Maria Barnas: ARE YOU AVOIDING THE HORSES AGAIN

A piece for three voices

by Maria Barnas

and a fragment from a poem by Rose Ausländer

Sag Nicht Gute Nacht

 

Sound Georgia Koumará

with Johanna Vargas, Susanne Leitz-Lorey, Truike van der Poel

 

 

Are you avoiding the horses again is an exoloration in sound, text and image of what a panic attack consists of. I wrote in and around the context of this unsettling phenomenon. What is a panic attack? Could it be a collapse of (our understanding of) time? Could it be considered as the plot of daily life gone wrong? Could we learn something from these moments of crisis?

 

I looked into the old knowledge of healing plants, in particular Gart der Gesundheit (1491), a book from the Athenaeum Library of Deventer. In a (not often reprinted) appendix, I found healing stones that were thought to calm fear and soothe panic.

Struck by the fact that stones were considered as part of the plant-world, and a seemingly solid belief in the power of living matter over mind, I was inspired to read about a medieval women’s world in which mind and matter, mind and body were not yet separated.

 

The images projected are made by myself to present healing stones and what they may represent. They ‘speak’ to the audience as old healers, or contemporary therapists.

A speaking voice represents the conscious, watchful mind, two singing voices take the role of the subconscious, brimming to the surface and sometime overtaking consciousness–not unlike the experience of a panic attack. The inner voices together form a sometimes lucid, sometimes searching personality that stumbles through daily life.

 

FRAGMENT: … But what space does distraction inhibit exactly and is there room for me there and oh what are you turning away from, repeating razors are only allowed on board if the blade is removed, showing your children who are young men now how to shave–not telling them how the poet showed someone like you how to follow the lines of veins do not cross them and to save them from something not telling them to be careful be careful …

Maria Barnas