TRANSCRIPT: Notes From Dunfanaghy 15 – Finding Aliveness
Hi, it’s Megan. Welcome to today’s Notes from Dunfanaghy. Today I’m thinking about finding aliveness in our work, and how so often we find the aliveness in our own work through engaging with aliveness in someone else’s work.
So my husband is a signed artist and musician, filmmaker, among other things. But he had a show last night, which I went to. I used to go to all of his shows back in our glory days, but since children it’s harder and harder for each of us to go and witness the other’s work. So it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him play, and he has been working on this particular piece that he performed last night for the last few months. He’s been kind of testing it out and working towards it, and so I’ve heard it in little snippets in the house, and I’ve spoken to him about it a little bit, so, you know, I had engaged with it a little bit.
But whenever I went last night and saw him perform it, it was really alive. It was like, oh, it’s, I don’t know, it’s easy to forget the impact of stepping inside someone else’s work.
And so I always find that experience — it’s like a physical experience. And, you know, he’s doing sound work, and of course it’s physical, because, you know, the vibrations are moving through you. But that experience of immersing yourself in someone else’s work, I think, is always a physical experience — cells realigning. It’s not just standing at a distance and looking at someone’s work, or reading it, or standing on the edges of it. You’re there, you’re live with the person, you’re in their environment.
And so that’s one of my favorite things about running a retreat, going to a retreat, going to any kind of live thing by someone whose work I’m interested in — you actually get to really step inside.
And so, I mean, one of the reasons why I ran a retreat in Dunfanaghy to begin with — I think originally I thought of it as allowing people to step inside my story. I’ve been so aware over the years that — pardon me — I always say that our story and our work are about as valuable as each other, and actually sometimes our story might be more valuable than our work to other people, because our story is the thing that makes our work available to people, it’s like the catalyst that draws people in and lets them understand the context of the work, and kind of opens them to experience the work.
And so, you know, I was very conscious that that really is a lot of the value of me running a retreat in Dunfanaghy — like, you’ve heard my story, and now you can come and be in that place, be in the place that has shaped me, that has formed my work. And I think that is really valuable. But the other thing about it is just letting people come and not just witness, but be inside of the work, and the aliveness of it.
And my work is most alive in Dunfanaghy. This year, more so than ever. I’ve talked on some previous voice notes about — I thought I understood my relationship to Dunfanaghy and the landscape around it, I thought I understood the role that it played, the significance of it, how it related to my work, and on some level I did. But this year I am uncovering, like, a whole new layer to all of that. The land is coming alive to me in all kinds of ways.
I’m kind of experiencing — I ask Americans all the time if they have Everlasting Gobstoppers, and I should pay attention to the answer, because I can’t remember right now. But so whenever I was a kid, there was a candy in Northern Ireland, at least, it was Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers. And so you suck it, and it might start off red, and as you keep sucking the sweet, it changes colour, and the colours might come back around. So you’re on the red layer, and then you’re on a blue layer, and then a green layer, and a yellow layer, and then maybe it’s red again.
And I feel like my work is an Everlasting Gobstopper in that sense, I think. All of us have this experience of our work where we work through a particular layer, a particular topic, a particular part of our story, and we think we’re done with it, and we’re on to new things that are more alive for us and more interesting to us. And then at some point along the way you realise, oh, I’m back on the red layer again. Like, this thing has come alive again in a different way, and there’s some kind of deeper aspect to it that we’ve lived more life, and so now we’re ready to unpick some deeper part of it. And we’re just spiralling down or up, I don’t know, whatever direction you prefer.
And so I’m right in that, with Dunfanaghy, the landscape, and the Everlasting Gobstopper — like, I’m back on that layer, and it is so alive and unpredictable, and it’s just very exciting for me to be there at the minute. So I’m very excited to bring people there while I’m in that, like, thin place within a thin place.
So, yeah, I think that those are my musings today. It’s just about how we can often — I’m all about following the spark of aliveness in your own work, and sometimes the easiest place to find the spark of aliveness in yourself is within someone else’s work. Like, if you can step inside the aliveness in someone else’s work, things spark off.
So, you know, whenever I was at the gig last night, watching John’s performance, and the other woman who performed, my brain is processing all kinds of things to do with my work that are absolutely nothing to do with what I’m witnessing, but I’m just bouncing off these little sparks of aliveness, these little moments.
And so that’s one of the things that I think about a lot as I prepare for the retreat. That is one of the things that I want to foster for everyone.
Okay, thanks for listening, and I will see you tomorrow.