hello friends— i write to wish you well and to share with you these latest phases of my journey, and to invite you to come along for the directions my crooked path is taking me, if you are so inclined.
** after 5 wild and wily years as director of public programs, i was released by the land and i left my full-time job at socrates sculpture park last summer. i tatted hermetic wings on my ankles and spent most of the summer in england before coming back, experiencing initiation and ceremony with a community in colorado that blew my head off, and Here We Are, now. Here.
** my work is currently Teaching Me What It Is. folkloric futurism is the name that came to me some time ago– because working with the old stories, old wisdom, paradoxically helps create the future (by being Present in the Present). earth and story saved my life, so i’m traveling where They lead. traversing my mental health crisis/spiritual emergence and suicidality from 2015-2019 was nothing short of mythic, and it has been the ground i’ve stood firmly on ever since. i want to continue learning and teaching– as a singer, teller, dancer, and Listener, and bring my own firebrand of myth-inspired earth-centered embodied learning to the world.
this work weaves:
the old stories and the oral tradition. the earth. embodied creative experiences. explorations of inner and outer wilderness. mythologies of personhood and place. the body as oracle. holding paradox. associativity/leaping consciousness. deep listening.
you can find all of my current offerings on this page of my website HERE, including 1-on-1 legend sessions and storytelling in the oral tradition. if there is a way to work with you or your org or community, please let me know.
** co-founding the site-specific environmental art and stewardship project, kin to the cove and supporting/organizing for sarah cameron sunde’s 36.5 / a durational performance with the sea have been both my healing flowing waters and my anchor. the project culminates this year in sept and has been a space to deepen and play on the queens waterfront.
** by the grace of multiple good fortunes i’m working with the life partner of one of my greatest mythtelling heroes, daniel deardorff, who passed into the ancestral realm in 2019. daniel is a huge influence on my telling and teaching; i’ll be helping run future events for the mythsinger legacy project including monthly story-nights (email for the link!).
** i’ll be leading an online moving through myth – the way out is in session to benefit the qoya community/wiracocha foundation’s fundraiser for the weaving women of the q’ero, this coming tuesday march 15 6:30-8pm EST. your donation HERE will get you a link to my session as well as all the other free offerings from the qoya community this month.
The old stories carry ancient earthen energies that can help us move with and through the trouble and mystery of our lives. In this “The Way Out Is In” session Audrey will guide participants through a gathering of chosen stories around a virtual hearth-fire, that we will then “feed” and share from. Where do we find ourselves in the story? What announced itself in our bodies to tell us that? From there, we will dip into visualization/meditation or free movement/embodiment exercises to walk through our own internal legendary wilderness. Nothing is needed besides space to hear, listen, and feel.
**
They talk of the triumph of the machine,
but the machine will never triumph.
Out of the thousands and thousands of centuries of man
the unrolling of ferns, white tongues of the acanthus lapping at the sun,
for one sad century
machines have triumphed, rolled us hither and thither,
shaking the lark’s nest till the eggs have broken.
Shaken the marshes, till the geese have gone
and the wild swans flown away singing the swan-song at us.
Hard, hard on the earth the machines are rolling,
but through some hearts they will never roll.
— d.h. lawrence.
**
i appreciate these opportunities to share my work, to be in this absolutely quizzical After-Life from full-time event curation and dancing the mandorlas of the great unknown. my artist self– which is also my creature self– is leading this time; and it’s been said that our second half of life, our (chosen) second adulthood– is soul-led, not ego/mind-led…
i’m writhing in bed with the Good Trouble, rediscovering both restlessness and pleasure; i’d be lying if i said i could tell you exactly what that meant.
from the wilds of the deep heart–
as ever,
XO
a.
audrey di mola - folkloric futurism 