Deathclown Rules! podcast 4 - Cheryl Hsu
Dreaming Together, The Art & The Trouble
Deep Listening and Deep Speaking
The following recorded conversation is held a bit differently than many of my other podcast interviews. And even admitting that is a bit tender. Part of me wanted to “keep it for myself” in some way, but I lovelovelove public education when modeled well. Cheryl allows me to exist within a conversation is a way that is very rare in my life. I could list reasons why I think this is so: Zen praxis, soulmaking dharma, design thinking, ancestral connections, cultivation of artistic curiosity… but I suspect this is a case of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.
While Cheryl may credit the collective presencing process, cohort and associated written material as a large part of this style of communication, I would look at it from another angle. Because this style of communication is not new to me, nor do I see many euro-centric/modern/western people practicing it the way Cheryl does. My own belief is that this way of speaking, sharing, listening and being in dreamspace together is much more like the yarning Tyson Yunkaporta speaks of, and much more like the kind of dreamy sing-song-storytelling style of many indigenous peoples, and the process that I’ve participated in with devised theater making. I’ve experienced this way of being with ancestors, in medicine circles, and rarely, ever-so rarely with other human peers.
In a basic sense, Cheryl is holding space to the degree that they become and allow space to unfold. This is always what I’ve been doing in my practice, but it rarely ever appears that way to outside observers because one single person holding such a wide frame, listening to the dream so warmly and artistically can only do so much when others are not really in-the-pocket with you. When multiple skilled people can hold, allow and become space in this way, the Collaborative ARTISTRY of co-dreaming, story-sharing and collective inspiration becomes able to flourish in the felt sense of everyone involved, without competition, without extreme trauma regression, without perceived scarcity and biases taking over.
In my opinion, it is a soul ‘decolonizing’ and maturation process if one is able to hang out with what that entails.
It is a long and intense conversation, and at times the wifi and assorted technology saw fit to fail, glitch and otherwise apply its agency. Here it is.
Cheryl Hsu https://cherylhsu.ca/
Ria Baeck's Collective Presencing: https://book.collectivepresencing.org/
postscript:
EARTH IS DREAMING EGG
It is sometimes that, like a strange bird flying through an open window, one’s experience of life can become refreshed. Temporarily of course, because everything is, but also, that moment can leave a mark, an echo that resounds and sustains a note within the perception of the experiencer — which is to say, a dream contacts another dream, and now both dreams are changed in some impossible-to-make-sense-of way.
I could spend hours lamenting about the struggles we face as a species and how those struggles compress my own life, my own body and mind and experience of being here. This world in many ways for many peoples, is a meat grinder, a crucible of whirling swords and hard lessons. Through my own personal struggle to remain alive in this place and time, I have come to realize that this world of materiality and dualism is a dream within a dream. This is not a metaphor! And even though I know this in my blood and bones and spirit, the very real stresses and oppressions of our collective choices can pull me, like a strong tide, out to sea — a sea of loneliness, pain, despair, anger, frustration.
Instead of pretending that this anguish is a problem to be solved, my nondual practice shows me that in that endless sea is a perfect place to practice, as perfect as it might ever be, so I better get to it.
And even as the weather rolls over me, my insignificance on full display, I try to make art of this life. For me, artmaking and soulmaking are the same as dreaming and being dreamt. We are each other’s refracted lights, rays that glimmer within a web of diversity and differentiation. Each soul-shard’s experience like a cryptic riddle, undecipherable without many other shards.
And even with the potential opportunity of sense-making, we often fall prey to the tyranny of our own addictions - to certainty, to comfort, preference, pleasure, safety, power…
All of these, distractions from the artmaking process while also being material for the same process!
And so, it was like this, in yet another winter of sickness and symptoms that a strange bird flew through a window and we began to speak and listen and dream a bit together. It was, and is, a great kindness that might only be possible because of personal distance and detachment, which centers the craft and science of the soulmaking, artmaking process itself as the primary attachment.
We do need each other, but I believe we need each other in non-ordinary ways. For it is this non-ordinariness, its strange yet specific rules and boundaries, limits and constraints, that allows the soul to dance and sing, less burdened by the morbid habits of our typical enculturation.
When two or more souls-in-the-making can play in this way, I believe there is no better nourishment for the violent boredom we have inflicted upon the Earth.
So, perhaps a long-winded way to say Thank You, Cheryl, for listening to whatever, whoever, sparked you to reach out and begin talking to me as a peer, a fellow player in the greatest and only game in town.
May the Dark Mother continue to dream us all, and may we explore the paths she reveals.
Deathclown Rules! series
Table of Contents
1. Boldness, Learning, Play, Theater - Deathclown Rules! prologue
2. The Pink Cloud Effect
3. Theater of Precarity
4. Cartoontra
5. Deathclown Rules! podcast series part 1 w/ Leah Piotroski
6. Deathclown Course webinar recording
7. Deathclown Rules! podcast 2 & 3 w/ Naked Empire Bouffon & Matt Sparkes
8. Creative Coaching Sessions with dare in Deathpractice & Deathclown
9. this article!
Info & Application for 3 month online deathclown demo group
Bonus New Interview recorded last fall in 2022 by Kate Morales of Somatic Scribing - you can see their website here: www.asthecrowfliesdesign.com
Thank you for this conversation! The implications of what Cheryl said about the almost violent intensity towards the cutenss of her cat (lol) being diffused or modulated into gentleness were wild for me. There was so much more too and I'm sure I'll rewatch many times. Grateful to both of you :)