Missing Witches - MW Rx. 44 - Sing The Body Electric

00:00:00.000 spirit is rising she's rising she's rising the spirit is rising it's rising it's rising

00:00:10.140 the spirit is rising they're rising they're rising the spirit is rising

00:00:17.400 yeah may's teacher was like may's been really tired lately which of course sent us both on a

00:00:24.320 spiral of what are we doing

00:00:26.280 wrong but of course

00:00:27.660 but also like the larger answer is like

00:00:30.180 who isn't yeah

00:00:31.940 yeah of course she's tired

00:00:36.220 you've seen it it's great

00:00:38.320 all the time 0.98

00:00:38.880 they fucked with time last week 0.98

00:00:42.380 and also we've been 0.99

00:00:44.360 partying and Mae loves to party

00:00:46.380 and then she's tired she parties on the 0.56

00:00:48.340 weekend and she's tired at school

00:00:49.720 yeah

00:00:51.440 this feels like part of the prescription are we rolling let's do it

00:00:57.240 someday we'll share the video for these rx's we know we should we know there's so many more

00:01:11.860 things we should be doing we're just two tired people yes we're just two people and we're just

00:01:18.820 too tired um but uh when we do share the video i look forward to you seeing our silent it kind

00:01:29.500 of looks like a scream face right before we're about to start but it's like waiting in anticipation

00:01:33.960 with a joyful silent scream for the one of us to say something hi witches welcome like it's our

00:01:42.340 transition yeah yes it's very cartoonish yeah scream face joyful scream yeah yeah

00:01:50.240 it's definitely a smile it's not like yeah a terror scream it's exciting yeah

00:01:56.900 that's the best sound that i can come up with to describe to describe the face we make is

00:02:05.260 hey welcome witches hi amy hi risa hi coven

00:02:14.200 how's everybody holding up i'm going to tell you some of the things i'm doing to hold up

00:02:20.280 please do

00:02:21.500 my we took last week off the prescription that's one of the things we're doing

00:02:27.480 it's like sometimes it's okay to just lie down

00:02:32.700 um mark and i are both in therapy therapy's amazing it's a slow build he's very like maybe

00:02:43.440 this is gendered maybe not but he's very much of the type that's like i don't know if this is

00:02:47.840 going to work for me but i'll do it because we said we would do it i'm very good at talking

00:02:51.440 about my feelings i don't know but if you as someone watching someone else go through therapy

00:02:56.620 over weeks you do see things slowly kind of settling in like like sediment or something

00:03:04.760 or like seeds sort of slowly taking root and that's a real pleasure for both of us and one

00:03:12.180 of them for him recently was like he really keeps the list in his head of everything that needs to

00:03:19.700 happen all the time it's a constant list and uh and she told him the list never goes away so

00:03:25.840 you need to rest even though the list is still there you will never reach the end of the list

00:03:30.800 because the list regenerates like you yes you have to shovel again the snow falls again

00:03:35.020 yeah a friend i i think of this all the time when i feel overwhelmed as a a friend of mine her

00:03:42.240 her folks like live in a farm that her stepdad inherited from generations and he said to me one

00:03:51.460 time you know Amy this farm has been in my family for 250 years and we haven't run out of things to

00:03:57.980 do yet right yeah that is real and you know he was talking about how he struggles to do things

00:04:09.440 like read or carve spoons or like things that he likes that rest his brain because he just

00:04:15.680 falls asleep and she was like maybe you just need to sleep then like maybe your rest time

00:04:23.160 can't be productive yet maybe it's just rest time for now you know that's been something for me and

00:04:29.020 this is part of my my hydra headed prediction of how i'm like prediction prescription of how i'm

00:04:36.380 surviving right now one of them has been a meditation app making myself lie down and

00:04:44.860 I find it incredibly hard to be like I'm just gonna lie down for 20 minutes and take a nap

00:04:51.220 like my grind culture hustle culture brain or I'm just like waiting for someone to tell me I'm not

00:04:58.820 allowed I don't know I don't know what happens but if I have like an app that's gonna talk at me

00:05:06.120 about how I should love myself for 13.5 minutes somehow I feel like that's okay like I could be

00:05:12.880 like mommy needs to meditate right because it's still like something on your list that you are

00:05:19.860 accomplishing right right right it's so interesting there's all of this uh there's all this cultural

00:05:27.000 stuff around like how we the self-optimization sort of stuff that's so much a part of like

00:05:33.980 tech culture Silicon Valley culture stuff came out about that guy from Huberman labs this week

00:05:39.780 I guess his wife filed a bunch of things against him for being like wildly controlling and it's

00:05:45.980 like I don't know if that's true but I wouldn't be fucking surprised that someone who tries to

00:05:50.180 control every aspect of what they consume and how they move and how they breathe to be the 0.53

00:05:55.500 most optimized possible was maybe a controlling spouse like that doesn't seem like a big stretch

00:05:59.920 and yes and and i'm still interested in so many of these things so my sister sent me

00:06:07.480 another one of these guys he's sort of an ultra marathoner the podcast is like probably not my

00:06:13.480 thing uh it's called ritual but he has on the podcast in this one episode this neurologist

00:06:21.840 who is named lisa musconi i don't know if you've run into her in your research about menopause at

00:06:29.280 all but she's kind of the leading researcher on menopause and brain chemistry and so I'll include

00:06:36.260 the link to this conversation with her in the show notes and in the rx this week but there's 1.00

00:06:43.240 so many beautiful things in her first of all she's like an angry feminist which you know you love you 1.00

00:06:48.920 love a angry feminist that's well armed with like deep neuroscience as opposed to my just sort of 1.00

00:06:56.680 like wordless rage. Generalized outrage. Yeah. She comes with the brain scans, like the tens 1.00

00:07:05.000 of thousands of brain scans. One of the pieces I love talking about menopause is she sort of points

00:07:10.900 to how this, the hormones in women's brains are absolutely the drivers and that for men, it's like 0.69

00:07:17.220 quite a straight line. Like it just sort of just tapers off as they age. And for us, it's really

00:07:22.380 not like having kids completely changes our brain chemistry we become she says we become like mind

00:07:28.120 readers like we absolutely become so attuned to non-verbal cues especially to this one being and

00:07:34.760 it makes us fuzzy on other things like that's not something we imagine that's really a thing that

00:07:38.900 happens and then in menopause it kind of is like at this meeting point of us getting really kind

00:07:46.200 of tapped out like women experience so much more stress and anxiety than men and we have much higher

00:07:51.640 rates of dementia than men and it's in part because our brain is is taking estrogen or

00:07:56.940 taking hormones from other places because we're we're stressed so it's kind of taking it out of

00:08:02.460 our brain that's that's not the science way to explain it but that's sort of the gist of it i

00:08:07.160 think um and so a lot of what i'm thinking about this week is calling my power back

00:08:14.340 and like calling my energy back or like raising my energy back up and so partially that is like

00:08:23.180 lying in the dark listening to a gentle voice tell me that I'm loved and part of it is like

00:08:30.420 feeding my brain beautiful luscious fruits like I also kind of got into this like denial thing

00:08:39.100 where like the kid loves fruit so the fruit in the house is for the kid but your brain needs it

00:08:43.880 it desperately desperately needs it's not an indulgence fruit is not dessert fruit is like

00:08:49.920 the number one it can be the like fruit and grains can be like the one of the biggest differentiators

00:08:55.640 on whether you're going to get dementia or not so start feeding your brain that stuff like loving

00:09:00.860 like lie back on a velvet chaise lounge and have someone feed you grapes because you need it for

00:09:07.460 your brain. And then after menopause, when the brain chemistry gets sorted, and if you can be

00:09:13.380 really tender and rest yourself and feed yourself through that process, what happens in the brain 0.95

00:09:18.940 chemistry can be one, like she calls it like a giving of less fucks, which herefore could use 0.98

00:09:27.080 fewer. And also like a more deeper sense of community connection than instead of connection 0.97

00:09:33.200 to immediate family which is what makes a post-menopausal person incredibly powerful 0.96

00:09:38.600 and that's that's why those women were leaders in the fight for universal health care 0.98

00:09:44.040 elderly women that's why elderly women were targeted by the witch hunts because they were

00:09:49.180 leading resistance to the land grabs of early stage capitalism so part of us being our best 0.98

00:09:56.560 fucking witch selves is tending to this transition in our brain how long it takes 0.92

00:10:01.400 um and then that brings me to my my last bit of what I've been thinking about it's another like 0.99

00:10:08.500 nerdy podcast that goes into a dance track so I'm listening to this other podcast series I think it

00:10:16.240 came out late last year um called the body electric it's from NPR some episodes are too

00:10:21.940 NPR-y for me if you know what I mean it's a little bit too Amy's naughty like she knows exactly

00:10:27.500 what I mean. I mean, I love NPR, but some of the episodes are a little heavy on the NPR vibes for

00:10:35.080 me. But what's interesting is they kind of did a large scale study with listeners of NPR with

00:10:43.540 these neuroscientists who are looking at like how a lot of people maybe will exercise like once in

00:10:51.900 a day or whatever but it doesn't really seem like it has the effect that would counteract how much

00:11:00.900 time we spend in front of screens and so the series goes back and forth on how the electricity

00:11:06.400 in our bodies and the shape of our bodies and our brains and the way our nervous system functions

00:11:10.720 is being changed by our relationships with technology and it goes back a really long way

00:11:18.320 and then it goes like kind of more in detail in the 90s and smartphones and and each episode has

00:11:25.500 a bunch of different really really interesting scientists on it anyway but the larger study or

00:11:29.880 like the body electric challenge is to take a break every 25 minutes or you can do an hour or

00:11:39.500 two hours but the the like most intense one is every 25 minutes so I've been setting like a

00:11:44.440 timer on my phone every 25 minutes and to like walk gently or dance for five

00:11:53.640 and the results that people experienced are super super joyful and interesting people feeling like

00:12:02.040 they got there's less depression you know they got their energy back they got their kind of

00:12:07.500 that out of that brain fog they were way more happy and joyful and also to not term it in the

00:12:14.960 language of productivity like I'm not taking these breaks so that I can be a more effective producer 0.68

00:12:20.040 I'm taking these breaks so that I can fucking be happier and that I can make space in my moments

00:12:26.400 in my life in my brain to hear what my body is really saying to hear what my heart is saying 0.97

00:12:36.920 to hear what the leaves are saying to hear what the wind is saying to hear what needs to change so

00:12:43.220 I'm taking these five minute breaks I've been making this playlist of five minute songs to

00:12:49.120 make me dance for the full five minutes and the best one so far and so this is my this is my

00:12:56.400 prescription for all of us is okay take five minute breaks with whatever feels good for you

00:13:01.940 maybe you want to walk on a treadmill maybe you circle your apartment maybe you dance it out to

00:13:06.600 something that I my brain wouldn't even be able to wrap its head around musically or you can just

00:13:12.960 do Donna Summers I Feel Love oh this track is one of the greatest of all times yeah honestly yeah

00:13:23.400 yeah it is it's like it's in all kinds of you know the archives the Library of Congress it's

00:13:31.520 And all of these incredible moments, they tried to make a sound of what the future sounded like.

00:13:37.480 It's Giorgio Morador who did, who created the whole soundscape.

00:13:42.500 It's almost entirely made with Moog synthesizers.

00:13:45.240 It's what?

00:13:49.260 You're laughing. 0.99

00:13:50.860 I'm laughing because I brought like a Moog enthusiast as my prescription. 1.00

00:13:57.400 So there's a lot to tie in. 0.79

00:13:58.600 I do want to say he he worked with Britney Spears in later times like Daft Punk like this is like

00:14:04.160 Giorgio Moroder is like if you're looking to get into like what can be done with synthesizers

00:14:10.860 we'll get to Mort Garson in a minute but we'll start with Giorgio Moroder

00:14:14.220 I think I'm done that's my that's my long-winded prescription I'll just say like

00:14:25.400 I am in a place and you can borrow this energy too if it's useful to you where I am going to

00:14:34.340 take extreme care of myself and my loved ones and my brain and my body I'm going to care for it with

00:14:42.100 fruit and rest and kindness and dance and I am going to use all of those things to continue to

00:14:49.860 fuel my resistance and to continue to fuel my creativity and to continue to fuel my life

00:14:57.220 and it's slow and my my rest is part of my resistance and i offer that to you too that

00:15:04.300 this is how we're calling our power back yeah and we can be like donna summer and sing like

00:15:11.860 oh i feel love i feel love i feel like those are most of the lyrics are just like oh

00:15:17.420 i feel love i feel love i feel love i have to mention you know you talk about this podcast

00:15:23.400 the body electric so i can't let that pass without bringing one of my favorite poets queer icon

00:15:29.920 walt whitman um as a surprise to me and to ourselves but um his poem i sing the body electric

00:15:40.220 begins. I sing the body electric. The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them.

00:15:50.980 And I'll leave it at that, but I do want to, like, bring attention to the armies of those that we

00:16:03.060 love, because we are out there, and sometimes it doesn't feel like it. It feels like the only

00:16:08.840 armies in existence are the armies of war we have armies of love too and we can you know battle

00:16:17.500 by resting just like you say Risa like this is part of our battle cry like to upend late stage

00:16:26.700 capitalism and and to and to resist it is to you know not have that feeling like if we take 20

00:16:32.940 minutes that we're like letting the economy down right but back to moog synthesizers

00:16:42.940 most importantly um i went to my stacks this week because i am feeling kind of like

00:16:51.380 i need a little break from human people and luckily like risa you and i are working on our

00:16:59.020 kinship season right now. Like, those of you who are listening probably heard Risa's Beautiful

00:17:03.780 Lycan episode the other day. So it's good for me to sort of, like, take myself out of this, like,

00:17:11.260 you know, human supremacist idea that we're the only creatures that are existing on this earth,

00:17:17.760 and it's all about whether humans survive this and what humans do with this. So I turn to

00:17:25.040 Mort Garson

00:17:26.660 Risa, I brought my stack to show you

00:17:29.440 but I'll put some pictures in the newsletter

00:17:31.180 because there is one particular

00:17:33.180 album cover that I want you to see

00:17:34.960 but I want to start with

00:17:36.960 Mother Earth's Plantasia

00:17:39.080 this album is

00:17:41.140 subtitled Warm Earth Music

00:17:43.260 for Plants and the People Who Love

00:17:45.300 Them and conceptually

00:17:47.440 the album is meant to be

00:17:49.480 played for your plants

00:17:51.380 when you're growing your plants

00:17:53.100 you put this album on and it will encourage them and it became kind of a hipster darling

00:17:58.720 um which for me is great I don't mind that you know when I was like a young angry punk I would 0.62

00:18:03.620 have been like oh you know whatever the mainstreaming of the cool shit that I like

00:18:07.560 but now I love it I'm like great they reissued that on vinyl I can finally get a copy it was

00:18:12.660 like kind of impossible to find before so thank you hipsters for you know getting into Mort Garson

00:18:19.960 and making the record industry release or re-release a bunch of his stuff.

00:18:26.140 This album comes with, like, a booklet that includes, like, little bits of plant poetry,

00:18:32.540 but also, like, if your plant is, like, wilty, what's wrong with it?

00:18:38.020 Well, it's probably being overwatered.

00:18:40.300 Like, it really is this whole compendium.

00:18:44.640 And this particular, I think this re-release came out in 2020.

00:18:48.140 it comes with a little download card a lot of vinyl records do these days they'll come with a

00:18:52.500 little code but this one is a little bit of paper with the download code printed on it but it's also

00:18:59.060 embedded with wildflower seeds so you can actually plant your download code card once you've finished

00:19:08.620 and the music sounds like the only way i can describe it like other than saying like he was

00:19:14.880 Mort Garson met Mr. Moog at like a conference and was one of the first people to use this instrument and experiment with it.

00:19:24.140 I would say it sounds like elevator music if the elevator was like taking you to fairyland or something like that.

00:19:32.360 You know, it's like fairyland elevator music.

00:19:38.420 It's adorable. It's very, it's very Dr. Snuggles.

00:19:44.880 so if you are like me and you're feeling more into plants than people these days then you can

00:19:59.680 listen to the whole album on youtube it's really like i say easy to find nowadays but i also and

00:20:05.840 Okay, so Mort Garson, this is my fractal thinking again. He must have been an occultist. Tons of his music is around these themes. He did pieces of music for each of the signs of the Zodiac. But I can't find anything about his actual practice.

00:20:26.380 He's just like some old Canadian, you know, I think he's from Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, like some, you know, and I don't know what his practice actually looked like. Everything that I know about his practice comes from the music that he made.

00:20:41.520 he made one record called the unexplained electronic musical impressions of the occult

00:20:50.500 and it's got songs like tarot astral projection i ching um and so yeah i don't know what he was

00:21:01.040 what are you doing um but i i do want to end this mort garson section on a bit of a

00:21:10.940 a high note a hopeful note um this album that i'm holding up and again i will definitely put

00:21:18.900 a picture of this in the newsletter because i'm going to describe the album cover to you so

00:21:23.040 it's it's a pentagram that is made of like flowery vines and the circle around the pentagram is like

00:21:32.140 the circle of the zodiac with all the zodiac signs and then there are little patch cords um

00:21:38.200 If you're not a musician, a patch cord is just like the cable that you use to like plug your guitar into your amp or your, you know, whatever into your whatever patch cords are just things that you use to plug instruments into amps or pedals or whatever.

00:21:52.500 So coming out of the flowery pentagram are all these little patch cords that are each plugged into one of the signs of the Zodiac.

00:22:02.660 And it's obviously occult-y, but it's also adorable.

00:22:06.340 like it's really cute to look at so i wanted to bring most of his music is instrumental but this

00:22:14.880 one is called cathedral of pleasure

00:22:18.700 and i want to read some of the lyrics

00:22:29.300 to again sort of bring me back into my to my own body and you know risa you're eating fruit this

00:22:36.980 is a relationship with plants if you're sitting there thinking you have no listeners that you

00:22:42.420 have no relationship with plants like do you eat food even if you don't ever eat a vegetable like

00:22:48.580 probably the animals that you were eating were eating like you have a relationship with plants

00:22:53.400 and it's up to you whether or not you want to foster that relationship but also we all have

00:22:58.740 relationships with our bodies and ourselves and you know we are sort of forced to exist in this

00:23:06.380 world we don't we don't have another world we can live in this is the one that we've got you know

00:23:11.600 and so I really want to get back into my body not as like a weight but as a cathedral of pleasure

00:23:21.680 here are some of the lyrics. Through the stained glass windows of my eyes, the wonders of my world

00:23:30.840 come pouring in. I feel life singing through me with all the music of the heaven that there's

00:23:40.880 ever been. And later, in every cell I have a soul, and every nerve I have a need. Each of my senses

00:23:56.340 has a seed, where love has been planted, and you, dear, will grow. On the sacred altar of my skin,

00:24:06.680 the candles are your hands which give me light. The simple words of love are prayers I offer

00:24:17.280 to the spirit of my holy love. My body is a cathedral of pleasure. I believe in the color

00:24:27.040 of eyes, the wild whisper of hair, the honeyed flavor of a mouth. I believe that love is the one

00:24:36.380 answer worth receiving so listeners as you know risa and i don't tell each other what

00:24:43.400 songs or materials we are bringing but this time it's moog love the theme today is songs of love

00:24:50.820 as told through moog synthesizers yeah and i couldn't be happier it's like it's i i mean i'm

00:25:00.240 beaming because I want you to dance around your house and listen to that song and then

00:25:06.440 listen to I feel love and sing it over and over and over again I feel love I feel love I feel

00:25:14.260 love call it back to yourself because demand it demand it insist upon it and listen to the person

00:25:22.020 inside of you that needs to hear that they're loved and tell them they are you know they are

00:25:28.700 loved i feel loved yeah and if you're like me this week and you're kind of over people then

00:25:34.200 love plants yeah love plants it's spring it's happening yeah just go out and look at the tiny

00:25:42.940 little lichen they're so sweet they're holding water they're having faith their lichen is is a

00:25:49.560 love between a fungus and an algae you know it's a love story so just go out and be with those guys

00:25:55.740 And also, Amy, what you just read, I mean, I'm certain was inspired by the body electric. I have the last couple lines of I sing the body electric that I had prepared to pull up for the end.

00:26:09.720 We truly are witches, are we not?

00:26:12.260 Yeah. Oh, because, you know, you can see, you can call it divinity, you know, you call it nature or call it God, that science calls nature, that religion calls God, as Margaret Murray put it. I don't mind, you know, truly whatever, whatever, whatever framework works for you.

00:26:32.540 But this poem and these songs are really about noticing, and I guess even these podcasts I've been listening to, are really about noticing that when we are alive, there is an electrical pulse within us that is beautiful and unknown.

00:26:50.100 that there is something in the beauty of how we move and breathe that is a mystery a beautiful

00:27:00.240 electric mystery and I honor the love that that makes me feel when I look at all different bodies

00:27:09.080 that are lit up by that and I believe as witches and as people whatever you want to call yourself

00:27:16.100 that we can reach out with that love and draw more love and more peace into the world it is

00:27:22.560 my stubborn optimism that insists upon believing that that is what we do with our stories and our 0.99

00:27:28.760 music and our care work and our fucking social work and our tech administration all this shit 0.96

00:27:33.740 we do you know that we pour love into the world and we draw the future towards us doesn't have 0.98

00:27:41.000 to be so ragey but sometimes it is okay here's the end bits of the body electric of icing the

00:27:46.220 body electric the voice articulation language whispering shouting aloud food drink pulse

00:27:53.980 digestion sweat sleep walking swimming poise on the hips leaping reclining embracing arm curving

00:28:02.640 and tightening the continual changes of the flex of the mouth and around the eyes the skin the

00:28:09.340 sunburnt shade freckles hair the curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked

00:28:17.040 meat of the body the circling rivers the breath and breathing it in and out the beauty of the

00:28:24.780 waist and thence of the hips and thence downward toward the knees the thin red jellies within you

00:28:32.680 or within me the bones and the marrow in the bones the exquisite realization of health

00:28:40.280 oh i say these are not the parts and poems of the body only but of the soul

00:28:47.740 oh i say now these are the soul 0.99

00:28:52.760 and bless it fucking be 0.99

00:28:56.580 Bless the fire, Hilbert. 0.97

00:29:03.180 I love myself and all of me.

00:29:18.800 I love myself and all of me.

00:29:20.960 I love, I love, I love myself and all of me.

00:29:25.060 If you want to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven.

00:29:31.000 Find out how at missingwitches.com.

Missing Witches - April 01, 2024

MW Rx. 44 - Sing The Body Electric

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