educator, artist, cultural organizer
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Groundswell Spell

GROUNDSWELL SPELL

Groundswell Spell

"Groundswell Spell" is a 10-minute double overhead projector and crankie shadow puppet performance, crafted from plastic packaging and paper refuse. It is accompanied by a recorded soundtrack composed and performed by Marian McLaughlin, and live vocals. Groundswell Spell is a light and shadow meditation, an offering to those who came before us who knew that all was kin, that god was rock as much as sky, who danced in cyclical time.

Artists who have collaborated on performing “Groundswell Spell” include Katherine Fahey and Peter Redgrave.  

Who are we / But If not / Of Each Other

Honor to those who came before us / Who knew that all is kin / Whose gods were rock as much as sky / Who danced in cyclical time

Where were you / the last time your animal eye / saw them running through the fields / grass stalks high, in the quivering night

Who were you then? / An amoeba, a starfish, a shooting star? / Antlered or hooved / your body, a primordial substance / Pooling in eroded rock, / brimming, spilling, running across                

Did you feel a space / Between your skin and the sea / Encounter there your deities / Wet, webbed, feathered, scaled / Piled high in flocks / Swarming towards rivers, rocks / In many bodied consciousness / One by one / but none

Do you re-member / Your own / flying, fluttering, swarming through sky / Eyes on High / Honking calls, trailing, hailing / snows in fall / holding sounding calls

What were you then? / Wordless mouth against the earth / Burrowing, breathing, dreaming / What had not been broken yet / What had not been taken. 

Torn, worn, sworn / What ground did your tears water? / Who was your kin? / Who are we / But if not of each other / All in bodied knowing / And in animal remembering