The Shamanic Journey


Matthew Stone performance- Conduit Gallery, Milan

“You wanna come to Milan with me and be part of a dance piece I’m performing at an art gallery?” asked my friend Matthew Stone. “It’s going to involve lots of roaring, you and me wresting, and about thirty ballerinas.”

“Yeah sure. Why not?” I said, suddenly registering the severity of the word ‘dance.’ “I love roaring.”

Matthew is an artist. I know this because he always has lots of weird dangly things hanging from his clothes, and the majority of the time when he speaks I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. He’s like the sphinx—he speaks in riddles.

“The performance is a representation of the shamanic journey, and the fact that the shaman can not exist without his community,” said Matthew, readjusting his pirate hat. “I want to us evoke enough spiritual energy through the dance that we can actually make someone fly.”

To give you a little insight, ‘journeying’ is a method used by shamans to activate the imagination in order to explore the spiritual universe and experience expanded awareness. The most common way to journey is to lie down in a dark space, relax, and listen to a repetitive drum beat. Next you visualize the place that you would like to visit on your journey. Once you are there you, like, find your power animal and it helps you to solve all your problems by leading you on a magical spirit adventure… or something like that. I’m not explaining it very well, but you get the idea—that higher consciousness shit.

“Put this blindfold on and lie on the floor,” Matthew whispered as he pressed play on the shamanic drumming track he downloaded off Limewire. “Let’s journey.”

My journey begins and the place I choose to visit is Long Beach Island—a small island off the coast of New Jersey. It’s pretty lame as far as beach towns go and it stinks like garbage but my family went there every summer for the first sixteen years of my life, so I have somewhat of a connection with it.

So I arrive at the beach and the first thing that happens is I get attacked by a bunch of crabs. (Nice one imagination. This was supposed to be a pleasant, calming experience, remember? For fuck’s sake). After the crab extravaganza is over, I go for a swim in the ocean. Next thing I know I’m swimming deeper and deeper, down a dark tunnel and into what looks like an underwater coliseum. This is where I meet Claudio, the rugged, handsome merman. This must be my power animal, I think. I feel a sudden pang of sadness when I realize that my power animal has a greasy ponytail and the sort of face that looks like he probably rapes animals, but I choose to ignore this and continue swimming.

Claudio then leads me to a throne from where I can view the entire stadium. What I see is a giant conveyor-belt lined with hundreds of mer-babies. At the end of the belt is a large stone hammer. As the babies travel along the belt, the hammer falls from the sky, crushing the infants one by one. Each time a baby dies the crowd goes into hysterics, cheering with delight as it’s tiny mer-brain is violently spewed from its collapsing skull. What a bunch of twisted mermaid fucks, I think to myself, completely ignoring the fact that all of this exists solely in my own demented brain.

Post baby-crusher Claudio and I go back to his aquatic apartment where he covers me in glitter and we fuck for a while. Somewhere in the middle of all this he kills a bird with his bare hands. The whole experience was really deep. I learned a lot.

* * *

Fast forward two weeks and I am sitting in my bedroom, typing these words with one hand and furiously rubbing my clit with the other. Reminiscing about my adventures with Claudio has made me incredible horny. What a fucking babe.

The performance in Milan has come and gone. It was a success, if only in that it heavily confused a load of arty Italian people. Afterward everyone in the audience gave Matthew a collective blow-job, not because they wanted to, but because it just felt like the right thing to do. As we were leaving the gallery I overheard a conversation between two old women

“I thought it was pretty although I didn’t really understand it,” croaked woman number one. “They should have handed out a pamphlet to explain.”

“I agree,” added woman number two. “And that awful smoke machine made me cough.”

“How dreadful.”


The performance will be recreated in London tonight if you want to come.

And as they reached for God with their fingertips, their toes wrote stories in the sand -A performance by Matthew Stone

London Performance: 15th October, 10pm -1am
Performance will start at 11pm

Cordy House
Curtain Road 87-95

Shoreditch
London
EC2A

Comments

Comments

One Reply to “The Shamanic Journey”

  1. My friend is new to bdsm, fisting, everything not-vanilla (What would you call that? Cocoa?). I’m browsing your archives to send him some enlightening links and came across this.

    I am serious about journeying and am attempting it myself in a few weeks (4-day fasting, in the woods, etc.). I’m not mentioning this in order to shame this post. I actually love it and I love Matthew Stone even more. I just want to say that I hope you and he continue to help others and become even more accessible, while at the same time reaching new heights in yourselves and your works.

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