Why Unspeakable Arts?
The unspeakable is my sovereign realm. By which I mean it is where I am connected to source – an intelligence and grace greater than myself. I feel more confident, alive and in flow. It’s not that it can’t include words… Let’s flow with the magic and paradox of speaking to the unspeakable. In our society so much of the focus is on verbal communication and linear left brain expression. Words can only aspire towards meaning (see more about this in my favourite piece of writing about language Toni Morrison’s Nobel prize lecture ). Words can be powerful and liberating; they are not really words they are symbols sounds and energy! How they are spoken, framed and structured is a spell and has its own aliveness.
I relish poetic and liminal language as a bridge arcing toward expressing and engaging with the magic of feeling and experience. However the realm of the unspeakable is being neglected and I see this in our disregard of the other than human world and of life’s mysteries. Words are tools of the mind, human mechanisms and they are not enough to hold the world of experience and energy. I want to offer spaces to discover where the languages of touch, energy, emotion, impulse, vision, scent and inspiration can be validated, integrated and unleashed.
Art is about skill and imagination, the fusing together of intention and attention. There are many ways to be an artist and all of us carry this archetype within us in some form or other, waiting to guide us and channel the intelligence of the divine. When we take ourselves out of the realm of preconceived ideas, material and emotional ambitions and insecurities and become present to a different kind of knowing, a silent unspoken awareness that is always there; it removes the exhaustion of isolation, of striving for significance and connection. Instead we make a little space to exist in surrender to a loving, awesome power that flows through us and we begin to wonder how we might participate and play in this short miracle of human life. Bliss, peace and acceptance become a balance point from where you can witness and enjoy the ups and downs of life. Adventure and arrival in the present moment are the same thing because when you are present, mystery and unknown wonders are available to you. Awareness will liberate you from the illusion of your mind and the give you choices and insights which will support you to live more fully in your authenticity and alignment.
If certain kinds of language are speakable and shareable they also capture, fix, fragment, reduce and negate. What is unspeakable is alive, indefinable, transgressive, it cannot be sold, regulated or captured – you are unspeakable. I could write and talk for hours, spend my whole life writing volumes of poetry and I could never contain the essence of your aliveness. This is why I value unspeakable things because they will set you free into new territory and because knowing them is a process not a destination; it is a blend of intuition and awareness and exploration. Aliveness is a blend of the spiritual and the embodied, the creative and the scientific that turns me on and wakes me up and makes me want to stay and play and reflect back to you your aliveness, your potency. It helps me to hold on even on the days where there is no hope nor reason to my mind and I am lost. Worming about in the darkness develops a sensitivity to knowing which is usually unseen and unthought. I want to plug in to that web and take you out and show you doorways in your being to trust, vitality and joy that hold all the rest of your experience and bring you to a fluid and flexible meaning making from the inside out.
My job might be to be a bridge between the speakable and the unspeakable, between the dominant and marginal between the seen and the unseen worlds. A lot of the time I spend exploring in the dark and it can be scary for my conditioned mind. I understand that terrifying aspect of the unspeakable and I celebrate words and stories too; these are the rafts on which we sail the ocean and we can make them beautiful. We need our voices and our minds and we need to learn to care for them. If you are struggling with fear, anxiety, internal conflict, fragmentation or numbness, dissatisfaction and a feeling of despair it might be a great thing to turn towards them. These are all exciting windows or doors of opportunity for engagement with more of your aliveness. The part of you that is more than human is trying to tell you something. Stillness and surrender to the unspeakable can offer both a refuge from your memories and ideas and a compassionate space for all the content of you, all that memory story you carry. You will feel the delicious potency of the other, the unknown, the unspeakable, the laughing witness, the dark matter they runs between everything. An edge of aliveness that can be disturbing and reassuring exists when we enter the realm of the unspeakable and play there, with life moving through us and as us, rather than happening to us or being driven by our conditioned minds.
Love Alex
