[CYCLE II] Refabricating culture in the body
One from the archive for the solstice 🔥
This was originally posted in Feb 2022. I am recycling it in honour of the solstice, which peaked at around 7am on June 21 (AEST).
The ancestors had techniques for puzzling out our place in the world, and they are still here. Many of these old ways - languages, stories, songs, dances, sites, rites - have come close to extinction under the homogenising forces of ideological and economic conquest, yet even those that are near-lost have bones that gesture toward elusive truths that continue to replicate in the cracks of empire. I feel this in my lineal resonance with the pre-Christian folklore of the landmass now known as Europe; I am of that tradition, even in its disintegrating remnant state, demoted from lived experience to ephemera or fantasy. I see it in the long, secure stitches holding together the planetary lore of Earth, patchworking relationships between localised people, places and times.
Brutal losses of folkways undoubtedly ripple through time, expressing as a widespread resistance to engaging deeply and directly with the profoundly destabilising features of our times. These include many of the issues we are collectively facing, including those around oppression and trauma. Still, the waves of collective dissociation that follow cultural suppression may yet see our species finding paths to restoration through longing for what has been valued and lost. Longing for collaborative relationships with our oceanic roots can reinstate the value of the more grounded tones of experience, bringing depth to our perceptions of time, place and interconnectivity.
Opportunities for a radical* return are to be found within the fabric of our lived experience. If the fields of collective psyche-soma that are shaped to hold stories, songs, dances and crafts could be reverently re-sensitised, they could serve as initiatory doorways to the mysteries of deep time, as well as to a true ethics of living together. Like sex, these naturally occurring places in our biopsychosocial terrain have become taboo under certain dominant regimes. If (as I suspect) this is due to their powerful generativity, then overcoming the taboo offers important potential for putting ourselves back together and crafting a more beautiful, mutually supportive Earthly culture.
*In botany: of or from the root of a plant
🖤, Niki
This publication is made on lands of the Kulin Nation. Traditional custodians have never ceded their sovereignty to the colonial construct of australia, and I support the unfolding process of giving voice to this.