Losing Oneself

Tag: Charlie Morrissey

  • becoming the passenger

    Yesterday I blogged about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s term awareness-ing and how awareness is inseparable from experience.

    Going through the transcripts of my post-dancing conversations with Katye Coe, I note that I was starting to use this term. In this extract below I am trying to describe two things. First is the shift from the feeling of awareness-ing to the feeling of becoming a passenger in the improvisation. Second is the question (while ‘awareness-ing’) of why some kinds of movements and not others.

    I haven’t edited the text just to keep the sense of how messy it is talking about these things. The text is from 14 February 2024.

    I think I’d probably say two things. One is the shift from the feeling as if I’m tuning into my body … surfing or allowing awarenesses or things that are happening in my body: friction, temperature, tension, tone, tingling etc … which is like a wash of yeah very open sense of awarenesses like I’m awareness-ing. The shift from that to what you’ve described Charlie Morrissey as describing it as being the passenger. That … it’s such a stark starkly different sensation.

    And I should be clear that the sort of awareness-ing … it doesn’t feel like I’m reaching or wanting this other thing. So yeah that shift which is so stark and so clear … and so surprising and and weirdly, it’s not as if I’m aware that I’ve gone into it or gone from one to the other.

    And I think I can see it [the transition] in you and it’s shockingly different. But if you were to ask me what is it that I’m seeing that’s different it’s not even about the quantity of movement that’s … sometimes but not necessarily. So that … and then the other thing is yeah, this thing that we talked about last week, I think which was why some movement and not others, why some movements and not others. As part of that awareness-ing, that process of, of being in awareness.

    – Simon Ellis (in conversation with Katye Coe, 14 February 2024.

  • ask where the horse is going

    In our work and conversations together Katye would often talk about the moment in improvising where one becomes a passenger. Katye says this is Charlie Morrissey’s term for the feeling that rather than you driving the improvisation, it is driving or leading you. Here’s one moment when Katye is reflecting on this idea:

    and the ability to really be a passenger in whatever adventure the practice and you go on … and to … and to hold that, be in that, process that, let go of that, allow for that, is like … that requires a set of grown up skills.

    – Katye Coe

    I was reminded of the following from Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

    Where are you going? Ask my horse, says the man. And this uncontrollable emotion doesn’t let you pick your destination or even see it.

    – Rebecca Solnit