dance #131, ordinary affects, take one: anger

Friday May 1, 2009

Ordinary Affects, Take One: Anger

9:30 p.m. A 45 second transduction in my study. I tap into this emotion—one I tend to try to avoid feeling—and let it move my body. The movements are fierce. Violent. I stand facing North. My arms raised up by my head. Hands like claws, repeatedly scraping downwards through an invisible layer of flesh before me. Hissing sounds scream almost silently out of my mouth. Teeth bared.  I let the feelings move through me until my arms fall limp and I’m left standing. Spent. Feeling my jaw and face slacken and release. Feeling the sour, almost acrid, sensations in my shoulders ease. I just breathe, letting go. Feeling nothing except exhaustion. Alice is almost wailing from the other room while I draw. She runs up and down the hall, agitated. The day was alternately cloudy, sunny, and wet. On this day when all workers are supposed to come together in solidarity, I struggle with seeing my labour rendered invisible, and my writing in print under someone elses name. This is the first in a series transducing “ordinary affects,” inspired by Kathleen Stewart’s (2007) ethnography Ordinary Affects.

~ by nmyers on May 1, 2009.