The Giant's Heart

First of all, I gotta say, if we want to wake the sleeping Giant, the Giant’s Heart is key. Won’t be easy, we’ll need to go out and find it first, to see where it sits in the city landscape. Now that’s the job for the scouts to pursue; but afterwards, when we know where to go, we’ll need some other characters there in the Giant’s Heart to keep it open and free. And these Keepers of the Heart, what will they do and what will their daily practice be? Hard to say until the day, but one thing for sure, they’ll have to sweep the energy of the chakra space - do a sweep of the people too, whoever comes to visit the place where the Giant’s Heart interpenetrates the city of Liverpool. Brooms will be used as part of the sweeping, but fans might prove to be useful as well, dream-flags too, hard to say what the best tool might be until the moment arrives.

So cleansing the Heart and those who flow through, that’s an ongoing thing. But here’s something else we’ll need to get into right away: the entrance gates of the Heart. There’s bound to be two as far as we know - front door and back, something like that - though what they look like and how they work, that’s something the Keepers will have to decide. Still, even so, we can probably say there should be a chance for you to pursue a number of activities when you come through an entranceway. Now these could change from day to day - there should be a choice available so everyone will want to play. There may not even be a person there to tell you what to do - just a set of instructions on what you can do as part of the entering in. Could be you throw the I Ching coins - the Keepers would keep the book for you to look up the oracle. (Click here to read the one we threw when we entered the Heart here in Canada). Or maybe you’re asked to pick up some object from a table of things in the entranceway and place it somewhere in the Heart as the first thing you do. Or maybe you leave something there at the gate for the next person coming through.

These are all good ways for the individual to have an effect individually. Which is all well and good and completely a part of the Giant’s awakening. But it’s also true that the Giant’s Heart needs to open up in a bigger way: a number of people acting together, that’s a big part too, a community of action. So the Keepers of the Heart should have in hand a number of activities planned to involve any number of people. Something that three or four could do, something else that ten could attend to, maybe even a few big plans for a couple of dozen denizens if a confluence should occur. But it’s very important to understand that these plans the Keepers have in hand should come from the Giant and not from themselves. Big responsibility, eh? Want to take it on? Better to leave the whole planning thing to the Giant I’d say. But here’s the thing too, anarchy can turn it all sour and ruin the Giant’s digestion. So what, oh what, can a poor Keeper do?

My suggestion is this: it’s not about holding on totally tight or letting completely go. It’s not about you or me or we - it’s more about what the Giant’s Heart needs to be open and free and able to work more consciously. So. The important thing for the Keepers of the Heart is to see the Giant’s dream. Look all around at the dreaming around you and see what the Giant is trying to do to open up its heart and awake. Then actively take your place in that action, help it arise, manifest and subside. See what form begins to arrive from the emptiness of the Giant’s dream, shape that form into what we can do to help it become an event, gather together some actors to act within the shape that wants to be seen, encourage the actions that are sure to arise spontaneously when we act out our roles, and then finally help the moment subside. Afterwards it might be nice to listen for the beat of the Giant’s Heart, to hear the sounds of awakening and feel the feelings that flow.

Sound is important for the Keepers of the Heart. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if some of the events that end up as part of their ongoing practice turn out to be based on listening. Which means blindfolds might be useful for the Keepers to employ. This might enable visitors to let go of their usual everyday sight more easily and begin to just listen instead. For the Giant. And hear. The Giant. Listening to them. Whatever is heard might be used to shape the eventual Giant awakening event, but sounds might also make the form of daily practices as well.

The following bell practice might serve as an example: Keepers of the Heart (and whoever else might like to be involved) meet each morning in the Giant’s Heart Chakra. They each bring a bell which they ring all together. Then they move out away from the Giant’s Heart, ringing their bell appropriately as they go. Every Keeper finds their own path, bringing the sound of the Giant’s Heart out into the city. They continue on until they stop, and when they do they take a long moment to listen to the Giant wherever they are. Then they ring their bell one final time before finding something close at hand to bring back to the Giant’s Heart. Later on that day, they might even want to return to this end-of-the-bell-path place to do something else, who knows what?

Sight is pretty important as well if you want to be a Keeper of the Heart. Here’s an idea to help yourself (and others) to see what the Giant is seeing as the dream arises. Make a frame (but not the painting) and place it out appropriately in the landscape of the Heart. Place a chair or a stool to face it. Sit and see. Step aside (while sitting still) and let the Giant look out through your eyes. Maybe a curtain could be opened and closed within the frame you’ve arranged. And while you’re at it maybe you could widen the space inside the frame, then place the chair and yourself in there and see what you see out the side.

The Keepers of the Giant’s Heart might want to work quite actionally too. So here’s an idea that might lead somewhere: every three days something is planned to take place inside the Giant’s Heart. The Keepers set out a very simple, open-ended event that actors can respond to individually while also being part of the group as a whole. For example: In this four-bell story, after the first bell is rung everyone sweeps the Heart and becomes conscious of the emotions there. After the second bell is rung everyone collects the discovered emotions and moves them to a specific location. After the third bell the collected emotions are expressed. When the fourth bell rings participants pump the emotions off into the city without leaving the Heart themselves. Each of these bells can be acted out as an individual or together as a small or large group. All things being equal, there should be a bias towards working with any emotion as part of a group.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk a bit about the emotions we’ll be dealing with in the Giant’s Heart. These emotions we work with won’t be ours, but rather they’re ones that come from the Giant as the Giant begins to awake. That means that we should refrain from acting out our own personal emotions during this work. We’ll feel whatever we’re feeling ourselves, that’s a given, but if we try, we can just let go of our own emotions and receive the Giant’s emotions instead.

Which brings up another important point: the Giant’s emotions are bound to be on a different scale than our own. The Giant is big and the emotions it has have a larger-than-usual amplitude. They roll through our small-scale everyday world and when we finally receive them they often become quite distorted, at least to us. In a way we’re like a crudely made speaker trying to play out an amplified song. Originally it might have been a calm and beautiful melody, but by the time it finally comes through the small speaker it’s got lots of static and crackley noise like a badly tuned radio.

Now I’m about to go out on a bit of a limb, but don’t go reach for your saw right away. Cause there may be some distortion around this idea, but who said we made up ideas ourselves? Seems to me that nobody makes up ideas at all, they originate from another place and our brain just receives them. And distorts them. And passes them on. To another brain that distorts them again and so forth and so on and on.

So anyway whichever way the distortion runs what I want to say is this: what if we don’t create our emotions either? Maybe our feelings are distorted reflections of some very much larger emotional shapes that originate somewhere else. Perhaps human feelings like love and hate, jealousy and admiration are distortions of some larger shapes like compassion and intimacy. Now I know this might not be all that easy for you or me to embrace: there’s a place in every one of us that just hates to hear this kind of thing. The ego sings its song of woe, it cries out loud: “I feel things so!” It thinks that it created it all. Everything!

Well maybe so or maybe not, but one thing’s true: when the Giant begins to wake up it’s going to have feelings, lots and lots and all those massive Giant emotions will want to manifest. And how will they finally find expression? Through us of course - as they roll through the ten directions all the people in Liverpool will be resonating with them. So. Not surprising. But it makes you want to do something about the amplitude of the feelings that flow through the Giant’s Heart. Which is why we’re going to have to build a step-down transformer to change the range of the emotional waves, to make them clear and distortion-free so we can receive them more comfortably.

This step-down transformer: it’s a little bit like a power substation that steps down high voltage electricity from the high-tension wires. Now the step-down transformer we need to build in the Giant’s Heart is exactly the same, but completely different and not quite as tech in the usual sense. Parts will exist in a physical way as a group-designed sculpture that grows each day as more and more people participate. But some of its parts will be harder to see, fashioned by patterned activity - music and dance and the chance energy of whoever is there when we turn the thing on. And all the sound that surrounds them will be very important too.

No sense in building a step-down transformer if we don’t have a way to move and use the energy we step-down and store. So we’ll also build a generator to pump out the Giant’s Heart energy to the rest of the city. This could be a second section to the step-down transformer, some parts physical, some parts not, but its function is to send out all the transformed emotions to all the people in Liverpool.

And that of course means that we’ll have to construct a delivery system for this Heart energy so it can circulate all throughout the entire body of the Giant. Because this energy is more than three dimensional, we won’t have to use whole lengths of tubing. Just a bit of the whole tube here, another part there, you won’t have to see the whole tube all the time, just what naturally pokes through into three dimensions. Lots of people can participate and create their own tube as part of the Tube and find a good place to place it. The tubes don’t have to be that ornate, though if they are that’s okay too. Many different materials can be used - towel tubes, copper tubing, plastic piping, straws, coils, even just rolled up sheets of paper. Some portions of the tube system might be hard to see, so we’ll publish maps and diagrams so they can be visited easily.

We'll also want to include dish receptors as part of the Heart delivery system. These dishes could disseminate the emotional energy generally, and also specifically connect up galleries and other art expressions as part of the grid. Dish receptors are easily placed. There’s no direct connection to a specific location and they aren’t connected by tubes - they’re broadcast points that relay emotional energy waves. They might even be a bit like the Giant’s skin receptors or some other part of the Giant’s nervous system. One thing about them, they’re all concave in much the same way that tubes are cylinders. And here’s something else that’d be fun to do: why not make a few miniature ones to wear on your shirt like a carnation? And if you pinned a small receptor dish to your upper arm it’d be a good way for you to wear the Giant’s Heart on your sleeve. Baseball caps have a some very nice holes that are excellent places to stick in the stick of your own personal dish receptor. Doesn't really matter where you wear your dish, tuning in to the Giant is easy to do and it shows off a style that will make people smile (and you'll find yourself smiling too).

So, all in all, there’s a lot to do in the Giant’s Heart. First of all to find it of course, then to build the entrance ways, clean it and sweep it and keep it free, establish an ongoing open heart practice that others can join and develop as well, build a transformer to step down the waves of the Giant’s emotions, build a generator pump to send out the transformed Heart energy, build the tubes and the receptor dishes to deliver the energy out to the city.

And when we finally set the day to make the final wake up call, we’ll centre it all in the Giant’s Heart. There’s sure to be a parade that day, and all the characters from the Giant’s dream will be taking part: the dream-flag flaggers, the Giantroom roomers, the dreamhouse dreamers, the Four Noble Truths, the Eight Confused Nobles, Giantwater sellers, and so forth and so on whoever they are - everybody! Actually it’s going to be six parades, one starting in each of the Giant’s other chakras and making their way to the Giant’s Heart. When all the parades arrive and merge, they’ll circumambulate the chakra space until the whole cast is together at last and occupies the entire place. And everything that has been going on for the whole two weeks of our ongoing play will concentrate and build towards the final call to wake up the sleeping Giant.

Now we might want people to bring their own bell and ring them all at the very same time. We might also want to have other sounds too, sounds of all sorts - lots of bells, lots of sounds, all sounding out at a single signal, and then a long silence. Then one single sound from one small bell. And then all the participants explode through the city, calling out “The Giant is waking!”, moving no-mindedly until they stop. And when they do they take a silent, empty moment and then make their own Giant-waking sound, whatever it is.

Now this is the glimpse of the Giant’s Heart as it seems to appear right now, right here. But everything is open and it’s opening more and more each day. Who knows the way it will turn out to be when October finally comes around and the Giant’s Heart is actually found. Depends on you; depends on me and whoever else attends. So all that’s been written above and before about the Heart is just an entranceway. What we find inside is for you and me and the Giant to know, so let’s all go in together and see.