Dear friends of the Psykadenz,
First of all thank you for joining our 3rd Happening.
After LivingRoom and Inbal Pinto conversing with all of us, yesterday, we attended the Première of a new choreography co written by Noa Wertheim and her company –Makom, by Vertigo, after which two of her lead dancers Sian Olles and Micah Aimos sat with us more time than any one of us expected -to the point that one of the artists’ managers knocked on our door to fetch them (!) and to my dismay we could hear Sian replying to her » -But we like it here, We enjoy it with them (us) « .
As Victor said it first and me second or the other way around, they are beautiful, and we do fall in love with dancers. Not the way Sian rejected with some life experience humor, warning us to-not-to! But primarily because of the experience of aesthetic they offer to us, because of their outstanding talent to interpret a non-verbal language intertwining Imaginary and Symbolism, for each one of us as a spectator to try receiving whatever we can from a fugitive common reality, and within the scope of Psykadenz to challenge our singular impressions to try approaching the hidden message of the state-of-the-art original encoder, Noa, and her dancers.
Likewise with every start of a psychoanalytical encounter, it kicks off with this bizarre invitation to allow oneself to say all that comes to the mind, to try repressing the repressive agents of fear, shyness, convention, all the xxxxly-correct conventions, especially to say the most utmost absurd, awkward, daring … Basically : to allow the other one that lives within you to seize the microphone and to speak out (.) for the Unconscious of the spectator to try connecting on the wavelength of the choreographer and her interpreters’ Unconscious.
I will hereafter try to share a few extra thoughts with those who joined the experience, also with those who missed out. Starting with this caution that may read like the warning displayed at the top of the windows within the wagons of the italian train » é pericoloso sporgersi » which Lacan hammered at the occasion of an interview that was later published under the title Television – » Nothing isn’t everything » (…) stressing that the wording cannot exhaust its meaning- the interpretation simply cannot drain the truth of the subject of the Unconscious. Lacan again – » Telling all of the truth is impossible, materially : words are missing « .
We sat 17 people in the room, you can double that when counting with our respective Unconscious or 34 as each one is composed of a female and a male element !
I hope you will have the courage, the energy, the desire to enter hereafter -Stopwatch in your hands : you need to give it approximately 10mn. From here on, bear with me for a reading attempt of an exceptional Choreography.
First about Makom. As Micah pointed it, מקום is one of the name of the Tetragrammaton or the Great Other. One of us maybe אלין or אילאנה -an other Anagram, met with the words of Sian’s father who saw the show before it was shown and thought of living people exiting the stage, as if exiting the World, a testimony of the death experience.
Reckoning with some psychoanalytic research work that i am currently pursuing with a colleague of mine -Magali, whereby we are looking into the sexuality and the Kabbalah with the work of the french borned jerusalemite kabbalist Charles Mopsik –The Sex Of The Souls, one of the initial impression that printed onto me is the very opposite : that is an experience of coming into the World, from its point of entrance, wandering throughout the various stages of being a being into the world. נשמות arrive from a point of Real -this should please our lacanian Psynemascope friend אלון -too bad you were not with us אלון (!) that is a point of darkness, a death angle which is also spoken as the אינסוף, the hidden G. They enter a womb, a רחם, incarnate into a body that is an ensemble of movements and enter the bigger-than-life dance evolution, one emotional stage morphing into another ; there is a beautiful moment of a man and a woman dancing onto a light projection that represents a circle, another מקום, another רחם where life is conceived, where life is given both male זכר and female נקבה to eventually take shape into the body of either a man איש or a woman אש-ה.
All of the show is about the two together honoring one of Louise Bourgeois’ motto forming some sort of Togetherness, experimenting along the way the emotions that pertain to every stage of its evolution, a שביל that is never straight, that is always taking turns here and there – » Life isn’t a long quiet river » says the french סרט במאי Chatilliez, appearing and disappearing, pairing, unpairing and re-pairing.
We can be surprised by today’s Wokism and Cancel culture’s coups, to witness in an art expression that is always at the forefront of the society’s agitations, an heterosexual incarnation of the genders, skipping on the bulshit media or administration dialect of impoverished computer de-generated acronyms cis/noncis/fluid etc. which, as confirmed by Micah, doesn’t exclude the choice of a homosexual sexuality and pairing.
Which brings me back to Kabbalah and The Sex Of The Souls. Male and female as any soul is composed at the origin of life, which is in a מקום of Real, life before life, when a soul decides to descend into our World, male and female to follow Plato’s Myth of The Cavern, another מקום whereby the human being was both male and female, an Androgyn. Their togetherness displays many choreographies, many ballets of duets, not all are the same, our guest speakers said each character is made of one dominant feature of each of the four elements -Earth, Wind & Fire, Water, which originate from the 3-4 letters ש-מ-א of the Creation alphabet, and each combination is re-composing the mythological pairing made of the same original dominant feature, one male and one female. Note that according to Mopsik referring to G.Sholem and his comment on The Book of Creation, the order of the 3 letters represent a specific alignment of the 3 elements making each of the core material of the nature -Air, Water, Fire, and as such determines the domination of a sexual principle over the other. Doesn’t it ring a bell? Don’t you recall here the very words of Sian, when talking about the orchestration that determines the coupling of the dancers?!
Another Middle-Age kabbalist Gikatila, commentator of Maimonide, points in his work The Secret Of The Marriage Of David And Batsheva, that in order to be able to come to life and into the human world, a soul breaks apart and singles out its two male and female components, once it has landed, the job of each one of them is to relocate its original and missing part in order to recompose its original form so that » One touches the other in such a manner, that not a breath can slip in-between them » ; By today’s language we would say that what matters regarding the pairing, is not that two alikes mate -Same/Same, but rather that they articulate and enunciate between the two of them a common sadomasochistic balance and language -in as many fields as can be, as they wish, and can afford.
In a Postmortem comment אלין mentioned that she read one of the opening scenes as showing » Slaves working hard and helping each other to cope with their destiny « . Indeed.
Because as much as a soul comes into the World, incarnates and puppets a human being, it is » being acted » more than it is acting. This is the generic psychological condition of the slave. A notion that we stumble upon with every celebration of פסח and the revisting of the אגדה אגדה sings French-Greek-American-Jew boy Joe Dassin about the cheezy heroism of the comics’ Dalton brothers. Coming to the World doesn’t come with liberty, it comes with the entanglement of the subject into the narratives’ spider-web that precede him and that we designate by the now commonly accepted word of Neurosis. Lacan speaking » Psychoanalysis surely can give hope to gain insight into the Unconscious that one is made of. Everyone knows that I don’t encourage anyone into it, no one whose desire is not cleared out « . The reason the soon-after liberated ex-slaves of Egypt turned against their liberator, they didn’t want to bear the responsibility of their life, the liability of their destiny -or their Unconscious. It is the core challenge of anyone facing the nagging inner questioning of going/not going-going/not-going into therapy. The reason some even in dire circumstances prefer to Not-To so they can continue enduring the enjoyment of their victimization.
At the opposite, it is this truth of the Unconscious which inspired British pediatrician turned Psychoanalyst Donald D. Winnicott, one of his famous epitaphs, which I recently heard myself offering with a twist to a woman advanced in age to her questioning whether entering now in therapy isn’t too late : » May I be alive when I die « .
Another reading key prolongs the intrigue concerning the intertwining of the two pulsions of life and death or Eros and Thanatos that we can best observe with this very opening scene and its feelings, exiting or entering onto the World stage, actually not one or the other but one and the other, the two together always in a non-time space ; shooting the arrow from the bow, giving life is giving death.
One last freeze-frame.
Makom was written in 3 months’ time. It is Vertigo’s first writing after re- entering the World in the aftermath of the in-sanitary crisis, after being suppressed all individual liberties, the mere possibility of a free-will, feeling deep down inside and throughout all of the bodies of its interprets a sense of urgency of urgencies, back-to-life, back-to-creating, back-to-speaking and back to commercial reality and economical contingencies -The famous Return of the Repressed.
Makom is a testimony on this outstanding episode of mankind history, traveling likewise Jack London and his short story Before Adam as far back as the caveman, up to yesterday’s return to the Chaos of modern times and life.
Makom is about the return to life after suffering the endangering of its precarious balance. It conveys to all of us a message that comes from outer space, both mythical and mystical, seeded with an Unconscious judaism library similar to the one that nourishes the background of the discoverer of Psychoanalysis, Sigismund Freud, filled with Torah, Talmud and Kabbalah :
With a closing painting whereas all dancers hold hands and trott under a semi-circle man made wooden construction, Makom is a celebration of life after standing on the brink of fearing its loss, bridging the epics of its epochs. It provides us with a glimpse of its secret remedy, its סוד, a call for resuming the mending of humanity, no matter what, through the reconciling of the two Sefirot ספירות that contain the two aspects of the divinity, Yessod יסוד [the foundation] and Malkhout מלכות [the royalty] the refabrication of the human being harmony both Male and Female, in all bodies (.) all genders (.) all sexualities (.), to work at trying to accomplish the messianic program of the repairing of the celestial vases of the Creation, following the japanese method called Kintsugi which consists of fixing the cracks by honoring their imperfections rather than attempting to delete them.
Makom is telling us about the Tikoun HaOlam תיקון העולם, it is a celebration of humanity, from the womb to the tomb, מרחם לקרב.
One last word to epilog this proposition which repeats a closing exchange with both Sian and Micah when wondering about the acuteness of their words, their speaking.
From the bios’ that I have shared with you in a preceding note, they are both experienced dancers. Their method of work, to elaborate a dance, includes heavy talking with Noa Wertheim and their partners in dance, but also within oneself.
Their language is strongly impregnated with spirituality, a knowledge of the inner self that most of us common people can only achieve throughout a never-ending lifetime journey of introspection which can be best achieved through an analysis, or a genuine dedication to practicing an Art, which to paraphrase Lacan in his 1953 RomeDiscourse » its function as a language is not to inform, but to evoke « .
Questions? Comments? Feel free, I’ll be pleased to pursue the dialogue.
For now : To Be Continued … With the next Psykadenz adventures.
שבוע טוב לכולם.
Samuel C. Beraud-Letz
Psychoanalyst, Freudian-Lacanian
Special Thanks to,
The choreograph Noa Wertheim, Our guests speakers and outstanding story tellers also dancers Sian Olles and Micah Aimos, Our liaison agent at Dellal for making possible those incredible encounters Galit Pri, Colleagues and friends with whom we continue researching various affairs of today’s metapsychology Magali T-Cohen and Gisèle Cababié, and Alon Kadosh, of course to each Psykadenzer for contributing their presence, enjoyment, emotions and daring to speak up and agitate the debate, Eventually my Producer Helit Strykowski, for putting it all in motion.
Ps. Is there any letter without the addendum of the after-effect that its writing triggers whilst awaiting to be stamped and addressed ?¿ …
When exchanging about the male-female characterization of the persona, Sian mentioned the costumes which from their shape may be looked upon as gender neutral, gender fluid. However when punctuating her sentence, she marked a hesitation that perspired a doubt ספק that arose from the mentioning of their Color (.) ; Same/Same, quite not, some pulling more into the אדמה reddish-orangish pantones others more into the מים greenish-blueish shades.
I will refer to Mopfsik who quotes another Middle-Age Kabbalist, Joseph de Hamadan and his work Sefer Toldot Adam. To his knowledge, he is the only Kabbalist who developed an approach of the sexual difference not in terms of essence, biology or function, but in terms of … Rhythm (.) To be a Man or a Woman is about endorsing or interpreting » A way of being passive or active, to receive, or to stream « . Each male or female Sefira singles out by its … Color (.) » The Male/Female difference is a question of .. Rhythm » (.)