Precarious Rest

Hello there, and thanks for stopping by! Welcome to my virtual living room…

Take a seat, get comfy: Shall we rest together while you’re here?

Precarious Rest aims to re-choreograph my relationship with labour, pleasure and rest, without trying too hard. It is an ongoing practise of subverting the influence of capitalism and white supremacy on my body, an invitation towards generative paradox and delightful contradiction, and the name I’ve bestowed to the current phase of my lifelong dance with self-love. It blossomed out of an invitation from Ana Barajas at YYZ Artists Outlet (Tkarón:to/Toronto) to create a choreographic response in relation to Galia Eibenschutz’s video installation titled Observatorio. The Precarious Rest film, with videography and editing by Kendra Epik, is conjured from archival footage documenting the one-on-one work-in-progress performance experiments that took place September 26-27, 2020, and features a textile collaboration with Mairi Greig. The participants who ventured into the complexity of resting-while-being-filmed are Tanveer Alam, Zuri Skeete, and Ana Barajas. 

I’m learning that my body (if I really listen) is my most profound teacher when it comes to learning how to rest restfully and access pleasing pleasure. I imagine that your body will share an abundance of knowledge with you too. However, if you’re 1. interested in deepening your embodied practise through intellectual ponderings, 2. curious to expand your understanding of the social and economic forces that create obstacles on this journey, or 3. desiring access to a more nuanced vocabulary for dialoguing about rest and pleasure with your family and friends… then perhaps you’ll enjoy exploring this page!

There’s a lot to digest here. Please take your time to read, watch and ponder.

Come and go, if you need. This content will be available until at least August 31, 2021.

A BOUNDARY

It’s possible that I might be delighted to hear from you via email in response to this work, but I’d like to set a boundary around potential interactions: Please only reach out to me with thoughts and questions if you’ve 1. read the material on this page in its entirety at least once, watched the film, and engaged with some of the links, and 2. paused to intentionally practise rest and pleasure yourself (at least for a few happy moments spread out across a few days) before writing to david.norsworthy@gmail.com. Thank you in advance for respecting this request.

AN OFFER

If you’re too fucking busy to rest and you cannot afford to slow down: We have an initial budget of $250 available to pay folks to rest, that we’ll disburse in $50 payments (no strings attached!) via e-transfer to the first 5 people who email me (david.norsworthy@gmail.com) with the message “Please pay me to rest”. Maybe with this micro-support you’ll be able to say “no” to that extra gig or hire a babysitter for a few hours or eat/share a meal that’s more nutritious and/or delicious than otherwise might be possible. Do a little self-check re: your privilege before you email, please! Alternatively, if you have a little extra cash at the moment and want to contribute to a stranger’s resting experience you can e-transfer me (david.norsworthy@gmail.com), and I’ll disburse the funds back out to those who request it.

A request

All of this content is available for free. For those of you who have some or plenty of expendable income, please consider either:

1. contributing to a strangers’ economic feasibility for rest (see above),

2. donating to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, or,

3. donating to Black Lives Matter Canada.

INITIAL OBSERVATIONS & QUESTIONS

(These anecdotes and questions were compiled in late August/early September 2020, during the initial stages of articulating this work. I’m sharing them here and now as a trace of the past; a time capsule that may illuminate something about the evolution of this work over time).

My first job was assembling and delivering the local newspaper in my hometown of Mississauga. My mother and I worked together; layering the flyers, wrapping an elastic around the whole bundle and then going from house to house dragging a wagon of newspapers along behind us. We would both sweat from the labor, joking that it was a kind of aerobic exercise. 

A couple months after graduating from college, amidst the fluster of a burgeoning freelance life, my boyfriend broke up with me partly because he felt that I didn’t take care of myself well enough. My hair was a shaggy mess, and in all honesty, I probably only brushed my teeth once every other day. He had cheated on me.

A couple years later I initiated a project exploring identity, specifically to reclaim my Japanese-ness. A mentor offered a question about pleasure, suggesting that it might be a key factor in understanding myself: What brings you pleasure? It felt like a dirty question to me. I realized that I didn’t have any hobbies. 

My partner and I were biking along the Don River trail (on my way to the YYZ Artists’ Outlet to work on this project) and he was leading the way. I noticed how quickly his legs were moving to keep up speed on a lower gear. I was still zooming forward with idle legs; recovering from a laborious earlier moment of acceleration. My choice was to work harder, then recuperate. His was to work less hard, but more constantly. My personal hygiene is better now.

1. How can we create the conditions for rest when circumstances are precarious (i.e. gig economy, pandemic, social uprising, state-sanctioned police violence, political instability)? How must I reconfigure my relationship with myself to be able to rest restfully right now?

2. How might we resist the binary of work vs. rest and instead ask; Can I rest and work at the same time, so that, at the end of my work day I have an abundance of energy remaining for life?

3. Can two strangers rest together, without knowing each other intimately? Can we find ease together despite possible different world views and different priorities/values?

Let’s check in. How are you feeling? Are you breathing deeply? Too hot? Too cold?

Is your body asking for anything right now that might help us slow down together?

This offering is an embodied visual and audio invitation. Sound on + full screen!

There are several ways to engage with this content:

1. Witness and experience the film on its own. Take pauses as you need/want.

2. Listen to and experience the audio offering on its own. This might be useful and/or interesting if your screen is typically a realm of labour and you’d like to rest your eyes elsewhere.

3. Play both at the same time, if you think you might enjoy more stimulation than either on their own. If you try this option, I recommend hitting “play” on the audio first, then the film immediately after. You may need to experiment with downloading the audio and/or using two separate devices.

RUMINATIONS ON REST

CW: mentions of colonial violence and genocide 

Two days into the first pandemic lockdown, I remember thinking: How could I have possibly continued at my pre-lockdown intensity? I’m embarrassed to say that the stay-at-home order was a kind of welcome detour around an otherwise insurmountable mountain. 15 months later, I’m just starting to recover from the cruelty of my former schedule. I know this because I’m crying more often, I’m flossing every day, and because I’ve given up trying to keep busy. This feels radical to me.

I write this as my partner naps on the couch after a hard day’s work. Me, on the other hand…  I feel an energized calmness at my core. Like time is a little slower than it sometimes is and my brain is riding the same wave as my body. This is a sensation that I value deeply, and one that I too often exploit for the purposes of doing ‘good’ work. So I’m writing to you in an act of generosity today; I’m not keeping this all for myself. The challenge will be in stopping before this resource is exhausted… before the icky-ness of labour and obligation and get-it-done ambition begins to accumulate in my body.

My goal was to only work on this project, Precarious Rest, when I felt rested. To really commit to a different ethic of contributing and living; one that honours my body as a site of pleasure. So it’s taken a lot longer than I anticipated to release this writing, film, and audio recording.

A disclaimer that probably isn’t necessary: I’m a total novice when it comes to rest and pleasure. All of this is an invitation to join me in my process of unravelling to then re-member (as in, re-constitute) myself, my process of falling apart to then put myself back together in a way that feels more true. I suppose resting (as in, not doing) often inspires the question: Who am I, apart from what I do?

Last week I attended a gorgeous evening of music. Meeting the artists after the performance was a moment to show my appreciation. In these exchanges, I noticed an impulse to bring my identities as Dancer and Choreographer into the discussion, as if that would somehow deepen the dialogue (or was it to boost my own ego?). I was on the precipice of choice for a while, but ultimately decided that it didn’t make sense for me to mention anything about what I do for work in this context. As a result, I felt a bit empty somehow; unseen; anonymous; like I wasn’t fully present. 

Needless to say, the past year’s drought of freelance dance work has been as much an opportunity to practice rest as it has been a dramatic uncovering of the gaping chasms in my personality when work, doing, and ‘succeeding’ are removed (or minimized) from the equation. Who am I, apart from what I do?

I suppose that is a fraction of what makes rest so precarious. The vulnerability of lying down in a sea of your incompleteness; with dreams partially accomplished, relationships in need of tending, bills needing to be paid, and dirty dishes in the sink. How can I rest in this mess of desires and obligations, many of which teeter on the edge of deadlines and expiry dates? Furthermore, how can I rest when I’m absorbed in the delusion that my worthiness is connected to what and how much I accomplish?

This, of course, is a primary teaching of capitalism, and I’m only just beginning to realize what a good student I’ve been.

While the past 15 months certainly haven’t been without laborious sprints, this prolonged and sometimes leisurely exploration of rest and pleasure has only been possible because of government assistance like CRB and CERB; little magic payments that have caught me, and hold me in a hammock of anti-hustle for the time being. What an immense middle class privilege; one that I wield along with my white(ish), cis, able-bodied, post-secondary education (and myriad of other) privileges. For the time being, I am allowed to survive on the juggling of 4 part-time projects simultaneously instead of 8.

(continued below)

Oh hello again! I’m glad you’re still here. Just a reminder: you can take a break now and come back later if you’d like.

It’s now been two days since I started writing the above. I could’ve worked on this yesterday or earlier today, but I didn’t. I did, however, take myself to a beach on which I played with the sand, solved a sudoku puzzle, drank bubbly water, and listened to the waves caressing the shoreline. The stolen shoreline.

The land on which I write this is called Epekwitk and it is the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. This land does not belong to the nation state of Canada, and yet it’s commonly referred to as Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada. There is violence in this lie, and as I learn more about colonization, I’m seeing the world around me differently; the dark underpinnings of an otherwise charming settlement are becoming exposed.  As I walk along the historic streets of this “birthplace of Confederation” named after England’s late Queen Charlotte, I can occasionally hear water moving through the hundred-year-old sewer system beneath me. Even the water is controlled by the design of European settlers. 

How can I rest in this architecture of violence? 

How can I rest if my simple existence here on this land is connected to a legacy of ongoing harm and genocide of Indigenous peoples?

How can I rest as my “Canadian” identity of niceness crumbles (and so it should!) under the weight of the news of 215 + 104 + 38 + 35 + 751 children’s remains found in unmarked graves at residential school sites across this land?

How can I rest in the comfort of emergency support dollars from a government that denies how white supremacy is woven into the fabric of our society?

How can I rest before the police are defunded?

How can I rest as our world literally goes up in the flames of a climate emergency?

How can anyone rest in this architecture of violence?

I will not try to answer these questions directly, but I do want to share a bit more about what I’ve been learning from some courageous and inspiring thinkers. Note: these BIPOC voices deserve your dollars and activism as much as your appreciation…

• Lee Maracle’s My Conversations with Canadians shines light on the atrocious history of Canada including the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and the residential school system. She pokes at false assumptions around Canadian “identity” (maple syrup, hockey, apologetic niceties?) to further complicate the question “Who am I, apart from what I do?” for settlers like me. Her words have helped me realize that “racism, colonialism and patriarchy are Canadian social formations, not Indigenous ones”. 

• Saundra Dalton Smith’s Ted Talk helped me realize that rest is balance, and that physical rest is only helpful if you’re depleted in that particular category. Sometimes, bringing your body into balance means hanging out with friends, creating a dance, writing a stern email to your elected officials, or taking a hike. Passivity doesn’t equate to restful rest.

• A podcast interview with Tricia Hersey (The Nap Bishop!) and adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism are teaching me that rest and pleasure are a kind of resistance against capitalist and white supremacist ways of being.

• How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell reminded me that momentarily pausing to regain clarity and autonomy of one’s attention is imperative to cultivate the conditions for critical thinking and discernment. You may also find these words of hers interesting.

• Bayo Akomolafe’s many videos and podcasts have invited me to ponder how ‘solutions’ are often disguised elaborations and complications of the initial problem itself and that the mental gymnastics of understanding this trickery is only possible when you fully succumb to the idea that “the times are urgent, let us slow down”.

Perhaps the pinnacle of my learning within the past year is also the simplest takeaway: that without rest and pleasure I am meaningless and therefore also, relatively useless. While that may sound dramatic, in retrospect I realize that I’ve often tiptoed across the melting ice of this dilemma, especially at the heights of my busy-ness. Without the spaciousness and the connection to self made possible through rest, I cannot grieve the destruction of old growth forests or celebrate the excellence of my friends. Without rest, I am feelingless and therefore I have no internal impetus for action. Without rest, I am easily manipulated towards status quo convenience.

Who benefits from your labour anyway? How much numbness is necessary for your survival in this state of overwork? Who benefits from this numbness? How can we disrupt oppressive systems or create spaces of healing if our petals are constantly wilted? 

I want to bloom, at least occasionally, and I want the same for you.

It’s beginning. My cells that are rooting down to the wet, dark, rocky earth and simultaneously sprouting up towards the sun are touching new sensations in both directions. This is experiential wisdom that I cannot unlearn. Now that my body knows these feelings, I won’t be able to “go back to normal”. At least not right away. My porous skin has absorbed something alternative, and while I suppose that I remain susceptible to external forces, my practise of rest has been incubated in the suspended time of the pandemic and has been relatively protected through its most vulnerable stages of germination.

That feeling of dread when I think about “going back to normal” isn’t an obstacle. It’s a reminder that we all deserve a more fulfilling life.

(continued below)

Day Three of writing and editing this, and about a week and a half has passed. 

There’s a part of me that is delaying the release of this work, and sitting in the question of “is it ready to be shared?” . This feels like one of the most vulnerable offerings I’ve ever conjured. Perhaps it’s the first time that I’m sharing something that really leaves behind the idea of wanting to impress you, the anonymous public. The invitation is to tickle boredom with me. It’s deliberately unflashy and non-manipulative. There’s a strange kind of one-way intimacy at play here: you get a portal into my reality, and I might never meet you. The shared context of live performance is somehow more comforting than the abyss of this faceless exchange but I’m ok with that for now.

With love even though I may not know you,

David 

You made it! Thanks for the hang.

Hopefully you were able to take care of yourself along the way….?

This work/process is really just beginning for me, so I hope our rest practises intersect again in the future.