Ecstatic Dance Temple

I went to Ecstatic Dance Temple in a Church in Camden last night.

It unleashed something wild in me.

It was pretty psychedelic. There were about 20 young, fit hippies, some drummers, a woman with a mic and a DJ. It was in a church, with glowing fairy lights, dark corners, an Om sign and a statue of a Hindu God placed beneath the cross.

I liked the warm up but the part that really got me was the shaking. I've done shaking before with Jewls and it didn't get me like this. I think it was the live drummers this time. Their rhythms took my body. Actually, the rhythms were in a gentle tug of war for power with my head.

We'd been told to let the movement be led by the coxyx, and to encourage the hands and the head to shake too. The drums made my coxyx go mental. Mental. Powerful, violent argh what's the word – convulsions, that's it, but rhythmic convulsions starting in my coxyx, pelvorising up through my body and shaking my chest, really shaking it, totally within the rhythm, powered by the rhythm. The loss of control scared my mind a bit. It would come back in and say – 'ah ha! But look, I can wiggle my hips from side to side – isn't that good?' and my movement would change, the kind of possession would end, and I would feel in control again. Then the rhythm would dance back into my body and start dancing it again in it's violent, incredible convulsions. 'Warning: risk of whiplash' said head. It was true, my neck was starting to feel bad. I engaged my abs to stop my spine from wiggling so furiously, and the rhythm took me again.

I've had a shit week. And in that dark corner at the back of the church it was like all the power of it was coming out. And it came, and came, and came. I don't know how long the shaking continued for, maybe 15 minutes, maybe 30. I was drenched with sweat, and quietly glad to be able to let all this intensity move.

Some people have talked about feeling fear within a trance state, because it's an unknown territory without sense of direction or protection, like swimming in the deep sea and you don't know what monsters are in there.

I haven't felt that before. In the few trance states I've been taken into, I've only known bliss.

I didn't go into a trance last night. My friend Mark thinks he did. I didn't, but when the rhythm started to really take me and I let it, I went into darkness. I had to call for God to be with me. God be with me, I said. God be with me.

That brought me back from the darkness.

There was more darkness there overall last night than in other things, for me. There was something very Camden about it. It feels like, there are people who live in more innocence than others. Adults. I live with innocence and non innocence. I think last night, maybe those people lived in less innocence. There was maybe more chaos, darkness, cigarettes and alcohol in their lives. Less security. Maybe. I don't know. I'm making huge judgements. Maybe it was my week. My darkness. I lived in more darkness than normal this week.

Then we did a particular kind of breathing and had a free dance, for about forty minutes, to psychedelic music and live drumming. That was WICKED. I bounced around furiously and freely and I was delighted, delighted. I was happy and free. I had such intensity and so much energy. It felt like an endless enormous torrent of energy. I felt so alive. London has been making me feel half dead. Last night I felt so alive.

Some of the rhythms got me shaking again, and this time it was Sexy. Powerful, powerful, fast, big gyrations of the hips and body like an African mama, like those kids on the streets of New York you see in the videos, but like nothing learnt or copied, something instinctive coming out of the body. And I was free to just let it go and it went and it went.

Then we lay on the floor, they played rain sticks and sung songs to calm us, we had a small meditation circle, Om'd three times and drank tea, and left feeling so clean and clear and good, really good, unflutterable.

At about 1am as I got into the shower, my skin felt so very soft, and I can't help but tell you that my breasts and bottom were really firm and smooth and round and, dare I say it, pert. The skin on my face was taught and I looked beautiful to myself. This is not my usual self perception. My body felt really different, lifted, infused with some kind of primal sexy animal woman earth spirit. Was that coincidence? Did the Ecstatic dance somehow produce it?

Digging around online, all the imagery around trance dance seems to involve nearly naked women dancing to drums. Is there something about female sexual energy and real drums and the feeling I had in my body during and after the trance dance - is there something about that that's common experience - hence the images? Or is it simply that sexy scantily clad women make things look attractive to women who want to look like that and men who want to look at women who look like that?

Overall, my questions are:
Does it have to be that dark?
Does it have to be that psychedelic? Can it be a bit dehippyfied and a bit more accessible?
It was similar to Anna Halprin but more intense and wild, and more dark.
Who can and can't enjoy this?
Was I duped all those years thinking it was the drugs that made me feel so high and actually it was just the dancing I did on the drugs?
Should the kids be doing this instead? :)

I reckon the live drummers made all the difference.

....

She said that the shaking practice comes from Ratu Bagus. He's based in Indonesia. The people in this video don't seem to have experienced that darkness. I have to say though, like a lot of this stuff, it looks more than a little bit mental...

And that Frank Natale is the father of contemporary ecstatic trance dance. He's dead now, but according to his website "The last years of his work were dedicated to a large extent towards the study of extraordinary states of consciousness." Who knows what he was thinking?

I did Ecstatic dance for the first time with Jewls Wingfield at Buddhafield festival in 2005. At the end I somehow managed to fall in love with most people in the room. Most of them were strangers. The dancing dissolved into endless embraces. Jewls knows some magic.

Wierdly I just found a picture of me in there in flickr while looking for pics of ecstatic dance for this post. i'm the short haired one right in the middle.

Mayday in Padstein

This is my first real mission in the search for fun. I'm in Padstow, Cornwall, for Mayday.

It's April 30. Tomorrow apparently the whole town will erupt in fun.

After a drive down, wondering when we're going to have a proper sustainable transport system, listening to the incredible Oreka Tx for the first time - (from the amazing film Nomadak Tx, a multi award winning documentary about musicians traveling the world collaborating, getting up to mischief and meeting wild horse riding, yurt dwelling mongolian throat singers who called the call of the wild so loud my heart leapt up and joined in...)

... then yodelling along to the CD of Chartwell the Dude and trying to master Ave Maria, both the melody line and the Bach Fugue accompaniment alla Bobby Mcferrin, while eating far too much chocolate, wondering when I'm going to stop eating so much sugar, and also trying not to crash whenever I got carried away...

Upon arrival, Padstow appears to be run by Rick Stein. I didn't know that. I eat at one of Rick Stein's restaurants (I don't think I had any choice) after calling Anthony for fish advice (I only started eating  fish 6 months ago after 29 years of fish phobia. "Anthony, I eat Seabass, will I like Sole?" Affirmative.

I started writing this at dinner after text from Mark suggesting travel book. Didn't like that idea, so decided on a blog instead and got started with first post in my notebook.

You know, I'm think I might get lonely on these travels. I think I'll always be surrounded by people, but there won't be much social continuity. We'll see. Maybe this can be some kind of temporary substitute for enduring relationships. Or maybe that'll mean I'll clog up an otherwise interesting blog with random ramblings about my day. Humm. Maybe if I get any readers you can tell me whether or not I should stick to the point...

Right, Mayday eve is apparently the time for singing, so I'm off to try and find some.

After going through every pub in the village, I pass a busker singing "I'll do the job I came here to do, by any means I can."

It's the only singing I can find. Otherwise, it's lots of boozing. People are pouring out of the pubs and flooding the streets. They look healthy and beautiful.

The busker's song is about his politics. He sounds honest. Maybe for him this is a way of forming his feelings into meaning and expressing them out.

How do you feel?

I feel a bit nervous in my friend's charity shop raincoat and my shoulder bag frayed to shreds at the shoulder strap. I feel a bit overwhelmed and alone, everyone is together in community enjoying themselves. I am walking and thinking, before you can gain any trust you probably need to be relaxed and maybe even fit in, or at least make sense.

Maybe the busker will know where the singing is. I stop and perch by him.

People pass.

"It's nice that he's here", a woman says.

Others give money. A young couple stand and listen.

The village centre is decorated by big flags in the streets and on the boats in the harbour. It's a shared thing. Maybe Rick Stein co-ordinated everybody to put up the flags but I don't think so. I think people shared a story that made each of them want to put up decorations. How did that come to be?

The busker finishes his song and I go to speak to him but his phone rings. "They've started singing, have they? Ah well, I'm here now, you'll have to drag me."

Somehow or other, five minutes later John the busker and I are in his car driving to the pub in the nearby village of St Issey. As we walk in, the whole place is singing "let the light from the lighthouse shine on me." The place is packed. Everyone is booming. The sound goes deep into my fibres.

Hang on, I think, this is a Christian tune, but no one seems to care. They know it and they're going for it.

The singing is led by a small group of folkies who stand right in the middle of the crowd, facing each other for courage and because they only know the words to each song between them.

They meet here twice a month, according to the events calendar on the blackboard. That's how they can do this.

Everyone looks rosy.

More songs, the dregs of the pint and then we're back into Padstow for midnight. In the car, John tells me he saw the baker and his wife working behind the till at Tesco. “What happened!?” The baker looked bashful, he says. ”Rick Stein made us an offer we couldn't refuse.”

As we enter the village square, we find this...

(apologies for video quality... my first two little bits of filming and editing in about 8 years and I had to play with some special effects....)

It's incredible, the town is packed. Then the crowd literally goes around the village to the homes of people who have stayed at home, and they sing to get them out. There are whole verses of the song dedicated to getting the loners out of their homes because the whole point is to "unite, unite and let us all unite".

Some sleep and then up for the morning.

At 8.30am the kiddies have their own processions with the mums playing accordions. It's fantastic.

Then mid morning the big version begins:

Sam Lee told me this is the oldest living traditional festival in Europe. It's amazingly cathartic - lots of shouting at the top of your voice - it has a profound community bonding role - everyone - everyone - comes out. And according to Sam there's something trancy about it. The previous year he had that kind of peak experience quality of following the drum and the procession and the music until he was really bored, then going through the boredom and into a kind of trance. For hours and hours he couldn't be without the music.

And they do play it all day.

Later we went to the pub in Padstow and this time there was singing. At the tops of our voices, belting out harmonies, joyful. Cathartic. Fantastic.

This all works because everybody knows what to do, and they know that because it's been happening every year beyond anyone's memory. There's no one story for the history of Mayday, I'm told.

And because it requires no abstract. "Unite, for summer is a come un today." That's it. Let's all get together once a year, isn't it good that winter's over and summer's coming? Good for the fields and the fun and the bones. No one can argue with that. Out on the streets they go.

Is it gold? I don't know because I am an outsider with a mini camcorder in my hand. The insiders look like they're having a gay old time. I certainly think it's good.

Well after midnight, I walk torchless across the fields to the campsite, a mile or so away. As I'm approaching the start of the footpath I'm relieved to see three others heading the same way. I stop to roll up my jeans and tuck them into my socks. A few feet away I hear “Oh that's a good idea.” A woman bends down to do the same, and the others with her follow her lead.

It strikes me that so much of how we learn and what we do is about picking up ideas from each other and copying. It's almost as if teaching is not required a lot of the time.

On the journey I am reminded of an England of old, an England of highwaymen and moonlit paths.

I can discern the path across the field because the trodden earth reflects the iridescent moon, while the matt surface of the ploughed earth absorbs it. I stumble once or twice because I can't take my eyes off the beautiful sky.

What do you do if you were born into a community with no rituals? OK that's rubbish, we've got lots of rituals but this is a good one and I've got nothing like it in my local culture. Singing and dancing in the streets all night with the entire community, simply to come together and welcome the change of season.

I like it. I like applying fun stuff to real things, like a change in season and the passing of time.

How do we do this kind of thing in communities which don't have a deep shared memory and love of a ritual which they all feel they own, together?