Hooked to infinity:
Life after life
Composed for Edfringe Festival 2006
Who do you think you are?
ha ha bless your soul
do you really think you're in control?
well I think you're crazy
just like me - Gnarls Barkley
Hooked to Infinity' is a visionary journey through time, space, and the inner drama of the mind, to explore what lies behind individual identity. It evokes a synaesthetic experience of awareness expanded into space, the space of the theatre, the space beyond the theatre, the distant reaches of outer space... As if with a child's eyes the audience can discover for themselves how unthinkingly the mind recoils from perceiving empty space, how it avoids meeting its own eyes, looking for security in the eyes of others, and so hooks itself to limitation rather than to infinity. How naturally in each moment it prefers its old habits to freedom, any security to the unknown. As the song says, 'do you really think you're in control? well I think you're crazy just like me.'
Observing the experience in this moment of heightened perception something changes. The atmosphere shifts. In this hypnotic dreamscape woven through music, poetry, silence and expanded consciousness, the audience is led to experience the space between thoughts and feelings, as the trance of everyday mind dissolves for a moment into another perspective. We think we are the dream and forget we are the dreamer. Only when dream remembers dreamer, infinity opens its doors... we tap into something beyond our own limitations.
The self confidence of the warrior is not the self confidence of the average man. The average man seeks centainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked to infinity. - Carlos Castaneda
The shaman/actor invokes a connection with the invisible world and invites the audience to take off the mask of individual history and step over it into a mythic timeless state of being. The audience momentarily become the protagonist in their own drama. The observer becomes the observed in an endless spiral. In this way the performance creates a cathartic confrontation with the habitual patterns of everyday mind. Through unfolding the counterpoint between insecurity, infinity and identity, narrative dissolves into perception; what remains is the dance of movement, sound and stillness gathered at the edge of time.