The Voodoo Sisters' Pins and Needles

White people are weird.

2009-05-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

Seriously-- white people are really weird about pregnancy. And I say this as an official pregnant white person.

In my personal experience of unsolicited comments as a pregnant woman walking down the NYC streets, here's the breakdown:

Black people:
"Congratulations"
"You go, mama!"

Hispanic people:
"Congratulations!"
"You look great!" (from women!)

Asian people:
"Boy or girl?"
They then proceed to give me health advice.

White people:
"Does she have twins in there?"
"Any day now..." (in that "you're in for it" voice)
And many other variations on "Wow, you're huge/ready to pop (a phrase I detest!)"

Sadly, I run into more white people than anyone else.

But what I really wonder is, how are we the most numerous ethnic group in the country with this attitude? I mean, really?

If you still haven't heard about the April 9th salon....

2009-04-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

Don't forget the Voodoo Sisters' Between Dimensions Salon this
Thursday, April 9th, in Alphabet City.

This will be the last monthly salon for the Voodoo Sisters! We have
had a great time and worked with a lot of excellent dancers, and
look forward to putting on more shows in the future.

Our future Between Dimensions shows will likely be less frequent
but more formal. Stay tuned to this list for the earliest
notifications!

In the meantime, come enjoy our final salon, full of excellent
performers and interesting performances. Dig our last free show!
See stuff you've never seen before-- and may never see again!

Place: Teneleven art bar, 171 Avenue C between 10th and 11th
Time: Doors open at 9:30, show starts at 9:45
Cover: none! Just show up, have a tasty drink or 2, and enjoy the
fun!

See you there!

The Voodoo Sisters

Horrific Movement

2009-02-10T15:31:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a course in basic Laban Movement Analysis-- this stuff is fascinating to me as a movement teacher. It's giving me a whole new vocabulary to talk about what's missing in a choreography or performance, or what's excellent. it's also giving me a structure to speak about why some movement combinations seem "natural" or "creepy."

Useful when you teach Gothic bellydance classes.

After this second workshop (all taught by a martial artist, not a dancer-- extra interesting!), I'm starting to understand the concept of movement affinities and disaffinities better. Which makes me bounce up and down.

Basically, movement affinities are combinations of effort and direction that fit together naturally. For example, if you think of "light" as a quality of weight, the first direction that comes to mind is "up." If you think of "strong" or "heavy" as a quality of weight, you think immediately of "down."

A disaffinity is when you combine effort and direction in non-intuitive ways-- light movement down, for instance, or strong movement up. A primary use of movement disaffinities is comedy-- when your body is saying something other than what the situation seems to be calling for. Think of the uses of slow-motion falls to add comedy-- you expect quick speed, but the fall is sustained instead.

Another use of movement disaffinities is horror. When it's well done, it's the kind of creepiness that you can't place, the instinct that tells you, "Cross the street rather than walk past that guy-- something's not right." If you see someone backing away slowly from something, you know this isn't just a normal startle reaction (back/quick is the usual movement affinity). Something is wrong here.

I plan to have a lot of fun with this in future Voodoo Sisters pieces. We use plenty of disaffinities in our work already (see Vampian Lespire Cats!), but this can take it to a whole new level. Watch this troupe.

-mv

The Fury of Overshoes

2009-02-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

I woke up and I'm four years old this morning. I need a nanny.

First, Lux Interior, frontman for the Cramps, one of my favorite bands ever, died.

Then I read the Joe Weil poem, "Love Poem for My Mother Clare," which recalls so exactly my grief over my deceased gothfather in its invocations that I can't stuff the loss back in the box and shoulder my adult responsibilities, like copyediting.

It's winter and the whole world is frozen and even the warm puppy snoozing on my lap can't take away the ache entirely.

This poem by Anne Sexton is what I read when I spontaneously regress.

The Fury of Overshoes

They sit in a row
outside the kindergarten,
black, red, brown, all
with those brass buckles.
Remember when you couldn't
buckle your own
overshoe
or tie your own
overshoe
or tie your own shoe
or cut your own meat
and the tears
running down like mud
because you fell off your
tricycle?
Remember, big fish,
when you couldn't swim
and simply slipped under
like a stone frog?
The world wasn't
yours.
It belonged to
the big people.
Under your bed
sat the wolf
and he made a shadow
when cars passed by
at night.
They made you give up
your nightlight
and your teddy
and your thumb.
Oh overshoes,
don't you
remember me,
pushing you up and down
in the winter snow?
Oh thumb,
I want a drink,
it is dark,
where are the big people,
when will I get there,
taking giant steps
all day,
each day
and thinking
nothing of it?

Abstinence Porn and Vampires

2009-02-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

In an interview with USA Today, Stephen King came out and slagged Stephanie Meyers's _Twilight_ series, saying she "can't write worth a darn."

I couldn't agree more, although, in the interest of full disclosure: I'm a frustrated YA novelist. What? A tiny slice of schadenfreude never hurt anyone.

Just last night my friends and I were talking about _Twilight_ as "abstinence porn" and debating the relative merits thereof. Kenwyn said that there is a venerated place for teen romances that encourage romantic and sexy feelings but don't place demands on girls to do anything about those urges.

I think of how excited I used to get watching "The Outsiders," with all those yummy men and one delicious Diane Lane Cherry on top, and I can't help but agree.

And yet.

What I'd really love to see is the female version of "Porky's" or "American Pie." Because, y'know, girls have sex drives, too, and it's about time we celebrated that, taught our girls to pay attention to what feels good and cultivate it. Kenwyn's point was that abstinence porn is a kind of gateway drug that honors sexual feelings but in a safe way, for those girls who might not be ready to engage in sex play.

My point was that girls need media that focuses on the pleasures of their own bodies. Right now, the choices for teen female sexuality are either abstinence or objectification, and although objectification does confer a form of power when the sex object can successfully manipulate the viewer, neither is satisfying.

And I just don't buy that the anticipation of an event is better than the actual event. Idealization is not more exciting than the five senses. I love that Anne Sexton poem in which she describes God as wanting to have a body so he can come down to Earth and give it a bath now and then.

That being said, art is wonderful when it can prolong the tension between anticipation and gratification. But not for 300 pages, Ms. Meyers.

I loved Judy Blume's _Forever_ because the protagonist is responsible about sex but also wholeheartedly gets her rocks off. I can't think of too many YA novels in which there isn't some kind of consequence for the gorgeousness of sex, can you? I can't think of a single contemporary one.

In _Twilight_, the vampirism seems completely incidental to the thrust of the story. Any circumstance that would've prevented the main characters from getting together would've done just as well. Where's the blood? Where's the violence? Where's the existential agita? My newest favorite vampire novel is Scott Westerfeld's _Peeps_. It's the freshest treatment of the subject that I've seen in a long time. My second favorite is the Melissa de la Cruz _Blue Bloods_ books.

Why I do what I do

2009-02-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

Reading the paper last week, I came across a review of the NYC City ballet's current show, "Founding Choreographers I". I'm always interested in reading reviews and criticism of dance, to see how people think about it and what they notice.

One section caught my eye: "Several members of Tuesday's cast dancers... have aspects of tension across the upper torso that rob the carriage of their necks and heads of the clarity that surely characterizes a true Robbins stylist." Later the reviewer mentions that a dancer's "head is so well-placed that its least shift registers expressively."

(I'm going to keep an eye on Alastair Macauley, the reviewer. He is paying attention to the use of the dancer's body as the tool it is for expressing emotion and story in movement.)

This is why I do what I do, why I teach like I teach.

In my class, it is of vital importance that students focus on turning their bodies into well-trained tools for expressing the emotions and stories inherent in their choreographies. A tense, clumsy, or inflexible body is hampered by these limitations, unable to rise to the peak of its art form, or to live up to the artistic vision of its choreographer.

I see lots and lots of dancers in my travels, visiting festivals and so on. The really good ones are technically AND EXPRESSIVELY stunning. And why? Because they have trained their bodies for clarity of expression as well as of movement. There is nothing in the way of their emotions-- not a clumsy hip, a tight shoulder, a weak thigh holding them back. Most of them probably don't even think about it this way-- these are the dancers we call "naturally gifted."

I believe that these natural gifts can be taught. I believe I am able to teach them, not only to my own body, but to others'. I believe I have no talent for expressing this (see the rest of this post!).

I wish I did. I know so many people who would love to dance the way I can teach them.

The Catharsis of Terror

2009-01-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday one of my friends posted a Kafka quote that made me cheer: "The only thing worse than suffering is the refusal to suffer." My response was that I am pro suffering and anti-comfort, because it's the American addiction to comfort that makes us infantile and spiritually bankrupt.

Then we had quite a lively discussion about the function of suffering, with a few people chiming in that poets are overfond of suffering. Being poets, we had to clarify our definitions of suffering. Joe believes suffering is the refusal to live in your life. I'd agree with that, adding the spin that the suffering results from an *inability* to live in your life, probably because of fear, and that this is the root of the addictive behaviors that make a full, rich life impossible.

Because I am also a wiseacre, I had to admit that my notion of suffering is to be too far from a Starbucks at any given time. (See my above comment about addiction...)

We raised a few questions that I think about all the time. Joe put forth the idea that suffering is a luxury because it presupposes a lack of detachment that one could, theoretically, choose to assume. Given these parameters for suffering, I became aware again of how much Blake's idea of clean living through excess has formed my way of being in the world. All of my addictions, and the relinquishing of them, have been extremely instructive, mainly in how they allowed me to shunt my grief aside.

When my first love killed himself I was faced with an unassailable grief, and I had to either join him in the grave or find a way to live with what felt like unbearable loss.

Joe's point that making a habit or a fad of suffering can be just as detrimental as the refusal to suffer absolutely played up my conflicting emotions about the gothic subculture. On the one hand, the vocabulary of horror and terror has allowed me to grapple with issues of grief, fear, death, identity, and power in fruitful ways. On the other hand, romanticizing the shadow side of life can foster an inability to confront the crucial aspects of the shadow by providing a ready-made cache of imagery that was always meant to function as a starting point for discussion, not the solution. But this is an idea as old as Eden: that naming something tames it.

I hunger for a legitimately terrifying art. I still believe in the uses of catharsis when it comes to terror, and I don't mean the ratiocination involved in mysteries, thrillers, or forensics shows. I've heard it said that, as we age, we turn away from horror and instead work out the same issues by craving mystery stories, in which the hero is dead and the lyric event of violence has passed, and in which problemsolving done at a remove is the palliative for heightened emotions.

I still want horror movies and books that scare me, dammit. And as I age, they are getting harder and harder to come by. The last one I enjoyed was The Descent.

Fred Botting in his book _Gothic_ posits that gothic can no longer function because it has not survived the extreme inward direction of the twentieth-century's psychotherapeutic culture. All I know is that I can no longer sit still for B horror movies.

Voodoo Consort Number One and I talk about this a lot, since he is a filmmaker and loves crappy horror movies. He doesn't understand why I used to adore these films and now can't abide them. We read two books together and had a great discussion about gender identity and horror movies: _Men, Women, and Chainsaws_, and _Recreational Terror_.

Add belly dance to these thoughts about the function of gothic, and you've got a major preoccupation of the Voodoo Sisters.

Monster Hybrid

2009-01-28T05:15:00.000-08:00

Has anyone seen Underworld: Rise of the Lycans yet? I must admit, during the first two of these Underworld movies I was mostly preoccupied by Kate Beckinsale's lip gloss...and her tight pants. But by now, I'm anticipating this third installment in the series. I think it's the hybrid action that's got me interested. And werewolves are the stepchild of the monster franchise, I don't know why. There seems to be a dearth of werewolf movies. The last one I liked was Ginger Snaps.

What is there to say about monster culture that hasn't already been done, ad nauseum? I'm so over the whole zombie thing that I could cheerfully disembowel myself. Michael Jackson is going to be adapting "Thriller" for the Broadway stage. "Evil Dead" has become an off-Broadway musical. Do we need further proof that zombies have mainstreamed?

I thought zombies were over years ago, when I choreographed I Shimmied with a Zombie for Belly Horror in 2007. I did that choreography as a tribute to Voodoo Consort Number One, who has recurring nightmares of a zombie apocalypse and who, over coffee in the mornings, regales me with exit scenarios predicated on New York's eventual zombie occupation.

My abiding interest is in vampires, and I'm delighted that the groovy ghoul seems to be enjoying a return to prominence in fiction lately--the travesty of Twilight notwithstanding; don't get me started. I plan to read the Sookie Stackhouse novels soon.

Hybrid monsters are the way to go. In this post-Jungian age, we can all see the way our core archetypes blend, and a vampire-werewolf hybrid seems to humanize the vampires and make the werewolves a little more...classy? articulate? Depends on which vampire mythos you're considering. Mine is pretty much mired in the 19th-century Romantic Byron gentleman vampire, but if you are subscribing to the revenant kind that ravaged Europe before Romanticism took hold, you're thinking of vampires as much more akin to werwolves, anyway.

A quick note about Beckinsale's makeup in the movies: I'm fascinated by the understated nude lipgloss, on which the blood shines so compellingly, like blood on a baby's lips. Reminds me of Stuart Townsend's makeup in Queen of the Damned, all mauves and purples. This is a trend I've been noticing in films, that the more outre the character is supposed to be, the more unobtrusive the makeup is (think Olympia Dukakis's character--surely the most complex and liminal--in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City movies)

As someone with four planets in Scorpio, I'm coming around to the nude makeup palette because I'm down with using my appearance as a smokescreen and with blending in rather than standing out (I have my moon in Leo; I wasn't always this willing to assimilate. But living in NYC, where you can go out painted up like a gilded Statue of Liberty every day and no one spares you a glance, has cured me of my mania for looking different. Well, that and the fact that I'm staring down the cold, hard muzzle of 40.)

As an old-school goth chick who's used to using the same black kohl on eyes, cheeks, and lips, I find the new palette refreshing, particularly as I age. I can no longer get away with the bruise palette of cosmetics without looking like a drag queen that's been beat up in the Meat Packing District.

Buy Voodoo Sisters Gear!

2009-01-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's the non-poet again, writing, not about beautiful thoughts, but about CRASS COMMERCIALISM!!

We've opened a CafePress store, linked to our website, and also of course, found here. I has a good time working on the graphics for this, so I hope you have a good time wearing them around.

--Melissa V.

Expertly Loved, and Beautiful

2009-01-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

This poem by Judy Grahn exemplifies the kind of creative spirit that shuns living up to others' expectations or inside of others' frameworks without a single, crucial, individual twist: In effect, what a yawn it is to have smooth poreless skin and a hardbody that ripples but may not quiver, even when in the throes of love, or dance.

Give me the margins, every time.

In the company I keep, even in the audience for the Voodoo Sisters, what I want are people who question, who risk, and especially those who weave the inescapable threads of themselves into established, sacred forms--not those who abandon form altogether. Because really, "gothic" is such an embattled term in art to begin with, as far as the literary sense, and then when you apply it to dance, Tempest's Gothic Bellydance Resource being a stellar example of lucid writing about GBD, what we're talking about is imagery transforming an ancient movement vocabulary. Just as this poem by Judy Grahn shows how spiders, those ultimate artists of the natural world, express their love in an entirely characteristic but--for the speaker of the poem--new way.

The poem's untitled, but here it is:

The most blonde woman in the world
one day threw off her skin
her hair, threw off her hair, declaring
'Whosoever chooses to love me
chooses to love a bald woman
with bleeding pores.'
Those who came then as her lovers
were small hard-bodied spiders
with dark eyes and an excellent
knowledge of weaving.
They spun her blood into long strands,
and altogether wove millions of red
webs, webs red in the afternoon sun.
'Now', she said, 'Now I am expertly loved,
and now I am beautiful."

U-G-L-Y You Ain't Got No Alibi

2009-01-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about ugly. So much of what has attracted me about goth culture is the romanticizing of what is unknown, frightening, or downright unsavory. The older I get, though, the more I am of necessity and by dint of simply surviving coming to embody the Crone. I'm over 35, and my own face frightens me when I encounter it in bright sunlight at, say, eleven in the morning. The ravages of time. My teenaged self prisoned in my chest like Merlin in the tree where the sorceress Nimue put him.

This becomes an issue in photo shoots, too. With all the technology available, I could of course get rid of the eye bags I've got (in which small rodents could happily snuggle for the winter, I assure you--since I've been averaging five hours' sleep a night since I got the puppy). I choose not to. I kind of like them. They are baroque, ornate, puffy, the tarnished color of bruises on bananas. They're mine. They're the map of a life, just as my tattoos are.

Right now I'm choreographing an Alien piece, which is meant to stand for the utter joy a creature feels at being solitary and unobserved, and therefore free. The audience will get the voyeur's pleasure of spying on what a lethal predator does when she's alone and simply puttering around after waking up from a nap.

Look in the mirror. What do you see? Creatures that have their eyes in the front of their head are predators. The title of the piece of music I'm using is "Bathed in Love." I've always thought that the predator/prey relationship is one of love.

What does all this have to do with ugly? Just that I'm freelancing more at home rather than being out in the world, and I'm acutely aware of what a toll the beauty myth takes on my everyday dealings, how such nonsense as framing others' expectations saps my power. When I'm home I don't have to wear makeup, or even clothes. I don't have to bind my breasts so they look perkier.

Reminds me of when I shaved my head, and my mother-in-law asked me why I did it, and I said it was because it's so easy to be pretty, and so much more interesting to find out what's underneath the obligations to delight the eyes of other people.

The root of the word "glamour" is the same as the one for "grammar," and points to the relationship between Logos and spellcraft. The ability to put people under your spell, irrespective of what you look like. Reminds me of some of my favorite lines from Yeats: An aged man is but a paltry thing/a tattered coat upon a stick/unless soul clap its hands and louder sing/for every tatter in its mortal dress.

As youth flees from us, what recourse do we have but to develop the spirit, the mind, the heart, all brimming with the delight of a life richly and exquisitely lived from within, with awareness, plugged into the five (in my case, six) senses?

Who wants to see ugly bellydance? Isn't dance supposed to galvanize the onlooker with its beauty, strength, flexibility? Should all art be beautiful?

The movements I'm thinking of to depict this effort of carving Medusa out of rock where her own gaze has prisoned her has to do with the grace that comes from awkward.

Welcome Deirdre Voodoo!

2009-01-15T20:38:00.000-08:00

The Voodoo Sisters would like to welcome Deirdre Voodoo!

An accomplished Turkish and Egyptian-style dancer, Deirdre Voodoo became a friend of the Voodoo Sisters when she became our rubber kidney supplier. It doesn't get much better than that.

See Deirdre and Melissa Voodoo in action in "The Golden Golem," below:

The Shimmy Diet

2009-01-09T06:03:00.001-08:00

This is the time of year when weight-loss advertisements--many of them targeted to women--run rampant. Do you make resolutions for the New Year? Is one of the resolutions to drop a few pounds?

I don't make such resolutions anymore. Since I quit smoking nine years ago, I've gained and lost the same thirty pounds about five times until I just resigned myself to a certain easy-to-maintain size, on the advice of my doctor. She said, "If you have to change your whole life to be a size 2, what's the point? Gaining and losing is just as bad for your health as an 'extra' ten or twenty pounds.' "

Then one of my friends gave me an ice cream maker for Yule. I've made olive oil ice cream, which was fabulous, and today I'm going to try peanut butter chocolate caramel ice cream.

All of this adds up to what I'm calling the shimmy diet. Because, seriously? I'm attracted to women with tummies, whose generous curves bespeak a love of the table and all its sensuous promise. It's why I got into bellydance to begin with, to see delicious women shake, rattle, and roll. This is not to say that sylph-like dancers are not beautiful. They are. I simply prefer watching voluptuous women bellydance.

My shimmies are a lot easier during the wintertime, when carbohydrate-rich food ensures you can see my shimmies from space. And that's the way I like it.

If you're going to make a resolution for this new year, make it about health and not about perpetuating the beauty myth that is breaking the back of women's happiness and sexuality. Make this the year of the shimmy!

For Beginner Bellydancers

2009-01-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

I've had a ton of beginners asking me about what videos to use if they can't get to a real teacher.

You NEED to take a look at Autumn Ward's new DVD. Buy it direct from her so she makes some money off the project. (No, I get nothing from this. I just know how she teaches-- really, really well.)

http://www.autumnward.com/

-mv

The Voodoo Sisters Make the Bitch List!

2009-01-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true-- the Voodoo Sisters have a mention and a pic in this month's issue of Bitch magazine!

Pick it up on your local newsstand!

-mv

2008-12-22T12:29:00.000-08:00

My boys, Voodoo Consort Number One and Sweeney Dog.

2008-12-22T11:15:00.000-08:00

VoodooDog

Melissa Voodoo dances-- don’t miss it.

2008-09-22T10:57:00.001-07:00

At 8:00 pm on Tuesday the 23rd, Melissa Voodoo will perform at a fund raiser for mirrors for rehearsal space at We Click. Live music by Scott Wilson, and friends. We Click Studios, 20 West 20th Street, Suite 602, NYC NY 10011 Studio: 646.233.3767 Cost: Min door donation $15

And yes, I'll be testing out part of the Voodoo Sisters Warrior Woman Suite. You will be sad if you miss this.

melissa v.
P.S.: Next month, Thursday night classes switch to Kinected, 151 W. 19th st at 7th ave, 2nd floor, 7-8:30 PM. Be there.

Between Dimensions Salon #1: What You Missed

2008-09-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Salon last night ROCKED! The Salon's goal is to provide a more frequent and informal venue than our Between Dimensions stage show ('cause we'd die doing that every month!) to showcase the more alternative branches of bellydance, and to give the bleeding edge of this rising art form a home. I must admit that I was a bit worried about attendance on 9/11, but we had a good turnout, and a fantastic show!

We had a beautifully liquid duet from Sophia and Diana, a hilariously sassy solo (with rockin' isolations!) from Stacy, and a stunning veil fan piece from Teuta. Deirdre and I premiered our revamped floor duet with backbends galore and an out-of-control creation (honest, not a metaphor for my artistic life...), and I learned that Kawaii no Cane is much more fun as a duet than a solo (the lovely Magdalena Voodoo was not available that evening, much to my chagrin), and that I should never wear fingerless gloves when doing cane work.

The space (171 Ave C between 10th and 11th, 9:30 every 2nd Thursday of the month) turned out to be even better to work in than I expected, and the lighting bank I brought in really worked. We are always accepting video submissions for performers, so show us your stuff!

We'll have video of the show to post as soon as possible, and I'm definitely looking forward to next month's show.

Plan on being there.

-Melissa V.

Voodoo Sisters in Chi-Town

2008-08-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, the Voodoo Sisters went to Chicago to participate in Bellydance Underground's benefit show for Between Friends, an organization fighting domestic violence (www.betweenfriendschicago.org). Great cause, great show, great time!

We debuted Vampian Lespire Cats to a highly entertained audience, and had a great time doing it. We also spent the show backstage, listening raptly to the music, but unable to go out and watch the show because, well, our cover-up veils were under the MC's shirt.

You'll understand when you see the video, which we shall post as soon as we get it.

Many thanks to Rocio, who set this up, and the fine ladies of Chicago's belly dance world, as well as to Renee for putting us up, and George for letting us rip out his innards in public.

In the meantime, I gotta link to Aziza's post on weirdness and belly dance, which encapsulates why the Voodoo Sisters do what we do: http://azizasaid.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/is-that-weird/

None of the Above Bellydancers

2008-07-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

Finally back in town after a lovely 2 weeks in Seattle (a shout-out to Kendra, who made me feel very welcome; sorry we didn't get to hang more!) and right back to business!

Teaching lots of Pilates, planning to start teaching some Biomechanics for Bellydancers classes or workshops next month or in September.

More immediately, check out the Evil Dustbunnies' Nook for info on the None of the Above dancers' meeting. We're really looking to develop a community for all the people out there who love being, well, out there. I'm really excited about it!

Melissa V.

Spring Caravan--whee!

2008-06-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to all who came out to see us at Spring Caravan! That may have been our best audience reception yet! Many thanks!

If you missed the show, you can see it online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViMgEX-L7PA.

Enjoy!

--Melissa V.

Dissection Redux: Still not safe for reading

2008-06-06T05:03:00.000-07:00

OK, here's where things go a bit more below the proverbial surface, now that I've slept and had a chance to think about things.

What I Learned This Spring in Gross Anatomy Lab:

There are a lot more structures than just muscles, bones, and ligaments involved in movement. I spent the last day of the dissection with a colleague from the Kane School working on raising May's (our cadaver) arm above her head. Aside from the obvious difficulties with lack of elasticity in the muscle tissue, we found that most shoulder restriction comes from: 1. tight lats. 2. The tendon of the long head of the triceps sticking to the teres major and minor (see http://www.bartleby.com/107/illus412.html) for this area). 3. The bundle of the brachial artery, radial and ulnar nerves, and associated veins etc. (http://www.bartleby.com/107/illus523.html).

Yeah, your nerves can get tight. You can stretch them with nerve gliding exercises like these. It really does help mobility. We kept trying to figure out what was restricting May's arm, and while I've been doing nerve gliding stuff for a while, this really brought its purpose home to me.

Another really interesting revelation was the effect your life has on your organs. May's chest was very narrow, but the rib cage bulged in the center to accommodate her enlarged heart. The membrane on the inside of the ribs was very, very thick on the right, which must have restricted her breathing. The male cadaver, whom we called Georgi, had intestines that had literally adhered to each other. The manual therapists in the group were fascinated by this because there are techniques for visceral massage that are designed to help with this sort of thing. We movement people made mental notes about the "use it or lose it" principle of movement. It applies to organs, too.

I've known that organs move around each other for a while-- if your organs didn't move at all, your thorax and abdomen would be a solid mass, not the flexible thing it is. So it is important to keep your organs moving as well as your muscles-- not only by bending and stretching and exercising, but by putting your body in different relationships to gravity. Hence all the inversion work in yoga!

I was particularly interested in the relationship of the liver, descending aorta/vena cava, upper psoas, and diaphragm. This is the kind of thing you don't often see in anatomy texts, and is really impossible to get a feel for in 2-D. The perfect fit of the curve of the left half of the diaphragm and the top of the liver is a thing of beauty. And as the aorta/vena cava come down from the heart, they go through the diaphragm and zip right behind the liver. And right below the liver, your right psoas arises. Oh yeah-- and your kidneys sit back there too, hanging out with the upper psoas and posterior diaphragm. Cushioned by, yes, FAT! Which is actually your friend. Not that you should be the size of a house, but fat-phobia is really overrated.

What do all these relationships mean? Right now, they mean "everything really IS connected!" But they also mean that the muscular system affects the cardiovascular system affects the excretory, digestive, and endocrine systems very directly. How, exactly? I'm still working on it.

BTW, if anyone knows bio researchers looking for interesting topics to work on, I'm more than happy to start spouting ideas. I'd love to know more about the interrelationships of the systems myself, and the more scientific proof we have, the better!

More later, I'm sure.

Melissa V.

Dissection day 4: Not a safe day to read

2008-05-10T03:42:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Didn't blog last night because I had a really awesome energy work session done last night by a classmate of mine, and I needed to sleep a whole lot. Very, very cool stuff.

Again, this day was pretty intense. Do not read if you are unnerved by anything I've written so far. If you haven't been reading, this is a bad day to start.

Things I learned yesterday:

When dissecting the digestive system, take extreme care not to puncture the intestines. This is very, very important.

Should you puncture the intestines, much cleanup will have to ensue. We definitely had a day of poop going on.

Despite this, we managed to remove the heart and lungs as a unit-- just fabulous. The lungs really are huge, and much heavier than the heart. May had an enlarged heart and a gigantic aorta; even so, the lungs are enormous and weighty!

We also managed to remove (most) of the digestive system at a go. The relationships are fascinating. The esophagus really does run right down the front of the spine, and the inferior vena cava runs right down into the liver. The heart itself is sitting right on top of the liver, with the diaphragm in between them, and the stomach and spleen take up the other lobe of the diaphragm. The kidneys, adrenals, and upper psoas indeed hang out right next to each other in the back of the diaphragm, and the ovaries also hang out on the psoas. I knew all these things intellectually, but seeing them in situ really brings home the interrelatedness of the organs and muscles.

Speaking of psoas, leaving it in place while removing the viscera illustrates quite clearly the 2 separate bowls of the upper and lower pelvis. I had read about this recently, and even looking at a skeleton could only vaguely see the divisions, but the reality of it is that the upper iliac crests form one bowl, then the sacrum dives down and back, forming almost a pelvic cylinder rather than a pelvic floor. It's fascinating, and will definitely inform my teaching in the future.

Today, with any luck, we'll see the rotator cuff, deep rotators of the hip, and possibly even the attachments of the psoas and psoas minor.

Yay.

--Melissa V.

Dissection day 3: Not for the faint of heart. Or lung.

2008-05-08T17:48:00.001-07:00

Today was the day of viscera!

We opened up the thoracic and abdominal cavities and spent the day palpating and talking about the digestive system and the "500 functions of the liver."

I learned:

--The intestines are not just hanging out like spaghetti; they're more like coral or very tight ruffles.

--The large intestine does not look all neat and organized like it does in books.

--The lungs really take up most of the sides of the body.

--The greater omentum (never heard of it? It's cool!) is your internal security blanket. It moves (moves!) and wraps itself around any unhappy organ it can reach and tries to make it better.

--The liver really does do about 500 different things.

Time to sleep!

--Melissa V.

Dissection Day 3: Probably don't read this one.

2008-05-07T18:22:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

1. Really, I'm fine. Just tired.

2. Formalin stench gets easier to deal with by the third day.

3. Ladies, you have fat investing your musculature. Gentlemen, that's why we're soft. Both of ya, get used to it.

4. It's nice to be done with superficial fascia. The layers really do have their own "vibrations" and emotional content. Yesterday, dissecting superficial fascia (or the adipose layer), the class was getting slow and grouchy. Today, as we got into muscle tissue, the energy was palpably higher in the room.

5. Real cadaver forms look nothing like the pictures in the books. Nothing is neatly differentiated. Skin, superficial fascia, and deep fascia are stuck together like the skin of an orange and the white stuff outside the slices. In fact, if you carefully pull the skin off an orange, you'll find fluff similar the that which binds the layers. My nephrologist friend says that in a live person, it's more slippery and less fluffy, but we agree that's likely a temperature and preservation artifact.

6. I know I said I wasn't going to blog, but hey. No one said it had to be coherent.

Goodnight, all.

--Melissa V.

Dissection Day 2: SAFE TO READ

2008-05-06T16:07:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I've decided I'm not able to blog this dissection as it's happening-- one, because I need this evening time to recharge myself, reset my hands and eyes (when you've been dissecting all day, your eyes and hands REALLY need to do something else), and study anatomy to prep for the next day.

I also feel like it's not fair to make you all read the dissection notes without the experience of getting into the necessary mindset first. (I know all you med students are giggling right now, but your first dissection is on hell of an experience, especially if you aren't prepared by med school.) Gil is very careful to prepare us mentally and psychologically for the encounter, and I don't feel I can do a good job of that, especially in my current state of mind.

So if insights come to me that are coherent enough to share with y'all, I'll definitely let you know. Otherwise, you'll just have to get the benefits of my experience some other way-- like taking classes over the summer! Whee!

Take care-- I'm going to sleep!

--Melissa Voodoo

WARNING! Future graphic posts!

2008-05-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

From May 5 to May 10, I will be participating in a Somanautics human dissection workshop. I will be blogging the experience here.

If you are in any way squeamish about this concept, PLEASE DELETE UNREAD THE POSTS FOR MAY 5-10!!!

Let me repeat that: If you are in any way squeamish about this concept, PLEASE DELETE *UNREAD* THE POSTS FOR MAY 5-10!!!

If this concept does not bother you, though, feel free to read on! I expect this to be a thoroughly educational experience, and I am extremely excited about the learning opportunity!

So keep an eye out for the next 5 days' worth of posts-- or not, as the case may be! It will definitely be a unique experience.

--Melissa Voodoo

Miley Cyrus and Boundary-breaking

2008-04-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

So Miley Cyrus is making a big splash by doing what every other star-chicky has done since the beginning of time: posed for a photo showing some skin.

Yeah, so there's a damn good argument that since she'd 15, this could technically be child porn. Also that parents are kind of tired of their kids being exposed to over-sexualized media (sorry guys; welcome to America!). And generally bemoaning the loss of role models you can count on (they're all ducking back down that alley with anyone they can get, apparently.).

What I find interesting about this is that for Miley, appearing topless wrapped in bedsheets is daring, controversial, and potentially career-denting.

The photo itself, though, is bland. And trite. I mean, really- show me a star who HASN'T appeared coyly clutching a sheet to her bare chest, and I'll show you someone who hasn't searched hard enough online.

What's ground-breaking for one person is trite for another. This happens a lot to women-- we go through an arduous personal journey of accepting our bodies, maybe even feeling comfortable enough to wear daring clothing-- a tank top! A bikini! A thong and pasties!

And this great result of our long soul- searching produces... yet another chick showing some skin. Of which, if you'll look at any magazine, billboard, or TV show, there is a serious glut. (But maybe that's the motivation-- I want to be one of the crowd!)

If you want to make your own personal journey unique, not only for yourself, but for everyone to whom you're declaring it, you have to take your inner world public in a way that doesn't pound the same old path yet again. You have to find a fresh perspective on your experience that makes it different from everyone else's. Sound hard? It shouldn't-- no one else is you.

Sure, some people are better than others at expressing how they feel and think, but there are lots of media for self- expression, and lots of places to get practice writing, drawing, singing, dancing, building things. And if not everyone gets it, then that's ok-- just as no one else is you, not everyone is on your wavelength.

But those who are will get it. And if you work on getting better at expressing yourself, your inner world will be able to reach and touch more people.

And you won't have to pose naked to get people's attention.

--Melissa Voodoo

Making the Darkness a Little Squishier

2008-04-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

This is where we stick pins in as many things as we can think of. Sometimes, it's to deflate them. Sometimes, it's to nail them to the Web where they will be worshipped for ever and ever. And sometimes, it's because we like poking holes in things.

Welcome to the pincushion.

--Melissa Voodoo