"The twig is always present.
The twig pays attention to you.
The twig is sincere.
The twig is very sensitive.
The twig is inexpensive, but very valuable."
Originated from a profound experience, ‘Delicate Balancing of a Twig’ is a movement meditation practice, where one is developing a highly sensitive and harmonious connection with a twig. As one is balancing their special twig they can realise a growing delicacy in their movement, a very open and deep attention and presence, a sense of care to a light object, playfullness and self reflection.
Practiced at public spaces it is both a durational performance and a fluid, open ended workshop. As people join him in the practice, it offers the public space a collective choreography and a gentle spectacle.
"If I want, everything around me disappears, and I'm like a UFO in the middle of Örs vezér tér. If I want, I'm fully immersed in the crowd, and I feel like I'm navigating the entire world in balance. Is this magic? someone asks. Which sect do you belong to? another one throws in, but it's neither magic nor a sect, just us and the sticks, a rather profane situation, and that state in which this seemingly insignificant nonsense, for some inexplicable reason, is still able to change dimensions."
Csaba Králl, Élet és Irodalom
TWIG DIARY:
As a part of my 3 days/3 hours sessions at 3 intense public square of Budapest for Placcc Fesztivál I wrote public daily diaries of my experiences:
> Twig Diary I.
Day 0: While I stood motionless with my twig on Széll Kálmán for 45 minutes for practice, a young girl waved in my field of vision and handed me a thousand forints.
Day 1: Yesterday was the first day at Örs vezér tere. The first practitioners arrived at 4:30 and stayed for two and a half hours. As the number of practitioners grew, more and more passersby gathered around.
A lady wearing classic Romani clothing asked how it worked, to which I simply said to clench her fist as I showed her and placed the twig on her knuckles. 'I feel it,' she said after a few seconds.
A group of four teenage boys came over, who could only communicate in connection to fucking, while they were also trying the twig balancing one by one: 'You use this for fucking? Does this fuck? Is your dick this big? Put it here, does it fuck now? Oh, the twig is a gay fucker. Haven't fucked yet, does it help with fucking?' - Here, I saw an opportunity to deepen the conversation and said, 'Yes, the twig practice definitely helps with fucking because when girls see that you can balance it gently and skillfully...' but this was swept away by more jokes.
An elderly lady on her way back from shopping stopped next to me, and we smiled at each other for a minute. 'Beautiful,' she said and continued on.
A food delivery guy stopped for a moment to try balancing; he did it quite nicely. Then, he asked to try my twig. 'Let me try it. Look, you can do this too,' and he started spinning it between his fingers. After four turns, the twig flew out of his hand, fell, and broke in two. Both of us felt the weight of the lesson.
The finale was that the whole team was marching through the underpass accompanied by Gregorian chants. During this, we left my valuables, padlocked twig suitcas unattended for about 5 minutes. By the time we returned, a slightly intoxicated guy was trying to tear off its handle by stepping on it. I shouted at him, 'No, it's mine, it stays that way,' then went up to him and told him to clench his fist and try balancing the twig. Unfortunately, he was quite embarrassed, said he didn't want it, and walked away.
>> Twig Diary II.
Yesterday started off difficult. An hour before our group practice, I went out to get into the right mindset. I was just focusing on the square with the twig on my hand when a 10-year-old boy with a buzz cut and a mischievous look stepped inside my aura and in his scratchy child's voice, asked me what I was preparing for. 'We're going to practice staff balancing in an hour; I'm getting in the zone for that.' 'Is that all?' he asked back, and then, after a few seconds of intense staring, he snatched the staff from my hand. I instinctively tried to grab it back, but then quickly realized that it would break like that, so I waited. He held it for a few seconds and then shouted at me, 'See? What you need to practice with this?' and threw it to the ground (it didn't break) and walked away. From about 10 meters away, he picked up a half-filled, half-open mineral water bottle and threw it at me with precise aim. Since the young man stayed in the square and terrorized everyone in a kind of 'City of God' style, I started to worry a bit, but fortunately (?!) by the time the group practice started, he and his friend had taken something because they spent the next 3 hours completely knocked out, sleeping on a concrete ledge surrounding a tree.
From then on, it was almost child's play to get centered within the rhythmically synchronized traffic of Rákóci-Körút with the twig on the hand, and the practitioners also arrived. The composition of the practitioners, was extremely diverse again. There was an elderly American tourist couple who stumbled upon us on their way to the hyper fancy New York Café and stayed until the wife found the perfect twig. There were high school students who I befriended in connection with the Kerekerdős installation, a toothless homeless man with a beer can in his other hand, an independent theater actor, workers heading home from work ('Look, look, I can do this easily, I'm a laborer, I know how to do this!'), young people from the Far East who immediately practiced how to balance while holding a phone and filming, cruising gay, Roma guys in Darth Vader and Mickey Mouse t-shirt, and a girl with short arms and great balance.
Some were amazed, some were embarrassed that they couldn't do it, some didn't believe it was actually a thing, and sometimes it struck me how light it felt to balance these twigs compared to the heaviness of people passing through the square. But almost everyone was kind to us, and as the shadows of the surrounding buildings slowly covered us towards the end of the day, I felt once again that there was more calmness in the square.
>>> Twig Diary III.
While at the beginning of the week, I was a bit nervous about whether I could always get into the right state, whether I would have a strong enough presence for it, by the end of the week, I arrived at the square without any doubts: I became sure that twig practice always works, it removes from my head, puts it into my body and into the present. Although the practice has an immediacy to it, the real effect kicks in after 30-40 minutes. The initially almost unbearable flood of stimuli slowly becomes tamed: as time passes, I stand more and more unshakeable in the midst of the infinite pedestrian choreography.
Everyone understands what is happening in their own way; after a while, I often don't even ask people if they would like to try the twig: when we make eye contact, I just raise it slightly as an offering, someone comes over, someone keeps walking.
Two young women arrive, one of them is carrying a midsize dog in her hands 'Well, I'll give this a try, hold it.' and hands the dog over to her friend. I ask her to show her fist, and put a twig on it. 'Wow, I really got scared just now.' 'What scared you?' I ask. 'Well, I really feel this. Calm is spreading through my body.' 'I'll try this too,' says her friend, putting the dog down and taking a twig.
Two Indian looking boys between 6 and 7 years old also came over. I showed them how to do it, and they each received a twig. The parents standing at the edge of the square tried to call them after 5 minutes, but they only managed to get one of them. The other one stood with his hand on his heart, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, still balancing for minutes.
Dániel Erdély, the inventor of the Spidron pattern, came by and tried the practice. 'Balancing is close to my heart too. You've found a beautiful and gentle thing; we'll meet again,' he said, then boarded the tram.
A middle-aged woman asked somewhat skeptically, 'So, what is this?' But after having the twig in her hand for half a minute, her face brightened: 'I'm an astrologer, and my clients often have trouble balancing their lives. I will definitely show this to them. But why are you doing this?' 'Because I found something that has given me a lot, and I like to show it to others.' 'You're an angel,' and she left.
Towards the end, a drunk man (from the photo) with only two teeth came along: 'What is this?' 'Twig balancing, want to try it?' 'It won't work, I'm drunk.' 'It will work, clench your fist.' And it did work, which he was pleased about, and with slightly teary eyes and barely understandable, he began to tell his life story as long as I could follow.
Then it was 7:00 PM, my work hours were over, I turned off Hildegard von Bingen's music playing from the waist bags, packed them into the suitcase, and went to dinner with my mother, who ws practicing for one and half hour. I left the posters and twigs in the square. To be continued.