These tender alms
In collaboration with Lesley Ewen. These Tender Alms was first performed at Buzzcut 2016 and shown at Spill Festival in October 2016.
Two wyrdy orphans, "Angus & Rayshall" (aka Hybridity and Synthesis) come together to work out their trauma and sing some curious songs...
"No, no! I am nothing pure!
My race is mixed. My sex is mixed.
I am woman and man, light with darkness,
nothing pure! I am mud and flame!" *
Singing together as a singeing,
The burning off and the burning through -
The singing is the burning off, through vibration and voice.
The songs are the driving force; a very curious concert.
Things going wrong. Things blowing up.
The voices are coming from somewhere that isn't every day: that netherworld that we occupy. The places of healing and trauma and childhood. Something pagan about it. British Dreamtime.
Song: a huge part of going to a different level of consciousness.
Song allows you to travel.
There is talking in between, action in between
Re-visiting
Re-vising
Maybe the songs are covers
Or revealers
Of that one big flaw called Humanity.
To be able to bear that naturally occurring dissonance.
There's so much pressure to overcome things.
There's a reason why these incantations are taking place, why we've set up this Ritual of coming together, tumbling with social norms and becoming these hybrid identities, which are chosen, crafted, applied from outside. In the covering up, is a revealing of what we are underneath it all and a hope for acceptance when seen with all our unshackled oddness.
"Be secret.
Child, be strange, dark, true, impure, and dissonant.
Cherish our flame." *
* "Stephen", Pender's Fen 1974
