"Connect with your music"- what dancer hasn't heard that. A cliche, yes, but good advice nonetheless. When I heard the song "Bedroom Hymns" by Florence and the Machine, memories of my falling out with Christianity and its tangle in my personal life with sexuality came flooding back. The lyrics give a sacrilegious twist to the usual story about passion and love, and that brings up very intense memories for me.
I'm an atheist now, or maybe an agnostic. I could spend an entire post discussing my current views on spirituality, but it's a vague sort of rocks-and-trees type thing. Shinto without the shrines? I'm still working it out, honestly.
Regardless, I grew up Christian. I was very involved with youth groups, leading worship on Sundays, and small groups. Not because I had some deeply held belief in Presbyterian Christianity, Jesus or religion at all, but because I found friends there. I felt a connection and mutual respect with the adults in that system. My parents were very strict about which friends I made and where I went, but church events were one of the few times they gave me some freedom.
In high school, I had brief but intense relationships with a few of the boys in the youth group. It was such a small group, formed of people who theoretically shared a faith but not much else in common. Obviously we all felt some tension and struggled to be the Christian "brothers and sisters" that our religion called us to be.
One of my relationships with a member of the youth group became physical and subsequently that person betrayed my trust, shared my personal secrets with the other people in the group, and I felt cast out as a "slut". Hurt, I tried to form emotional bonds through liaisons with new boyfriends, which only made things worse. The friends I reached out to, whom Christianity had told me were upstanding, honest, compassionate people turned against me and I felt betrayed by my closest friends, my spiritual "brothers and sisters". The boys' small group made t-shirts around that time that said "Got Integrity?" on the backs. I couldn't make sense of the hypocrisy and lack of empathy. My religious beliefs started to crumble.
That was the seed for this performance, a deep wound that opened over a decade ago. I'm still working out my own spirituality and my sexuality has obviously taken a circuitous path since that time. Now I am an open (and happy) bisexual, sex-positive and proud kink. Religion and sex share a strong emotional link in my past, so when I heard Bedroom Hymns, I knew I had to dance to it. At first I thought it would only be a freedance, but I felt such a strong connection to the music that I realized it would be an incredible performance piece.
I'm no experienced performer, so obviously I couldn't lose myself in the music completely. I still worried about making the tricks dramatic, looking good, hitting the right beats, but that personal link did indeed help me forget about the audience a bit, work through those memories and just dance for me.
This is a good a place to fall as any / we'll build our altar here. Make me your Maria / I'm already on my knees. You had Jesus on your breath / and I caught Him in mine. Sweating our confessions / The undone and the divine.
This is his body, this is his love / Such selfish prayers and I can't get enough, oh / I can't get enough
Spilt bitter tears, I did this for you / Spilling over the aisle, the black and the blue
The sweetest submission, drinking you in / The wine and the women and the bedroom hymns
This is his body, this is his love / Such selfish prayers and I can't get enough, oh / I can't get enough
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