"Art is everywhere, it's only seeing which stops now and then."
-John Cage, 1978
What is it that draws us to a place? Landscape, economic opportunity, familiarity, the unknown..? My first earth acupuncture/needle insertion has begun in Stony Point, representing the coccyx, on the west side of the Hudson River. All I knew of Stony Point was John Cage had lived there in the 50's and 60's and a film John Cage Mushroom Hunting in Stony Point was made there. With little information of this place, I set out to look for a location to insert my first copper needle into the earth. Having been raised Catholic, my discovery of a Marian Shrine in Stony Point to insert the first needle, seemed right, in harmony, with my proposal to align places along the Hudson River.
Marian Shrine, Stony Point, NY
"Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and ones desire's out of its way and lets it act of its own accord."
-John Cage, 1972
Surprised to find the shrine's parking lot filled to capacity, I ask myself what kind of ideas continue for thousands of years and create a continuing interest in such a large audience as religion does. Sacred space is a form of creative placemaking, and boy, the Catholics are good at it. This place was filled with Italian carved marble sculptures in wooded paths called the Rosary Way or Pilgrims Path. I wandered until I found what felt right or as it turned out, broken, in need of something.
Marian Shrine, Stony Point, NY
Many of the shrines were filled with flowers but this neglected place is where I begin my project, the Main Central Vertical Flow of the Hudson River (see first post). To the left in the photo below, is my copper rod wrapped in iron wire, inserted into the ground
Stony Point Copper 41º 12' 57" N, 74º 0' 34"W
My friend with me, Mara Loving, widow of Al Loving, remarks on the uncanny connection of the spiral form in the marble remains next to my needle. Al is well known for his painted abstract spiral paper collages.
Al Loving, Beauty #57, 2003
"When you see how many things there are and you make more connections between things, I think that is the result of the acceptance of all the things. If you stick to your feelings and ideas, you may be impoverished then and have just the same ideas you've always had 2+2=4 and that will be the end of it. But if you let chaos come in, you have no idea how far you will go."
What is it that draws us to a place? Landscape, economic opportunity, familiarity, the unknown..? My second earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Peekskill, NY, on the east side of the Hudson River, representing the coccyx. I insert into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, along several chosen locations up the river representing points of the human spine. I am giving the river a Jin Shin Jyutsu treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow.
Ink, pen, copper foil on paper
I look for specific places in these pre-chosen towns/cities,that feels like an attractor of energy to me, to insert my copper needles. Once I learned of the meteorite that landed on the trunk of a red Chevy Malibu in a suburban neighborhood in Peekskill, I knew I had to place my needle in close proximity.
Taken by S. Eichmiller of the Altoona Mirror from Mansion Park football stadium
On October 9, 1992, the meteorite entered the earth's atmosphere over Kentucky, exploded into fragments, and continued over West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania before it crashed into Wells Street, Peekskill. At least 16 people in several states were able to film the meteorite traveling through the sky that night.
Just a block from the crash site, I found an outcropping of rocks, which might have made for a better landing site. The Chevy Malibu and meteorite sold at auction for $100,000 and toured the world on display in a glass box.
Blue Mountain Reservation, Peekskill, NY
Peekskill Copper
41º 17' 2" N, 73º 54' 53" W
A severe thunder and lightening storm was taking place as we drove to the Peekskill site. My friend accompanying me,Claire Lofrese, suggested we do it another day but I thought not. Somehow the crackling light and roar in the sky felt ritualistic and perfect, as though the act itself and the copper material were summoning the skies and atmosphere. And as fate would have it, the rain stopped briefly so I was able to scramble up the wet rocks to hammer the needle into the ground.
With very wet shoes and a bit shaken from the severe weather, we sought refuge in nearby Cold Spring for a glass of merlot and Claire, so generously tells the tale below.
"I expect to photograph thoughts... I am convinced that a definite image formed in thought, must by reflex-action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might be read by a suitable apparatus... with the optic nerve being a part of earth."
-Nikola Tesla, 1933
What is it that draws us to a place, or person or an idea? A feeling, a moment of some kind of recognition? My third earth acupuncture/needle insertion takes place in Newburgh, NY, on the west side of the Hudson River, representing the solar plexus. I am inserting into the earth, copper spikes wrapped in iron wire, along several chosen locations up the river representing acupuncture meridian points of the human spine. I am giving the Hudson River a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy-healing treatment called Main Central Vertical Flow (see first post).
My selection process of where to place the needles develops into an historical tour of the Hudson Valley, and of place finding me, drawing me to it, by its sheer nature of energetic interest...and its ability to hold onto to something that draws attention and people to it. And so I discover in Newburgh the place where Thomas Edison's very successful Electric Illuminating Company opened in 1884. Imagine electrifying and lighting up an entire city for the very first time.
The building then....
Edison Electric Illuminating Co., Newburgh, NY 1884
Now.....
Edison Electric Illuminating Co., Newburgh, NY 2012
On this abandoned, boarded-up site, I set out to find a location to hammer my copper acupuncture spike/needle into the earth, without causing too much notice. I need soft earth and find my way to the back of the building.
I like the quiet, somewhat anonymous aspect of this project, creating an invisible network of copper needles in the earth; transmitting energy, thought, intention...all those conditions I hear and read so much about regarding mindfulness and quantum healing. I think of my copper spikes as "nerves being a part of the earth."
Newburgh Copper 41º 30' 14" N, 74º 0' 29" W
It is impossible referencing Edison without an understanding of Tesla, and their well-known intellectual and commercial debate over AC/DC. Tesla won but died broke and alone. And Edison, known as the inventor of the light bulb, did not invent the light bulb. He improved upon a 50-year-old-idea with a more practical light bulb, using lower current electricity and a carbonized filament.
Edison did invent the phonograph using tin foil. He noticed when playing the tape of a telegraph machine at high speeds, it resembled the sound of spoken words and this caused him to wonder if he could record sound. The ability to record sounds was by the gramophone, invented by Emile Berliner, and actually the first record player as we know it.
Inventions and ideas about sound bring me back to John Cage, to his term non-intention, and his idea of allowing chance and indeterminacy to develop a plan of action..."to diminish that kind of activity of the ego and to increase the activity that accepts the rest of creation." It was by chance, and paying attention to weird unknown sounds, that drove and inspired Edison to end up holding a world record of 1093 patents.
"As you perceive something, you give birth to a thought, and this thought now thinks. Now that it exists, now that it has been conjured, now that it has been focused, now it vibrates. Now, by law of attraction, other thoughts that are vibrationally same will come to it."
-Abraham Hicks
I continue my project of inserting conductive copper and iron rods into the earth, with the metaphysical idea of creating a network of, if you will, earth acupuncture points along the east and west sides of the Hudson River, based on a Jin Shin Jyutsu energy healing pattern, the Main Central Vertical flow. Forwarding the idea of material matter in a place and settling on a location/site to insert each needle, becomes the intersection between mind and place, or spirit and matter.
In choosing a place, eleven of the twelve locations came smoothly to me, as in a dream. Within the radius of my chosen cities, I intuitively knew by looking at maps and googling sites, where to begin; in the outer boundaries of a place allowing myself to be led to a specific point on the earth's surface. For some unknown reason, Albany escaped my wandering process. This was the final needle in this project and feeling lost in this open-ended process, I consulted dancer/healer/dowser Susan Osberg. Her dowsing method using a map of Albany yielded a response to one specific area that focused as a starting point.
Susan Osberg dowsing
Interestingly, the area most activated by her dowsing tool turned out to be not only an early pre-historic site, but the place where Henry Hudson settled a trading agreement with the Algonquian Indian tribes. My wandering process of zeroing in on a specific site continued to elude me as I searched the many historical places in the area. Not clearly understanding why the process was taking more time for me to grasp the intuitive feeling of knowing where to begin, I finally discovered the reason why.
An arsenal, the oldest continuously active arsenal of the United States army occupying 142 acres of land was the area identified by the energetic movement of the dowser . The Watervliet Arsenal produces the most advanced, high tech, high powered weaponry for tank and mortar systems. The place yields such a frequency that I could not find my way without the help of another healer.
My last earth acupuncture needle, representing the crown chakra, was up against some major frequency disturbance.
Watervliet Arsenal Albany, NY
The site barbed-wired and fenced off with cameras positioned everywhere was an obstacle to the intuitive process of communion with place. Allowing oneself to wander, in Robert Smithson's words, to get lost in the thickets to make art, didn't seem like an option. Just a short distance away, on a hill, I saw the electrical power towers that fed current into this massive war endeavor. I knew instantly this was the final place for the last earth acupuncture needle in this experimental project of amplifying matter into spirit.
Albany copper 42º 32' 18"N, 73º 43' 3"W
For an atom as a transmitter, the channel that limits the communication is generally the air or atmosphere between the atom and a detecting instrument. For a person as a transmitter, the channel that limits the communication is generally the human being themselves. The scientist, William Tiller proposes the following steps in the path of human transformation to increase the communication bandwidth.
