In dreams
Dear Reader.
If you are new here, welcome to my Substack. Until the beginning of May, 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. That will be 9 months since Leo’s birth. And time for me to focus on pulling the book into shape for publication. If you would like to read it in order, you may want to go back to the beginning. From May onwards I’ll be publishing different kinds of content, written, musical and otherwise.
Also. For something a bit more fun - I’d love to see you at the workshop I’m facilitating on “Breath Play” at IKSK Tomorrow, Saturday the 30th of March.
And now on with the show…
Shortly after Leo died, I found a box of tapes amongst belongings stored at my Dad’s house. On one, I’d made a radio play. I was probably 6 years old. It was uncanny to hear this young ghost of myself singing and interviewing imaginary guests and reading from story books. In one of them I read about a little girl who speaks the language of the thrushes and communicates with nature. The people of her village begin to fear the little girl, because she “knows too much”. Then they burn her alive.
Throughout my pregnancy and in the time directly after, the barrier between my conscious and subconscious minds felt very thin. The long ceremony of making you was undeniably psychadelic. In dreams, and sometimes waking, I was haunted by the voice of the little thrush girl, whose body became your body. When we were alone, in sleep, or close to nature, I felt you speaking to me with her voice.
Trypophobia is a fear of images or objects containing clustered bumps or holes. As a child I had a recurring dream featuring a terrifying object, that I intrinsically knew to be my mother’s. It was a strange conical shaped object. The large end covered with a skin, like a drum head, but pock-marked with ghastly, irregular emptinesses. I did not know what this fear meant at the time. Or what the object was. Only that its multitude of holes, was the height of horror. It’s gaping, abject hunger, scared the shit out of me.
I don’t remember when I realised that the nightmare object was actually what remains of a lotus flower. But once I did it was as if, all of a sudden, the fear vanished. I spent hours staring at the flowers in every stage of their cycle. The floral corpse of childhood no longer haunted me. Loss became necessary, inevitable, even beautiful.
My mother has a beautiful voice. She sang to me often when I was a child. There was this song “Baby mine”, I think it was from the “Dumbo” soundtrack, that Mum would sing to me. And I sang it to you, when we were in the hospital. I sang you so many songs. We were roudy. Which was not at all fair on the other patients. But then again. They too had their songs. Improvised ensembles of prayer accompanied the dusks and dawns. Men, women, young, old, one sounded professional, most sounded desperate. There was also the song of pain. That was there too. I have never heard such singing, or in so many languages, as by those parents trying to call their children into this world from the other one on the ward for endangered pregnancies.
“the speaking subject makes and unmakes themself ” (Julia Kristeva)
We made a total of 5 trips to hospital during my pregnancy. After the second round of bleeding, I stayed for a few days, though they told me there was nothing they could “do for me” except to monitor the blood.
On the second evening, I felt a deepening current. I called for a nurse. She called for someone else. After a while they told me I could go to the doctor. He examined me. Told me you are doing good. I am relieved. He is annoyed. He says. Why did you call for the doctor? You know there really isn’t anything we can do for you. I said: Why else am I in hospital if not to see the doctor when I start bleeding profusely? He says: I see your point. But we are busy here. There is nothing we can do until 22 weeks. Statistically 1/3 of babies will die when there is bleeding in this week. We just don’t know what’s causing your bleeding. The best you can do is relax and wait.
The Philosopher could not handle the waiting and he was “not relaxed”. And that was making it rather difficult for me to relax. In retrospect I see that his response was not only situated in the present. He had been avoiding the medical establishment for 30 years, after living through the near death of his mother in a car accident that left her with burns to 70% of her body. I’m not sure if it was him making the fuss, or the terrified 8 year old inside him. On the third day he insisted we get out of the hospital as soon as possible and did this thing where he ran around pressuring the doctors to get us out of there. They were annoyed. I did not have the strength to resist either his annoyance or theirs.
During this phase of events I felt both angry and relieved. I could see that the choices were all mine and they were also totally out of my control. That no-one could tell me what to do, and no-one knew for sure how to make anything better. The doctors seemed mostly to advise me just to go on with my life. The medical system had a routine for everything, but nonetheless there was nature at work. I felt weak. But you were strong. You kept meeting every bench mark, no matter how much shit my body seemed to throw at you. And that strength, gradually seemed to take root in me.
After the first hospital stay I decided to go on modified bed rest. I only left the apartment for doctors appointments. I tried to lay down as much as possible. Many of your Uncles and Aunties came to visit. The chosen family showed up in style with take-out and books and stories of the outside world. I felt grateful that I never had to pass a day alone. The bedroom balcony projected into the tree-line, three stories above the bustle of Berlin’s Helmholtzplatz. There was a bar downstairs with tables all over the street. I spent hours laying on bean bags, alone or with guests, for banquets of mutual verbal ventilation. A stealth operative of connection, I eavesdropped conversations. Street musicians played. My favourite was a bass-baritone with an electric keyboard who accompanied himself through books of favourite arias. His pointed, directional tone would hit me where it hurt the best way.
“The voice is the element which ties the subject and the other together without belonging to either, just as it formed the tie between body and language without being part of them’’ (Mladen Dolar, 2006 p.103)
It was strangely satisfying to be the quiet one for once. An observer of life’s rhythms rather than a soloist. We had only moved in to the place a month before. Our previous apartment had been half the size, dark, far from the street. We had moved into the philosopher’s brother’s much larger place, for the baby. I was so grateful that at this moment I’d landed in proximity to life. Connected but under no duress to leave my position, a still spot in Summer’s cacophony, protectively serene.
The doctors kept telling me there was nothing to be done until “22 weeks” though no-one would tell me what exactly would happen then, until it happened. They also kept pointing out the reasons we should be optimistic: You were perfect. You were a girl.
Boys are far less likely to survive a premature birth than girls. Girl babies are unequivocally understood to be stronger. So I got to work getting softly stronger too. I turned my researcher’s attention upon my (our)selves and to figure out how to make this matter “fit to purpose”. To create better conditions for my body’s creative energies I invented a schedule of stationary activities for myself. I massaged the potentially stressful foreground and background of dragging time with motion and learning.
Every day I monitored the blood. I measured clots. Took notes on mucous. Photographed globules of unidentified red, white and flowing tissues, for posterity. What once was horror became routine. Became research material.
I rested. Performed Feldenkrais exercises. Lifted hand-weights. Wrote and wrote and wrote. Practiced Polyvagal tuning and toning. Composed music with your heart beat. Read-up on Tibetan Buddhist meditation styles. Practiced controlled articular rotations. Followed Youtube meditation gurus. Tried to shower daily. I massaged my myself. The philosopher massaged me. He massaged me so often it became a kind of tick. I could see his hands go up towards my shoulders, like a reflex, every time he perceived I was in pain or was about to be in pain.
Things gradually improved. By the Philosopher’s birthday in early July, I had stopped bleeding. We invited friends to the apartment for a balcony Bbq. Every other time I’d thrown a party only adults had shown up. Friends with kids had almost never brought them along. But this time, with me 5 months pregnant suddenly the place was full of children. Three four year olds turned our couch into a jumping castle and there was laughter and giggling over our not-so-proficient BBQ skills. It was a beautiful day. I tried not to stand up too much, but I still wanted to sing something. We hatched a plan. Or better said “a womb”.
With help from the composer Manuel Lima, and artist Tina Stefanou we turned my canopy bed into a giant “womb”, wrapped in multicoloured pink wool. I lay inside it. Tina wrapped a hot-pink tendril from the womb-bed around the life size model of a human pelvis I kept in the living room. She began singing, drawing the crowd by the tendril towards the bedroom. Manuel played a slowed down introduction to “In dreams” by Roy Orbison. At some point Tina went under the bed.
Before the gathered company we sang:
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
Go to sleep, everything is alrightI close my eyes then I drift away
Into the magic night, I softly say
A silent prayer like dreamers do
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of youIn dreams I walk with you
In dreams I talk to you
In dreams you're mine all of the time
We're together in dreams, in dreamsBut just before the dawn
I awake and find you gone
I can't help it
I can't help it
If I cry
I remember that you said goodbyeIt's too bad that all these things
Can only happen in my dreams
Only in dreams
In beautiful dreams
The glottis is the absence that unfolds the edge of vocal fold. The edge of the edge of the fold is the lamina. “Lamina” comes from Latin and means a thin piece of wood, a plate, a leaf, a layer. The beautiful lack of the glottis edges itself with the grain. Planing its layers on a vulnerable injury-prone instrument, the “Lamina Propria”.
“Lamina Propria” are a thin layer of connective tissue that forms part of the moist linings of the body’s mucous membranes. These mucosae cover not just the glottal edge, but much of our body’s tubes and sphincters. They are the lips that edge empty, the opaque parts whose most base desire is to open to the world: the projectile tongue, the holey respiratory system, the hungry gastrointestinal tract, and the whole hebetic urogenital region.
The abject is edged with the sublime. It is not the same moment on the journey, but the same subject and speech bring them into being. (Julia Kristeva. Powers of Horror, pg 12)
The Lamina are construction sites for seeds projecting into the world of others. Production is repetitive. Progress can be slow. Creativity looks like open, close, open, close, open… But there is a something, passing through. Maybe something subtle, some gas, bile, breath? Or maybe it’s solid as stones or shit or a child’s corpse? No matter the matter, the means of release are tender. Success of intact passage through these slippery gauntlets of laminae come only with gentle rehearsal. We know what happens at explosive points of egress - projectile shit, screams, tears, and vomit. Our inside universe erupts.
And that, in a sense, is what happened next. But I’m not quite ready to describe the gap between Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” and the week of projectile nightmares that sealed Leo’s fate. Where my body burst under the gravitational pull of a seeming black hole. So for now, we fast-forward to the boring bits. To the slowness of what happens after the rupture. The next hospital stay.
When I was admitted to hospital the second time I was 21 weeks into what one hopes will be 40 weeks of gestation. This time, they said, I wouldn’t be coming out until Leo was out. I settled in for what I hoped was the long-haul. The repetition of life took on a ritual, religious character.
Breakfast was the same thing. Every day. 3 mass produced bread rolls (2 white, 1 brown). 3 slices of cheese. Single-serve packets butter, cream cheese, margarine, jam. A cup of coffee. I ate the brown roll, the butter, and either the jam or the cheese. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, there was also one boiled egg. Which I always ate.
Dinner was much the same as breakfast. There was bread instead of bread rolls. And it came with a pickle. Not the kind of pickle that I like. Not the dill pickles I grew up eating at my grandma’s house. These hospital pickles were sweet. I did not understand them. Sometimes they also gave us carrot salad. Most days I didn’t have to eat the dinner. Someone always visits in the afternoon. Brings me something better to eat.
My Father’s mother was named Erzsebet. She was raised in an orphanage. We don’t know her origins exactly. She was by far the best cook in our family. Every second Sunday we visited my grandparents unit and she would prepare these meticulous meals that to my child’s senses, were a delicious and comical pageant. Our diet more usually consisted of McDonalds, Pizza, Fish and Chips and frozen dinners eaten on the couch at “TV trays”. At grandma’s we had to wash our hands before we ate. There were matching plates and cups. And we ate at the dining table. The white one in the kitchen. Not the formal dining table, which I never saw used. The “dining room” was also the “sitting room”. The sitting room had an elegant sofa of olive green fabric covered in thick plastic. Which we definitely did not eat at while sitting upon.
Dinner was always 3 courses. Each course had 3 or four possible menu items on rotation.
Soup Course: Mushroom soup, Asparagus soup, Chicken soup with dumplings.
Main Course: Chicken Paprika, Chicken Schnitzel, Beef Goulash - with a side of cucumber salad (with dill and spring onions), mashed potato, or “Nokedli” (which are similar to Spätzle), and of course, as many dill pickles as we could eat.
Dessert Course: “Gumboots” (boiled potato dumplings) stuffed with plums, apricots or cheese, sugar and cinnamon. I always hoped for apricot.
where does a mother without mother learn to be a mother? where could she know that from? how does she mother in the absence of a mother? (Jasmina Al Qaisi)
Repetition points us towards some objects and away from others (Sarah Ahmed). It is not neutral work. Repetition can build strength, endurance and flexibility within our apparatus for particular circumstances. It also stokes desire for turns towards that which we are already predisposed to turn. This muscularity becomes the embodied knowledge that gives us our ‘orientation’. A compass of desire that operates according to a set of laws of physics all of our very own.
The slowing of my body to the resting position, towards “bed-rest” took a heavy toll on my compass of desire. Entropy abounded. My mind was willing. Committed. For your sake. But the habits of my body told a different story. I wanted to flee. My skin crawled. Sometimes every fibre of my being screamed “run!”. The laws of physics at work in the practiced muscle memory of my singer’s body resisted the softening that pregnancy required. I wanted to project, vibrate, connect, resonate, touch, reach.
Fear was in my mouth, head, legs and hands. My legs restless. My mouth hungry. I ate and ate and ate. I felt dead. I felt high. I felt surrender. I felt horny. I felt a gaping wound crying for closure. Every doctor that walked into my room seemed to bring new and often contradictory information. Leo was doing well. Leo was being suffocated. My condition was improving. Leo’s kidneys weren’t functioning, her spine was being crushed. I should wait to take those steroids. I could consider a termination. If she’s born after 24 weeks we are legally obliged to do everything in our power to keep her alive no matter how cruel the procedures may seem. A few years ago there would be no hope, but technology has really moved on. Now 50% of 24 weekers will live. Actually, I mean, today, if she were born today, the number would 10%. But don’t worry, 2 days from now the survival rate goes up to 30%, though of those survivors 70% will have lifelong disabilities. And there will be months in hospital after they’re born. At least. It could be years. I hope you have a good support system. Unless I want to terminate? What happens now is up to you. Until 24 weeks. Then the baby is the patient. Make that 23 weeks. Actually let me check that with legal? I started to imagine my futures, a galactic clusterfuck of possibilities spiraling away from the life I’d known until that point.
Every thing that went in or came out of my body was a weighed risk. What was healing? What was murder? I had no idea. The butterfly effects of changing prognoses, rights and responsibilities started to wear down the edges of my ego. I started to forget who I was, all the things that had seemed important until then. Options would narrow, and open, and narrow again. I could not see the pattern governing these openings and closings. Our futures looked different every day. These days of indeterminacies were repetitions. Repetition is amplification. The quiet atmosphere “got louder”. My skin lost its power. My body was still, unsovereign, penetrable. I could feel with my own insides the details of the vocal tract’s of the whole ward’s snoring, or their cries of pain. My sight trained its memory on the exact white of the curtains and how the light behaved and the changing weather… I focused upon on how I “did repetition”. On these cumulative acts of relationship, between the changes on their tethers to the end. How many gestures of “reaching” might bring me closer to you? Might tell you and me that it was safe to stay? Safe enough to be in this world.
Then it happened. I gave up hope. I stopped reaching. I stepped into a gap. What remained of the fighting parts was an indifferent whole. Everything got really light and sad and I loved you so much. My whole self believes you felt the same.
There’s an app on my phone called “BeReal”. Maybe you know it? I used it religiously during the endangered portion of the pregnancy. Once a day a sound would go off telling me I had 2 minutes to photograph whatever was in front of me. At the same time the app would take photo of my face, then post both images. BeReal “pings” for everyone in the same geographic region at the same time each day; technologically mediated umbilical frivolity. Before captivity, I’d loved that I might hear the familiar “ping” go off, drawing strangers into simultaneous relation. Once, in the midst of a rush hour train carriage, a troop of teenagers invited me to join their group-hug as we took our “selfies” together.
During June and July of 2023 I took dozens of these pictures from bed. The ones at home were sometimes even pretty. I have a canopy bed, the kind with iron posts and connectors, which we hung with colourful fabrics. Though most days I had the same view when it came time to “Be Real”, I made a game of articulating a little something different for each repetition. After I went into hospital, this became harder. Hospital rooms are not photogenic. I had a stuffed toy Lobster that I moved around the scene. One day it was on my lap, the next it’d be hiding behind a vase of flowers like “Where’s Wally”. Only to appear the next morning on the breakfast tray. I called her “Leo’s lobster”. It was physically attached to me day and night. I wanted that it would smell like me. We knew that if Leo made it, she would have to spend, at best, her first few months in an incubator. I did not want her to feel abandoned. I wanted her to feel my presence. I imagined, with your lobster within reach, you would sense that I was there. What would that be like? To love a lobster in lieu of a mother?