if you lived in your body

for spoken word and strings

When I told my therapist I was feeling ungrounded and dissociated, she offered the mantra "If you lived in your body, you’d be home." I repeated this every day, and while it brought some comfort, it was not a perfect salve. I have never felt at home in my body, preferring to evict body from brain in order to ignore pain. Still, finding a home within my body is a hopeful goal. Comprised of spoken word and layers of violin, this piece will be the opening track on my forthcoming Homecoming album.

This piece can be arranged for live performance upon request.

if you lived in your body

i’m going on the road
could be 6 months, maybe a year.

she asks how i feel.
i say
i’m terrified.
that i’ll lose my center

i have no sense of home.

i’m going on the road, 
living in bunks with people i barely know
she asks how i feel.

i say i already crave home.
not the place, the feeling.

i’m traveling on a bus. could be 6 months, maybe a year.
notice your body, she says.
i don’t want to notice my body, i say.
i’d like to pretend it doesn’t exist.

breathe, she says.
feel your body, she says.

why can’t i hide out in my brain?
both places are inhospitable
but the brain i’m more used to.

where is home, really, where is it?

this has now become a pressing matter.
i’ve moved 3 times in the past 3 months,
and i need to figure this out.

she says,
“if you lived in your body, you’d be home now.”
if i lived in my body…
if i lived in my body…
to live in my body
i would first need to move into my body…

breathe, she says.
i don’t want to, i say
or maybe it’s hard to.

my body is a terrible host.
would you want to stay there?
why would i would want to live there?

it hurts…
this body
is not my body
or worse, 
it is.

and yet, there it is.
“if you lived in your body, you’d be home.”
“if you lived in your body, you’d be home.”
“if my body is my home, home will always be with me.”

is that what i want?
home, always with me?

i search my journal for the word “home.”
i count 155 times in 243 pages
an average of 1.6 times per page.

i talk about going home, being at home, laying at home, working at home, loving home, hating home, escaping home, old homes, future homes, hiding at home, moving home, multiple homes, making a home, what is home?

“if i lived in my body, i’d be home”
“if i lived in my body, i’d be home”

i want
to be home
but then what?

===

Composed and performed by Chrysanthe Tan in May 2016.
Photo is by Jairo Alzate.

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