An interview about the body, art, and transcendental magic
with Phillip Melchers , storyteller, host, and theatre writer/performer
Mezrab is self-titled “The House of Stories”. It is open almost every night, hosting a variety of storytelling events such as myth nights, open mics, professional storytelling, as well as live music events and more. I got in touch with Phillip Melchers, a storyteller, host, and theatre writer/performer. Our 45-minute interview resulted in 7148 words of wisdom on performance art, vulnerability, magic, community and transcendence. With great effort and sorrow, I cut it down to the 1500-word limit for the magazine: here are some highlights from our conversation.
Diatribes, ripples, and waves from within
I had planned for this interview to be about body language and how the body can be used as an instrument for storytelling. But before I started with specific questions, I wanted to hear about Phillip’s initial thoughts on the topic of the body. He took the conversation in a totally different direction (that I believe ended up being a much better starting point).
Phillip has a lot of experience in being on stage as he performed in public speaking when he was a kid, and then went off into theatre, then a bit of poetry, then storytelling at Mezrab, and now has co-written a play (see the bottom of the page for more info!). It is something that he always felt comfortable doing. However, one thing that he thinks we need to start recognizing, in terms of performing, is just how embedded the fear of societal rejection is within us. He doesn’t think it's something that we can entirely get over. It can be suppressed in order to do what we need to do. But, as he puts it, “there is always that self-correcting mechanism in the back of the head that's still running this diatribe of saying, ‘Are you saying it right? Are you connecting to the audience?’”. (I asked him what the word “diatribe” meant. He confirmed the definition I found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary: “a bitter or abusive speech”).
I found it so telling that his starting point was not how his use of his body affects the audience, but rather how being in front of an audience affects his body. As if to subtly correct me and say that the work starts from within. I asked him if storytelling training also focuses on the body or just on the story itself, and he replied that he learned to understand how to body scan and where nerves are affecting him. He thinks “it's the little ripples in the body that end up having a big effect if you don't take them into consideration. There are so many micro ways that humans read each other's bodies in terms of body language, things that we're not aware of, things that feel very, very subconscious. So, if you don't feel on the micro-level kind of relaxed and really, really open, then it's gonna be harder to connect to your audience because they're gonna react to that tension that you're unwillingly getting off”.
He added: “For as much as there's the bad feelings, the tension in the field, there's also good feelings, the release, the catharsis, things that you can really use to your advantage if you understand how these feelings kind of swell and sway within you while you're performing. I mean, in my visualization of it, it really becomes, if I can really, really get into it, and I don't always do it, but it can really begin to feel like this wave that's swelling and shrinking inside of you. And then, really, you can start to pull on the magic at the moment as memory kind of overlaps over reality, and then you're just really speaking from these very dense personal memories.”
Magic is based in developing the individual against the institution
My next question was a bit more metaphorical. In anthropology, we deal with a lot of anti-capitalist ideas, criticizing the fact that in today’s society, everything needs to be for profit, and if it’s not making money, then it’s considered not worth it. There is also a lot of discussion about how performance art or art in general kind of goes against that capitalist ideal because art is an end in itself and not a means to an end. I asked Phillip if he agreed with this, and if he thinks about it when he performs.
His response?
“Absolutely”.
He shared a quote from Michel Duchamp (the guy who painted the toilet bowl): “I think art is the only form of activity through which man shows himself to be a real individual. Through it alone, he can move beyond the animal stage because art opens up onto regions dominated by neither time nor space.”
It turns out this was actually something Phillip had been looking into a lot recently. After listening to a podcast on witchcraft, that discussed amongst other topics what the oppression of witches meant historically-speaking, he and his friend started discussing the nature of magic.
“[…] And it created this conversation of how maybe it's more about magic belonging to the oppressed or the minority rather than the majority, because in order for magic to work (and I'm using magic in very metaphorical terms) it is intuition-based. It is about embodying yourself, becoming this individual feeling process outside of the machine of society, or capitalism, or the institution or whatever you want to call it. I find that if you are within a system that doesn't really operate for you, then you seek out your own system of feeling that subscribes better to your individual self, that speaks true to yourself. It's only when you're feeling oppressed that you begin to question what is around you. And I think magic or art or performance, all of these things are really based in that experience of developing the individual against the institution.”
“On the small communal scale, when you really start to look at people who build covens, communities, you really start to see that there is this need to express, this need to feel magic. And I think it's because, to me, magic comes from the subconscious parts of ourselves that we don't fully understand. Our emotional processes are so complex that when you really sit back and you really start to feel yourself, you can only call it magic.”
Phillip went on to explain that in his opinion, institutions are made for making things fit into strict categories, although nothing in nature actually fits in there. You win at the capitalist game when you think in binaries, but this binary reality is never reflected in nature: not in gender, not in body and mind, not in life and death… “Everything that's important exists in the nuance between two spaces”.
Transcendence across thresholds
I brought us back to this notion of working for the capitalist machine. Marxists analyses suggest that modern work is meaningless because it makes us tiny cogs in a machine, and we don’t really see the product of what we’re making. And I feel like art is the opposite of that. I asked Phillip if he thinks of it that way and if in his own life, he makes a separation between his 9-5 job and his art, and if that helps him get out of it.
“Yes and no”. And his answer gives much to reflect on. Traditionally, in simple terms, he thinks of his job as a paycheck so that he can continue living his artistic life. And, luckily, he says, he makes just enough money, and has just enough physical health that he can exist in two spaces.
But his main concern recently has been what he calls an “idea of self-embodied radical resistance” in which he can understand his place within the institution. He doesn’t believe work and art should be seen as two separate spaces, because carrying an energy or beginning to embody and represent something also means having the ability to carry that energy into spaces where it may not be so accepted. So, he doesn’t “hide” himself at work, and that to him is radically changing the nature of what it means to be within that institution.
“And that's me embodying, you know, the confidence, the lack of shame, these kinds of emotional barriers that I've overcome in order to, kind of bring it into the real world. I think one thing that's really interesting in magic rituals is this idea of transcending across thresholds. So, in rituals that involve going to the underworld, so to speak, or going into the dark subconscious realm, the idea is that there's always this crossing of a threshold. I think we need to ask ourselves, especially as artists, who am I in relationship to the institution? And, you know, it's also nice to have healthcare. It's also nice to know that if I get really, really sick, the capitalist machine is gonna get me back into working status. So that's what I mean. I do separate myself between my 9 to 5 and my artist life. But ideally, I would like to be more of a torchbearer in terms of what I bring from either sphere. You know?”
A big thank you to Phillip Melchers for the 45-minute interview of which I managed to share only a tidbit. If you want to see more of his work, check out his instagram @phlipmel. If you want to see more amazing performances and experience what it really feels like to be human, see you at Mezrab!
Images: Helena Peters
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