My cooking/soup analogy!

Watching TV is somewhat a passive experience, and also engages less of the senses. Not just bodily (sight, smell, touch, hearing), but also how emotion, excitement, danger influences the perception of time and proximity to others. In a cypher, to watch is to displace. You may as well bring yourself as an audience member.

So then, to dance or watch dance should I consider it an invitation to interact and respect space? Does the dancer take priority over the viewers on a groove space? If I take the dance floor, can I expect others to move, and if they do not make way, or ask me to stop. Are they perhaps in the wrong?

Also love that the audience's energy fuels the performance. Without a crowd, we only see the end product and not the engine. The byproducts and not the reaction.

This is how I feel about build season and punk worksites. If you wanna participate in collective action, know where to not put your body. Know where to put your weight. Yelling is just part of communication, unless pointed and demeaning. Know who the leads are. Keep an eye out for yourself and others.

the circle as an organism has a sort of ecology and life cycle of its own. the cypher is made of people, but has a life of its own made up of the exchange, transformation, and recirculation of energy. The cypher is not merely just made of moving bodies in closeness. There's a shared sense of connection that makes reactions possible fueling the cypher's metabolism.

I am working on a framework for understanding different social circles. It starts with observing and conceptualizing groups of people as overlapping semi-permeable membranes. The distinctions are not always clear, and sometimes the distinctions I make about belonging and kinship also influence the generalizations that can be pulled about said groups. Sometimes a groups of strangers on a dance floor can feel like the author's description of cyphers, and knowing how to be a participant observer, respecting space, showing interest, sometimes mirroring movements lets me join in and pass a threshold/cross membranes.

to participate as a viewer also means to draw from your own experiences (conscious or not) in your response. there is some psychic exchange between performer, viewer, movement, music.

As an analogy, it would be hard to gain an understanding of a dish I've never had from just the raw ingredients eaten seprately. Perhaps there is needed infusing, mellowing by roasting, aromas from toasting, removal of seeds and stems, fermentation, baking, stewing that makes the experience nourishing to more than just the stomach. And perhaps a recipe is incomplete without it's original name, a visit to its place of procurement, attachment to its means of production, and the occasion for which it is prepared as a remedy for heartache, celebration, and expression of love.

strong defense of history and legacy. the role of earlier figures is not just in their innovations, but also the groundwork laid to create a shared form of art.

The crowd also serves a regulating role to channel and regulate the energy. There are spaces in which I feel unsafe or alien because of a lack of feedback. And when a conflict or fight breaks out, when we all get on the same page, I have found faith and safety again. Perhaps the cypher operates similarly, a somewhat rehearsed occasion of collective engagement and drama that brings people together without witnessing or experiencing harm?

Though, what separates this form from say a nationally recognized participatory occasion like football or boxing? Perhaps it is because the goal of breaking isn't to cause physical harm on another?

Academic participation is cerebral and perhaps objectifying. As a researcher, it's not enough to describe from a disembodied perspective. A disembodied or empirical presence can not account for why a ritual or performance is necessary. A disembodied perspective is really a conceit, as in it is a refusal for the account to leave it's origin and bias, which is in fact grounded in the observer's own body. A way of engaging with dance as an observer needs participation. It needs to integrate your own feelings, the unspoken rules of a dance floor, engagement with the performer.

when the lights go down, we are called into bodies--our own and those of others. When the light goes on, we separate again. There is an exchange and transformation of energy, a sense of self that is communal being affirmed, a lack of reservation about bodies and appearances in the aftermath, perhaps a sense of collective trust in seeing the emotional extremes of others transformed into movement and cause for closeness instead of separation.

Passage starts with the narrator's presence, expanding to venue and event. Follows the flow of time as day unfolds.