Bardo is a term used in Tibetan Buddhism to describe the intermediate state between death and rebirth. That also coincides with the time between life and death. In some places, bardo is considered that fuzzy border between sleep and wake. In others, it is considered a state of suspended life. For the purposes of this project, bardo is taken to be the place between a dream and reality, where the limits of the physical world are bent by the fantasies of the dream world. It sounds like a lovely place of dreamy other-worldliness, and there is that fantastical element of limitless possibility, but there is a much darker underside of a dreamworld. The very limitlessness of hopeful possibility extends to the nightmarish as well: the more you can dream of something beautiful and charming and good, the more you can dream of something ugly and disturbing and evil.
The crux of dreams and reality is where we locate the tension that runs through this project. There is a bird motif that carries its own set of metaphors, with egg references and feathered tales and a gilded cage that offers the freedom of imprisonment. There are animals that talk and sing, stories that defy logic and reason, and a merman who cannot miss the limbs he never had.
Mostly, though, there is the tension of the unresolved fuzziness of the border between being asleep and being awake. Once upon my youth, there wasn’t 24-7 television broadcasting. Some stations simply went dark at certain hours, with that weird color-banded screen and a strange one-note tone that rang until they resumed broadcasting the next morning. That was the land of bardo.
A state of suspension. A state of the in-between. It was a place in which you didn’t want to get stuck, but it was interesting to visit now and then. One got the sense that it was a land where monsters dwelled, and while monsters may seem exciting from a distance, when they get too close it can be terrifying.
…And in the end the birdcage descends, its bamboo bars now gold, now melting away, now revealed to be… a pretty ornate gate closing off the open sky. Protections against what is without. You, pretty bird, have sung for Kings and Queens through the ages, your plaintive coos unanswered, your shrill trills unheard, your splattered shit veined with gray. You dribble urine down your talons and dream of digging them into your masters. One day your beak will be unleashed, macerating all in its path, only your wings won’t work. You won’t remember how to use them, even if they’ve never been clipped, even if they spared you that one indignity.
{See ‘Bardo ~ The Dream Surreal’ in its entirety here. Also see ‘StoneLight‘, ‘The Circus Project‘, ‘A Night at the Hotel Chelsea‘ and ‘A 21stCentury Renaissance: The Resurrection Tour’.}
