January 25, 2025
My current project, Disciple, hinges on the relationship between three words: discipline, dignity and disciple and their very early root word: dek, which means acceptance. What does acceptance have to do with discipline or dignity? Intuitively, I know it is key somehow. But how?
In the midst of creating this project, which is focused on the labour of women in my community in Newfoundland (who have been the source of inspiration for this investigation and with whom I am positioning myself as their disciple) and women in rural Scotland who share a similar social and economic background, I have spent time in residence at Zen Mountain Monastery and I have been the full time caregiver to my elderly mother who fell and needed a hip replacement. I asked the Universe to teach me about discipline and she very kindly provided me with two different but clear opportunities to practice it. Not as theoretical or even as Art Project but as life.
At first, I was worried that I wasn’t working on my project, which has been funded by ArtsNL (my deepest gratitude to ArtsNL!) and will require some kind of reporting. After days became weeks and weeks became months, I realized that I was, in fact, “working on my project” but, like so many projects before this one, it just doesn’t quite look like what I thought it would look like. Once I saw that, the world opened up. Everything was fair game to be included, examined and celebrated.
One thing that I had set myself to do as part of the project was to make three performances - one each for discipline, dignity and disciple. Discipline would come first. This is now a video/audio project. It may yet include performance but let’s see what happens. Dignity was always going to happen in Scotland, where I will be starting on March 10th. And the conclusion of the project will happen this summer in Gillams with disciple.
After so many years of making art, I trust that forces are at play that I can’t always see or be conscious of in the moment. It is only afterwards that I can look back and point to things coming together outside of my control. Perhaps this too is part of acceptance?