THE BOOK OF ECSTASIES AND TRANSFORMATIONS

KEY TO THE THOMPSON VERSION

Axioms and Tokens: Original Author

Commentaries: Marissa Mars

Narratives: Autumn Tremond

Responses: Robert C. Thompson

PART I. THE AXIOMS

1.1. The Mind Axiom: Wander beyond the known to find what is shared.

1.2. Commentary: The imagination mediates between the conscious and subconscious worlds. When we allow it to roam freely, we open ourselves to a deep exploration of the self. Within ourselves, we discover an overlap with conscious beings outside of ourselves. This world is a shared, separate realm of being.

1.3. The First Narrative of Autumn Tremond: I was sitting in a desk wearing pants and shoelaces but I wasn't there. I wasn't in the desk. There were no shoes or shoelaces. The answer wasn't the cosmological constant. It was anti-matter. The lesson wasn't over, but I left. Not forever. It was only my first attempt. In a field beside the chapel I took off my pants and waited. It was a field because I had to get out of the desk, but it was beside the chapel because I shouldn't have to hide. Indulging shame is no better than the dark side of the binary. I chewed on one of my shoelaces until I had the idea to arrange some rocks. The idea had to be real because there weren't any rocks around. I felt the gray sky on my face and went in my socks to move a boulder. The rock was heavy but it didn't matter. The rain came and the pulse ran through my fingers at the first touch. I came up barefoot through the ground and met the girl in the rain.

1.4. The Actor's Response: It's important not to treat this text as an exact blueprint. We can take the efficacy of Marissa Mars' commentary for granted because Autumn Tremond says it worked for her. Tremond's narrative shows a state of mind that was tethered to a project but still wandering. When I attempted this with my performing partner in a gutted classroom above the new Talbot lecture hall (under construction at the time) we were not moved to begin by inspiration as Tremond describes. Rather, we adopted the elements of water and rocks and skin contact and left the rest. The water and rocks surfaced in the case of the “New Hope Sound Demon” as Teresa Carlysle's chosen means for building a portal and skin contact was suggested by her sister Melissa. Melissa had also worked with sound and so we introduced white noise from a radio as a fourth component. We combined these in unnumbered ways until we experienced the doubling. This encounter was different for each of us. I felt as if space had expanded around me and the double was a giant. For her, she felt as though she had expanded to fill the empty classroom and her second sat in the palm of her hand. We shifted positions and she was my double and I was hers. We had come back to size but we were four instead of two. And then it snapped shut.

2.1. Axiom of Being: To believe is to welcome the realm.

2.2. Commentary: Belief is not something we can control. To come to believe is an existential shift that happens deep in our souls. Belief is like an infinte number of popcorn kernels fired against a solid brick wall until by some miracle of quantum physics one passes through to the other world.

2.3. The Second Narrative of Autumn Tremond: I went back to my pants. I went back to my desk. I went back to the cosmological constant. A circle had opened under a rock. I had met the other world. But what else was there to do? I'm just a human female, two years too late in her social-emotional engineering. All the same, I didn't deny it. There I was while I was there. It was an event in time and space. Perhaps not physical but palpable. The thrill haunted me as an afterthought for days but I didn't want to go back to the rock. It was isolated. Past tense. I sat on my bed with my door locked and my socks off. I tried to see me entering through a hole in the wall wearing nothing but socks. I arrived intermittently but I wasn't very personable, chewing on a shoelace from last season with that dull expression. I might go back to the rock but what if it wasn't there anymore. Or what if the rock was there but I wasn't. Or what if I was there but I was alone? Expectation was a weakness. If I didn't get up I'd always be here on the bed staring dumbly at my navel and wondering. The rain annoyed me until I went to the rock again.

2.4. The Actor's Second Response: Tremond's narrative is comforting here. After initial success—beginner's luck—there is a long period of frustration. If spontaneity is essential to achieving those first results—even planned spontaneity in our case—then it is not repeatable by its very nature. So we expected a period of repetition without result. It was only after we lost the expectation completely that the work could begin again.

3.1. Axiom of Assembly: Twelve is fullness and thirteen the proof.

3.2. Commentary: Numbers are ideas. Ideas form patterns. Patterns become cycles and the process repeats. Twelve is a cycle, but thirteen is not. Thirteen comes from outside the system. Thirteen does not arrive willingly and this is the only way to know that the twelve are genuine.

3.3. The Third Narrative of Autumn Tremond: I brought a tape recorder for the static sound. (1) The static was a mist and I saw through the sound. (2) The sound was space and the air ran scared then crushed me at its center then sat still around me. And the rock. (3) The static wasn't static anymore. It had a feeling. (4) So I took off my clothes and rubbed the ether on my skin. (5) I arrived then and there (6) dressed like a constellation (7) and growling like a beast. (8) So I became me and I wasn't there anymore. (9) I was with the vortex and the vortex was a portal (10) and the portal was a passage. One body lost its grip. One body gained its footing. (11) I was on the other side. (12) I was already there.

3.4. The Actor's Third Response: Each week we met. And we moved between animals and spirits and the many shades in between in every stage of naked and covered, silent and screaming. This was the action of our attempt to return to the second world, but the thirteenth element—the static sound—was hard to come by because we had started with it. We should have known better, but we never intended to follow Tremond exactly. It wasn't possible. We started to feel, or perhaps to reason, that the static itself was the disconnect. We tried without it. Then we recorded the text: the axioms and the tokens as we had them. As we listened we memorized the words and started to speak them and we brought back the static. We told ourselves we were getting closer but one session we realized we weren't closer. We were doubled on the other side, moving between worlds, and we had been for longer than we realized.

4.1. The Myth Axiom: The rite is the story told, but the story is not the rite.

4.2. Commentary: There is a gap between the exercise as carried out and the story told about the exercise. The work itself can never be shared in a technical fashion. The true process is in the narrative and the narrative is a refraction of the work from which it was fashioned.

4.3. The Fourth Narrative of Autumn Tremond: One day she offered to do my laundry. When I went to get my clothes, I found her with her ear pressed up against the machine. Marissa Mars was always listening like that. V understood. She did not. In that room we both belonged to her. It was her text that we had gathered around. Ecstasies and transformations. I had experimented on my own. She didn't grasp that impulse was essential. Now my impulse was for him. I couldn't let her know about the other world. I couldn't let her know that we needed to separate. We had been fully intimate since before the summer. Not just the three of us but the five who shared the book, deeply focused in our nakedness. Marissa Mars hated me the day we didn't show for her reading. We had always been there before. I had seen the other world and now I was with him. She knew she'd never find it or else it would have been her. One of us would need him. The other would be left behind. I think she liked my body better. A terminal flaw. She would hate me more. She said I stole her power like a vampire. The book was mine now. She had the words but I knew the ending.

4.4: The Actor's Fourth Response: I had selected her or perhaps we had selected each other for the tendency to opposition within similarity. Both artists. Her: female and physical. Mine: male and mental. We had to fetishize each other this way, to believe that this was the ideal combination for this work. Then we had to overcome the fetish because it was based in an essentialization. Although we always had ulterior motives, the portal had to subsume every motivation so that we could flow through and between it. The same was true of our relationship with Autumn Tremond and Marissa Mars. They had their story and we had ours. The repetition of the text was as much about immersing ourselves in their world as it was about thinning its meaning until it was a wordless song and the sound was fine mist.

PART II. TOKENS OF THE VESSEL

5.1. The Token of Sound. Leave yourself. A sound emerges from the deep silence. It begins faint and becomes louder. Channel the sound back to yourself. Allow yourself to make the sound. Return to the silence. Sound. Silence. Return to yourself.

5.2. Commentary: Sound is the first token of the mechanism. You cannot compel the sound or you will imagine it. The sound must come on its own as if arriving from outside of yourself. Sound navigates between the poles of intellectualism and sensuality and for this reason it is recommended as the first token. If the sound does not emerge, try exploring sensation first or image.

5.3. The Fifth Narrative of Autumn Tremond: Marissa Mars had explained how to record a tape. On Tuesday nights after the meeting she would go to the radio station and do an hour from two until three. Some students smoked to it. A philosophy major called to say his bed had levitated three feet off the ground. My sound had all been in my head, but I knew what it was and that I could capture it. He had to hear the sound of my mind. The frequency of the other world would be enough to bring him to the sidewalk. But when I went to see him in his room, the Unbeliever was there already. I put the tape in anyway. The Unbeliever didn't like it. He said, I can't focus. He was thinking of the credits. I said, this could be the experiment that gets us the credits. He didn't like it. He was thinking that the Man-Spirit wouldn't approve. By Man-Spirit I mean his Man-Spirit. Not the actual Man-Spirit if there is an actual Man-Spirit. The Unbeliever was agitated. V liked the scandal. I knew he would. V was thinking that the Unbeliever shouldn't be hearing this. V laid back on his bed and listened. I sat beside him and closed my eyes. I was already so open and sensitive. I touched his hand and the frequency took us. The Unbeliever was at the window. He was choking. We were at the sidewalk. Perhaps if we had our pants on, he might have let it pass as an illusion. The Unbeliever said something. He was afraid. Uncertain. It was the closest I'd ever felt to understanding him. Then he left us alone. The door stayed open.

5.4. The Actor's Fifth Response: The sound loop is central to partner work. Hear a sound and make a sound and hear a sound. The initial utterance feels forced because it is an individual action, but it prompts a response which is receptive. What follows moves further and further from the hollowness of this first articulation and toward a union that is both musical and psychic. There were many first attempts until our voices synced to a rhythm that could be dropped and joined each meeting. She had a boyfriend who didn't like it. He didn't understand how it could be art. Maybe it wasn't. It was a tremendous effort of love and attention and blood for an audience of one who was, truth be told, only half listening. He was anxious so we invited him to watch a session. He was fine at first but then she tried to interact with him. She wanted to bring him closer to the experience as long as he was there. I held back on instinct. His laugh was uneasy. That was natural enough. He moved with her a minute—maybe two—but then he stiffened. He pulled back from her. He pushed her off. Completely still, she collapsed. She hoped we didn't notice. But he saw it. I could tell. She said it was alright. There was a long silence. We'd kept our personal lives apart from each other, from this place. I said I wasn't having the best night. Let's end it early. She kissed him and he left. Alone with me again, she fell on the ground and screamed. I moved away and whispered. Just like that, we were there again as if nothing else had happened.

6.1. The Token of Sensation. Leave yourself. Your skin draws sensation from the emptiness around you like a magnet. Feel the sensation gather on the surface of your body and into your muscles and bones. A second sensation. A third sensation. Return to yourself.

6.2. Commentary: Sensation is the second token of the mechanism. Sensation is the most abstract and creatural perception and is easiest to discover if you are intellectually oriented. But for actors who are more sensual in their orientation and day-to-day living, sensation may be the most difficult to arrive at without prevarication. Note that our inclination runs counter to our capacity with the token.

6.3. The Sixth Narrative of Autumn Tremond: We were often naked, the five of us. We were vaguely pretty with our clothes off. I think this was intentional. When Marissa Mars touched me—when I wanted her to—it felt like falling through a hole in the earth into the expanding infinity of space. I was gone but I wasn't there. When V touched me—when I asked him to—I was in two places at once. Still not there but also not gone. That is, until I walked out onto the event horizon and met the rock in a field beside the chapel. I knew from the way his skin felt there in the rehearsal room above the old theater after the actors had all gone home for the night that I could take him with me. Marissa Mars knew it too but she pretended otherwise. Maybe she thought if we kept on meeting the feeling might extend to her. Maybe she thought I could take all five. Except there weren't really five. There were four. And there weren't really four. There were two. Me and him in the passage to the other world. I had already gone but he could get us there again. 

6.4. The Actor's Sixth Response: While nakedness was a tool used by both Melissa Carlysle and Autumn Tremond, I had no intention of forcing the issue or initiating it. There was a slight power differential, after all. Still, I had to let her know it was an option. The exposed body had potential but only if that potential remained uncoerced and unsubjugated. We may have arrived at the choice to experiment with clothes off organically, but that wasn't how we approached the experiment itself. We tried it together but we remained separate according to a plan. We forgot about it for a few sessions but then she wanted to try it again, this time without rules. I tried to keep pace with her which was a bit artificial but she was naked first. I forced myself to join her. Our bodies made contact according to the work but that was all. Intimacy is a necessity but sexual feeling is not. After that, it became part of the work. Sometimes her. Sometimes me. Sometimes both of us. But not always.

7.1. The Token of Image. Leave yourself. You are surrounded by a thick mist. See something faintly through the mist. Approach it. See it clearly. And the mist envelops you. Second vision. Mist again. Third vision. Mist. Return to yourself.

7.2. Commentary: Image is the third token of the mechanism. Image is the most concrete and cerebral perception and is easiest to discover if you are very sensually oriented. But for actors who are more intellectual in their orientation and day-to-day living, image may be the most difficult to arrive at without prevarication. As with sensation, our inclination runs counter to our capacity with the token.

7.3. The Seventh Narrative of Autumn Tremond: When I saw myself I wasn't me and I was alone. When I switched perspective the view around me was faint like the world had just been created and needed firming up. I had done the twelve exercises to open the door but I could not be twelve myself and he could not be thirteen. The other two had left us. I think Marissa Mars got rid of them. We had skipped the week before and when we came back she was by herself. Something went wrong with them, she said. They wouldn't be coming tonight, she said. We took off our clothes and started the work. But there was nothing new, and for the first time Marissa Mars let us know that she was angry about it. She called us monkeys and dogs. She said, your only talent is dumb belief. You won't see me again after tonight but it's a mistake. You will never finish without me. You don't understand the thirteen. You've read the text but not the commentary. There's so much more to know and until you know it you will wander lost, a world away. This is my curse. This is the curse of Marissa Mars.

7.4. The Actor's Seventh Response: She was in my acting troupe. We traveled and did festivals. There might have been an outside thought that this work would feed our storytelling, but if it did the influence would be very indirect. Beyond that, we had nothing to gain. I wouldn't write anything outside these notes. There wouldn't be a performance. There wouldn't be an audience. We knew that in advance. It was part of the set-up for our sessions. We'd gotten ahold of these chapters and they sketched out an experience provocatively but not clearly. Neither Mars nor Tremond nor the original author gave any sense of where this was going. We weren't sure what the effect was, if there ever was an effect, or if there would be one for us. Later, there would be the dark pool and the portals but we weren't thinking of that then. The dark pool was a call back from the second world, not our own impulse to return there. The rehearsals in the gutted classroom were as pure an action as two people can conceive of and maybe that's why it ended up working. Tremond's exercises were much more complicated, particularly her relationships in and around the work, but among her talents was the ability to drop below these complexities into the project itself. This is, apparently, what Mars lacked and the reason they had to separate.

8.1. The Key Token. Connect with the frequency and vibrate with the pulse of the other world.

8.2. Commentary: At the intersection of sound, image, and sensation you will feel yourself in tune with the frequency of the other world. You may discover that you do not require all three tokens of the mechanism to achieve this frequency. Engage with the tokens according to what attunes you best. You must be sensitive to your own consciousness. Feel for the frequency by shifting your focus between the tokens, moving your emphasis according to what strengthens your connection.

8.3. The Eighth Narrative: V is a point in a long line, the keepers of the page on which the universe is written. I am a speck, a drop of color washed with water. Water is the key and light and heat. Union is the key, physical and interdimensional, across spans of time and space. For a thousand years I've found him. Not me and not him but us. I know this not just as a feeling but from Marissa Mars. This is how she found him although I can't explain why I found her. She knew his name from the archive. His ancestors have been seeking a way into the garden for a thousand years. This haunts me more than anything. I'm not so arrogant as to think that I'm the only one. A multiverse of seeds have budded. Maybe some have even blossomed. But then what. Perhaps they could not finish the work. Perhaps they fell short of the thirteen. I worry more that they succeeded.

8.4. The Actor's Eighth Response: The Chinese alchemists believed only a certain person born under a certain star could brew the sacred elixir of life. Tremond believed she had a gift or at least that Vandermeer did. We knew we did not. We were self-selected having no connection to the chapters before I'd discovered them while I was researching the story of a medieval storm raiser who'd been stoned to death for falling out of the sky. That seemed like enough of a coincidence, but we never saw it as a sign. Tremond felt her way through using intuition. We were following a map as best we could. The rocks were a frame. The water was a sheet of glass. But all they did was reveal a locked window. We still needed a way inside. We felt for it until one night she sat. I felt her sinking through the floor and grabbed hold of her feet, not to stop her but to fall along. She wanted me to. She'd extended herself to keep from going alone. I fell with her under the water, below the rocks, into the second world. This was the first pattern we could replicate, and we didn't realize what we were doing until we'd repeated it for a month of sessions. When we dropped, we felt like teenagers sneaking through an abandoned lot. Tremond knew that she belonged across the water's pane. We knew that we were never meant to go there. And yet, we'd gone. And gone again.

Part III. SECOND TOKENS

9.1. The Traveler's Token. Separate from yourself. Use the frequency to breathe reality into the projected self. As the double becomes more real, feel yourself reach to become one. Free yourself from the mind and reach. Free yourself from the body and reach. Merge completely.

9.2. Commentary: You allow the traveler to separate from yourself in order that you may become the traveler. You project the second self as a vehicle in order to abandon the first self temporarily.

9.3. The Ninth Narrative of Autumn Tremond: (1) I came through the bathroom door and saw myself sitting cross-legged at the foot of my bed in pants and socks, gnawing through a shoelace. Are you ready to leave yet, I said with my mouth full. Will you come with me, I asked. (2) I walked to the bed and got down on the ground on my hands and knees. I sniffed my hair and licked my mouth. I crawled on top of myself and we slid to the ground and rolled for a while, our bodies locked together, smelling and tasting. (3) Then it started to hurt. A pain just outside my body. A pain in her body. My body. Right beneath the solar plexus. Nibbles became bites as we collided with furniture. I felt nothing but still I was violent. I pulled and scratched and jabbed. I wanted her gone, not as a matter of feeling but necessity. (4) Then she burst into flame. I caught fire. We burned together and imploded like a dark star into one.

9.4. The Actor's Ninth Response: With my hands on her ankles, I projected her across the water to the other side and she imagined my crossing the same way. We were two halves of the same and saw our opposite as the traveler so that we both made the journey together. I was her double and she was mine. This isn't how Tremond described it, but Mars kept open the possibility. I'm not sure what we left behind or what we did once we'd left. There were still physical bodies in the gutted classroom doing something or maybe nothing. We were in the living space beyond imagination, expanding and contracting like breath. We explored alone for a long while over several sessions before we shared the impression that we weren't alone. Someone else was in this place with us unless these were our true doubles, hiding to avoid correcting our misconception about how we'd arrived. But the dwellers of the second world are not a question for the traveler. They have their own token.

10.1. The Token of the Portal. Seek the portal. Intuit its location and move to find it. Draw the portal toward you as you draw closer to it. Feel it. Hear it. See it in the distance and arrive.

10.2. Commentary: There is no consensus on whether the portal possesses a corollary in physical time and space. You must follow your traveler's direction regardless of your preconceptions. The portal will have its own sound, sensation, and visual. Feel for the portal as you felt for the frequency and arrive accordingly.

10.3. The Tenth Narrative: In the shower I saw a triangle in the woods. I felt it. How far I was. How close. His grandfather had showed him a place not far from his childhood home. That's where we spent the summer: sleeping in a tent, re-supplying in his parents' kitchen, and bathing in the creek. We worked sometimes, cleaning the bathrooms at the gas station, but mostly we sat inside the rocks. It wasn't easy to find them at first because there were rocks everywhere. But after a few days I picked them out. We weren't traveling. We could come and go and sometimes we did but we couldn't cross all the way inside. I was teaching him so that it would be easier when the time came. We were waiting for the days, but we couldn't know when they were unless we were there in the woods to see and hear and feel the rocks. When the time came the rocks would change and we would go to the other world.

10.4. The Actor's Tenth Response: After awhile, discovering the portal and dropping through it lost its drama. I suppose this was our first mistake or maybe the culmination of an entire journey taken in error. I don't mean that we caused ourselves any harm but rather that we went in not knowing how much there was to take in. Without the proper orientation—really the fallout of a few innocent mistakes—we were bound to lose our way. We lost track of the text. We should have never recorded it. However we heard the words, they became like static. We were no longer mindful of the steps: the rocks, the water, the sounds, the approach, her butt in the puddle, my hands on her feet. Each had been a special revelation but with repetition they became routine. The trick—the challenge—was to maintain the feeling of discovery each time. We wandered aimless through our abandoned lot in our gutted classroom until we were certain there was nothing there to see. Still, we kept meeting. Still, we kept going. And going again.

11.1. The Token of the Passage. Move through the portal into the passage. Release your connection with the place you’ve come from. Strengthen your connection to the place you are going to. And pass through.

11.2. Commentary: The traveler must be honest. Hear, feel, or see your tie to the physical world. Allow it to dissipate. Hear, feel, or see your tie to the second world. Allow it to strengthen until the cord snaps.

11.3. The Eleventh Narrative of Autumn Tremond: All portals are one. There were others out there like us. We couldn't know them. Not then. They could be in the trees or the sand. They could be ten years away. Or twelve. Or thirteen. Maybe some of them hadn't found their portal yet. But they were looking. We had to trust that they were looking. And when the days arrived they would step inside with us and complete the ritual. Until then we will take on the curse. We will be transformed into frogs. Maybe we would spend forever living in and out of the pool. If we knew, the exercise would have no meaning. It starts and ends with Marissa Mars. And even if Marissa Mars collapses our uncertainty, her choice is not without risk. None of us know what happens next.

11.4. The Actor's Eleventh Response: We had to speak the words of the axioms and the tokens knowing what they were and what they meant. We had to arrange the portal and the water and our bodies in anticipation of a momentous transition. We had to leave cautiously and close the ritual intentionally. One night we were navigating the nothingness of the second world when suddenly we weren't. We were rolling in the water on the floor together, partially undressed. But we also had the distinct impression we were still inside. She looked at me. She said she thought we'd lost the travelers. I tried to say it was just a change, a new event, something to learn from. But we'd been silently anticipating this for weeks now. She said she didn't feel the purpose anymore. It was never something we could discuss or record. The feeling was all we had to motivate us, to direct our exploration. She said she worried whether we should keep going. Maybe we were burning up the wire that brought us between places. Maybe if we stopped we could never come back to it. That was the reason we kept on with it, but we probably shouldn't have.

12.1. The Other's Token. Pass through to the other side. Feel yourself alone. Feel a second presence. Hear a second presence. See a second presence. Go and be among the presence.

12.2. Commentary: The presence is unknowable except by the traveler. Even when the traveler returns—whatever may return—the knowledge is never fully shared with the consciousness of the physical self. At the core of this work is a necessary mystery.

12.3. The Twelfth Narrative: I write outside of the portal but soon I will be in it again, and when I am the ritual will be complete. I have been reading the book again, retracing my journey to find my way back to my traveler on the other side. The twelve completed the journey. We only needed Marissa Mars to join the performance. Marissa Mars would not play until she would. Because she thought if she played the role, she might abort the ritual. Bring it to an early close somehow. She told herself that the experiment had gone wrong and she wanted to finish it before it could end. But her real fear was that she would attempt to enter and be turned away. This hesitation had kept her at the edge of the portal for as long as we had been inside of it. But now we had arranged for her to step inside.

12.4. The Dialogue with the Thirteenth Member: M said, give me the script. I said, these are your lines. M said, who are you? I said, I am Autumn. M said, there is no Autumn. I said, I am Teresa. M said, what happened to your clothes? I said, you are Marissa Mars. M said, how am I outside the window? Who is here with you? You were playing. I said, what happened to your clothes? M said, what time is it? I said, all portals are one. M said, you made them up. I said, we are the same. M said, they aren't real. I said, neither are you. M said, I'm not playing. I'm getting out of here. I said, out of where? M said, the theater. I said, we're in the portal. M said, how did we get here? I said, we were always in the portal. M said, will it hurt? I said, you will start again.

12.5. The Actor's Twelfth Response: The others approached us only after we'd separated from our second selves, in the dim twilight of our adventure. Maybe they'd never intended for us to see them but failed to realize that we remained psychically linked to the travelers we'd left behind. It was Tremond and Vandermeer. Or at least that's how we saw them. They were timeless and more substantial than anything else we'd experienced in the second world. I found myself wondering if they'd crossed bodily into this place, not as the traveler but as themselves. That's not what she meant when she said they were frogs. I saw their bodies in this world—entranced engines of survival—subsisting in a cabin to preserve these ethereal beings on the other side. They were split just like us, but their whole existence was spent preserving their connection to the traveler until their experiment could reach fruition. We had been ejected and lacked the commitment to persevere as they had, but we maintained our curiosity; our sense that we had just missed a terrific opportunity. It tethered us across time and space and brought us back together to try with the benefit of experience to navigate once more into the dark pool.