Kukeri Dream
This trip held a slight change of trajectory or really may be it was realigning to a more authentic one. I wanted to connect with the spiritual nature or the nature of spirituality. It is not empirically proven my dr scientist devil on my shoulder shouts. People think artists are the hecklers, oh no no no. The artist angel on my other shoulder, happy to be hippy or have the odd witty protest sign and some interpretative dance.
The scientist devil on the other er scapula, this one I mean. Cantankerous as fuck – and armed with evidence.
Spirituality ? Why ? Well there are some things unexplained. I don’t mean most of the universe which we have blanket names Dark Matter and Dark Energy. I mean the other unexplained creepy hairs on the back of your neck that earie feeling cousins with awe.
So where to start ? Whenever you type spirituality or spiritual places into google, usually it lists religious sites and we did visit a few.
But I wanted to look under the surface. The forgotten places. The abandoned buildings.
So in Plovdiv, I managed to connect with http://abandonedbulgaria.com/. I immediately loved the concept, which he called the Dark Tour. That’s were all the secret stories hide, in contrast it was run by the very enthusiastic and breezy Genadi. He himself was a photographer and with his friends found their way into derelict urban buildings motivated mainly by curiosity. We took a whole day driving around Plovdiv visiting a variety of buildings including an old warehouse (I nearly lost my drone camera in there), an orphanage, a sanatorium, a block of flats and a brutalist monument.
Most of the buildings, I felt scared in. They were out of a horror movie. Broken dolls. ‘See you in your nightmare’ graffiti. Crumbling mottled walls with water stains or fire damage. Some of the buildings more in the city were being used by drug addicts, so be careful of used needles on the ground. Wear decent shoes. I wore sandals !
I asked Genadi about any more spiritual places he knew about. He mentioned the Sitovo Inscription. Discovered in 1928, the carved, so far undecipherable, is dated between 300 and 100 BCE.
A follow up interview with Genadi.
It was not easy to find actually so got lost a little around the quaint village of Sitovo. When we did find the post to it, it was up a steep ridge with a tumbledown path. At the top there were a number of precarious boulders, one of which had the inscription. I sat and meditated there for a few minutes. I have to say I did feel something. Definitely a calmness. I think the getting lost, no good map of it and then clamboring up and knowing that Peev who was an amateur archeologist who had first documented it, sent a copy of it to Soviet archeologists hoping they could decipher it but was shot for potential treason. He was posthumously awarded the Lenin award.
There was mention of an energy vortex in that area. Oooh that sounds fantasy level sciency - energies and vortices.
Really reaffirms the expectation of an outerbody ‘look at me being all Indiana Jones’ feeling. And actually standing next to boulders was calming. Yes when no one was looking, I hugged one. Strangely more comforting than a tree, I felt hugged back.
These other spiritual places we took from google.
Rila Monastery close to Sofia in the Rila Mountains, is the largest Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria housing, founded in the 10th Century, houses 60 monks. Stunning even in the torrential rain, built into a little valley in the mountains. Bright medieval murals and friezes depicting a variety of hell.
Demir Baba Teke, near Sveshtari, is a mausoleum for the Demir Baba, a 16th-century Alevi saint. The site was built on an ancient Thracian holy site from the 4th century BC. Though refered to as mosque it was a multi-faith sanctuary for all religions with a purifying holy water spring. ‘Demir Baba left a testament calling upon Muslims and Christians to help each other and live as brothers’.
Ivanovo rock monastery St. Archangel Michael, is 22km outside the pretty Danube city of Ruse. Founded in 1220s by the monk Yoakim and patronised by Bulgarian tsars Yoan Asen ІІ (1218-1241), Yoan Alexander (1331-1371) and other representatives of the royal court whose portraits are still preserved. Subsequently it established itself as a great spiritual and educational centre with brightly coloured wall inscriptions and pictures.
The Madara Horse Rider, AD 705 and 801 set in a complex of rocks and caves which where prehistoric dwellings with artefacts
Chapel of St. Panteleimon Some of the many caves, located at different levels, were used for churches, chapels, tombs and monastic cells. In one of the caves, which was used as a church, is located today the restored rock chapel "St. Panteleimon".
Sozopol is a small seaside resort on the Black Sea dating back to the Bronze Age with a number of Roman ruins, medieval churches and old style houses.
Rila is generally known as one of the most cosmically energetically places on earth. And within the mountains, there are 7 lakes adopted by group The Universal White Brotherhood movement who dance the paneurhytmy, connecting to each other and to nature in mid-august. Paneurhythmy originates from the spiritual (esoteric Christian) teachings of Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno (1864-1944)).
St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral Built in Neo-Byzantine style, it serves as the cathedral church of the Patriarch of Bulgaria and it is one of the 50 largest Christian church buildings by volume in the world. It is the largest cathedral in the Balkans. It is believed that up until the year 2000 it was the largest finished Orthodox cathedral.
Las Bolas De Fuego Dream
It’s really hard to get a handle on what’s going on in El Salvador, ‘The Saviour’ … known as the Land of Volcanoes (170 with 23 active).
It feels like it’s moving. And I am not talking about the two tectonic plates it sits on, dramatically known as the Pacific "Ring of Fire". A place prone to eruptions and earthquakes. And not just a little, there are a lot of moving parts accelerating right now.
For such a teeny weeny country – the smallest in Central America (21,041 square kilometers) but with 7million people, also the most densely populated in the Americas - there’s a lot going on.
Conquered by the Spanish, in the 1500s, it became a producer of coffee and sugar which created a small elite in currently the 5th poorest country in North America; 38% live in the rural areas, 40% fall below the poverty line, 50% don’t have internet and 70% are unbanked. Its main exports with coffee and sugar are textiles, chemicals ,rubber and plastics and metallic products with 45% going to the US. ‘Over 2.5 million Salvadorans live abroad - mostly in the United States - and in 2020 they sent back almost $6 billion, equivalent to 23% of the country's gross domestic product’ - that’s a lot of transaction costs which could be saved.
The capital city of El Salvador is San Salvador founded in 1524 by Pedro de Alvarado. Alvarado was a Spanish conquistador sent by Hernán Cortés from Mexico. It is the oldest and most long-standing capital in Central America and El Salvador remained a Spanish colony for about 300 years.
As recent as 2015, it was known the homicide capital of the world with 105 homicides per 100,000 and it’s still reeling from civil war, guerrilla activities and military backed political parties and governments. During 1979-1981 around 30000 people were killed by army backed right wing death squads.
In 2019, there was a regime change with the new youthful, charming, great on Twitter populist El Presidente disrupter and part-time autocrat, Nayib Bukele. There is certainly a sense of hope amongst everyday people. Food and computers were distributed during COVID and deals were negotiated with the gangs halving the homicides.
However very recently in March and April 2022, the gang violence started to spike which led Bukele to take a hard line. With the help of his army, he has arrested 10000 gang members but he also brought a state of emergency measures which have violated human rights and had much criticism from advocacy organisations and journalists, who have been allegedly put under surveillance.
A sort of perfect storm for a new world order.
Indeed, El Salvador has become the first Bitcoin country with Bukele decreeing it as legal tender, issuing $30 via Government administered wallets in September 2021 to all citizens. This has led to 3million people using it. That’s nearly half the population ! Not without its opponents, both the World Bank and the IMF have voiced their concerns.
Alongside, El Salvador is promoting one of it’s real USPs, and it’s being rebranded as a Surf haven - I mean it has always been such but more so now, with ‘Surfcity’ attracting - ‘We are here because the water is too cold in California right now’ rich crypto Californians (we met many). In fact, as a testament, I didn’t mind getting mostly slapped in the face by the waves and the surf board pretty much temporarily breaking my nose when we had surf lessons there because the water was an unbelievable 28*C.
Surfing Bitcoin Missionaries in countries determined to break from its shackles and move to economic salvation … evangelical holidays.
This is certainly a well travelled path El Salvador is accustomed to in welcoming new ideologies.
Samisk Folkedag Dream
Samisk folkedag DREAM
We unwittingly chose a very busy week to travel to Tromso, North of the Arctic Circle. It was school holidays for some European countries, the first international travel for many families, and in Norway the first time in 2years when all restrictions such as the 1m rule in public places were relaxed. And it was a week of Northern Light sightings.
We caught the train up from Oslo to Trondheim and picked up a 3 night cruise to Tromso.
This was traditionally the postal / delivery boat route ran by the Hurtigruten (‘sailing since 1893‘) and we’d been reliably informed that they perservere through the choppiest seas. The boat stopped every few hours but most of the stops were for deliveries and pick ups. We had a couple of hours at Bodo and made a b-line for a sushi place. Did we really have enough time for a nice lunch off ship ? As luck would have it, they had a eat as much as you want buffet, so no eating time was wasted on waiting for food. And we stuffed our faces and slip and slid-run back to the boat in time for set off.
Fjords, icebergs, islands, seafaring is a way of life in the Nordics. For us, they clearly knew what they were doing, it was a really comfortable cruise. It felt unusually cosy with rocking chairs and blankets in one section. And the staff were so friendly. In fact there was a box of knitting materials and people would knit squares and then these squares would be stitched together to create cosy blankets for the ship. And on outer deck it was crazy cold in the wind and bearable with gloves and hat in the sun.
We would run out to take photos of the incredible iceberg piercing crystal clear saturated luminous skies and then run back eyes and noses dripping with cold, to throw mishmash hand knitted blankets over our legs …. ahhhh that high.
So yes …. the skies and the sea reflecting the skies and the snow and ice shimmery and magical and spellbinding and envelope me with this crazy beautiful light.
But the real reason everyone was here… they wanted to catch the The Northern Lights. … Aurora Borealis.
“Aurora was the Roman goddess of dawn, and Borealis was the Greek name for the north wind”.
The absolute money shot of weather shots.
They can only really be seen in the dark, so from 1700 HRS. The other thing is that is best seen away from as much light pollution as possible, to allow our eyes to adjust and probably we would see it as a white streak with a tinge of green but our phone cameras night shot mode could pick up the light at the required wavelength. We even had the cabin internal radio on throughout the night in case of a sighting.
But we didn’t see it on our voyage. Don't get me wrong, we saw absolutely unbelievable skies and sunsets and icebergs and fjords. But by this time, was feeling a kind of next level fomo anxiety of not seeing the Northern Lights. Seriously what's wrong with me?
And what was all the fuss about ?
“A scientific phenomenon caused by electrically electrically charged particles from space (originating from the sun - solar winds) entering the Earth’s upper atmosphere at a very high speed. 98% of these particles are deflected by the Earth’s magnetic fields and the rest leak through and are funnelled towards the Earth’s magnetic North and South poles, colliding and exciting atoms and molecules. On decaying back to their original state, colours of light are emitted, Oxygen emits green and red (only visible sometimes) and Nitrogen emits purple”.
Or also explained by a scientist - Sophus Tromholt – a Danish astrophysicist who set up the auroral observatory in Kautokeino, Norway and also allegedly took the first first photograph of the Northern Lights in 1885 :
“From one side of the sky to another a drapery, woven of light and colour is wafted; now here now there, first one then two, then several bands, one above the other, never at rest, and never the same form, hither and thither the folds sway with a soft, fascinating motion, as from one end to the other waves of light chase each other, over-taking, crossing, meeting, while the lower, intense border, displays the loveliest colours of red and green, the upper one fading into the dark background”
Photocredit : University of Bergen Library.
Our final destination was Tromso, 400 km North of the Arctic Circle. It is one of the places were the sun sometimes never sets and sometimes (November to January - the Polar Night) doesn’t rise. It was termed in the nineteenth century as the Paris of the North, one commentator at the time, poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who wrote the lyrics to the national anthem of Norway, said that it was all “..champagne and spectacle”. Certainly it had become the starting point for several Arctic expeditions and I can imagine was one of those exotic bragging rights destinations for curious Victorian era travellers. Even today it has more restaurants per head than any other Norweigan city and it is the largest fishing and transport hub in the Arctic North of Norway.
For us, it was kind of a quaint town with 70K inhabitants and bustling with tourists.
And we had booked possibly the most touristy thing we could -, a night at the Ice Hotel, walk in the forest with snow shoes, make fire, drink hot chocolate in the light of the moon, eat reindeer stew and sledge on reindeer the next day with an indigenous Sami local. And it was all bloody brilliant. Really it was absolutely spectacular … all of it. The first time you walk into the ice hotel, it is like nothing you have ever seen. Cavernous airy and again the light … the whole evening your eyes adjust to either bright moonlight or the weird spooky icy light. Makes you wonder so our eyes get used to this, how much light do we need ?
But heat we need heat .. I also confirmed when looking at our bed of ice. And I saw a wire with a switch next to it and I said to my husband reassuringly - oh they have some heated mattress setup I think. God I am silly… husband couldn’t stop laughing … the wire was actually for lights and yes we had signed up to sleeping on a block of ice, in a dome of ice with a hole into the night sky for ventilation. But we are zipped up in an arctic sleeping bag over reindeer hide (don’t even think about going to the toilet in the night !) and we did manage to get some sleep.
And best of all the Northern Lights cascaded in wisps across the skies like a celestial ghost throughout the evening while in the forest. I could understand why it had inspired so much folklore and legends about ravens to spirit guides. Especially if you had just been happenning to be trying to survive in these harsh conditions. Can you imagine your moustache and brows are crystalised with icicles with relatively monochrome backdrop probably no sun for months and you look up to see a coloured light show out of nowhere. Aliens (replace with Nordic god) I’m yours - you win.
The indigenous Sami culture called it “Guovssahas” - “the light you can hear.. thinking that the lights were caused by a magical fox running across the Arctic fells and sweeping it’s tail sending a trail of crackling sparks up in the sky”. And Norse mythology feature the Northern lights prominently …the lights were thought be reflections from the shields and armour of the Valkyrie, female warriors and also the bridge “Bifrost Bridge” which led those fallen in battle to the warriors final resting place in Valhalla.
It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s a universe size reminder to forget your own hype, feel suitably insignificant but monumentally lucky and connected to your own ancestors through an otherworldly sense of awe. You are feeling what they felt.
As a side note, here’s a project I worked previously https://www.bushraburge.com/#/ojenfryd/ on a Norse Legend about Aslaug - female empowerment story if ever was one. Incidentally Norway is considered to be one of the most gender equal countries in the world.
Noche de Rábanos Dream
Noche de Rábanos DREAM
“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” – Frida Kahlo
Transfixed I started to spontaneously weep. I had never seen a miscarriage so accurately unashamedly articulated. In fact I had seldom seen any miscarriage depicted. Here it was in all its gory vulnerable, tender, powerful and deeply affecting state. And yet after seeing it I felt better. It was like confronting and stepping through a personal trauma portal and feeling lighter for it on the other side. [Here’s my miscarriage story : https://qr.ae/pG3kFJ ].
Henry Ford Hospital, 1932
Frida Kahlo’s vibrant work was of pain and growth and optimism with passionate references of indigenous Mexican culture, nature, her long term partner - Diego Riviera, and of herself (55 of completed 143 paintings were self-portraits). In November 2021, her 1949 painting ‘Diego and I’ sold for $34.9million breaking the record for the most expensive Latin American Painting (and one of the most expensive female artists in history).
Diego and I, 1949
And most recently NFT projects have been cropping up involving her legacy including https://awesomefrida.com/ and https://ezel.life/ where
‘The brick from Frida Kahlo ́s Family home forms the foundation of Ezel.Life's metaverse and connects it with the physical location, where we can all play our part in preserving Frida's legacy’.
Her work and life is heavily documented, countless books and films. The feminist, the disabled, the communist, the seductress, the liberal, the tragic, the optimist, the creative visionary, the fashion icon, the authentic personal brand …. Fridamania is well established. There is not one bad photo of her or selfie painting.
My Birth, 1932
Born in Mexico City on July 6, 1907, one of 4 sisters, Frida Kahlo Kahlo later described the atmosphere in her childhood home as often "very, very sad". At age 6, she had polio which left her with a weak left leg. But it did not deter her from being a curious student. She was initially leaning towards becoming a physcian. Everything changed at age 18, 17 September 1925. She was involved in a horrific accident with a bus and a streetcar. A bus handrail impaled her through her pelvis, which was pulled out of her on site. She later described the injury as "the way a sword pierces a bull." This led to months of recovery followed by bed rest and a life time of operations, wearing corsets and pain. It was also the reason she became a painter.
When she had recovered she approached the then famous painter Diego Riviera (20 years her senior) about career advice which led to a tumultuous passionate relationship with many infidelities including him with her own sister and she with Leon Trotsky.
“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the train the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.”
She eventually lost her right leg from the knee down due to gangrene, and died in July 1954 from a pulmonary embolism. She was 47 years old.
Her work expresses much of her extraordinary life and character.
The Broken Column, 1944
I had already seen 2 major exhibitions in London prior to visiting Mexico City. But I always wanted to visit The Blue House, Coyoacá.
“La Casa Azul is the Intimate Universe of Frida Kahlo. In this beautiful residence, the artist lived most of her life; initially with her family and years later, with Diego Rivera.” https://www.museofridakahlo.org.mx/en/the-blue-house/
The house is sprawling with gardens and connected buildings. Like anything about Frida Kahlo, there are so many layers and facets and the house feels small with so many artifacts in shelves and walls. Everywhere you look there is some iconography or book or ceramic pieces. It felt crowded but brimming with inspiration, and with visitors (despite Covid restrictions… book tickets well ahead) but at the same time weaving around the museum, you were so close to her objects and untold stories. In fact part of her collection were only discovered in 2004.
It was quite astonishing to be standing in front of her actual bed where she had convalesced and with nothing else to do became a painter of herself.
“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”
Fantasia Dream
Fantasia Dream
Flying through mosques and palaces in Morocco.
Controls
'MouseMove' to rotate; | 'W', 'A' ,'S','D', Up Arrow, Down Arrow to move | 'Left Shift' to accelerate the movement speed | 'Mouse Scroll Wheel' to zoom in/out | 'Escape' to unlock control and show the pointer | 'Left Mouse Button' click on in-game screen (in play mode) to lock control and hide the pointer| 'R' to return camera into initial position.
Brick Lane Dream
Brick Lane Dream
An AI, wearables interactive dance Virtual reality experience developed on a residency with Goldsmiths University and the wonderful InterActML team.
SUNSET
“Sun! You have set.
At the end of the day as you go to sleep .. Your dying rays scratch at the sandy shore,
Like waves which rise to comb the beach ..And bathe its grains of sand.
And still, your going down each day....Gives promise of a day to come.
I never crossed the water, never sailed the blue, Nor scanned the gull on his outstretching wings.
When you next dip under the sea, take me, Take me, will you? Won’t you take me?
Mood colours the mind with changing hues ..And the tint of the clouds is changed by you anon.
Now I have seen ..You, the sun submerged! The sun which has set!
The thickening glow of evening light
In the ruddy hour of dusk ..Whispers in my ear like a lost moment:
“’Tis time, dear, time to return to your den! No more of childhood’s song, an end to play.”
On a sandy shell-strewn shore I have danced with the waves. My garland of memories, pink with dreams,
I have dropped and left on the beach.
Ah, if time would stand still for a pause, And I could halt my weary wandering,
I would stop, and you would stop as well.
And an end would come to the shattering of dreams. Were I to stop, at once.
Like the end of a day I would sink down below ...Into the endless night of my final repose.
Sunk down with you, I would sleep,
I would sleep.
”