Category: Writer in Residence — Published:
This text was performed by Daniella Valz Gen with Ana Tienne at an event at Whitechapel Gallery on 30 Jan 2025.
“The Gorgon was made out of the terror,
not the terror out of the Gorgon.”
You can call me monster
Monster girl
I am the offspring on Titans
I am primordial
Eternal
A monster
A girl
A serpent
A head
A nervous system
A scorned woman
A femme fatale
Gorgeous
I’m gorgeous
I’m Donatella in leopard skin
Mistress of beasts
Mother of Flying Horse
A symbol
I’m golden
A logo
An image
An image for your rage
Our rage
For your projections
Our projections
An expensive image
Expensive
I am the harsh reality of consequence
Expensive
A gorgeous monster
Beyond your comprehension
Chapter IV
The Head
The gorgoneion,
the severed head of the gorgon
is an evil averting device
A head and a nervous system
A brain from which nerves dangle like snakes
Vagus nerve
Trochlear nerve
Trigeminal nerve
Hypoglossal nerve
Glossolalia nerve
Guttural nerve
Oracular nerve
Omniscient
Over-reactive snakes
To avert evil is to respond to it
A trauma response
To avert evil
Is to protect,
to self-preserve
You freeze at the sight of
yourself in the eyes of another.
You freeze to protect
To preserve you freeze, of course
You freeze in shame,
in the sheer embarrassment
of your own petty cruelty,
as it is seen,
Caught in the act
You freeze as you are witnessed,
acknowledged
Even the goddess,
the cold-hearted goddess froze.
Freeze is a way of playing dead
A holding of the breath
in dread or foreboding.
you camouflage as a response
You become invisible
become an object,
a thing, an empty thing
Trauma responses are a normal part
of being a mammal;
When used correctly,
they can save a mammal’s life.
Becoming a thing can save a life
More so if you are a monster
A girl
A monster girl
When there is a freeze response,
the system knows that there is a threat
so the body becomes frozen with sympathetic,
hyper-aroused energy.
The fear response has been turned on,
and the heart rate increases
so that oxygen can flow to the muscles.
This immobility is not a choice,
it is the body’s way of trying to prepare
for the next step
but it is unable to release the energy
until the threat passes.
We freeze to preserve energy
To then fight or flee
But what of remaining frozen,
like a stone
The collapse response looks very different from freeze
from a biological perspective.
Collapse is a state of hypo-arousal.
When a person begins to experience this response,
they may not be able to speak,
and they feel detached or disconnected from their body.
Their heart rate, blood pressure,
and body temperature lower.
If you are with someone in this state,
you may notice they have a “blank stare”
as they become less aware of their
internal and external world.
There is a decrease in muscle tone,
as the body is no longer attempting to fight or flee.
The gorgoneion,
the severed head of the gorgon
is an evil averting device
A ward
It allows you to see before you are seen
To keep yourself safe
To freeze others before you are frozen yourself
The cost of protection
Expensive
Expensive trauma begets trauma
Chapter V
On being everywhere at once
At the centre of it all
there’s a luminous egg full of potential,
colours swirl ready to burst, to spill.
Potential is fragile though,
it can spill from its flimsy container,
flat goo.
The cocoon that shelters
the transformation process
is a thin membrane,
egg shell is delicate.
No shell No shelter
The serpent that guards the egg
can be a guardian, sure.
And also a predator,
hungry to feed on goo, your goo
Things often hatch out of their shell
in a flurry of a swirl
In Chaos
No one knows anything above their capacity
We don’t know what we don’t know.
Chaos is possibility
You don’t know how you will respond
until you do
The flight turns into persecution,
all pain becomes harm if kept a secret.
If it swims low under the tide,
belly down at the bottom of the ocean.
An ocean of monsters
A tension
Tense
Always
What breaks the tension?
Seeing eye to eye?
Eye see you
Eye see your ugly
The monster in me sees the monster in you.
Don’t try to hide it
Quit playing that game.
Quit it now, GIRL!
A dangerous start and fragile
Fragile in the egg of possibility.
Egg goo
Yolk
Yoke
Let’s say you are born innocent, monstrous,
limbic and playful.
Let’s say you are unborn.
What might that mean?
To hang in there until you’re ready to hatch,
until you’re ready to see.
Being seen is terrifying.
That is if you can’t see yourself.
If you avoid.
A void.
If you are a void.
Unborn
No shell no shelter,
Null. Froth and Fog.
The question is
Was the monster girl ever born?
And did she ever die?
Is her head in the bottom of the ocean?
Where is she?
Is she here?
