[This text is taken from a reflection on the Musical Body format between its co-designers.]
- Do you 'talk' with your body?
- Do you listen to other people's bodies?
- Are you ever surprised by your body?
- Does your body sound like home?
We talked without words. We made sounds with our bodies to communicate. Sometimes we didn't communicate, sometimes we just existed together. We spent time just being bodies together.
We tried to 'talk' about clock time, the kind of time that only humans follow. We set a 1 minute time and tried to communicate, while listening all around to the sounds of clock time. But we could not 'talk' about it with our bodies as they became tense and we stopped listening to each other.
- What would happen if we made sounds with our bodies to talk about freedom, peace, community or utopia?
We struggle to talk about these things with words, maybe because we don't know what they would feel like.
- What if we could show each other the way with our bodies?
Having a conversation about utopia with a friend and only 'talk' using our bodies, would be really intense. It could be something like this.
We will start by connecting with the sounds of our bodies, the sounds in our bodies. We will do this by making sounds on our own. Then we will have some general conversation together using the sounds from our bodies. Our sounds will develop together, just like our thoughts develop when we have conversations using words. Then, finally, our bodies will have a conversation about utopia, our visions and how we will get there.
How do we 'talk' with our bodies? We can't tell you with words! But if you ask your body, you will tell yourself the answers, and you will do it without words.