I'm scared and excited on this path

I don't want to go on my own but I don't want to be

swallowed up either

Can we be in our different rhythms together? Centred in fire with the right to be

clumsy, cliched and tired 

clumsiness is an essential part of grace 

Oh No.....not another fear to face or dance around and avoid

in what my mate Shirl calls a void dance

a dancing void

It's a skip and a stumble

a trip and a fall

a flip and a fumble

a dip and a crawl

but like Dorothy said “ We're coming to call”

It's a break dance down and through to fly anew but don't forget your roots

in the underbelly ground

This is a dance of dissidence a dizzy dance of contradiction in the here and not here always moving the same and not the same continuity and interruption

Altered states are natural anyone can experience them but being pushed over the edge by those who deny, then classify and pathologise them can spin you round in vicious circles of lonely isolation and despair.

Psychiatric straight jacket authority colonises our minds solidarity frayed    kindred spirits betrayed

“Are you an angel from heaven come to prostitute me”?

I we you she he they I wish you were here on this journey of

musical metaphor

flesh    blood    bone  stripped bare to the essential soul energy of being alive and human

constantly changing in the face of orders to stay the same

fixed and framed in a state of imposed surrender

someone who knows their place nose to the grindstone

no escape

scapegoat those who cannot/will not fit even into the fringes

isolate   dislocate   medicate  They're finding new disorders every day

IT COULD BE YOU... The pharmaceutical companies need your custom

Capitalism needs new markets and efficient, obedient,  cheap and cheerful labour

Sickness and Wars let thevampire undead suck out the life blood from me and you

oh let me sleep through it I don't want to be on this journey

it's too much to take in and take on

I'll wake up every now and then and shout obscenities at the telly but not too loud

in case the neighbours think I'm mad better try to pass as normal, put on a funny hat  style  face  at the appropriate time and place

some of us get paid for our consciousness streaming screaming

Hecate be my guide on this journey of becoming

Mother of the witches, lady of the crossroads, journeywoman of death, change, giving birth and altered states

crazy, creative crone, bullshit detector,  protector of the innocent and the mad. Take me to the heart of the beast and find me courage I didn't know I had

show me we can choose within the limits of our epoch

to gather our resources

summon up the forces of freedom and change make a nuisance of ourselves

to make a new sense of ourselves

Maggie Nicols - Performance Piece - 1995