ARchives

2022 streetlamp

Spring: “A Light in the Night” ~ 10 Tracks
April 2022 New York City
“Am I listening to receive what She is leaving for us? A passion in me has to rise, has to rise, and be strong enough, strong enough, to focus my heart. “

Track 1.  A Light in the Night 24.21 (the first part of the track is a reading from Alchemy of Light; Working with the Primal Energies of Life, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, pp.70-73)

2021 streetlamp

Spring: “Dear Streetlamp, A Performance.” ~ 12 Tracks
May 2020- On Zoom

“My Bonnie lies over the ocean, My Bonnie lies over the sea. My Bonnie lies over the ocean. Bring back my Bonnie to me. The leaves have indeed started falling.  Already there's such a chill in the air... Soon there'll be no difference between the land and the water…”

A. Excerpts from Introductory Performance-Dear Streetlamp 12:20  (Noah Stelmok, Shiloh Hodges, Laura Stelmok)
B. 39 Letters in a Bag 4:08
C. When We Stop Saying I’m Sorry 3:15
D. The Wellspring in your Heart 4:44
E. Not An Authority Outside 6:05
F. A Devotional Rhythm 8:20
G. Dear Streetlamp (Shiloh Hodges reads again) 5:46
H. At the Door of the Heart 3:29
I.  Dear Friend (Love, Emily) 5:36
J. “How dare you fall asleep?” 4:31
K. Poem by Dena Gold (read by Dena Gold) 2:19
L. Laura reads Dena’s poem 3:16

2020 streetlamp

Summer: “The Performance & The Audience” ~ 17 Tracks
June 2020 ~ On Zoom

Part I: “The Performance” ~ Tracks 1-2 Track 2 includes LCS, Sarah Laplante, Noah Stelmok, Travis Laplante, Shantelle Jackson, and Shiloh Hodges
Part II: “The Audience” ~ Tracks 3-17

From the beginning of Streetlamp, the note has been rung that the muse of the artist can be trained here.  So the word performance began to be scrubbed of consumerism. 

We begin this weekend with a performance that 6 of us received. We begin in performance to seed the weekend.  Like waking with a dream, we will begin with words we have received in a particular movement, which because of Zoom, we can’t enact on a stage.  You can’t see our bodies move, but they are moving.  There is a particular way the hand, the Unseen Hand takes our hand to communicate even more directly than English. 

The Songs of Creation are simultaneously the promise between the creator and creation and the conversation, the celebration of that promise.  They are capable of mending what we would believe are wounds that cannot heal, which is one of our purposes in gathering today. 

“There is a secret hidden inside this Song that hears us when we sing.  There is a house, an ancient house, a place where the hearts of those awake to the light inside of this Song gather.  It is not human form that gathers.  Together, when these hearts gather, there is a warm glow inside of the darkness.  The pollen within a flower.  Turning like an instrument, not manmade.  The most natural creation.  The heart in communion.  These hearts guard a silence that is black.  The light guards the darkness.  This is the way of the secret.  And the pinprick of blood, where the servant gives herself is where the human and the soul come together.” Sarah Laplante

Autumn: “To partake of the mystery of incarnation” ~ 10 Tracks
November 2020 ~ On Zoom
I'm back at the beginning of Streetlamp. And the original words of Streetlamp were that we are driven out of bed by a madness in our hearts. We leave the known comforts of our home. Cookies and milk will not do it tonight. And I enter the night. And, my English is very poor. I might get on the floor and draw, as I'm listening to the other travelers who come in the night, who come to be remembered and to remember.

The Songs of Creation come alive through the longing in the hearts of those who are present. Rain falls upon that which is growing, or waiting to grow. Takes time to prepare. The senses are washed and washed, cleaned, scraped. The senses are changed from orifices that are here to participate in the theater of life to keep us alive, they're changed. They're given to Her, to outwit the trick that life herself is. This is done through the longing of the hearts of the wayfarers. It is not ever done to you. It is given, and one's sense changes. So, there is not a curriculum. There is a living tradition that moves the hearts of those who are here, and a conversation is begun.

So, please, sit back. Let your breath come into a rhythm that was given to humanity in what we call antiquity. We are not inventing anything here today. And you will speak; you will bring yourself in. Crazy people at streetlamps are strangely more polite than people having a dinner party. I don't know if you've watched the politeness of people who live on the streets and the rudeness of the ones who have living rooms. We remember a different manner. When something needs to be said, it is said, and if it needs to be on repeat, it is on repeat. Women in subways who are screaming around and around and around “wake up!” They have no other message than that. Very, very dangerous moment in the world right now because of the United States. We gather in prayer. We gather in remembrance of the source of life. And we come as we are, not who we want to be, please. The spiritual clothing that we all put on is useless this weekend.

2019 streetlamp

Summer: “A Treatise on the Dark Behind the Dark” ~ 3 Tracks
June 2019 ~ New York City
Streetlamp is a conversation that is inside of each one of us that has been waiting.  It is a conversation between strangers.  Strangers do not make the same assumptions of each other.  A conversation between those people who’ve given up on themselves, who don’t believe that they have the answers anymore, either through madness or grief, fear, what drives us from our beds at night.  A light inside the night that you have to want with all of your heart.  You have to leave the comfort of your home.  However scary your home might be.  However unfulfilled you might be in your home.  However wonderful your home is.  Something wakes you.

One of the trickiest things in a mystical tradition is the group.  It’s supposed to be tricky.   Streetlamp for me, in the beginning, was that it would be a refuge from the dynamics of a group, because we would all be strangers to one another.  We wouldn’t have enough familiarity to get tangled.  The conversation would arise from what unites us.

This is an ancient mystical tradition of love that works inside the heart.  We move between the worlds as part of an ancient covenant with the source of all life.  Inwardly to come true.  And outwardly to live service to that which animates all of life. 

Autumn: “What is Art?” ~ 3 Tracks
October 2019 ~ New York City
This is a very ancient tradition that guides souls.  First welcomes them, whether we gathered under a tent or a tree or the crossing of rivers or the week after the battle was over on the battlefield, whether we plant seeds or bury the dead, whether our primary conversation is with the seen or the unseen.  We live at crossroads; we gather at crossroads. 

When I think of Streetlamp, I think of an audacious painful longing to remember something of the purpose of art, which I might say is the purpose of breath. We gather as servants of truth that share companionship, prayer.  A very simple idea, a bell that rings to bring us together.  And then we follow the wild urgencies that are here in the presence the masters and a transmission that is given.  Very particular transmissions given into individuals at the center of us that if we’re paying attention tune us, speak to us, keep us in a current of being reduced, by love.  

There’s no way to be freed from materialism without being freed from racism; they are inseparable.  There is no way to come to a different relationship to the earth, who is the source of the arts, without our relationship to the wound of the feminine changing.  Means different things to different people.  So I’m always listening here.  What is art?  And is it possible for a human being to be transformed into the instrument that she or he is, in service to the creative expression at the turn of the eras.  Is it possible to live oneness at the end of this nightmare that we’re in now?  Yes, it is possible.

2018 streetlamp

Summer: “The Last 15 Minutes” ~ 2 Tracks
June 2018 ~ New York City
“The pure note in us allows us to enter a conversation of word, sound, image, and idea.  The creative faculty is a medium in itself designed to take the seeker beyond the traditional realms of herself into a location of divine knowledge where fear and envy do not exist.  It is in the instructions of life to allow such an intercommunication to allow the “hand to be taken” by the love of the Masters.  A Song of Creation was returned to invite the imagination back into the realms of life, to re-enliven and resuscitate its existence on earth.  Without Imagination the earth will die, because we will not be able to reach her.  There will be no direct line of communication between her soul and ours. “

Track 1 is ‘A Poem and A Letter (read by Laura Stelmok)’ 7:12

”Black, Midnight, Ebony” is written by Dena Gold, Streetlamp 2018 and
The letter that is read was received from Sarah H. Paulson, February 2018, Correspondence inside of Streetlamp

Autumn: “The Wait at the Door” ~ 5 Tracks
October 2018 ~ New York City
“A conversation in the middle of the night in the center of Lonely in the rage of waste and every unspeakable word. A conversation that matters. That is given, not taken. That is given back into the weaver’s hands. Please may we remember. Please see what I have become. Please protect me from the Night. Please listen. Please be quiet. Please teach me how to love. Even here. Even now. A conversation around which the city falls. Where all that we use to enforce our differences falls into rubble. A conversation that defuses the bomb secretly. That addresses the rose, once again, as the secret She is.”