Travelling Bodies

Leaving Parrsboro: rural gas station

I was there with my luggage and a nervous laughter. What made sense a second ago (being dropped off at a gas station by my colleagues and laughing while waving at them), suddenly did not make much sense anymore (laughing alone and waiting for an hour next to a sanitary tank before calling a local cab in order to get to the train stop in the middle of nowhere and get on the train). It was very odd: so close to Parrsboro and yet so far from everything.

After spending 8 DAYS in close proximity with other artists, always being able to chat or ask for help, and then abruptly experiencing the banality of being alone on the side of the road with my bags, I could feel the steady distance between Parrsboro and myself; a concrete and geographical distance between my body and a small city. I could feel the increasing distance between Peter’s car and myself; an abstract and ever-changing distance between my body and a group of people going away. None of this is special or difficult, but trying to map the distance between things helps me render the uncanny feelings that inhabit me during transitional moments.

As the sensation of being close and far at the same time stretched my state of mind, I was delighted by the simplicity of 8 DAYS, and how, to me, it certainly has not yet become institutionalized. We reinvent how we make it happen every year, using organizational tools and collective work to support our ideals, but always counting on individuals’ efforts to concretize the project and willingness to be gently displaced, physically and intellectually.

I’ve been thinking about how when we try to get more organized, we fear the we are institutionalizing the project, but there is a big difference between being organized and institutionalized. To me, being organized prevents us from reconducting the things we often denounce when we are at 8 DAYS: lack of consideration from presenters towards artists, bad working conditions, waste of our precious time. We at 8 DAYS can certainly do better in terms of how we welcome new participants and communicate with the outside world. The project can become super-tight, in a good way, in how it handles logistics, administrative tasks and communications. Yet, it can remain unshaped, random, unpredictable and collective.

Resisting the institutionalization of a project has nothing to do with how well organized it is. I would even argue it has nothing to do with money ie whether we get funding or not. What makes institutions what they are is when projects become formatted, predictable, graspable, fixed. Or simply when it has to be accountable for much more than what it was originally intended. 8 DAYS can manoeuvre around these challenges and remain its own weird project, while making sure things are respectful and go smoothly for everyone.

So, sitting there at the side of the road, I was enjoying the raw side of 8 DAYS. I very much appreciated my hour waiting at that gas station. I became friends with the cashier and she made sure my cab was there when I needed it. And, I could eat ice cream!

Waiting for the train: thinking about bodies in random spaces

• a feeling of empowerment and fragility at the same time
• talking with the woman taxi driver
• being impressed with her assurance
• that kind of a job - for a woman, in a small town
• wanting her to stay
• laughing (again) nervously when she leaves
• waiting at the station-not-station
• waving at the train for it to stop : what a fun gesture to make
• feeling so ridiculous and official at the same time
• being amazed that my small insignificant body would be picked up by a train
• a train that would stop just for me
• thinking about how much we travel without feeling the travel in our bodies
• thinking that waiting in that random spot made the travel quite concrete
• and surreal at the same time

10 hours on the train from Springhill to Mont-Joli: thinking about language

Listening to someone speaking in English about how in Gaspésie decades ago nobody spoke English and they had to learn it, and how in Nova Scotia it was the opposite, they felt compelled to speak English to be understood. They were mad at how most francophones learn English and not the opposite.

Thinking about my speaking and writing in English at 8 DAYS: I'm feeling guilty about not wanting to speak French that much and a little irritated by that guilt. As much as I can understand and support the politics of it, speaking French is not my priority when I go to 8 DAYS. My focus is on sharing ideas about choreography, exchanging with peers and unfolding new perspectives around the work we do. I cannot resolve myself to put the politics of language (with everything it entails) before my own (quite vivid) desire to communicate, be understood and go deep into the conversations.

Arriving in Mont-Joli in the middle of the night: recalling Molly’s hide/not hide game

Unexpected events led me to wait for 35 minutes, at 2am, for my ride from Mont-Joli to Marsoui (final destination). I would have been happy to sleep on a bench in the train station with my luggage while I waited, but there was no train station. No building. No bench. No roof. Basically, like in Springhill, you get on and off the train in an empty field next to the rails. There were a few houses with no lights on and I was a 25-minute walk away from the 24 hour gas station. It was 10˚ and pouring rain.

I did not have so many bags, but I could not walk several kilometers by myself. I contemplated waiting there, sitting on the ground, in the pouring rain, with no roof to protect me, but it felt unsafe. This place was very dark and remote. No taxi or bus. At least I had my phone, in case of an emergency.

I would not say Gaspésie is a scary place. I spend a lot of time there alone in a remote house with no phone or internet. Any time something happens, like locking myself out of the house, car problems, etc., there's always someone nice who is willing to help. However, that night I was tired, with lots of bags to carry, cold and lonely, and I felt vulnerable.

I thought of Molly’s hide/not hide game and how bodies sometimes become invisible because they don’t move, they merge with the background or they belong there. I thought of hiding behind the abandoned station, as there was nobody there and it was raining quite a lot. Then I thought that some (drunken) men or teenagers might walk by and this made me uncomfortable. I contemplated walking (with all my stuff) to the gas station, not hiding, making myself visible, but this made feel vulnerable too, because of all the stuff I was carrying, that was alone and that am a woman. To hide or not hide?

It struck me how, even in 2019, women’s bodies must be hidden under certain circumstances. How women, even if there are no actual dangers, almost always take into account the potential of danger. It’s so frustrating. I was trying to make right choice in case of harassment or an attack. Not the best choice for me, at that precise moment in the pouring rain, but the choice that put me least at risk. I'm thinking that I'm going crazy and should just do whatever the fuck I want. But, deep inside I know that bad things happen all the time.

I think of all the stories I've heard from friends walking alone at night, all those times I almost got attacked, all those stories. They inhabit my body and I cannot help it. I am scared like a woman in a misogynist world, a woman who recalls endlessly that she is possible prey when she walks in the street. I am scared like a woman whose body has been claimed by men, in so many ways, since she was a little girl. Uncles and other adults commenting on my body. I am scared like a woman whose body was once stolen by a man I trusted and loved, my body dismembered, reduced to almost nothing. I am scared like a woman who knows there is not just one way to break into my body. I feel I’d like to remove the woman out of my body, for this moment, to prevent danger.

As I try to rationalize the situation and remind myself that it’s okay to walk through an empty street in the middle of the night, I know that violence is often not rational, it can happen for no reason. I think of Virginie Despentes’ essay King Kong Théorie, and how she proposes to infiltrate womens' psyches with the idea that they will most likely get raped in their lifetime and to give them tools to fight it or recover from it. I am not sure what to think about this. But overall I think this sucks. What was supposed to be a rather logistical problem (walking or not walking to the gas station?) became a safety problem (hiding or not hiding?).

We had a discussion one night at 8 DAYS, after one of us got nervous about not being able to unlock their door at night. Even though some of us, who had been in Parrsboro for a few days already, felt it was very safe, I insist that we cannot disregard womens' fears just because we feel safe. How safe we feel depends on who we are and the privileges we have. The same world might not feel safe to someone else. And this world might actually not be safe for that person. Don’t ever pretend you know what is safe for a person. You can only know for yourself. Women have myriad reasons to be afraid. We’ve often experienced traumatic events that we did not think were possible, or did not think could happen to us. Men are often shocked when they hear our stories, but they need to hear how women experience the world.

On that night in Mont-Joli, nothing happened to me: I decided to carry my stuff to the gas station. A pick-up with (drunken) men yeilded when they drove by me. Another pick-up with a woman driving stopped to ask if I was ok. I got to the gas station, waited a few more minutes under neon lights and got my car ride to Marsoui. But I could feel the tensions in my body: my breath was shorter, my limbs crisped, my mouth tight. Even though I knew I was probably safe, I also knew that I could never be totally sure of my safety in this world.

During that day my body went through a mesmerising journey: from a heart so warm and full of emotions to a head so tired with invading thoughts, replaying discussions and inventing new endings. To a body all crisped, scanning the streets in Mont-Joli, listening to sounds in the dark, watching with my eyes in night vision mode.

Safety is not a thing or a fact: it’s a feeling that transforms and it can be quite ungraspable for many of us. These 10 hours felt like 8 DAYS: an improbable and hectic journey that does not leave you intact, but does make you appreciate (and remember!) every part of yourself, from your huge heart, to your busy mind, through your stiff body.