dreaming our futures
dream archive
songspell towards noncriticality.
video description: a songspell ripples and envelopes, cozy and warm, co-crafted and cast in care-filled crip community for dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams. we’re dreaming towards noncriticality. soft blurs of bright green and yellowgreen fabric portals (shaped into alexa dexa’s bed opera costume by Rebirth Garments) shimmer and slowly shift with the peach pink of alexa dexa’s body in motion. our libretto, co-crafted by all, floats to the top. sound descriptions by Hayley Ku’unani float to the bottom within brackets. all text is handwritten by alexa dexa, half-script scribbles and etches. sounds are shared by alexa dexa and their toychestra, our gorgeous crip community, and live electronic processing in maxmsp.
This is alexa speaking and I just wanna thank everyone for sharing such beautiful welcomes and dreams, such incredible wishes for this space, for ourselves, for each other and just feeling really blessed to be here with you and to dream together.
I think we’ll move into co‑crafting our songspell, but if there’s something you still want to share about yourself or about an introduction or a welcome or a dream or anything that’s coming up for you, please feel free to keep sharing. We’ll just keep sharing. And there’s never a wrong time to share what you want to share.
Okay. So we’re going to be taking this space to think about the dreams that we want to be dreaming about together for now and into the future. And just to sort of give us a little bit of insight or a little theme that we can dream on for anyone who’s maybe looking for a little extra guidance, I’m going to be shuffling my dreaming our futures + embodying our dreams oracle//composition cards and each of these cards shares a little crip dream and wisdom for living through ableist chaos as well as a little crayon drawing / glitch drawing that can be read as a graphic musical score and that I’ll read while we’re casting our songspell together. So I’m just shuffling and seeing if there’s anything that comes up for us to be dreaming around today. Also if you know what you want to dream on already, that’s perfect. We can dream on anything together. This isn’t a limitation, just a guiding point if it resonates with you. And no worries if it doesn’t. Just still shuffling and making a selection.
Okay. So this card says towards noncriticality and it features a couple of triangle shapes, so they are like large triangle shapes and then large rectangle shapes and inside of the triangles are smaller crayon drawings of triangles. So there’s smaller triangles inside these sort of larger triangles and they’re all different shapes and a bit glitched in yellows and purples. And yes. This is — I feel like I’m calling myself out with this one personally in my own life, I know I made these cards but it’s a good reminder — towards noncriticality.
There’s so much to be judgmental about or critical about and sometimes having a critical eye towards something is really necessary, really important. You know, we need that. But also when it turns inward or becomes something that’s so critical that you can’t experience the joy or see the beauty for where it is. When it becomes, like the details, instead of being there and integrated, become so large that we can’t experience the whole of something because we are so in the tinyness of critical judgment-making. This is sort of like a reminder, like ok, let’s pull back. Let’s move toward noncriticality, towards more of a — I know I’m always saying towards more ease because I’m constantly wishing and dreaming of more ease everywhere and always but I think yeah, towards a way of being that ‑‑ doesn’t say we can’t have a critical moment. But does say that we are opening up a little more space to be experiencing a state or an environment or some way of being that has a bit more flow and a bit more acceptance. And for seeing where ‑‑ mmm — I’m doing this hand motion that’s just waving my hand sort of like in a circular space. And that’s not a word, but that’s the vibe, I think, of noncriticality for me. So yeah, there’s a little spell poem that goes along with this card. So I’m just gonna find it so, okay – here it is! – so we can have a reading. And it says:
towards noncriticality
undoing
the urge
to pick
apart
And I’ll read that again. It says:
towards noncriticality
undoing
the urge
to pick
apart
Okay. So what I’m gonna do here is I’m just gonna write down towards noncriticality and if there’s any dream that you want to share, any message, any spell, any prayer, anything to anchor us in our dreams together, you can share that now. It can be about moving towards noncriticality. It can be about anything. There’s no wrong way to contribute. So yea, so you can feel free to type in the chat or just speak aloud and this will — whatever we write together here, I’ll take notes of what everyone is sharing and this will become the libretto for the songspell that we’re crafting together here.
towards noncriticality
push away the judgement
turning away
from criticality
and towards
showing the seams
watching the puppeteer
seeing the web
thanking the person
who worked in the factory
that made the thread
holding your book together
apologizing
to the people we harmed
but will never meet
feeling frustrated
when i have to deal with
annoying people
for disability services
not to be ableist
so deeply important
to be aware and alert
but in the action
of picking apart
an apathy grows
with momentum lost
from hopes, cares
and what makes
criticality meaningful
in the first place
getting something a little wrong
is usually the first part
of getting it right
the gift of being a child again
on a playground with your best friend
eating candy and being away from your parents
bruising up your knees
and having your hair wild in the wind
a plant
growing in a
tangle of roots
and stems into something
complex and beautiful
i dream of sensation as
imagination foundation
the opposite of criticality to me
i dream that whenever crip folks hold
personal boundaries that enable
us to meet our needs
that we are met with more
understanding and curiosity and
less criticality
the food stains
on my clothes
are splashes
from the painting
of my life
less hard
less hard
less hard
on this being
hard enough
let’s make it easy
to be more forgiving of
others so i can be able
to have more ease to forgive
myself
to meet silence and absence with
patience and compassion
instead of assumptions
i dream of the circles of ancestors
soft moss, solemn trees
that help us carry
our crip queer pain and loss
i dream of the circles of ancestors
soft moss, solemn trees
that help us carry
help us carry
sound description by Hayley Ku’unani.
[alexadexa sounds the melodica to set the scene towards non-criticality]
[layers of vocalisations imbue the weaving of melody]
[piano notes ascend with hope and order]
[combinations of sounds collage and co-create into liminal listening]
[inhalations, exhalations, declarations and affirmations swirl]
[tender tinkling keys trot into audio terrain]
[woodwinds whirl with wonder]
[electronic sounds chop and fade in algorithmic parade]
[the libretto beckons softly against hopeful strings]
[vocalisations support us into surrender]
[grand keys ground]
[8bit builds beyond textures of fx]
[woodwinds whisper and whoosh melodies of mercy]
[bubbles of audio build, boil and birth]
[crip voices cradle care]
[clank keys sound tones of non-criticality]
[ethereal whispers wisp and waiver under textured ambient tones]
[coo’s of loops layer and lull into crip symphony]
[emotive motifs mend and tend to care]
[bells bleed melodic clarity and comfort]
[static surrenders into gentle vocalisations]
[drones drip behind alexadexa’s singing]
[mysticism moulds the power of collective crip sound]
[burgeoning bells arrange and acclimate in sonic zoom soundscape]
[revs and reversals reveal layers of keys and voices as tones unfold]
[songspells siren and sway amid affirmations and declarations of dreams]
[tickles of ticking shine alongside piano melodies]
[crip conjuring circle and swell manifestations into reality]
group portrait <3
