About seven seconds, at the moment.
About two seconds on the train, five seconds when I wake up, and twelve seconds when I’m reading a book. This is the amount of time my mind rests on a thought before the impulse arises to check something or contact somebody on my phone. I’m usually grateful for the distraction from my claustrophobic commute and for the stimulus to wake up and get out of bed. But my phone has colonised my mind to a degree that I feel I’m basically a face, with thumbs that do all the work. A bit like an emoji, I suppose. I wonder how I still have a body and what purpose it serves anymore, for any of us. We earn by thinking and tapping, procure food often by tapping and expend most of our earnings by tapping. I’m more grateful then, that my profession requires me to reclaim my body. Contemporary dance demands that I begin carving movement from the impulses and sensations that arise in my limbs, joints, skin, bones, fascia, muscles, cells. In order to do this, I have to tune in, listen and most importantly, maintain contact. Movement (or ‘dance’) arises as I accept these small intuitions; when I let my thinking mind work in sync with my feeling body to develop patterns, shapes, designs, meaning. It is a battle, and one I think that highlights a severe deprivation in our lives today.
I’m in the studio, alone. There is no music, my eyes are closed and I can sense large amounts of sweeping empty space around me. The instant possession of knowledge that I have not only become accustomed to, but have come to depend on makes listening to my body extremely difficult. The physical sensations are small, quiet, fleeting and not immediately inspiring. I feel my attention move to a twitch in my elbow and I resolve to stick with it. I let my elbow move and images of triangles flood into my mind’s eye. I accept them, letting the imagery stimulate increasingly expansive movement. Behind my eyelids, I’m imagining building pyramids, watching light refract through prisms, letting the seven colours of a rainbow guide my feet and - and - and - and suddenly the desire to let it all go is overwhelmingly powerful because something much better is offered up: take a break and check your phone. Check if she’s read the message, check the time, check the train, check if that email sent. All of these options feel more gratifying than this delicate and difficult task of listening to and staying with my body. Which certainly feels better than feeling stuck, like I’m not getting anywhere, like I can’t. I record my movement improvisation for instagram and realise it doesn’t look great. I look kind of clumsy and my tricep fat is forefronted. Clicking through to other videos, photos, stories, feels better. My previous post has been racking up likes and now I feel great. Everything is fine.
By now I’ve opted more than a hundred times to consume a distraction or to view my body from the gaze of somebody watching me on a screen, than encounter my body in all its reality. These alternatives are more appealing than encountering the plain, unspectacular, unglamorous, lumpy, uncertain, long, unproductive, confusing, complicated and unsettling moments of reality. I can’t help but feel that these four mins in the studio are a microcosm of the battle that we should all actually be fighting. Encountering reality in all its ungratifying glory is the cornerstone to staying sane; for being able to process ‘negative’ emotions and attend to trails of thought long enough to untangle complexity. But most importantly, a resistance to instant gratification and crowd validation is what will allow us to question the societal and cultural structures that are constantly being built by those in power; that is those with the most money, and those looking to make the most money.
Some of these technological structures have convinced us that there is no reason to bear inconvenience, but I question that. Feeling hurt is inconvenient, grief is inconvenient. Concentration is inconvenient. Having to think through complex problems is inconvenient. Reconciling arguments is inconvenient. Having to be my own source of self-esteem is inconvenient. Boredom is inconvenient. Questioning the dominant ideals of feminine beauty is inconvenient. Checking facts from four different sources is inconvenient. Stepping off the rollercoaster of notification-induced gratification, to sleep, is inconvenient. Listening to my body is often inconvenient, uncomfortable, and takes a long time to become pleasurable. But I’m reclaiming my body from the forces above (read: in my phone) whose very existence depends on their ability to disconnect me from myself.