Dancing with Dragons

No Party without its Rough Patches. On how I deal with the unpleasant and triggering, what there is to Learn from the Underworld, and why I am definitely never too kind.

Mercury, 8 March 2023

__Stirring up your Life with:

__Dishes as Dragons

__Facing Fear with Love

__Why I am not too kind

__Lessons from the Underworld

I promise you will learn interesting things if you read this. Let me know if you do.

Romain Frequency aka. Electrosexual the Dragon Carrier and Music Wizard

Thanks for letting me imagine visuals for your mesmerising tracks, love it!

Listen to their latest release, Journey to the End of the Night, here

__Dishes as Dragons

Two days after The Party I finally made it home. I always need to recharge and gather the courage to face the residual mess and the leftover energies hovering in my space after all that happened there. (Thank you to everybody who helped clean in between!) One more coffee and one more cigarette and then I'll be ready to tackle these dishes. I look at my phone, my mum sent me a message. It's a poem by a Dutch songwriter, Toon Hermans. I read it and immediately cry, because I am reminded of what I am doing these dishes for. To belong with you, who will keep on dancing with me in the rain long after the musicians are gone.

There need to be people

who light suns

before the world will drown

People who sell ice cream

at the graveyard exit

and climb the ruins

to play harmonica

People who stand on chairs

and put up stars in the fog

who make spring out of fallen leaves

and light of fallen shadows

There need to be people

who write their names

on trees full of fruits

because there are others

who flee from butterflies

and throw rocks at the blue of spring

because they are scared of flowers

and of hearing

I love you

People who warm us

who don't know of time

who, like a child, are in awe

with something that shines

Who shout there is love

and wonder

if all others say

we are doomed

Then they reply

we are not going under

because every ending

is a new start

I want to belong with these people

who will keep dancing in the rain

long after the musicians are gone

Whose tears are like pearls

glowing in darkness

With these people

I want to belong

(freely translated by me)

__The cleaning tornado hit and all turned out to be fine in the end

__Facing Fear with Love

Dishes are not the only Dragons to face in The Party. They are the things we would rather not see, hear, feel, or deal with right now, or ever. And fighting them doesn't generally help. When I was a teenager, I had a dream that taught me something about this. I was running up the stairs of a tower, followed by an unknown creature that I feared. As I reached the top of the tower, I realised I couldn't run any further. So I took a deep breath and turned around to look the creature in the eyes. In that moment, it was no longer behind me. Looking through a window, I could just see it disappear in a forest in the distance. In his Letters to Young Poet, my favourite German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

__“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

Turning to my Dragons with love and grace is something I have to learn over and over again, and The Party is an excellent practicing ground for this. Why? Because there are people to engage with, and whenever I feel irritated or triggered by these Others, I know it's my own Dragons peeking around the corner.

I do make choices about who I bring in by sharing my energy with those who want to come and sensing what is coming back my way. I trust that Friends who invite their Friends will bring people who match the vibe. But there are always unknown factors, and I like the presence of the unpredictability they bring (sometimes, not always). I cannot tell you how much I have learned about myself by surrounding myself with Others.

__My space is not a safe space, because the world is not.

An After at my place often brings together people who are strangers to each other. Usually they get along, sometimes they don't. And sometimes they learn to over time. In that sense, The Party is a bit like mirror of society, though the common place we start from creates the first selection - which leaves out many people from the outset. Generally, if someone wants to join the pilgrimage from the Main to my After, I trust that we will find a way together. I don't want parties just for pretty people, young people, smart people, or enlightened people. We are all fucked up in our own glorious ways, and I am curious about the unexpected treasures we can find in each other in spite and because of the differences we bring. How else are we going to learn to live well enough together on this miraculous planet? That's why it says in my Partyfiesto:

__The right people are here, because they want to be here.

Finding out what these treasures are that people bring means that sometimes, we have to jump over our own shadow - especially if we don't feel an instant vibe with the other person. But oh, what would I have missed out on if I would have stuck with judgments based on my first impression of people! Maybe we don't get someone straight away, which is why I say:

__Give each other an advance of kindness.

That being said, the main aim of being in a party is having a good time. Nobody forces us to be there, nobody is paying us to be there. We are in this space by our own volition and it is up to every Guest and Host to take responsibility for co-creating a good time for everybody involved. There are times for choosing to be around people we know and trust, and there are times to open up to the Unknown. As the good Witches put it:

__Do no harm but take no shit.

Wild hand-dancing gear custom-made by Markus Stefan,

my ex of eleven years & fellow dragon dancer

Photos by Oleh Cherednichenko

__Why I am not too kind

People have told me that I am too kind to people. Here is a fragment from my favourite movie Adaptation by Charlie Kaufman (love meta cinema) explaining why I am not, and why my crushes are never in vain, and why I don't regret any relationships, and why I will keep on loving dragons until the end of time. Also, I love scenes with final insights before someone dies, and songs written at the end of someone's life, such as The Goal by Leonard Cohen. These lessons are the real thing.

__Bitch, that love was mine.

__Lessons from the Underworld

Since I stopped fearing the sides of people coming out in altered states of consciousness, I started being intrigued by them. What gets suppressed in daily life makes its appearance here, because it needs to. It doesn't want to be fought, it doesn't want to be pushed away, it doesn't want to be punished, it just wants to have a moment to be. If loved and cared for rather than rejected, the dragon will soon enough turn out to be a beautiful princess.

__Something Underloved can only be Healed by being Overloved

__That's why I Dance with Dragons

__See you at The Party xxx

I too am sometimes a Dragon

that wants your Love

Thank you Jaime

for this Hug

❤❤❤

Let's keep Dancing forever!

❤❤❤