In the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna, before she can descend into the Underworld, Inanna is asked to leave everything at the gate.
Her crown. Her robes. Her name.
Only once she is naked and bare can she go any further.
For many years I have been living inside the myth of Inanna and feeling the implications it has on our world. Inanna is the embodiment of a woman who chooses to leave the luxuries of the upper world in order to find something in the depths that was lost - her exiled sister Ereshkigal.
It is only here, faced with all the exiled parts of herself, that she dies and can be reborn.
We are collectively, I believe, in another moment of descent. But we resist the change. We don’t want to give up our robes, our old identities. We want to stay safe. To stay clothed.
But underneath all that, the underworld beckons. It asks us to surrender. To be naked and exposed. To descend into the body, and find all that was hidden beneath the surface.
And from here the true rising can begin.
For the past year, @jaspertrim and I have been deep in the belly of the underworld creating a mythic musical journey of descent. We have traversed the inner world and risen, over and over again to meet the demands and voice of this work.
And soon it will be coming your way.
For now, here is a little taste.
———
Piano&production - @jaspertrim
Voice - @katya.barton
Shot by @jackktierney & @spikeadamss
Bodies @loveispowa@bel_fam_life@medinatrevathan@daisy_de_barros
Aloneness
I start to clean the kitchen.
Put some music on in the background.
Light the fire.
I look over at my dog while washing a mug and splashing soapy water onto my jumper. She looks so tender in her resting. One eye opens as she notices me watching her. I return to the dishes.
Aloneness.
Here, I finally hear myself speaking. Not aloud, that inside voice that comes when I am truly intimate with myself. When my only responsibility is to really listen. When I’m not afraid to let it enter me.
There’s a stable fragility to being with myself in this kind of space. The kind that sometimes catches itself thinking, is anyone watching me? I look around the corner and see a shadow that doesn’t feel like my own, it disappears, and then swiftly return to the task at hand.
Wash the dishes.
Make the space clean.
Make it clean for yourself.
I wipe my hands on my wet jumper and look at the dog again. I wonder if she watches me differently in this aloneness too. Or if something changes in her demeanour. There’s a sensitivity, we are attuned. Is it me, or her? Perhaps she’s always in that space, and I only seem to find it in the aloneness.
How precious, to not fear this darkening place.
But to find myself return.
📷 @belbluebel in Iceland
Day 20
Simona Kossak. The wild woman of białowieża forest. The last primeval forest of its size still standing in Europe. The landscape that woke me up from my slumber. When I first saw these photos I was captivated. Who was this woman? What was her story? I was much younger then. In my early twenties, awakening to the world around me and hungry for truth. An inner calling brought me to this forest which was in the middle of a political war. The same old same old. A government that was cutting down ancient trees and blaming nature for its natural cycles so that it could be managed, controlled and contained. And somehow in the midst of it all, I came across Simona Kossak. She wasn’t alive anymore in the flesh. But her spirit was. I could feel her in every corner of that land. Protecting it, like it had protected her. She lived in the forest along with the trees and the animals, studying animal behaviour and biology. An activist and a lover of the wild. But really it was her spirit, her listening, that still reverberated in the space between. The forest held her in its memory, and so when I was there it felt as though, I was invited in to that listening, too.
Lakes are Katya’s favourite body of water. Rivers are Jaspers favourite body of water.
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#messengers2025 #music #improvisation #channeling #synthesiser #harmonizer
Part 2 - cont.
I am like a gladiator. Waiting in the dark tunnels contemplating death before I am released like cattle into the slaughter house. The match hits half-time and we hear a deep belly roar from the crowd coming towards us. I look around at the ‘Staff Heroes’. We are just a bunch of misfits from all over the place. I don’t actually know anyones name. But something happens when the crowd descends upon us like a heard of wild boar. We could not think. There was no time for thinking. No time for the rational mind. We had to act. To move. To improvise this collective symphony.
I think of the athletes on the rugby pitch. Those exhilarating moments of presence when you surpass what you believe is possible and nothing else exists except you, your team, and the ball. Nothing else existed now except me, the Staff Hero’s, and those pints. How long had it been? 15 minutes? An hour? Time loses all meaning. We are in flow. There is beer all over the floor and I am pouring pint after pint, orders being shouted over the roar of the crowd. For the first time in months, I feel alive.
The bell rings. Half-time is over. Manager hits the big red button on the side of the bar and the metal shutters close. Our symphony comes to an abrupt end. A moment of silence.
I look down. I peel the soles of my feet off the beer-sticky ground and catch the smell of my sweat mixed in with the persons before. I look up at us, the Staff Hero’s, panting like Gladiators who have just come out of the battle ring. We had made it. One more day of survival. Manager takes one, breathless look at us all.
‘Well,’ He says. ‘Don’t forget to leave your T-shirts.’
One by one we pile our red T-shirts up by the door without saying a word. I walk out of the underground tunnel and step outside into the light. The sun hits the back of my neck and I turn to face it, my eyes draw shut. I watch the colour behind my eye lids change from black to pink to white. I notice my breath move inside me. Falling in. Releasing out.
‘Eh - What’s she doing? Meditating or something?’ Two men from the bar are smoking a cigarette and watching me.
No, I thought. Just remembering how to listen.
———
📷 unknown
Day 15 - Storytelling. Part 1.
I wake up. I don’t know where I am. I orient myself, blurry eyed to my surroundings. I’m in my bed. I’m in London. I am 23 years old. A paper cup and old cigarettes from the night before decorate the floor around my mattress. What day is it? I look at my phone and it tells me it is Sunday, February 23rd. That means I was out last night. Memories come back to me from the night before, dancing on tables, kissing strangers. I push them to the back of my mind and turn my attention to the application on my phone. There’s 3 notifications from ‘Staff Heroes!’ of temp jobs to fill for the day.
Bar Staff. Twickenham rugby stadium. 3 hours. 25 quid.
‘Accept’.
I get out of bed and get in the shower. The cold water pinching my skin like tiny sewing needles. I know I had dreams once, but they had been robbed a long time ago along with any sense of identity that I might have been proud of. I get out, wet. Brush my teeth, put on clothes and get to the underground station and one hour later I am at the rugby stadium, a grey, concrete colosseum. A middle-aged man with a dishevelled look on his face wearing a cheap suit with a plastic name tag that says ‘Manager’ approaches me.
‘Who ‘re you?’ He says.
‘I’m Katya’. My voice is hesitant, guarded.
‘Bar’. He throws me an unwashed red T-shirt with a beer bottle sewn into the top right corner and flaps his hand vaguely toward a cluster of humans by the bar. I put the T-shirt on over my clothes and join the other ‘Staff Heroes’. Manager starts to give us an un-enthusiastic
demonstration of how to pour a pint.
‘Fill it to the top, right to the top. Put it to the side. Do it again.’
I lean over to the spotty kid chewing gum standing next to me. ‘So, you think he’s done this before?’ He pretends not to hear me.
Manager continues his demo.
‘And when they come in at half time, be ready.’
Be ready.
Tbc…
——
📷 unknown Pinterest image
#storytelling #myth
Day 13
A few years ago I was living in a van and all my stuff was stolen. The only possessions I had left were my little wallet, and this camera. It was gifted to me by a man that I will call apple cider man (more on that another time).
After the event - I took myself to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to remove myself completely from civilisation.
I needed to descend.
I started taking clips of moments of my inner state. To try to find who was hiding beneath it all. To try and find who, and what was left.
Day 11
When I walk through the doors of judgement I die to the reality of duality and fall into the centre of my hearts compassion. Here - the unconditional self works through me for the transmutation of old wounds that keep me locked in the prison of my past. In the remembrance of my choice to be here, I take full responsibility for my life and reclaim my sentient sovereignty. In every moment that I remember my right to choose, I am freed again, and again, to listen to the wisdom of my heart.
Oh, my heart.
To keep choosing to open my heart. Is to live with the perpetual risk of the pain of heartbreak. To give myself full permission for the yearning. Without knowing if it will come back in return. To love this way requires me to put down the defences. To expose myself. ‘Exposing yourself will set you free.’ They say. Say what you wouldn’t dare to say. To expose those voices, those voices we are so afraid to reveal. I am so afraid to reveal. But it is those voices - those hidden fragmented voices - when truly heard, will not be what divide us, but that which sets us free.
Day 8
It’s late. I listened. There was nothing, at first.
I dug a little deeper, and felt the vastness of my breath
It does that sometimes. It expands beyond the capacity of my body and I breathe, or more so, I feel I am being breathed.
The external muscular system has let go of its reins of control and from the inside, space. Opens, contracts, opens, contracts. I remember that I am always being breathed.
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