Movement Piece No. 11

Recorded November 17
Track: The Curse
Artist: Agnes Obel

I sat at her kitchen table and admitted that I had become obsessed with Movement Piece 10. For a few weeks there, I watched it daily, sometimes more than a few times a day.

“I just wanted to be back there, in that moment, in that environment.”

“What were you feeling in that moment, and how did it feel in your body?” she asked.

In my mind, I replayed the morning — not the video of it, but the experience itself.

I felt free, liberated — but, at the same time, very grounded. I felt connected, connected to something … I don’t know … something I couldn’t see or really understand? It’s like the sky was watching me. I felt an Observer, and what I was doing mattered to it.

And how did it feel in my body? That's harder to articulate. I guess I felt my vitality, like a tingling on my cheeks and in my fingers and toes. I felt the oxygen in my nostrils and lungs. I felt rooted to the earth, which is strange because I struggled on the gravel-strewn incline. But that’s how I would describe it.

Looking back on it, I think what I was feeling was faith. Faith in myself. Faith in my life. And it was coming from a place within and without simultaneously.

I think that’s what I was searching for as I replayed the video countless times. I was trying to remember: How does it feel to have faith in myself, complete and utter faith?

I embodied it for a moment alongside a desert road. And now that I know what it feels like, I will recognize it when it happens again.

And it will happen again, as long as I keep moving through it.