FREE WORDS: Second breath

Podcast / 10 min / e-Scena

wstęp wolny
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05/10
godz. 11:00
ACCESSIBILITY
Polish subtitles – to be confirmed

 

FREE WORDS is a series of essays in a ready-to-listen form. The authors read them in their mother tongues.

Izabela Szymczyk – psychologist, psychotherapist, who specialises in individual therapy (integrative approach), runs a support group for women experiencing violence.

From the perspective of her professional experience, Szymczyk shares in the essay her reflections after watching Anda, Diana by the Portuguese artist Diana Niecpce, who has had severe movement limitations since her accident. In recent years Niepce’s personal experiences have become the subject of her artistic explorations in the field of dance art. The 21st C/U will feature the Polish premiere of  Anda, Diana.

The whole essay in the form of a podcast read by the author in the original language (Polish) will be published on our e-Scene (i.e. on our FB fanpage and YT channel). In Polish it it will be also published in the festival magazine, which will be available in October at festival venues during the events. The whole text in English will be available here on our website after its premiere on the e-Scene.

Excerpt from the essay:

Deserving is often the keynote of my therapies. (Un)deserving happiness, health, things and – finally – love.

Valuation of the self, one`s biography, being placed on the success-failure continuum may condemn to a package without rights or to a deluxe version. Obviously knowing the rights does not guarantee their realization. The most common concern about executing one`s rights is the feeling that they would burden one too much or maybe even kill, so enduring becomes the ”sanctified”, yet still pathogenic regulation.

THE ENTIRE TEXT:

Second Breath

Deserving is often the keynote of my therapies. (Un)deserving happiness, health, things and – finally – love.

Valuation of the self, one`s biography, being placed on the success-failure continuum may condemn to a package without rights or to a deluxe version. Obviously knowing the rights does not guarantee their realization. The most common concern about executing one`s rights is the feeling that they would burden one too much or maybe even kill, so enduring becomes the ”sanctified”, yet still pathogenic regulation. 

Deserving is easier when we can ask for help. It is almost always connected with overcoming shame, which means admitting one`s limitations and acknowledging them. Executed rights lift off the burden. 

I remember an accordion virtuoso who after a sudden illness lost control over his body, lost his family, money, prestige. When years later he walked back to the stage after a long and ineffective rehabilitation, the audience cried – over him or over themselves, I know not. The loss was hard to name. What does a person feel after losing the ability on which their whole life was based? What do sportspeople or dancers feel when they retire at thirty?

Fear and pain distort us cognitively. It is worth remembering that pain has informative function, but from certain (subjective) threshold becomes nothing but trauma. 

Fear is forest at night. No visibility, no data to fill the gap with negative emotion, presumed evil. It happens that rationalizing the forest requires pharmacology and therapy. My private antidote is my father`s tale. He has many times returned home through the Kielce forest. He would then take his shoes off to feel the path; only then he would not get lost. 

I can imagine how many such crises Diana Niepce must have overcome to change/transform feelings into metalanguage, an artistic vision and expression. 

It is an illusion to believe that we can achieve independence and that the world is fair. False beliefs are so common that they have dethroned facts. The fact that body will never return to its former full physical fitness crushes defense mechanisms: it is violation of cognitive processes, earthquake for relationships. It seems that if someone has decided to fight the limits of the body/mind and does it consciously, they become more real and humble. They also feel relief from the notion that being stretched between potency and dependency, they acknowledge the boundaries of their own state.

We interchangeably experience being better and worse but forget that with deterioration increases the probability of change and, what follows – development. Crisis may be springboard to success. 

In this place in life, D.N. wrote her protest song, but we deal much more often with a developmental block of a person in crisis. And then the sick does not expose us to the sight of a distorted, crippled body, does not stimulate with “otherness”, they certainly do not give themselves the right to go on stage.

Do you instinctively avoid difficulties, confrontations? Diana Niepce will take you peace away, will disturb your mind. Someone who has watched the documentary Like a Butterfly knows that after such a dose of realism one cannot fall asleep easily. Is it possible that pain and loneliness have no end? For me the right to assisted death no longer seems so controversial. 

I try to imagine the route Diana must have taken. Starting with shock, denial, anger, depression and finally acceptance. This scheme may describe our reality during the pandemic, war, and a multidimensional state crisis. Whichever stage you are at, you construct your truth in experiencing, interpreting facts, just like she does. 

The clumsy and awkward form of still frail self-liking is like a shoot growing in the dark. The formation of the self, of creating the choreography for the performance is like creating her narrative identity by the author. Deserving appreciation and recognition is an unmeasurable burden for the artist. To reach the top twice, also after a catastrophe, makes her a special woman.

Disability teaches new perception of the body, brings closer to physiology and its simplicity. The test for the environment cannot be passed without damage. What does a half-naked body mean for me as a viewer? Body becomes asexual – it is muscles that work while dancing. The gesture of spread arms can be interpreted as invitation: “Look, get used to it”. It is like a terror vaccine. What would you do if it happened to you? If your body stopped cooperating? At the end of this austere show, I am rooting for her to learn to walk…

It is an illusion, like observing a passing train from a standing one. This time the child will not fall into their parent`s arms (there will never be any more safeguard).

It is gullible to hope that a train is moving when it is standing, but who will forbid us both? We deserve this moment of infantility like a deep breath before taking a dive. 

 

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