Shining Like The Transcestors: Rediscovering Ancient Truths Through Music and Movement
Photo by Andrew Tess
One more note on the Galli before I get back to Synthesis: throughout these texts, I found that there’s this pretty heavy fixation on how “crazed” these people are, and how bloody and gory the cutting-off-the-genitals is. Here, I think we have to recognize that history gets recorded by those at the center of society, not by those at its margins. We don’t actually have any records about the practices of Cybele’s cult that were written by its members. Everything we have is from the perspective of non-initiates. It makes sense that we see writers focus on what was most unfamiliar to them, and they would likely understand these gender-bending practices as shocking and sensational. What I mean to say is that these accounts provide a very incomplete picture of who the Galli actually were. After all, there’s plenty of writing out there today that describes trans women solely as maniacs who chop their dicks off.
Okay, so bringing it all back to Synthesis, the Galli (whom I’ve lovingly begun to regard as my transcestors, anachronism be damned) provided me an entry point into sharing that other magical feature of Drum & Flow: connecting to the Earth. In their close relationship with their Earth Goddess, and in the essential role their gender seemed to play in that relationship, I find validation for my desire to speak on our current-day need to respect and honor our planet. In fact, minus the castration bit, Drum & Flow is not dissimilar to what most of the Dies Sanguinis seems to have been about: drumming and dancing. The whole thing clicked into place for me when I realized that Synthesis was originally booked for March 20 and 21, while the Dies Sanguinis was every year on March 24.
So, with the musical backdrop of the Seikilos Epitaph and the spiritual inspiration of the transcestors, Jojo, Agave, and I got to it!
Within a few rehearsal sessions, Jojo was able to build a full track out of the eight simple bars of the Seikilos Epitaph that I’d been able to plunk out on the harp. He fleshed out a full soundscape by bringing in a synthesizer (...for Synthesis, lol) and curated an array of drums and percussion based on a few historical notes about the Galli’s instruments of choice. The track captured something that I still hold as a spiritual tenant: that which is holy can also be raucous. Invoking the magnificence of Nature doesn’t need to be a solemn affair. The ancient cult of Cybele wasn’t tapping into the profound abundance of the Earth through somber prayer and austerity, but through total revelry and flamboyance! In that same vein, Jojo’s bouncing, pulsing rhythms and electronic flourishes, laid over the steady back-and-forth of the Seikilos Epitaph, evoked a forest chittering with new spring, on the shore of an ever-lapping lake. He playfully remarked that it sounded like “Fairy Music,” which brought me such glee that I originally decided to submit the piece to Triskelion with that name.
As fairy music filled the air, Agave slipped effortlessly into fluid, elegant movement. With one step, she was sturdy and grounded, her feet roots reaching deep into soil, and with the next she was wind, toes barely skimming the surface beneath them. A heavier beat came in, and she was a panther, sinewy and sauntering. Before I realized it, she had enchanted me into joining her. When I attempted to match the ease of her motions, she told me instead to move how I move.
Agave explained that to celebrate the miracle of our bodies in this dance doesn’t have to be an attempt to achieve some external standard. Rather, it can be the joy of moving our bodies in the ways that we want to move them, to wield our limbs and fill out our skin in the way that we decide feels good to us, without adjusting for the opinions of other people. She described how much tension we tend to carry with us as we move through our lives, how we limit our range of movements and lock down our energy so as not to attract unwanted attention. There’s so much that our anatomy is designed to do that we don’t do, because of convention and because of fear. However, in dance, she shared, we can walk how we’d walk in a better world.
What a lovely gift for Earth Mama! I mean, she gifted all of us with these bodies, and she’s even spent thousands of years fine-tuning them for us to be perfectly suited to thrive. What better way to show appreciation for such a carefully crafted gift than to use it with love and delight? Not to mention, this fell in line perfectly with the ethos of this most-ancient song of Seikilos that managed to survive two millennia: to be radiant in this life while it lasts. Hell, maybe this thing could even encourage people to incorporate Earth-and-body gratitude into their daily practices! And maybe that could generate a wave that could contribute to a species-level shift toward sustainable, loving environmental practices!!
Well, this was shaping up to be a real doozy of a number and I had really worked myself up to be absolutely buzzing with excitement to share it. Truly in the spirit of Synthesis, we were fusing my words with Jojo’s music with Agave’s dance; the mental with the spiritual with the physical; transness with Classics with performance; ancient history with modern expression with hopes for the future. And this soaring Hymn to Cybele, this cry of joy and call to action, was going to happen on the Spring Equinox, on the first day of Aries season, on the Dies friggin Sanguines for Chrissake!
And then, you know, COVID shut down New York, so it didn’t happen. And while I’d like to think that the energetic ripples of this number have helped to carry me through quarantine, I think it’s really been Agave and Jojo. Outside of the grand spectacle of a staged performance, these two maintain a practice of drumming and dancing year round. Throughout these past trying months, they have hosted Drum & Flow on Zoom every single day. They’ve built a community out of people who have never met, and we meet daily to be present and active in our bodies, and we remind ourselves that we’re standing because there’s an Earth under our feet to stand on. And so, I eagerly await that day that we’ll be able to share this culminatory piece of ours with the world, but until then, the opportunity to participate in the grand tradition of the transcestors is always available to us, thanks to those among us who keep it alive.