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Happy Year of the Water Rabbit this Sunday~ I hope you are healthy and OK. I’m back home in Quezon City, writing to you from the other side of all that’s happened since the last “monthly” newsletter.
Last October, I headed to Jogjakarta for a month to join the ROSA group residency at lifepatch, then returned to Indonesia in mid-December to join the performance and documentation tour of the Damalung Blueprint project around Mount Merbabu near Semarang, also in central Java.
There’s much too much to say about these trips than I can wrap my head around, so I’ll save the writeup for the next couple of newsletters. For now, I want to share something I’m currently working on as I sift through notes and transcriptions from different sources and try to track common threads for some upcoming research projects:
The first fragment is a combined Facebook chat excerpt (with Sidd) and journal entry from December 2018, where I’m recounting things that my Jungian therapist said to me in a session.
The second is a direct quote of a Whatsapp message from Hyojeong, describing her experience of a session I did for her via Zoom in May 2022.
The third piece is a modified transcription of Jaya’s feedback after I’d done a Zoom sound bath for her in January 2023.
Using these three excerpts of journal entries, chat threads, and session feedback from 2018 to 2023, I follow an idea (or a call) of the feminine voice. For example, it’s only after lining up Hyojeong’s and Jaya’s words here that I see the strong similarities in psychic imagery plain as day. What did they hear in my hearing? Were they hearing from the same world and thus seeing the same vista?
Then there is the alignment between the 2018 chats with an utterance made just last week. Is there any meaning to the precision with which the destination of my voice resonates a prior vision? Or is this inevitable, since everything ends up in the wet fertile dark of the cavern anyway? Does it all come down, as Hyojeong says—to ‘the human voice’— and its mutability as both vision and vibration?
1. 2018: Talking to Sidd / After talking to Sophie
I’m gestating a performance piece na
around the voice, and longing,
and hymns
Or hymen? Lol.
-
THERE
HYMEN HYMNS
-
That my healing work is not even music, but sound.
Whore! When I told Sophie about the Hymen Hymns project,
she giggled. ‘Virgin-whore!’
2. 2022: Hyojeong’s telling
Throughout Angeline's sound session, I could feel protected from something, a sense of being filled with energy, and a feeling of confidence and courage that I had the power to move forward.
It was a great experience to observe myself from a new perspective and feel the movement of my mind visually and tactilely, which I could not think of in other meditations before.
At that time, I was lost in the various problems I faced, and I could feel them unfolding in the landscape. In it, I took a new step in my mind, which embodied the shift from abstract and blurred mental pain and problems to material things and surroundings that seemed realistic to a reasonable level in my head.
So when I did an action in it, I felt like I had a clue or a guide to how to get through the situation in my mind, and I think it actually eased the difficulty of doing something a little after a while as if I had done it before. It's as if it was a time to be sure of my honest intentions and thoughts in advance.
Although it is a human voice, it is impressive and spiritually fulfilled. It stimulates personal narratives and brings about a change of thought by creating a sound, not a way, to send and receive messages directly verbally.
Anyone can experience their own's journey deeply after experiencing Angeline's session. It was such a meaningful and energetic experience.
Below is what I experienced through the session.
I'm standing on a cliff at the start.
It feels like the space is filled with humid and chill air, and wind around the body.
The air seems dense and heavy, there are many dark clouds, and the body stands heavily on the ground, but it is not anxious.
There are many other cliffs in the distance, and there is a sense that I should soon leave here and go there.
At first, I didn't know how to get out of this place, but as I slowly felt around where I was standing, at some point, I could see a staircase made of stone like a narrow and small road. My mind moved to go along there.
As I slowly walk down the stairs, I met small animals, bugs, and drooping plants, all of which feel welcomed and protected. There are often places like slides, and I could come down from the cliff without much effort.
After coming down, what I reached is a vast plain. Reeds-like plants that are similar in height to mine are endlessly spread out and I walk one step at a time toward another cliff. It is a continuation of walking and walking. A heavy mass of wind is all over the body as it goes. I feel alone and I feel I have to be alone, but I am not lonely. I walk with a sense of my whole journey.
Meanwhile, very strong energy enters the lower back of the body and repeatedly passes through the end of the head, filling my body with energy, and with that power, I feel confident that I can continue to move forward and further. The energy is with me throughout the walk, winding around me and the vast atmosphere.
The strange cliffs far away look closer and closer, and among them, the golden and orange cliffs, which are brightly colored, stand out. However, I am not worried about climbing the cliff again and I am sure there will be a way to go.
3. 2023: Jaya’s transmission
I don’t know, it’s uh, terrifying but—
Beautiful youknowwhatI— Dark sounds from within? Um.
Beautiful creatures of the dark. But that’s just the first act.
The first act is just really dark and lunar.
And your sounds— just, you’re so, I’m so proud of you
From I don’t know the Vargas Museum concert to this?
It’s still you but, uh, you’ve finally—
Heard yourself. Yeah like um. Thank you for sharing that.
Very feminine sound which,
which is what I needed.
Very vaginal. Clitoral. Yes I was moving
Babaylan, wild woman way. Hair just all over the place,
Lots of stomping. Non-graceful, architectural movements.
The limbs and then uh. The voice,
The guttural sounds… and primal screams.
You were saying ibu, right? Sister.
I heard sister. Ibu in Bahasa Indonesia.
The second act was beautiful for me because I saw
Red flowers and bluebirds. And the, the Sun?
And, uh… that was your return to heaven, your safe space.
Yes, beautiful birds, beautiful flowers, and bright lights.
But you withheld it again, you know—and. Yeah.
You gave me a feminine vision.
From the earth and the water—
tadpoles and fish, and sharks, crocodiles,
Creeping creatures, very vaginal. Cavernous.
That’s why I said vaginal.
The woman, the woman! The earth goddess. I saw her.
Very forceful. The masculine, but reclaimed
by the feminine.
And then in the silence I ended up with:
Oh my god me alone in my throne.
Alone, atop a mountain, but so happy.
So thank you.