Communication
Dear Reader.
If you are new here, welcome to my Substack. For the next few weeks, every Friday I’ll be publishing writing that may become excerpts from the book I’m working on “Glottis: Love Letter to the Open wound”. It’s about grief, trauma, childbirth, singing and the erotic. If you would like to read it in order, you may want to go back to the beginning.
If you would like to come learn something less depressing with me, also about breathing, I’d love to see you at the workshop I’m facilitating on “Breath Play” at IKSK next Saturday the 30th of March.
Thanks for being here…
In 1884, Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote À rebours, one of the great works of decadent literature. It is usually translated as “Against Nature” or “Against the grain” but the originally title was “Alone”. It is a catalogue of aesthetic refineries practiced to a level of stunning imagination. As a self-destructive teenager I romanticized the plight Huysmans’s protagonist “Des Esseintes”. An aristocrat who loathes bourgeois society and retreats into an artistic world of his own creation.
“We have two things in our human history - against nature, with nature. You have to choose either one." [The great Japanese carpenter - Hisao Hanafusa]
In one famous scene Des Esseintes covers a tortoise shell with rare jewels so that it might better catch the light as it walks upon his Oriental carpet. Only later to realise the danger of covering the shell the animal needs for breathing. The tortoise dies. When I was at University, along with several of your Aunts and uncles, we made a theatre piece in homage to the book. It featured a feast of entirely black food, celebrating the death of our virility. We were 20 years old.
“Discontinuous existence is the realm of isolated beings. In it, entities are limited, and thus have a selfhood, even a sense of seriousness. Continuous existence, on the other hand, is the realm in which the Self is no more, in which energies are ever moving and stability is impossible. The realm of animality; a night in which separated forms and beings are not, but in which everything is part of a continuity. Eroticism is thus the transgression of the determined limits of discontinuous beings in order to experience the violence of continuity. “ Thomas Minguy on Bataille
During covid, like a great many people on planet earth, I was lonely. I was new in Berlin, living by myself without family and a limited circle of friends. I bought a Roomba, one of those vacuum-cleaning robots, and covered it in plastic jewels so it might catch the light as it walked upon my carpet. A buzzing circular prism refracting coloured light around my room and, inexplicably, speaking Portuguese. I called it “Des Esseintes”. My illusion of discontinuity was shattered.
In our dream of continuous and connected love, there were open spaces. In the Summer before you were conceived, a new love entered our story, in the form of a fire-breathing, sequin, leather and feather loving, semi-famous ex-model I’ll be referring to from now on as “the Burlesque dancer”.
Early in the Philosopher’s relationship with the Burlesque dancer, I felt it was essential that we all communicate. It scared me that he was falling in love with someone I had never met, and that she would appear in Berlin only when I was out of town. We had mutual friends, who assured me what a fierce and excellent human she was. 50 years old, successful, self-actualized, married. I did not see any reason to fear incompatibility. My first introduction to her was via a youtube video, where she talked about how, as feminists, we need to learn how to step into our own power rather than competing with other women for male attention. I liked her. She was exactly the kind of person I would be proud to have as a friend. But it scared me to see the partner I planned to have a child with rearranging his life to pursue a new relationship with someone who lived in another country. I was sure the whole situation would be defused if she got to know me as a human.
Aretha Franklin described her mission as a singer as - “Me with my hand outstretched, hoping someone will take it.”
The glottis is a special threshold for connection. It marks the soft-hard limit of the sphincter that separates your inner world from the rest of the everything. Unless you live in an iron lung or under the sea, a normal breath happens automatically, and inhales and exhales approximately half a liter of air during each respiratory cycle. This is called tidal volume. When your body has metabolized what it needs after inhalation it is hardwired to want to release waste products by exhalation.
Me, improvising in rehearsal (in preparation for “my self in that moment” with Chamber Made)
The Philosopher and the Burlesque dancer got together while I was in Australia performing the piece you see referenced above. It was a very busy time for me professionally, I had 3 different shows going in 4 cities across two continents in quick succession. More importantly, it was the week your uncle Ryan died. It was one of the most emotionally and physically draining experiences of my life. By the time I returned home to Berlin I was shattered.
Hiking had long been my natural source of reconnection with grace and wonder… I cringe as I write this…. What happens next is … I organised a hiking trip, then rearranged it in order to facilitate a meeting with the Burlesque dancer. Instead of going to Slovenia, like I’d planned, I went to France. The holiday was awful. The weather was awful. The accommodation was awful. There was so much cloud-cover we could barely entertain the idea of hiking. We had an insane fight over a misunderstanding about the meaning of the word “Chalet” and wasted 2 days trying to rebook our accommodation.
Eventually we managed it. We went to Italy. Which is always a good idea. The clouds cleared and glorious sunshine rained down, just in time for us to have to leave the goddamn Alps, to get back to sea level in time for the rendezvous with the Burlesque dancer. When we arrived in Alsace for our meeting, my heart just about exploded. She refused to meet me. I remember sitting in the bath, reading her passionately emotional text messages accusing me of toying with her. I had literally come to another country with the intention of trying to build a sense of solidarity between us, at a point in time where I really should have been focused on taking care of myself. I did not understand how I could have been clearer in my seriousness.
The glottis is the site of attraction between two vocal folds. If they are always closed, nothing can pass through. If they are always open they die an early death of loneliness. The glottis needs rehearsal of togetherness. Too little action brings atrophy, and dehydration. The twin folds, with their tender mucous membranes always need to come together again, replenishing their waters, resting in one another’s embrace. The wound needs to open and close and open and close, to speak and be heard.
When the wasted breath is released from the high pressure zone of the lungs through the glottis and into the outside world, that is communication. That is you, going out of yourself. Your body just knows how to do this. Day and night. Good mood or bad. There is a “you” in there that says, “I want what the world has to offer and I will keep on staying and going out of myself so long as I am breathing”.
Isn’t that wonderful?
On Christmas eve the Burlesque dancer announced she was on her way to Berlin. And she expected to see the Philosopher. We were at Christmas eve dinner with his family. We were supposed to be hosting 20 people in our apartment the next day. The Philosopher ended up spending swathes of Christmas standing outside, fighting with the Burlesque dancer on the phone.
I had been writing her these neurotically well crafted letters, in the months since the un-meeting in Alsace, trying as calmly as I could manage to explain how hurt I was. How important it was for me that all parties communicate and know each other. I remember feeling a sense of desperation as I wrote those letters, as if my life depended on making myself understood. When we finally met, two days after Christmas, one of the first things she said to me was “I don’t understand what you want from me”.
Fetuses aren’t just growing the meat and matter of their being. They are rehearsing all their forms of ingress and egress. To communicate with the outside world a fetus must learn to choreograph gas, liquid and solid exchange. Their little bodies begin, as soon as practical, to practice what it feels like to sense, to feel, to see, to hear, to smell, to move, and to orient themselves in space. They also learn to perform the body functions under the control of their unconscious: immunity, digestion, pissing, shitting, breathing - all mediated through the body of their host.
For this to work a fetus needs an environment fit to purpose. Every form of knowledge in the world, including Western science, emphasizes that maternal stressors, both physical and psychological make that uterus less fit to purpose. A recent study from researchers at Columbia University (and others) published in PNAS found that the single biggest predictor of adverse pregnancy outcome was the quality of social support mechanisms of the mother. This effects not just the way the health of the mother interacts with the needs of the baby, but it can change the ways the genes themselves function. Which phenotypes (expressions) will turn on, from amongst the many potential genotypic possibilities. And these traits can become heritable. Phenosong. Genosong. Epigenosong.
Before Western colonial capitalism sectioned the messy business of baby-making off into the professional sphere, the whole village participated in supporting families as they moved through pregnancy. Rather than something to be suffered through, or sanitized, pregnancy was regarded as a sacred ritual to bring new human life to earth. Even if it makes no sense to you to think of birth as sacred, that in-utero time must surely be the most mysterious experience every human shares.
For a bit over the first half of a pregnancy a fetus doesn’t breathe air. They breathe amniotic fluid. They gulp down the fluid, which passes through their then amphibious respiratory system, until it is metabolised, passing through the kidneys and bladder, on its way to become urine, so it can be drunk again. You got it. We drank our own piss.
During weeks 20-28 of pregnancy a baby’s lungs begin to produce surfactant, through which their lungs are said to “ripen”. Surfactant is a mixture of fat and proteins. It coats the alveoli (the air sacs in the lungs) to prevent them from sticking together on exhalation. Without surfactant there is no means of ingress or egress.
To speed up this ripening process in endangered pregnancies, in utero treatments are offered to the mother, with injections of corticosteroids and/or thyroid hormones. The timing of these steroid treatments is key, because they cannot be given multiple times. It is possible to administer the steroids from 22 weeks onwards, but it’s better to wait, until closer to the birth. Before I went into labour, the head doctor of the clinic estimated my pregnancy would last until 27-28 weeks. Though our conscious minds have no influence over when the birth will be.
My labour began at 23 weeks 2 days, I had not yet had the steroids. While I was in labour a doctor came to me, between contractions, and wanted to know if I wanted to take a different set of drugs we’d not yet discussed, they could slow down the contractions so he could give me the steroids. It wasn’t possible to stop the labour, but they could slow it down, and prevent the birth for maybe another few days. Maybe even get us over the magical 24 week line. Which could be enough for the steroids to take effect.
I’m not sure if he’d read my chart, but by that stage Leo had dehydration and lungs in the 6th percentile. Even for “healthy babies” born in the 23rd week the survival rates are less than one third. A child born before this ripening process has fully occurred will likely have to have their lungs mechanically pumped open. Like using a bike pump to force an opening into a slice of cake. If their lungs can not breathe air on the day a baby is born. It will die. Nonetheless if they’re born after 24 weeks the doctors legally have to try everything possible to save it. The process was referred to by one neonatologist we spoke to as “beating the child into life”.
An opera singer is concerned not only with the lungs staying open and exchanging necessary gases with the outside world. They need to be in communication with the very fine grain of the glottis, creating conditions for excellence in the limits of lack making meeting. The amount of pressure the lungs exert on the glottis is influenced by what singers usually call the “support mechanism”. It is comprised of the thoracic diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and pelvic floor. All of whose motions conspire to influence the movement of the lungs. The thoracic diaphragm is the most important of these muscles for normal breathing. It is an uneven disc shaped muscle that separates the upper torso (whose biggest residents are the lungs and heart) and the lower torso (home to the liver, spleen, gall bladder, large and small intestine amongst other things). When the phrenic nerve is functioning, and the inter-costal muscles and cartilages between your ribs open, the diaphragm descends. Inflating the lungs as the air moves from outside to in.
Will you try something for me?
Put your hands around your low ribs, just above your waist. Try to push all the air out of your lungs, use your hands. Then try pulling the belly in and out, while there is no air. Hold your ribs in firmly and puff your belly like blowing up a beach ball, then pull your belly button towards the spine. Do you feel the resistance? How the body struggles to find the choreography? Keep going until you really need to inhale. Now breathe! Let it all go! Do you feel how the body expands, making a run for freedom in whatever direction it can? That is your support system, readjusting, without struggle, automatically.
Dharma is sometimes translated as “support” or “nature” sometimes as “law” or 12 or 20 other things. In my rather body-centric way of knowing, and with my limited understanding of Buddhism, I could best integrate the concept by thinking of it as rather like a “body-nature”. Living form, knowing its natural law, its genosong, phenosong and epigenosong. Dharma could be said to be the fate of the body being in communication with the external world. It’s staying-with its process - inhaling and exhaling. Even if we are naive enough to resist.
There was a brief, golden period, where both the Burlesque dancer and I decided not to resist our situation and to communicate. It was glorious.
One day she asked me:
What is your family’s Dharma? What do they do over generations. My family’s mission for example is medicine and war. On my mothers side, we are warriors and medics. For centuries we heal who deserves to be healed and kill who deserves to be killed. On my fathers side it is to entertain. I believe we are nothing on a personal ego level. We are only the result of a culture, society, a generation… What is your family’s vocation? Their social contribution? When you find your Dharma and accept it you find peace and happiness.
I did not know how to answer the question at the time. My answers were resistant. self-pitying. I could only think of the suffering my family had endured. The suffering I was enduring. I could not say what their way of relating to society had been. It seemed to me no-one in my family had managed much continuity of anything. On each side there was suffering, loss of homeland, forced relocation, with many and various ways of survival. They’d made pet food, quarried rocks, farmed fruit, cared for children, welded gates and fencing, distilled brandy, bred animals, sewed clothes, done various kinds of factory work. And then I saw it.
Little one, I see it clearly. We make things.