In the Old Testament, Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt. Salt on its own can suck away dark energy, it is that powerful. Salt preserves and seasons food. The bible refers to salt a lot, for example the Sodom and Gomorrah story, Abraham’s nephew Lot chose to live in these cities because they had much water and good grazing lands for his sheep ( Genesis 13:8-13 ). Due to the sins of the citizens of these cities, God destroyed them with fire. As they fled, the angels warned them, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you, and do not stay anywhere in the valley; escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away” (Genesis 19:17).
Lot and his family escaped, “But his wife, from behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26). She lagged behind. She turned and watched the flaming sulfur fall from the sky, consuming everything she valued. Then it consumed her. The Hebrew word for “looked back” means more than to glance over one’s shoulder. It means “to regard, to consider, to pay attention to.”
Her punishment is ironic as the image of Lot’s wife standing watching over the Dead Sea area—where to this day no life can exist—is a poignant reminder to us not to look back or turn back from the profession of faith.
Basis of all science: osmosis. Happens every minute. When there’s a salty solution on one side of a membrane and water on the other so there’s a concentration gradient. Naturally the salt will move across the membrane into the water solution until it reaches equilibrium (balance state) between both. That happens throughout all cells in the body, this is called osmosis and it’s to do with salt concentration gradients. For example, my mum always gets me to gargle my sore throat with warm salty water, which again follows this process and the water and badness in the mucus cell will be transferred out into the saline solution and vice versa.
there's a desert
or a mountaintop
or a pile of salt on a dining room table, a girls slim fingers sidling around it
a mermaid, an eye, a spelt out fuc- before mother swipes through
and now the salt pours inside her belly
fills her up as she grows
sucks the wet from her insides
so when she breathes the leaves crackle and fall
and people cough
and lakes dry up
and she keeps breathing
and filling the salt with all the
stuff
from the outside
so her belly is an ocean and her tongue is a salt flat
and it hurts
to have her stomach so dry it burns
and her throat so itchy it's cracked
she hasn't spoken in years
can't
speak without seizing up
drink
breathe
and so she coughs
and vomits and retches
and the salt comes up
brings with it silt and dead leaves and years old driftwood
preserved apples
glass rims filled with bitter cheap
stuff
and her chest is raw and throbbing pink
throat clawed up
maybe this hurts as much as the dry did
all the wet blood and sweat
but she's done it now
and she breathes out her insides
throws them on the walls around her
and into the people she sees
so she's everywhere
and the salt is gone
and she can speak again.
Echo
Ovid- Echo was a beautiful nymph who protected Zeus from Hera’s anger. In
return, Hera cursed Echo so she was only able to repeat the last words spoken to
her.
Longus (Daphnis and Chloe) Echo’s mother was a nymph, but she had a mortal
father and Echo was not a nymph herself. She was raised amongst nymphs, and
the Muses taught her singing and musical instruments. Pan grew angry, enraged
by her musical virtuosity and her modesty, and he drove the men of the fields
mad. They ripped Echo apart, and scattered the still singing shreds of her body
across the earth. Gaia hid the shreds of Echo in the earth, and she still sings back
when others sing to her.
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Female voices on the radio
Women on the radio- 99% invisible has set up a specific folder and autoreply for
complaints about women’s voices
Vocal fry- lowering voice and making it gravelly for emphasis
Women also criticised for upspeak- raising your voice at the end of statements-
‘valley girl’ speech, mocked
So women are criticised for raising their voices and for lowering them- the
implication being that any tool that helps a women emphasise and make a point
is an unpleasant sound- women should be uninteresting and easy to ignore
Men do vocal fry all the time!
Female assistant voices
Viv, Siri, Alexa- all digital assistants with female names and feminine voices
Why are these digital assistants all still female?
Codes a connection between feminine voices and names and subservience
Her- assistant is female
Sandra- podcast- the ai assistant is called Sandra
Watson- used on quiz show jeopardy and works alongside cancer researches- is
a male voice and name- more definitive, shorter sentences
Enlightenment salons
Run by women, but not places where women spoke or shared work
Moments to play with
-
Innocence and Kindness
-
A gang of men tore her body apart
-
Gaea scattered her body still singing
-
Osmosis happens every minute
-
So she coughs and retches and vomits
-
She sings back. Echo
-
Protect yourself with an element that hurts you
-
It was deep, so deep as high as the stars above we will go below
-
in her own private garden
-
Voice as her entry to the world
-
Pretty is not the price we pay to exist in the world
-
Sea salt foam on the sea
-
Innocence viewed as weakness
-
Mermaids have no tears therefor they suffer more
-
on the power of another hangs her eternal desitny
-
want to be eternally living
-
beauty comes with pain
-
want what you cant have
-
The price to pay
-
Every step forward will feel like a thousand knives
-
pride must suffer pain
-
A woman without fear is not natural, a child without doubt is _______________
-
How does our voice reflect how we feel in the world?
-
How important is voice to expression
-
The difference between masculine and feminine anger
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Punishment for saying no
-
Hearing but never experiencing
-
Seeing through someone else's eyes
-
Curiosity killed the feline
-
Preservation (Lots wife turned into Salt)
-
Not technically dead, not technically alive - preserved
-
Sacrifice and knives
-
Oysters on her tail (being weighed down)
MERMAID TEXT
It’s a superstition among sailors that having women on board a ship is bad luck
Whenever ships were hit by a big storm, sailors would throw women overboard to increase their chances of survival
As the women sank below the waves, perhaps the mermaids who preyed on sailors saw them sinking
And took them in their arms
And breathed salt water into their lungs
Held them up as their legs fused together and scaled over
Stroked their hair and wiped their eyes as they opened
And saw the girls around them
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TEXT
water burns our throats
where we have swallowed our tongues
which were writhing sharp edged things
that fought on the way down
our mouths are tired and weary
jaw locking
teeth ground to the gum pink and empty and bleeding
from keeping all the mess making noise in
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The age of start and End.
It’s a wait,
Or a ticking time bomb.
Its patience.
You long and seek,
becoming thirst.
To chase the clock and be
Older.
A whole eighteen years around the sun.
Adult.
And you believe you’re out.
Released, to finally migrate from nest.
The nest that was mended, layered, broken through, and healed again
And again.
Strict, hesitant and protective was
My father.
And I expected more
Stricter, more hesitant, more protective.
Cold smack in the face.
Need: Information, fact, word.
I had to be a silver platter of purity.
The age of time was reversed
And I was a child.
Restriction upon restriction
And I refused.
Age came with rights,
So I chose,
And naturally it was politics.
From what hangs within the stars
He entered my story,
And so, entered consequences naturally
Love is the compass,
And all there was time.
But love gave me freedom, time and myself.
And I am forever disorient with my own flesh and blood.
They can be avoided
But ultimately you will ache.
And as much as you wish not,
You will care.
AMALIAs POEM
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Salty water poured out of your nose
and you coughed and crawled and
heaved and you’re dragging yourself out of the sea.
And you’re sick, sick, sick
But you’re better off I think
Things are getting clearer
And your arms are less tired than they were before.
Lifted by strings,
They sprinkle a salt circle around your vessel.
Around your cold, cracked flesh.
Rub it into your wounds.
It’ll hurt, you’ll be clean.
Most importantly you’ll be safe.
It may seem strange to protect yourself with an element of what you chose to do yourself harm.
But pain is worth nothing if you do not learn from it
and if you do not decide to let it settle inside you and accept that it lingers.
That salt lines all of your guts.
Each of your organs.
Flakes and crystals will sprinkle out from time to time
When you cough or when you speak.
And if they ask tell them that you went into the sea,
That it swallowed you whole,
That you forgot how to see.
Tell them it left the salt behind when it poured out.
Of your nose.
Then cough again.
INTO -
MOMENT 1 - A girl sings
- It was deep, so deep, as high as the stars above, we will go below.
Moment/Music to create:
Chorus
Beauty
Solid
One voice
-
How important is voice to expression.
Moment:
From scattered places around the room, each girl sings the same sustained note- C.
Slowly, we walk together and get into formation, with girls speaking text in the centre.
Once in the formation, we slowly kneel, suzuki style, and start the trills and spoken text.
There are specific gestures for each line of text, eg. Imagine if patches of moonlight sank to the sand is the right hand lifted up and then zigzagging from side to side downwards.
Maybe text speakers have different gestures.
The tone of the sustained note slowly changes to a nasal sound, and some girls sing down the octave- this represents a change to a storm or turbulence.
Text:
Look up, and see the moon above the waves,
and the belly of beasts in the water above
feel the waves brush your cheek
and the tides caress your hair
cold water currents wrap themselves around your legs
imagine if patches of moonlight sank to the sand
fluttered softly downward to rest upon your cheek
or the flowers came alive around you
and touched their petals against your arms
or the fish came together
to dart around your eyes
and softly kiss your eyelids
imagine if the sea storm winds came down to tangle themselves in your hair.
MOMENT 2 Superstition
It’s a superstition among sailors that having women on board a ship is bad luck
Whenever ships were hit by a big storm, sailors would throw women overboard to increase their chances of survival
As the women sank below the waves, perhaps the mermaids who preyed on sailors saw them sinking
And took them in their arms
And breathed salt water into their lungs
Held them up as their legs fused together and scaled over
Stroked their hair and wiped their eyes as they opened
And saw the girls around them
MOMENT 3 She is kept small and delicate
- Innocence and kindness viewed as a weakness.
- Mermaids have no tears.
- GIANT GIRLS extending over audience and giving advice.
Moment/music to create:
Low cooing voice
Patronising
Calming lullaby but annoying
Hey darling,
Hey sweetheart,
Hey little one
id listen
but the pitch of it
the edge on it
its unpleasant
Hey chicka,
If you’d just stay calm,
why are you so upset?
I won’t want to help you
with your voice breaking like that
grating like that
its shrill, its nasty
you’re getting hysterical
sweetie, girly, young lady
calm down
Kiri wave music
Tears:
I remember learning that you can cry from any emotion, that emotions are chemical levels in your brain and your body is constantly trying to maintain equilibrium. If one emotion sky rockets, that chemical becomes flagged and signals the tear duct to open as an exit and to release that emotion packaged neatly within a tear. Everything made sense after learning that. That sudden stability of your emotions after crying. How crying is often accompanied by the inability to feel any other emotion at that precise moment. It is especially beautiful knowing that is is even possible to experience so much beauty or love or happiness that your body literally cant hold on to all of it. So what I have learned, is that crying signifies that you are feeling as much as humanly possible - and that is living life to the fullest. So keep feeling and crying as much as you need.
MOMENT 4 She fights her way out
- You protect yourself with an element that hurts you.
- Nasty, bossy, shrill, hysteria.
- How important is voice to expression.
Moment/music to create:
Driven
Chant
Intense
Discordant
Climax
Subvert dynamic
Reckless
Desert poem
Theres a desert
or a mountaintop
or a pile of salt on a dining room table, a girls slim fingers sidling around it
a mermaid, an eye, a spelt out fuc- before mother swipes through
and now the salt pours inside her belly
fills her up as she grows
sucks the wet from her insides
so when she breathes the leaves crackle and fall
and people cough
and lakes dry up
and she keeps breathing
and filling the salt with all the
stuff
from the outside
so her belly is an ocean and her tongue is a salt flat
and it hurts
to have her stomach so dry it burns
and her throat so itchy it's cracked
she hasn't spoken in years
can't
speak without seizing up
drink
breathe
and so she coughs
and vomits and retches
and the salt comes up
brings with it silt and dead leaves and years old driftwood
preserved apples
glass rims filled with bitter cheap
stuff
and her chest is raw and throbbing pink
throat clawed up
maybe this hurts as much as the dry did
all the wet blood and sweat
but she's done it now
and she breathes out her insides
throws them on the walls around her
and into the people she sees
so she's everywhere
and the salt is gone
and she can speak again.
She breathes out her insides
MOMENT 5 She is torn apart
- Osmosis happens every minute.
- Moon turns to mermaid.
Salt sisterhood melody
Salty water text
Salty water poured out of your nose
and you coughed and crawled and
heaved and you’re dragging yourself out of the sea.
And you’re sick, sick, sick
But you’re better off I think
Things are getting clearer
And your arms are less tired than they were before.
Lifted by strings,
They sprinkle a salt circle around your vessel.
Around your cold, cracked flesh.
Rub it into your wounds.
It’ll hurt, you’ll be clean.
Most importantly you’ll be safe.
It may seem strange to protect yourself with an element of what you chose to do yourself harm.
But pain is worth nothing if you do not learn from it
and if you do not decide to let it settle inside you and accept that it lingers.
That salt lines all of your guts.
Each of your organs.
Flakes and crystals will sprinkle out from time to time
When you cough or when you speak.
And if they ask tell them that you went into the sea,
That it swallowed you whole,
That you forgot how to see.
Tell them it left the salt behind when it poured out.
Of your nose.
Then cough again.
Picking up the pieces
MOMENT 6 She is scattered across the earth and sea
Drive salt into the earth
Gaia taking pieces (DAN THATS THE DANCE VID WE NEED TO FIND AND INSERT HERE THX)
Gaia echo
MOMENT 7 She sings still
- Preservation and curing.
Moment/music to create:
Take off skirts
Dresses sing on their own
We sing to them