I’ve been writing a letter for you about Fear, but it’s not ready yet, so for now here’s a bulletin of what I’m up to in August and beyond. This list includes classes, ritual space, workshops and extended training which I facilitate.

I’d love to see you in the studio soon!

xo

Isabel

Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes with PETE

PETE’s Suzuki and Viewpoints drop-ins offer an flexible introduction to these two beloved training methods. Often a group of artists and humans of all walks (actors and non-actors alike), this class has become a precious heart of my week.

Together we explore expressive movement, collective effervescence and how to move as a group with care and speed.

First class of this series in Friday! Learn more and sign up HERE.

Intermediate Training Cohort

For those with a strong foundation is Suzuki and Viewpoints, this new class with PETE offers a place to deepen specific inquiry, collaborate with others who love the trainings, and practice facilitating both methods.

We meet weekly for 8 weeks to explore nooks and crannies of Suzuki and Viewpoints we might not often get to go. Folks bring specific (and often delightfully unanswerable) questions to the group and we crack them open together. Everyone can elect to teach a class if they so wish and receive feedback on their facilitation practice.

Our inaugural cohort gave me the gift of regular study with a warm and generous group of scholars and performers. I can’t wait to dive back in!

This session begins Thursday, August 13th and runs for 8 weeks. You can sign up HERE. Reach out to me with questions at isabel@petensemble.com

Song Channeling

Our next Song Channeling gathering is Wednesday, August 12th, 6pm-8pm in the PETE Studio. (That’s 2259 NW Raleigh St.)

Song Channeling is completely free and free childcare is provided on site. We use group conversation, oracle cards, intuitive movement and improvised group singing to tune in with the present moment and compost what we need to in order to move forward together with purpose.

Please reach out directly if you want to know more about what the gathering is like: isabelmctighe@gmail.com.

Third Rail Mentorship Company

Two more days to apply for Third Rail Repertory Theatre’s Mentorship Training Company. It’s a joy and a privilege to instruct this cohort each year. I teach Devising and Viewpoints as part of Third Rail’s tuition-free year long training program.

If you’re curious to learn more or want to apply, you can read all about it on Third Rail's website.

Sending you all the love!

More soon x

It’s Leo Season and so I’m returning

Love Poems to God

This time in the form of Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows’

translation of Rilke’s Book of Hours.

Last year I wrote a devotional poem each day July until August.

I wrote:

Dear God,

How about this:

I want more contact.

Like you and I rolling around beneath that Laurel.

Grass-stain me

and leave me out to dry in the holy sun

So that I become stiff and smell so particularly of living.

Fill me up on what counts:

An honest love,

Faith to hang myself on,

Trust trust trust,

And a golden eye for all that is wonderous in a body. 1

This morning with Rilke2 I read:

I am, you anxious one. 

Don't you sense me, ready to break 
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. 
Can't you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn't my longing ripened in you from the beginning
as fruit ripens on a branch? 

I am the dream you are dreaming. 
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting: 
I grow strong in the beauty you behold. 
And with the silence of the stars I enfold
your cities made by time. 

More to come, Beloveds.

xo

Isabel

Here’s a rundown of what I’ve got going on this summer in the public realm. I hope to see you soon at one or many of these offerings, especially the retreat I am hosting for trans poets in August. More info below.

xo

Isabel

Song Channeling

Our next Song Channeling gathering will be Sunday, May 31st, 5-7pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. This event is pay-what-you-will and free childcare is provided onsite to support parents and caregivers to attend. If you can’t make it, feel free to share this event with anyone you think wants or needs it. Each month I feel restored, grounded and deeply in love with all humans. That’s a feeling I really want to share.

Read more about Song Channeling here.

Register Here!

Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-In Classes

Two weeks remain in this series of Suzuki and Viewpoints classes. Fridays, 6-8pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. This class is $25 to drop-in and free for BIPOC participants. I am finding so much fortitude and joy in this class recently. We’ve been playing with speaking clearly as a united front, feeling our shared root system and gathering strength together, and developing the courage to move individually within a group. It’s everything!

Sign up and learn more here.

Suzuki and Viewpoints Summer Intensive

I’m teaching again at PETE’s summer intensive in July. These two weeks are hands down, always my favorite moment of the year. Biking each day along the river up to Lewis and Clark, moving, dancing, learning and exploring all day alongside a cohort of exquisite makers, communing with old friends and meeting new folks from near and far, a feel in close contact with God and all that is good in humans and nature.

Register on PETE's website

Trans Poetry Retreat

I am SO EXCITED to announce that applications are live for the trans-affinity poetry writing retreat I am co-hosting in August. We’re going to the coast for five days of swimming, walking on the beach, studying gender expansive poetry together, and writing and reading our own. Percy and I are cooking all the food — cooking being another creative love of mine — there’s gonna be dancing and probably a fire and the house is ON THE BEACH.

Fill Out the Application Here

If you are unable to join but want to support creative development and community healing for trans artists you can donate to the program here.

Donations allow us to provide sliding scale tuition to those who need it, thank you!!

*a note: trans is a word that can be an umbrella term and also clearly boundaried and specific. The term sometimes means different things to different people. If you’re wondering, ‘Is this affinity space for me?’ feel free to reach out. I genuinely love receiving emails.

That’s all from me for now! I’m looking forward to gardening the future together this summer.

Sending love,

Bo

I have so much to tell you!

I don’t want to apologize for not writing last month. One friend recently told me she appreciates the slower pace of my posts, and I do too. Plus, ever since I started sending these letters, I’ve been feeling the undertow of capitalism trying to drag me into the deeps of BEING PRODUCTIVE and I just don’t wanna go there! I will produce when God quickens my sap, when the sun warms me to open, and not before.

This is the cocoon I’ve been inside. I love thinking about how caterpillars COMPLETELY DISSOLVE THEIR WHOLE SELVES inside their cocoons before recoagulating into butterflies. You gotta let it all become soup sometimes. You gotta go dark and retreat behind the scenes sometimes.

On the other hand, I can feel the resistance to writing that’s been building up. Today I set aside the afternoon (between devising with first graders in the morning and devising with middle schoolers in the evening - dream life!) to write this. But when I got home from class, oooh was I procrastinating! I really didn’t want to begin. I’ve been feeling this tiny tug of war in my belly all month, wanting — almost aching — to write, but leaning away in fear too. But then again, I will produce when God quickens my sap, when the sun warms me to open, and not before.

How do I know if I’m in the cocoon, flowing with divine timing, or if I’m resisting the call to reemerge? Maybe the butterflies feel the tug of war too like, “Wait! I’m not me yet! I think I’m still soup actually!”

Another image I’ve been enjoying is that I am a new sprout in spring. I’ve been imagining how totally traumatic it probably is to be a sprout. Like first you’re a seed. And then your WHOLE BODY EXPLODES and a new body wiggles out of there, and you start pushing up through the dark then BAM — you’re in the world — and the air is cold and it’s loud and bright and all your nerves are fresh and raw (I know sprouts might not have nerves but I’m actually talking about myself here and maybe sprouts DO have nerves how would I know??) and you’re FREAKED OUT but also SO ALIVE and you start growing like crazy because you’re out here now so what else is there to do if you’re not gonna get eaten.

That’s how I feel. I've been really leaning on caps lock.

I went back and read the script Becca Wirta and I wrote for our duet last Spring. I was struck by how much of what I’m feeling now appeared in our conversation and what we made to express that Spring, which is also this Spring (time travel).

It went like this:

Here you have celestial anomaly.

Life - just teeming.

And it buzzes, and fucks, and oozes, and sucks, and laughs, and gets obliterated by window shields.

Epic/Cosmic/Gigantic/ Magic

Inconsequential/Gelital/Questionable/Laughable

sprout is listening to the radio:

Radio voice: “Welcome back to Torrential Downpour. We’re here with renowned flutist, creative shape shifter, André 3000. Before the break we heard the first track off his newest work, 7 piano sketches.1 It’s all just a little too much isn’t it? (Laughing) In the best way, in the best way.”

turning away from the radio into a somersault sprout sings:

🎵it’s all just a little too much🎵

🎵it’s all just a little too much🎵

🎵it’s all just a little too muUUuhhhUhhhchhhh🎵

🎵it’s all just a little too much🎵

it is raining outside. a torrential downpour. we hear it on the roof very loud.

a stone falls.

another.

the turtle man is rising.

sprout (shouting over the rain): hello!

turtle man: HELLO. I RISE.

sprout: hello! yes! So anyway! I’ve been getting really into cycle tracking recently? Yeah! Like in the last few years? And I’ve noticed that I have a really hard time in spring!

sprout is orbiting the turtle man

sprout: that’s what they call the (the rain pours) THE FOLLICULAR PHASE. Kind of — in that world — they say after your period, you’re in your “internal spring” - or whenever you’re hormones are like that:

they go whoop! up with their hand

sprout: you know, even if you don’t get a period you still have an internal spring.

turtle man: IT. IS. SPRING.

sprout: yes! I love it! so good to be out and about!

sprout: (making sounds like something is too hot.) hah! hooh! hah aha! hooowwyeah!

sprout: do you ever feel like you got busted out too fast? Like:

they make an obscene crocus poking out of the earth gesture.

sprout: ???

turtle man: IT. IS SPRING. I RISE.

quiet now. the rain stopped. we are suspended. floating out of time and there is flute.

sprout: there’s something so wonderful and unique about you.

…

sprout: I know you’re so much older than me, and yet, I feel this immense pressure to emulate your particularities and your wonderfulnesses. It’s a paradox I really roll over and over like a mind stone. You’re the one who taught me God Is Change and Change Is Constant so i know that way back when when you were like me you were not like you - I mean, you now - so no one could hardly expect me now to be like you now. And even if I were like you now, when I was where you are I wouldn’t be like you now I would be like me then so there wouldn’t even be — I mean it’s not about getting to be you anyway it’s getting to be me then— in the future I mean — and — I mean by being me now!

But gosh aren’t you pointing somewhere I oughtta go??

and how to go there?

turtle man: IT. IS SPRING. I RISE.

a stone falls.

sprout: 🎵Here’s the problem, with it all. I have never, felt so small. And when you think of me, is this form all that you see? Because, I wonder, if it’s all.

Radio voice: “Herby dumplings are on the menu. Pea shoots. Blossoms. Downpours. A turtle passes by in the garden. He’ll munch leafy greens but prefers the flesh of berries, the sloppy one-slurp innards of that worm over there. Oh! A sunny spot. But also with enough mud to really sink and squirm in. Mmmmmmmmmmph.”

There is flute and rain.

I guess I’ve been in the downpour. When the rain is so thick you feel it rushing over your nose and mouth, almost a sheet you can’t breath through.

I guess I’ve been dissolving, and maybe I still am. Is this the recoagulation, or will I come to in 20 years and know that this moment was just the beginning of falling apart?

I imagine myself: earth. Stoic and immovable. I imagine sometimes that it is a challenge for me to feel. But earth is trembling and fracturing and oozing all the time. Earth is feeling ant steps and reacting seismically to fractions of degrees and BLOOMING.

I started teaching a new class. It’s a six-week training cohort for folks with some experience to deepen their relationship to Suzuki and Viewpoints in an intensive and experimental container. The other week in class we were talking about beginnings, about the creative impulse to start. S said how the pressure to begin can be paralyzing. How do I know what to do? How to move when every minute is new? We spoke about channeling. Treating an improvisation like a listening dance with God. Learning to soften enough that divinity can move through you, shape you into something unexpected. It doesn’t all have to be on the performer to create something with effort. Then C spoke about practicing waiting. Almost floating in the current of the moment, allowing the impulse to find them. Who knows when it will come?

It was an interesting moment for me because we had just been talking about softening, allowing, following God. And all of that had felt right on time for S, and their paralysis. But now with C, I wanted to push back.

“I think you can know when the beginning will be,” I said. “It’s not just about waiting for the impulse to strike. I think part of what we’re practicing is shortening the distance between when we begin, and when the impulse comes. We offer our beginning to God — or the flow, or the group, the moment, life, whatever — and they respond in kind.”

Now I might say, Beginning is an invitation to God. To dance, to play, to sit and wait, to speak together. I soften myself, and then I make a start. I stand, open, and life rushes in.

Everything is a tug of war, a balance. A swing!

Here’s what’s on this season:

Upcoming

• Suzuki and Viewpoints:

  • drop-in classes every Friday evening, 6-8pm at the PETE Studio. Learn more and sign up HERE.

  • Summer intensive with PETE. Suzuki, Viewpoints and Devising. This is hands down always the best two weeks of my year. I’m looking forward to it eagerly. July 20-31, 10am-4pm daily. More info and registration here!

  • And stay tuned for another six week intermediate cohort coming soon!

• Song Channeling

  • Every last Sunday of the month at the PETE studio.

  • Free to attend, donations welcome. Free childcare provided on site.

  • Here's a post I wrote, interviewing Sofía about Song Channeling. Or reach out to learn more!

It’s renewal time for me and many as the cracks and exfoliation of Spring unfurl. Sofía and I are pausing Song Channeling this month to make a clear space for this restructuring. We’ll be back on April 26th and hope you join us then.

More to come.

All my love,

Isabel

I'm drawing a circle
of chalk and salt, a bone breaking 
there will not be all the space in the world 
there will not be all the openness in the world 
there will be a measure, a clear line

I dreamt of armor
white ropes of linen wound around the chest and hands for
protection
Sofía said: rosemary is for remembrance but also for healing the heart 

romero romero la lágrima del mar

when I asked, love said: you're like the ocean.
You're the deep.
The circle is a close nest 
of cedar roots, an eggshell
I may not break out for many years

Here’s a short post to say I’d love to see you in person soon. Reply to this email with questions about any of these offerings.

Sending all my love,

Isabel

An exploration into improvisation facilitated by me and London Bauman. We’re growing our tolerance for the unknown, practicing how to move fierce and decisive through uncertainty and exercising our joy muscles. We are rigorous and playful! We are curious and innovative! This will be the final gathering before we take a break to rest and restructure.

PETE Studio is at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

An introduction to the Suzuki and Viewpoints methods facilitated by me and Sophie Traub. We’re developing our belief in many possible futures, becoming strong in body and spirit and nurturing hyper-local relationships. For all who crave rigorous spirit and collective meaning-making.

Also at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

More info and register here.

A ritual of collective catharsis facilitated by me and Sofía Marks. We’re offering our fear, grief, anger, joy and overwhelm to the earth. We help each other sweep off what is ready to fall away and make space for new growth and clarity of direction. Intuitive movement, nourishing singing and restorative reflection. This is strategic catharsis: we move together to grow our capacity for collective action. Song Channeling is adults only, but free, onsite childcare is provided by sweet AC.

Sofía and I drew this card this morning which spoke to me so much of what we are up to with Song Channeling. The portal that opens there, at the center, where our grief and love intersect, where our voices blend and weave.

I hope to see you soon, Beloveds.

All my love,

Bo

I’m writing this letter to metabolize some thinking and feeling about Whiteness, Violence, Shock and the power of knowing what I want. My writing is growing directly out of what I’ve been reading from:

Black Modern Mystic

Grief and Grits

adrienne maree brown

three radical, black, public thinkers who I am in deep gratitude to. I’ve cited specific essays in the footnotes. If you’re reading this, you’ll want to read them too.

“things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. we must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”

In 2017, in an essay titled, Living Through the Unveiling, adrienne maree brown wrote these words. Reading them this morning, written in my own handwriting, the words time traveled me. I had noted them down only to forget the moment of noting.

Later, she says,

“police, and military, are, and have been, armed racial profilers filling modern day slave cages, upholding imperialist lines of power. black people have been in the streets saying we are not paranoid and we are not criminals – there’s something rotten in this nation. indigenous water protectors have been telling us there’s something rotten in this nation. our comrades in the global south, in Muslim nations, all over Latin America have been telling us there’s something rotten in this nation.”1

Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered.

It feels important for me to amplify this. For so many people I love, for selves inside of me that I love, these fresh violences are not a shock, are not unbelievable developments, are not new. This is an unveiling, and the unveiling is mainly happening for white people.

Oooooohhwhheee I feel scared writing this!

Whiteness, U.S. citizenship, compliance with the law, peaceful protest, none of these things protect us. It is lie — a tactical manipulation of collective imagination — that has had some of us thinking we are within the realm of safety from ICE or the police.

On the most recent episode of Love in A Fucked-Up World, Dean Spade said simply, “You can’t promise anyone safety from the police.” That’s the truth.

What am I trying to say here? I’m not trying to say ‘be afraid. we should all be afraid.’

You who are reading this, I want us to speak to each other earnestly, clearly and with feeling. I want to try and say what is awkward and scary to say. To risk mishap, hurt, social capital and face in order to actually Be Together. I want us to move together more gracefully. More forcefully.

Sometimes I have echoed shock at police violence, and in doing so separated myself from those who were not shocked.2 The astonishment, the separation, an attempt to maintain my imagined safety.

Sometimes I feel grief, rage, hope, anticipation, fear, and call it shock. The shock of these feelings in my system. My reluctance to feel their power.

Sometimes I echo the shock because it seems like the right thing to do. The empathetic thing. But it doesn’t come from my heart. It’s what I have been taught, a buffer of false separateness.

I’m leaving the right thing behind.

I’m reaching out for longings.

For wants.

I’m reading this book, The Art of Receiving and Giving. In the introduction, author Betty Martin writes, “Learning to receive the gifts of others cracks our hearts open, and as we do that, we learn to be clear about what we actually want.” She emphasizes the power of wanting, quoting Derrick Jensen:3

“So, I don’t think that a lot of us think very clearly about what it is exactly we want. And, I mean, I do know what I want, which is I want to live in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before, and I want to live in a world that has less dioxin in every mother’s breast milk every year than the year before, and a world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before…I’m not sure that a lot of us know what we want.”4

Last week I made a duet with myself (this is somehow different from a solo. I think it has to do with my relationship with the audience), specifically with my wants.

The challenge:

For one week, focus your attention toward wanting. Notice when you ask yourself, “What is the right thing to do? Is this a good time? Would it be okay if..?” Ask instead, “What do I want?”

Write the wants down.

As the week progresses the wants will start to creep and leap toward you unbidden. Write them down.

Make a long list of wants without editing or excluding any. If you catch yourself writing things down that you feel you should want, that you imagine yourself looking sexy when you want, that you imagine to be virtuous, delete them.

Feel the wants in your belly. Write those down.

Then, make a dance with the wants. Dance the wanting. Do what you want in the dance. Do what you want lavishly until it becomes a dance. Perform the dance. At the end, read the list out loud.

It feels risky to bump Whiteness and Wanting up against each other like this, but there’s something important in it too. Grief and Grits said it clearly in an essay they posted last month:

“Our wants are political. Wanting with clarity, and practicing those wants, in a collapsing world is one of the ways we shape our current reality, and our future. [ ]If we aren’t intentional about what we want, this world will embed its violent wants and desires into us, and we’ll mistake them for our own.”5

This is what the Shock was for me. A violent desire to create a buffer between my life and the lives of Black and Brown people, of immigrants, people I loved, strangers, anyone not afforded the luxury of shock. An imaginary buffer, and one that perpetuated it’s own kind of violence and abandonment.

As I continue to flirt with wanting, to get to know my wants by name, I’m starting to ask myself, “Where did this desire come from? Was I taught to want this? By whom? Who is benefiting from this wanting?” And I’m trusting my heart.

I want to grow,

and learn.

In public, with accountability and transformation.

I want to feel my feet on the ground,

Speak from my experience,

blush,

resist,

come undone.

I want to go deeper into my discomfort and find bones there.

I’m stopping here. Resisting the urge to list all the right things to want. I won’t prove my goodness to you. I couldn’t possibly anyway, and I’m losing interest in trying to be good. I want your freedom, beloved, which is another way to say I want to love you.

The wanting is not individualistic. The wanting is a balm for separation. The wanting turns me toward what is mine to dismantle, and cracks my heart open.

All of this was written in the spirit of public learning. I hope you’ll feed in, if you want to.

xo,

bo

My friend Kyrie sent me this new year ritual with adrienne maree brown. She guides you in reflective and visionary writing and then helps you craft a poem/spell/incantation for the new year. Very good magic.

I’m still sitting on if I want to share my spell here. I’ve been speaking it to folks as I see them in the world and that feels good. Maybe when we see each other next you can ask for it ;)

These next two episodes feel timely, clear-headed, vital and emboldening. I’ve been so grateful to be in conversation with some of you in response to what’s offered here. To accept (as Prentis urges) where we are, and to strategize together.

and

These are two of my listen immediately, listen everyday, woven-in-the-fabric-of-my-days podcasts, along with Embodied Astrology. These two episodes, and EA’s Aquarius season horoscopes are currently helping me navigate.

I’m a Virgo rising. You can find your rising sign (or any other sign you want a reading for) by going to EA’s page.

Beloveds, thank you for holding me these days. I’m so lucky to get to write to you, to see you unexpectedly at that one friend’s show, or the coffee shop where we all work, or hear your voice in a message. We’re all changing all the time and it’s astounding to me that we can grow together in the big shifts. I love you.

More ways we can be together:

Facilitated by me and London Bauman, we’re growing our tolerance for the unknown, practicing moving tight and fierce and decisive through change and uncertainty and exercising our right to joy. We are experimenters, dancers and kids! Come play and excavate.

6:30-8pm every other Wednesday at 2259 NW Raleigh st.

Facilitated by me and Sophie Traub, we’re developing our belief in many possible futures, becoming strong in body and spirit and nurturing hyper-local relationships. This is a welcoming, introductory place for all who crave rigorous spirit in the collective.

Facilitated by me and Sofía Marks, we’re offering our fear, grief, anger, joy and overwhelm to the earth. We help each other sweep off what is ready to fall away and make space for new growth, clarity of direction, connection and possibility. Intuitive and cathartic movement, nourishing and collaborative singing, restorative and affirming group ritual. This one’s adults only, but free childcare is provided next door by sweet AC.

Today I am devastated, afraid, awe-struck, quiet and small and sweeping the floor, in love (with Kami, with God), laughing on the phone, wanting to reach out to everyone.

Tomorrow marks a full year of weekly duets. My friend Connor, who made the first duet with me at the beginning of 2025, is joining me to make another, the 37th piece in the series. I’m extending into 2026 until we reach 52 Duets (another kind of year) and then the project will evolve.

Duet #37 - A Year of Duets!

Come together to celebrate a year of creative exploration and weaving community. 5:30pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Isabel and Connor will show what we made that day, followed by a big ol’ dance party and collective dreaming for the next evolution of the duet series. Duets are free and open to all. Please join us!

After Connor and I show what we’ve made, I’ll inviting everyone to dance and enjoy each other and to help me dream where the project will go next. The collective dreaming is important because the this project is not something I’m building, or a journey I’m on alone. I am not an individual, I am a fruiting body of the world! My existence is intricately interwoven with yours. Our longings and intuitions are one material from which creativity fruits — like mushrooms — seemingly separate, yet stemming from one vast aliveness just out of sight. I want to create from that knowing, less like building something, or going somewhere, and more like fertilizing our shared soil. The way trees share nutrients through the mycelia.2

In the lineage of devised theatre I come from, we often ask: What is the thing that is arising from amongst us? With this question as a compass, I want to move deeper into collectivist creativity. Listening for the body we make together, reaching out for what we are hungry for, holding each other up.

In love and love and love and love,

Isabel

Hello Beloveds,

I’ve been resisting writing. Then a poem this morning:

My heart breaks 

and I say: no no no no. 
Pretend it isn't happening.
Forget to look around at the beauty surrounding me
in my hurry to escape this feeling. 

Everything gets harder. 
The running-under-water resistance of denial. 
"I am well. All is well."
While I stop writing, struggle to speak, bar the door against affection. 

Wash me over. The truth of this moment, this moment, this. 
Watch the crows fly home in the morning. 
Follow. Go back the way I've come before. 
Remember how I've been just about to start this whole time. 

In September, I flew home from Connecticut where AC and I lived for six weeks this summer. Far from the people and places I love, I remember being full of anticipation for a sense of return. Instead, the last three months have washed me farther out to sea. Routines and regularity slough off me like dead leaves. Habits I have worn so long I mistook them for self dissolve overnight. Thinking and speaking take on a many-faceted, refracting quality and ideas proliferate possibility and perspective with no clear sense of direction. My compass of relationship and longing is spinning.

I read this yesterday, from one of my favorite writers on here, Amissa:

Her words struck my gooey, caterpillar-inside-the-cocoon-feeling self. Am I dissolving? How do I write with no body?

I think part of the answer is: little by little, so I’ll pause there and end with some invitations. More to come very soon.

In love and dissolution,

Bo

Upcoming

52 Duets - Every Saturday, 5:30pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

Next duet is January 10th and it’s a special one. This week marks a complete year of weekly duets. My partner from duet no.1, Connor Pascale, is returning to make a second duet. We’ll follow the performance with a celebration: dancing and collective dreaming toward the next phase of the project. I hope you’ll join us!

Duets are free and all are welcome.

Soundpoints - Every other Wednesday, 6:30-8:00pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

Open Viewpoints laboratory with live music by London Bauman and facilitation by me. Sustaining donations appreciated, no one turned away.

Song Channeling - Every last Sunday of the month, 5:00-7:00pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Next gathering is January 25th.

A place to tend to our grief, and tend to each other, together. Free childcare! $25 suggested donation, no one turned away.

I love you!

It’s Saturday as I’m beginning this. I haven’t found one day I like to write. I want to write on all days. Also I’m hibernating.

Last week - Sofía and I sang together at the Secret Seed Improv Salon. It felt good, like jumping into a cold lake.

The week before - Sophie Traub and I danced a duet about uncertainty and making art inside/outside/around/alongside/in defiance of fascism. They played the cello and sang a song about how we’re all going to die, which also felt good. Read: Death and the Fullness of Being Alive.

The past few days have been hard. I’m learning about a new autoimmune diagnosis with a host of symptoms, one of which is a decreased ability to regulate emotions — feeling more sad, more of the time.

I had named this grief world-grief, until I saw my friend dancing when nobody else was and he told me how he is feeling electric inside of his organizing work; hopeful and in love with life. And another friend said, “When I am at my most mentally healthy I know what the point of life is.”

When I asked her what is was she said, “To love and be loved.”

On the surface, I feel an urgent importance around parsing out where the grief is coming from (hormonal imbalance? increasing global chaos? generational pain roots?) so I can know where to look to quell it. Deeper though, I know the grief is here to be felt, not stopped up at the source.

When we were making our duet, I told Sophie about the grief. How usually when I stop to ask myself what I need, I feel like crying. How I don’t think there could possibly be enough time to grieve all the way to the end.

Then another friend said they were feeling grief too, and described it “Like sad, but also good. And alive.”

Yesterday I cried most of the day. And most of the day I felt profoundly loved. I worked outside. The air was sharp and cold in my lungs. When I felt scared I slowed down, I sang to God. I went to a show (where my friend was dancing so beautifully) and when I closed my eyes the music grew louder. I could feel it in my chest. I opened and let life in. I dissolved so that every moment was new and new and new. I didn’t stop feeling sad or scared or small, but when I opened my eyes my friend was looking at me and I knew he loved me and I loved him. It was enough; to keep being right where I was.

I know what the point of life is. To love and be loved.

As I walked home from the show, the wind blew my coat out to the sides, and the shirt under it, so my chest was open to the air. I felt like the wind was blowing my ribs apart too, heart and guts open to the world.

In college, AC and I were in a class where we practiced viewpoints most days. One day while we were paused for reflection they said that when they imagined having an open heart they imagined it opening inwards, so their heart could reach the rest of them. (Sometimes I point to this moment as the beginning of loving them, but it’s actually impossible to name a beginning. I loved them when we met, and before.)

It’s not about getting to the end of the grief. Stopping it up, or moving all the way through and out the other side to where life is waiting. I feel sad, but also good. And alive. I remind myself to open inwards so my heart can reach the rest of me. I close my eyes. Everything gets louder and I feel it in my chest. I let the feeling call me back and back and back to this moment, to love and be loved.

Love Poem to God #4 

Dear Mystery, 
as we walked through the woods just now
I felt you courting me. 

Gnats swimming in golden honey-sun
like tide pools,
like harkening possibilities. 

Unburdened by the need to explain,
I dive into you. 
Looking back up pool-window to this world,
I see myself the mystery 
the pool
the brimming hum of 'what if?'
and jump.

(I won't share this one yet. It is enough to know I am loved.)

Upcoming

• 52 Duets - Every Saturday, 5:30pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

  Next duet is December 13th with Damaris Webb. I’m so excited to dance with Damaris!

• Live-Music Viewpoints - Open Viewpoints lab, live music by London Bauman and facilitation by me. Donations appreciated, no one turned away.

  Next one: December 10th.

• Song Channeling - A chorus for our grief. Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio. Next gathering is January 25th.

I’m thinking about Duets. Two weeks ago at the Viewpoints jam I facilitate with London Bauman, we were experimenting a lot with duets. Sometimes two improvisers and London playing music, sometimes one improviser accompanied by London, the two of them making a duet also. After some larger group improvisations the week before, London and I thought to tune the focus of the jam toward our relationship with the music by limiting the number of players in the space. I didn’t fully articulate this at the top and after a string of duets someone asked, “Why are we doing so many duets??”

My first answer was, “Because I love duets.”

(I suppose that’s obvious after dedicating this entire year to making them. And now nearing the end of 2025, deciding to continue with weekly duets into the new year.)

After my declaration of love I explained our intention behind the small group numbers. The group discussion turned to how duets can feel tricky inside a Viewpoints improvisation. A larger group can help to soften the focus, turn your attention toward group event and the Viewpoints themselves, whereas when you’re improvising with a single partner you tend to magnetize toward them. The improvisation takes on a lot of eye contact and direct focus. Suddenly you’re only playing off each other, forgetting about the Viewpoints, it’s all bits and competitions and Relationship and Story. The possibilities narrow.

But that’s why I love duet! The volume get’s turned up on this one relationship and all my habits and fears come out to play. I can’t fade into the background, I can’t pull all the focus, it’s both of us. Our relationship becomes the thing. The challenge is to be with the other person and myself, understand our dynamic and partner the viewpoints. It’s not about denying the potency of whatever is between us, but about playing inside of it while also staying in touch with myself, the room, the audience, the music.

Which is what I’m trying to do outside the studio too, of course. Be with you, and me, and the group. Balance listening to myself and the other person — do both at the same time!

Here’s what’s alive for me right now in relationships: Some deep down fundamental part of me is pretty sure I’m a bad person. That the only thing keeping me from fucking everyone up and eating the whole earth is consistent, ✨rigorous✨ control. This part of me thinks that in order for me to get what I want, everyone else will have to compromise, or get hurt. I think that if I ease up on the control, the desire monster will go into a frenzy of eating and destroying and doing whatever it wants like some cosmic black-hole-werewolf-hurricane.

My belief in the desire monster is stronger than I’d like to admit. The energy I devote to keeping it wrapped up inside, more than I am comfortable with. I am very interested in practicing belief in other things, other ways I am that might be true. I practice in the morning at my desk, looking out at the trees (trees take exactly what they need and give as much as they can). I practice in group therapy and with my coevolution through friendship circle. We say what we need, what we’re feeling. We put words to the desire monster mythologies. And I practice with duets.

A few weeks ago I danced with Paul Fredrickson. As we were checking in, Paul told me he’d been struggling with new and very persistent tinnitus for eight days. First thing upon waking he was greeted by this ringing sound and it didn’t stop all day until he fell asleep. For over a week. He said he was scared because it may never stop and he didn’t know how or when he would learn to cope. And the sound was making it hard to focus and be present, even in that moment.

The first thing we did after checking in was look up tinnitus relief music and play it over the speakers. We surfed through melodic beeping, ambient drones, white noise and rushing water until we found a collection of tracks that provided Paul some relief. Those four tracks became the soundtrack of our duet. We played them on repeat for the entire three hours we were in the studio and continued to play them underneath the performance. Then we asked ourselves what kind of light would feel good and developed choreography around the small colorful lights we enjoyed washing over pain-points.

By the time folks came to watch what we had made I could no longer decipher what was taking care of each other and what was art. The whole dance was exactly what we both needed. Specifically enabling our ability to make — as with the tinnitus music — and exercising and soothing certain parts of our souls that needed help. At the end of the duet I lit Paul with a pale blue light while he danced with mesmerizing abandon.1 I saw this freedom in him I hadn’t ever seen before and it made me cry. We made the most beautiful thing because we started with what we needed. We asked directly for what would help and we did what we could for each other. There wasn’t any compromise. The magical thing was that what Paul really needed was healing for me too. Our care fed the piece and was good for us and the people who came to see it.2

I’m pretty sure I’ll befriend the desire monster eventually. We go through cycles of pain and appreciation. They are as epic as they are terrifying. Duets help. Making things together, taking care of each other and being cared for, not being able to tell the difference. Relationships are Everything.

More on this soon.

All my love,

Isabel

Upcoming

• 52 Duets - Every Saturday (pretty much) 5:30pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Next duet is December 6th with London Bauman. This week, no duet! I’ll be at Secret Seed with Sofía instead.

• Secret Seed Improv Salon - I’ll be performing song and storytelling with Sofía Marks as a part of this evening of improvised performance. More info here.

• Live-Music Viewpoints - Open Viewpoints lab featuring live music by London Bauman and facilitated by me. Donations appreciated, no one turned away. Next one: December 10th.

• Song Channeling - A chorus for our grief. Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio. Next gathering is November 30th.

This coming week is full of offerings. I hope to see you at one or many and hear how you’re doing. Here’s the lineup:

Saturday, November 22nd

Fall of Freedom duet with Sophie Traub. 5:30pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

Sophie joined me this year to teach Suzuki and Viewpoints with PETE. When I asked them to make a duet with me, they suggested this weekend in order to coincide with Fall of Freedom, a movement of arts and culture happenings aligning to resist US fascism. Join us on Saturday to see what we make, and explore other Fall of Freedom events happening all weekend in Portland, nationally, and internationally.

Wednesday, November 26

Live music Viewpoints jam with London Bauman. This has been such an excellent laboratory for me to experiment as a facilitator. London experiments with improvising on guitar, and everyone who joins experiments with Viewpoints - being together in time and space.

The studio is at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Come to play, observe, ask questions, a little of each!

Saturday, November 29

I’ll perform storytelling and Song Channeling with Sofía at Secret Seed. Hosted by Portland Action Theatre, this monthly salon gathers improvisers across discipline to share what they do in a collection of short-form performances. I hope you’ll join us!

All the info here, on PAT's website.

Sunday, November 30

Maybe you come see the performance at Secret Seed, and then you’re like, “I wanna do that!” so you join us the next night to dance, keen, howl and shake. Maybe you’re not ready to participate so you join us as a well-wisher and observer to hold the container. And did you notice: Free Childcare! Any kids who wanna join can hang with AC elsewhere in the building to play, dance and sing (or read a book if that’s more their style). Feel free to arrive at 4:30 to meet AC and get your kids settled in.

I’m starting a new journal. Marigold orange and has completely blank pages. If you know me and my always-the-same Leuchtturm 1917 bullet point journal, then you know these are big moves.

Whenever I change over to a new journal I like to cull through the old one to see if there is anything I want to transfer over. I found this poem from July, when I was biking up to Lewis and Clark every day and stopping on the trail to eat blackberries.

Love Poem to God #2

This morning the blackberries were like a pushy mother.
As I made myself ready to leave her table,
here a ripe berry glinting,
“Take one more!”

And now, my mouth full as I push off onto the road again, 
“There is enough.”

Each day I move deeper into God
and there is an even wilder, richer vastness there. 

Here
inside you, friend
I am undone by fullness. 

I’m transferring the poem into my new journal as a spell, to transfer that fullness back into my heart. I’ll send it your way too.

All my love,

Isabel

I don’t remember when I made this collage - I recently found it among old art projects while cleaning out the filing cabinet.1 Maybe I was with my mom and sister, sitting at the gigantic dining room table, but maybe I’m fabricating that memory. My mom and sister are two visual artists who inspire me to make, so usually if I’m making a collage, it’s with them.

Anyway, here it is:

What is rest and what is aversion?

The last time I sat down to write you was the morning of November 1st. The night before I had taught a Suzuki and Viewpoints class to the couple of folks who wanted to come out on a stormy Halloween night. We had one of those wonderful learning times that is born of a small group: a wealth of time to share insights, follow wild curiosities, and double back on ourselves. I left feeling grateful to each of us for meeting in the deep dark of autumn, and grateful to my teachers for making a space (this room and laboratory) where these connections and explorations can flourish.

After class I bussed it home in the rain. Every fall I’m full of memories of growing up here with the rain and the mist and the dark winters. When the rains come, there is a sense of settling — ahh I’m back where I belong.

That evening I had no plans and AC was out of town, so I had a solo night with the cat. Popcorn for dinner, reading Game of Thrones in bed with ginger tea until I fell asleep sitting up, rousing myself groggily and singing a little ‘you got this’ song to the bathroom to brush my teeth. The whole night lit by candle light. At some point a friend sent photos of their kid dressed up as a… glowbug? Fairy? Whatever they were, the pictures made me smile.

Did I ever show you my collection of resting places?

I’ve been spending more and more time alone this season. Is this rest or aversion?

When I say aversion, I’m thinking about the exhaustion generated by capitalism. Inside of this structure, much of life feels compulsory, I must, I must, I must… and a desire to recede from life can take root as a result. A habituation of aversion, not wanting to go anywhere, do anything or see anyone. I fantasize sometimes about saying no to every single thing. What would that be like? To not have to balance, choose, prioritize or rally my energy. To shut myself in, tune everything out and do nothing.

But there is nowhere far enough away and I feel myself receding from myself. My consciousness slipping back into the space at the back of my skull, like the tide going out.

We talked about this exact thing in Viewpoints class on Halloween. How soft focus (the practice of softening your gaze to take in more of what is happening in the room) can sometimes feel like disassociating. Softening my gaze until I’m not really looking at anything. Using the glazed-eye method as a buffer between me and the overwhelm of being with other people. We practiced moving into a soft focus that was awake, hungry and curious. It felt good.

What is rest and what is aversion?

Is my move toward solitude one of comfort with myself or discomfort with the world? Is it wisdom or exhaustion?

Wait. Stop. Pause. You have time.

When I find myself in these either/or tangles, it helps to pause and look around. What else is true?

Over the summer, when I was teaching and studying at the Portland Contact Improv Festival, a facilitator was speaking about neurodivergence and consent. They said because of how their brain works, a lot of the time when they’re in a dance and they ask themself, “Do I like this? Do I want to keep going?” the answer is, “I don’t know right now.” They introduced the possibility that it’s okay to feel uncertain and keep dancing and encouraged us to stay awake and curious inside the Maybe-space. In that class and afterwards, giving myself time to swim in the not-knowing was a relief.2

The quest for a dance where everyone is living inside of an ecstatic YES is an awesome one. And learning to feel a clear NO and honor it has been an invaluable practice for me. At the same time, “I don’t know right now,” is not the same for me as a clear no. When I hammer on myself for an answer, like: “Is this good or bad??!? Tell me right now!!” I’m not really with what is happening, and it’s harder for me to adapt.

Just now, while taking a pause from writing this, I hear Morgan Bassichis say this:

Perfection is a myth

And, it’s a really damaging

myth

It robs us of our lives

And it robs us of

intimacy with each other.3

Their words remind me of the tug-of-war I’m feeling around rest and aversion. The harder I try to work it out, the tighter the knot becomes (okay that’s not really how a tug of war works but I know y’all can roll with my metaphor-hopping). I’m striving for the perfect way to be. Imagining that it is possible for me to live my ideal at all times and that it’s my job to continually optimize toward the perfect experience. That’s capitalism at work inside me! And I feel the paradoxical way that I even want to get perfect about this revelation; becoming the best at swimming in uncertainty.

It’s tricky and I can feel myself grappling with it. I could use some thought-partners here and I would so love it if you wrote me me or called me up to tell me your thoughts. How can we be with what is, and be rigorous in our pursuit of transformation, pleasure and care? How can we begin to un-weave the bind of perfectionism?

Leave a comment

I think the comment button is a little cheesy but I am truly longing to talk to you so here it is.

This doesn’t feel like the perfect ending, but that’s great practice! No more time to write either way, I have to go eat pho with my mom and make a collage.

stay curious Beloveds!

love love love,

Isabel

Upcoming

• 52 Duets - Every Saturday (unless I’m sick) 5:30pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. This week: Paul Fredrickson!

• Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes - Tonight’s the last one until January! Friday evenings 6-8pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Register and learn more here.

• Musical Viewpoints - Open Viewpoints lab featuring live music by London Bauman and facilitated by me. Donations appreciated, NOTAFLOF. More info on the flyer below.

• Song Channeling - A chorus for our grief. Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio. Next gathering is November 30th.

• Secret Seed Improv Salon - I’ll be performing song and storytelling with Sofía Marks within this evening of improvised performance. More info on the flyer below and also here.

We do none of this alone. In a week (On Sunday, October 26th), Sofía and I will host our monthly song circle. In preparation to join with the practice again, we exchanged voice memos this week. What are we actually doing here?

Our exchange makes me think of Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Sangodare Wallace who call their partnering a Love-Ship and speak of relationships as public offerings, practical, spiritual, community-building technologies of devotion.1

I’m sharing some excerpts of our conversation here, as a way to invite you in. Journey with us in your imagination, and, if you feel called, join us on Sunday as we sing out together.

isa: halo! I’m feeling really inspired by voice memos right now, and like thhhh…the things that get communicated in this particular mode of communicating. And I had an idea! I wondered if you would exchange a few voice memos with me over the next day or two. I know you’re on the farm, so I dunno if it works for you to send voice memos at work or not. But I wanna talk about Song Channeling. And I think I have two intentions. One, like for us to sort of re..group? Be like, okay now that we’ve been in this experiment for a while, what are we doing here? What are we up to? And that maybe by sharing some of those thoughts we can let folks in to the experience.

(Before replying about song channeling, Sofía sent me a couple minutes update on her new laundry system we devised together, which is really cute and totally my love language, but not the focus of this letter so I’m omitting it for now.)

soso: I like the idea of us using this format to think about our experiment we’re doing. What exactly are we trying to do? From last time, it felt really nice to be like, you know, we’re tending to ourselves and to each other’s grief in a way. Is it a grieving space? There have been moments when it’s felt like lamentation practice, the way we were taught by Amber and Rebecca. But it also feels slightly different. But like, the format itself feels like lamentation, and we’re talking about Grief — and maybe it’s not always grief. Is it a space to tend to ourselves, in the midst of a society that doesn’t want to take care of us, or teach us how to care or prioritize our care? That we take time to tend to ourselves, and each other, in community.

The core of it, in the beginning, was asking myself a question and using movement and song to search for an answer. To listen to myself even if I didn’t find one. Or just like, experience being taken over by my feelings and by my experiences — allowing them to move me for that hour.

isa: hello goodmorning! I’m sick also. I’ve been in bed for three days basically. I felt a little sad to cancel everything yesterday. But I’m also feeling really proud of myself — the way that I’ve been honoring my illness and my capacity. Kind of feels like a belief in abundance. That there’s no scarcity of beautiful experiences, and art making and connection. And none of that even stops when I need to be home resting, it just takes a different shape.

(I was supposed to duet with Sofía’s partner, Paul on Saturday. I had been sooo looking forward to it for all the inter-relational web weaving and because we were sending such juicy source material back and forth. But our exchange about needing to rest, tending illness and more making possibilities in the future was also sweet.)

I’m so glad your laundry system is working for you! I loved hearing about it and feeling like, we make beautiful art together! We make beautiful laundry systems together! Everything is devising, there’s no difference.

One thing that really crystalized for me listening to your message was that something that makes this iteration, and shape of this practice, particular is that we are doing it in a group. And I keep being really struck by this thing you said after last month’s song circle, which was … what did you say? You were like, “A way to tend to each other, and tend to our grief, together.” And the together part feels important to me. And so listening to these questions you posed I was like, oh, of course, that togetherness feels central. And so, this question that Ki raised a couple sessions back, of like, are we listening to that place where the song wants to come through from the beyond, or are we listening to each other? I think they’re the same. When we’re together, the whole, the circle of us is the channel. And so, practicing how to open and let through together feels important.

soso: (6:24am) hey it’s super early. But I had ideas so I’m recording. I’m outside, in my back yard, with my glass of water and I’m thinkin’ about Song Channeling. So the thing I was thinking is, what do I think about when I think about song channeling? I think about the Moon, I think about my heart, I think about my shadow, I think about the Night and the Ocean. I think that song channeling is like giving yourself up to movement, giving in to yourself. It’s also about deep listening, to yourself and to others. What are the needs in the room? How can we tend to ourselves and each other?

It’s about Being together as we are, too. There’s so many rules about how to — or expectations about how to move, and how to sing, and what is Good, and how to exi—how to Be. And we’re asking ourselves to be with each other as we are. And to explore that with curiosity alongside each other.

It feels like Magic. And Love. Love for myself, love for others, love for the world. I feel like a lot of grief has shown up in that space because of how much love I feel. And how much excitement I feel by the power of our voices together. And the pure child-play of the full extent of voice and movement. Yeah.

Okay, I’m gonna go back to bed now. Bye <3

We start by arriving. Meeting each other, “What is present in the room?” There’s time to drink water, stretch, lie down, take a breath. Sofía and I tell the story of Song Channeling, how we came together, what we’re up to. Then we start moving. I play music that’s special to Sofía or I, or suggested by participants. Music that makes us want to dance — hard. There’s an invitation to exhaustive movement that everyone meets in their own way. We follow delight, using repetition as a guide.

When we’re out of breath and undone a little bit, the music stops. We sit in a circle. We listen. We sing. The song is always different, sometimes soaring, sometimes tip-toeing. At that point we don’t care about sounding good, it’s more about what we are hearing, what we are feeling. To me, it is always a kind of magic. The way our voices ripple and weave to make this one-time song of all that we are.

Before, I only ever sang while riding my bike late at night. When I did try to sing in front of people I would cry to the point of having no voice. Because of Sofía, and the way we have helped each other out into that child-play of the full extent of voice, it’s like the song never stops. I wake up singing and I sing through all my days.

love,

Isabel

Upcoming

• 52 Duets - Every Saturday (unless I’m sick) 5:30pm at 2259 NW NW Raleigh St. This week: Kai Hynes!

• Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes - Fridays 6-8pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Four more in this series! Register and learn more here.

• Musical Viewpoints - One-off class featuring live music by London Bauman. Pay what you can sliding scale $0-$10. Wednesday, October 22nd 6:30-8pm at the PETE Studio.

• Song Channeling - A chorus for our grief. Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio. Next gathering is October 26th.

• Want to work with me one-on-one? An emergent co-evolution practice offered in the gift. We’ll use movement, song, writing and listening practices to find out what we can set down and what we can hold together. Email me to learn more.

Just a short note to say that today’s duet is canceled. We’ve both got illness at home and are dueting with soup and baths and naps.

This week’s letter is taking it’s time also, but coming soon.

I love you!

Isabel

Upcoming

• 52 Duets - Every Saturday (unless I’m sick) 5:30pm at 2259 NW NW Raleigh St. Next week: Kai Hynes!

• Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes - Fridays 6-8pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Register and learn more here.

• Musical Viewpoints - One-off class featuring live music by London Bauman. Pay what you can sliding scale $0-$10. Wednesday, October 22nd 6:30-8pm at the PETE Studio.

• Song Channeling - A chorus for our grief. Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio. Next gathering is October 26th.

• Want to work with me one-on-one? An emergent co-evolution practice offered in the gift. We’ll use movement, song, writing and listen practices to find out what we can set down and what we can hold together. Email me to learn more and schedule a consultation.

On Saturday I danced with Cristi Miles. What an honor to invite my teacher, my friend!, into this project which is also my heart.

We danced to Bad Bunny, discarded sound files from old projects, and this crackling delight which R.L. Routh cooked up in 2023 when we were in ICP together. Give it a listen when you feel like being cracked.

Composition by R.L. Routh, music by Moses Sumney. Words by Bayo Akomolafe and Taiye Selasi.

Here we are with our primordial-moss, weeds we salvaged that morning from a communal gardening day at 2259.

After the gardening, and before joining Cristi to make our duet, I met with the Third Rail mentorship company for our first day of orientation. Each year I help guide the cohort of mentees through their year-long training in creative collaboration. By way of introducing myself this year, I read these words from Bayo Akomolafe, which also show up in R.L’s sound:

The idea of an unknowable God really appeals to me

It’s the idea that God is still figuring itself, herself, himself, themselves out.

God is still being worked out.

God is not just an essence. God is a becoming.

God is a dying.

God is a living.

God is the anamisy of a Mushroom world.

God is the weather. God is Geology.

And this is not just to say in a glib way that God is Everything.

Because there is no such thing as Everything.

That’s just a convenience of language.

And there’s no umbrella term to capture things that are happening in their happenings.

…

So, I like to think about God in this way.

As fugitive.

As the crack in things.

That disciplines our attempts to name with any sense of finality.

- Bayo Akomolafe, interviewed on For the Wild by Ayana Young1

Here’s what I’m wondering, Beloveds. How do I avoid being captured in my happenings, and still invite you in to be in the happening with me? How can I exist in this world, without a clear descriptor, a title, a location? I’m dreaming of a life where passion and labor wend into one fabric. Where there is no such thing as audience, and we co-create, participate, inter-weave and do it all, all together. I want more stumbling upon wonder and less marketing. Fewer paychecks and more gifts. More moving at the pace of trust, more relationships that are harder to describe.

Disciplining my attempt to name - I’m calling this my Bayo bio.

I’m beginning to find some threads. Beginning to weave them. Dancing with Cristi also reminded me, I’m a thread that has been finding and un-finding itself, weaving for thousands of years. That while I am dreaming of possible futures, I am alive inside of a future dreamed before I was born. As the leaves fall, death upon death, pain upon pain, dreams blooming and going to seed, the layers gather up on the forest floor. We are moving over a humus of what came before, of all that is possible.

May this decade bring more than just solutions, more than just a future - may it bring words we don’t know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited. May we be slower than speed could calculate, and swifter than the pull of the gravity of words can incarcerate. And may we be visited so thoroughly, and met in wild places so overwhelmingly, that we are left undone. Ready for composting. Ready for the impossible. Welcome to the decade of the fugitive. 2

Upcoming

• Duets continue (at least through the end of the year, possibly into the next). Next week, Paul Fredrikson who just lent me his Joanna Macy translation of The Book of Hours.

• Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes - Fridays 6-8pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St. Register and learn more here.

• Musical Viewpoints - One-off class featuring live music by London Bauman. Pay what you can sliding scale $0-$10. Wednesday, October 22nd 6:30-8pm at the PETE Studio.

• Song Channeling - As Sofia said last month, “A way to tend to our grief, and tend to each other, together.” Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio. Next gathering is October 26th.

• Want to work with me one-on-one? An emergent co-evolution practice offered in the gift. We’ll use movement, song, writing and listen practices to find out what we can set down and what we can hold together. Email me to learn more and schedule a consultation.

On Saturday I danced with R.L. Routh, a multi-fold reunion. The first duet after a long break, the first time we two had made anything together since ICP, and both of us returning home after months of travel.

We spoke about community. One of the first things R.L. said to me as we were checking in: “Community, our relationships, are the only way we are going to survive this.” Terrifying This.

The duet we made was compost-y. Lots of rich, dense, dark pieces piled up together. Loose structure, images, darkness. For me it was about fear. I felt the fear around the edges of our conversation. We are both happy to be home, practicing inside of complex love, feeling lucky to be creative in our work. And we are also preparing. Preparing to survive something we can’t name.

This is immanent, happening now but also in the future, larger than any one crisis and hard to put words to. This growing sense of uncertainty. This dwindling sense of trust. This fear. This— and often there’s a question underneath my conversations these days: How are we going to survive this?

I told R.L. that one of my foundational intentions in starting the duet series was to shore up the relationships in my life. Like mending a net in preparation for storms to come. Before we start moving I like to make some time to talk, “Ah, hello. It’s you. Who are you now? How are you doing? What’s heavy? What can we carry together?”

This year, alongside the cadence of weekly duets, I’ve felt my fear growing. It’s a tide I know we can all feel rising. Pressing from many places, the fear shuts down possibility. A line from the book R.L. brought in as source material: “He knew he wanted out but he didn’t know where out was.”1

How are we going to survive this? We’re looking for out. A way to slip through the cracks, to become fugitive from This.2 And often I think the best way out is deeper in.

So as grants and gigs dry up, my student loans begin to balloon again, and all my people feel the crush of money stress, I’m going deeper in to mutual aid. Measuring my wealth by what I give. Offering my work for free, feeding whoever I can, tending the gardens of my beloveds. With every gift the fear eases. There is enough. There is enough. There is enough.

I make more room for art. I try to be very honest with my needs. I’m reorganizing to spend more time collaborating, more time in relationship. I tell people I’m scared. I believe more in magic. I take a lot of baths, sing more, write more, sleep more and more regularly. I am writing a list of everything I want to give as a gift so that I can show that list to everyone I know. What do you need? I’m preparing, not by hunkering down, but by staying flexible, keeping soft, opening up.

As the fear presses in, it takes more time and concerted attention to soften. That’s what these practices are for. Writing you, being with children, singing, making food to share, dancing for myself, these rhythms where I place my time soften me, so that I can better slip through the cracks and out.

Upcoming

• Next duet, Saturday October 4th at 5:30pm. 2259 NW Raleigh St. Free and open to all. I’m still looking for a partner so let me know if you want to dance, or know someone who might want to.

• Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes - Fridays 6-8pm at the PETE Studio: 2259 NW Raleigh St. Register and learn more here.

• Song Channeling - As Sofia said on Sunday, “A way to tend to our grief, and tend to each other, together.” Every last Sunday of the month, 5-7pm at the PETE Studio.

• Want to work with me one-on-one? An emergent facilitation practice offered in the gift. Email me to schedule a consultation. What do you need?

Your first word of all was light, 
and time began. Then for long you were silent. 

Your second word was man, and fear began, 
which grips us still. 

Are you about to speak again? 
I don't want your third word. 

Sometimes I pray: Please don't talk. 
Let all your doings be by gesture only. 
Go on writing in faces and stone
what your silence means. 

Be our refuge from the wrath
that drove us out of Paradise. 

Be our shepherd, but never call us—
we can't bear to know what's ahead. 

- Rainer Maria Rilke 
  Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I added a new, ‘Upcoming’ section to the bottom of this letter. I’ll include it in future posts as a place to find all the details on upcoming performances and classes. Hope to see you soon!

Rather than one big post, here’s a collection of fragments from the past few weeks.

New door which AC salvaged, restored, painted AND installed.1 I didn’t want to call this room the Office when we moved in. Somehow we ended up calling it The Room of Light. Glass to let the light in. Featuring amazing face pillow painted and gifted to me by Garth Upshaw.

I pulled this card for us all before sitting down to write to you. The deck is by adrienne maree brown and fellows.2 The Two of Water came out in reverse. I like to read both upright and reverse and glean anything resonant.

And then I immediately found this lemon balm on the corner outside my house. As I was walking with a sprig in my pocket, I thought about Sofia telling me she’s been listening to Rage Against the Machine every morning while she drives to the farm. She put it on the first morning to help her wake up, and ended up crying. Now she’s putting it on whenever she’s in the car to grieve and rage. I’m adding them to the Song Channeling playlist.

Uplifting Embodied Astrology in the name of raging and grieving. Their weekly and seasonal horoscopes always help me to land at clarity and take the next right step. I’m very curious to join this workshop they’re hosting called Dancing the Political.

(I’m a virgo rising. You can go to their page to find your horoscope.)

Also in the name of raging and grieving, I’m helping to provide childcare at a Yom Kippur protest for Gaza on October 2nd, 1-4pm. Reach out directly if you want more details on how to join or support.

This beautiful print made by my friend, Virginia Marting.

Sending you all my love,

Isabel

Upcoming

• Suzuki and Viewpoints Drop-in Classes - Fridays 6-8pm at the PETE Studio: 2259 NW Raleigh St. Register and learn more here.

• Song Channeling - A monthly improvised song circle for Togetherness and Release. Every last Sunday of the month at the PETE Studio. You can reply to this email to learn more and let us know when you plan on joining.

• 52 Duets - Every week I make a new piece of performance with a new partner to share with you. Saturdays, 5:30pm at the PETE Studio.

Another phone call with my mom yesterday and I was telling her about my longing for routine. Summer and traveling often knock me out of daily rituals, so with the return home on the horizon I’ve begun daydreaming about autumn rhythms.

Some of those rhythms involve returning to regular teaching and performing. Here are the upcoming offerings I’m looking forward to sharing with you.

Suzuki + Viewpoints

Drop-in classes begin on September 26th. Join us on Fridays for an 8 week dip into the principals of these two beloved movement trainings. You can drop in for one or two classes, or register for the full 8 weeks. One of my favorite things about this class is the opportunity to teach to all levels of experience. We regularly have folks in class who have never heard of Viewpoints or Suzuki, along with folks who have been practicing for years.

Reach out to me directly if you want to know more before registering. Here’s the link!

Suzuki + Viewpoints Drop-in Classes

Duets Return!

Beginning September 27th I’m back to weekly duets at the PETE Studio. Every Saturday afternoon I’ll meet with a new partner at the studio and together we’ll make a new piece of performance to share with an audience that very evening. Come join us for a showing and discussion after. Every Saturday for the rest of the year, 5:30pm at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

Duet showings are free and all are welcome!

Monthly Song Circle

September 28th marks the first month of regular song circles. Sofia Marks and I co-facilitate a group ritual of improvised song, intuitive movement and catharsis. Before working together, neither Sofia or I had any kind of experience singing in front of people. Together we created a process to allow whatever sound wants to move through our bodies to be expressed. We taught each other to sing freely and love the feeling. There is some powerful magic in singing like this, together in a group and I feel humbled and excited to continue stewarding it.

Last Sunday of every month, 5-7pm in the PETE Studio at 2259 NW Raleigh St.

Bring a journal, a water bottle and anything you need to be comfortable moving on and off for two hours. Reach out directly if you want to know more before joining.

The cost of Song Circle is $25. No one turned away for lack of funds.