heart will be open

and our body strong enough,

to continue

falling.

One of the first things a baby learns to perceive is depth

And so, we spend most of our life

in fear of falling.

We wrap ourselves in layers of protection,

avoid certain places or situations,

make decisions to keep ourselves safe.

We try to control our destiny,

we try to control nature.

Then, when it comes eventually,

and it always does - it is a crash.

We practice alignment

It is important to make sure that the knee

is in the same direction of the toes, 

keeping the back at the back

and the front at the front.

But life, like a wild dance, is never aligned.

It throws us constantly and

instantly in many directions

It doesn’t care about sides. 

So perhaps it is good -

Sometimes

In order to prepare,

To practice no alignment.

supported by

​

Collider AIR / Contemporary Calgary

LAKE Studios Berlin

Fonds Darstellende Künste #takecare

performance, texts, images, and editing by Yotam Peled

video recording by Agustin Farias and Nabu Taka

On my last visit the chiropractor has told me to search under my ribcage, and so, as the migraine begins and my neck stiffens, I reach out to my golf ball.

I place it under my shoulder blade and surrender to the hardness of it, slowly shifting positions. I imagine the ball piercing holes into my armor, I let my flesh melt to create space for it. As I lie down I am reflecting on where my pain begins.

​

If I could decide on a point in time and space, if it is at all possible, it would be when I left the Kibbutz. It is also when my migraines began. My Heimet, the Kibbutz, was communist - but not necessarily only as a system, or at least I did not care for it back then. It was communist simply because it belonged to a community. It belonged to everyone, and also to none somehow. My appearance, my gender, my sexuality, my house, money, success, all of these didn’t seem to matter so much back then, and I never bothered to define myself through them, or my position to them. We were all part of a tiny utopia, a lost paradise, at least in my eyes back then as a child. Life was simple, and small somehow.

Small in comparison to the vastness of nature, to the wild surrounding us. Home was a resting place, a camp in the wild, from which I left to explore my little green universe. Sometimes I had partners, allies for these investigations, but I was often alone, and I liked it.

​

When we left, I felt torn. I cried for a while. It was taken away from me - this universe. It was when I began, inevitably, to see and understand myself through the eyes of others. I began questioning everything, and finding binary solutions. I began having an idea of what I need to be, which seemed to be more and more distant from what I desired to be, or what I simply was. I began constructing an armor, layer by layer.

The layers are countless.

​

I was, all of a sudden, in a land that confronted me with my queerness. That marked the soft and the wild, which were my strengths, as weaknesses. I was reminded daily that I was the other. That I was strange. That the way I talk, walk, stand, and dream, is wrong. I was confronted with a notion of masculinity. It was clearly described to me, verbally or otherwise, as an exclusive club I could never have access to. And I tried, very hard. I tried distancing from myself so much to fit in. I buried my Heimat.

​

It took me about 20 years, and moving to a new home, to a new continent, to face this pain. To go through the archive of my body, to trace its source. My path as a dancer, as a performer, as a maker, as an artist, as a raver has been subconsciously leading me there. Movement has been a way of slowly melting down the layers of armor, peeling metal, skin, flesh, bone, to reach the spirit. My moving body has been a vessel on a journey to the source, to points before and during the transformation. Dance has been a journey of surrendering to the subconscious.

Today I understand that in order to survive I need to regain my soft and my wild.

I see no other way for me to travel this world.