Daniella Valz Gen: You can call me Horse – After Chiron

Category: Writer in Residence — Published: 16 Jul

This text is an excerpt of a work that was first performed by Daniella Valz Gen with Belladonna Paloma at an event at Whitechapel Gallery on 23 May 2024.

Listen to a reading of this text here:

 

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You can call me Horse
After Chiron

 

A dimly lit space in warm light

Candle flame

The scent of resins and herbs

The low hum rattling noise of 35mm slide projector fans

A bell rings and a horse-like being speaks as it prances on the spot

 

 

Before I become beast
I need to prick
I need to prick through the elastic tissue
as it folds on itself like tired skin

slack

Before I become beast
–one prick at a time

I work

I work to pierce through

It’s hard to hit the same spot twice

Unless you work
You practise

I work

I work at it

little stabs

I stab I prick I jab
I jab
I work

Until I make a little hole
and I shape myself into long thin slime 
and slide

I slide through membranes
to come out and find what is my shape

 

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I don’t think we can understand what a hybrid being is

If I am a horse and a man
I’m twice a mammal
I’m more
I have
Two stomachs
or is it six?
four hooves
and two feet
two hands
opposable thumbs
a rump
a mane
and a full head of hair

I’m permanently hungry, always
I need to chew
I chew on it
I ruminate
Twice
Again
Chew

There is only one of me

I’m unlike my mother
my father
my creator

I was not conceived
I was more
like shaken into existence

Chewed up and spat out

Ugly
I’m ugly
I’m ugly because there’s no point of reference for me

 

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I don’t think we understand what a hybrid being is

We think two halves make a blend
but it’s not like that
more like a constant swirling
an unsettled mix in a permanent whirl

Shaking

I’ve come out to find my shape
and all I do is whirl and shake

This feels like a leg but it’s numb
Maybe a foot
inside my foot there’s a hoof

I’ve injected myself through a hole
through a slippery membrane
rubbery stretchy it folds on me
sticks

But I’ve come out

I have found my shape in this constant inner stirring

 

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I’m inside a cave and everything is pink

I can’t see myself
My eyes are not yet used to this dark
or to light

I’m undeniably alone

And I feel I’m too
I’m two
I’m twice
I’m twice myself
I’m you I’m me
I long for you
Where do I come from?
Who made me?

Did I make myself?

And I’m still swirling and whirling
and trembling
and longing

I’m thirsty

And I
I don’t know what my shape is

 

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Borne out of collision
like a celestial orb thrust onto the sea

In the realm of the dying
I mourn my belonging

A tangle of ribbons makes me

Limbic, I become animal,
wired nervous and shapeshifting

So much contained speed in the crashing of atoms

Impeccably alone
barely born and immortal
I attempt a step

I first have to grow my legs
find my feet and my hoofs

To earn my gait in the world

Whirling in my limbs
shimmying
I wobble
I wobble a trot

A heavy horse head for these human legs

I struggle to balance and collapse
I fall

I fall
to stand in front of you

I wobble my way towards an upright shape
upheld by sticks and ribbons
I am contained in a sac of myth
a pink cave
an impossible egg
to hatch out as myself

I am an asteroid and a man
A horse
I am a horse

 

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A horse’s brain is small
but I have the mind of a god
and a remarkable heart
it beats ever so slow
and then so fast to pump a gallop
when necessary

If I let you ride me
you’ll have to let go of your legs

Relax your pelvis into me
merge with my beast

I can feel your breath
and your heartbeat
I can even feel you blink

That’s how sensitive I am

I’ll handle you with care
as long as you finely tune to me

Treat me with respect

Respect

Respect I said

or I’ll knock you off
I’ll trample all over your neck

I will ruin you

Come to me clean

Do you even know what that means?

I’m not talking about hygiene

Do you know what it means to be real?

Yes I’m a myth
but I’m real

I’m really me

Whirling wobbling
horsing around me

Look at my canter
admire my gait
my wobbly shapeshifting self

undone in pain

Sick

I’m sick

Bandaged in ribbons

An exhausted god

Chronically alive

One of a kind

Alone with all this grace

Yes

 

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Little is known about the suffering of gods
though much about their passions
But little is known about my passions
and much about my pain

Undying
I suffer in intimate relationship with my open wound
Here
I have no choice other than to endure

I might as well learn to do it with grace

In the agony that longs for the mercy of death

Grace

You want to learn from me?

I will teach you to wash your hands in the river
I will teach you to hunt
I will teach you to pull the maggots
out of your holes

I will teach you to clean your wound

Endurance is a sport of gods
and no one endures with more grace than me
and you
Yes
you too
Endure

So much so that you might think I’m free from rage
but I injected a gallop in my veins

I know rage as much as I know pain

Indomitable
in my incomprehensible wildness

Typecast
as a good soft giver

but you’ll miss the boons of my beast if you do that

I say call me horse
Call me Wild filly
Call me Young Buck
Call me Old Mare

I am your Stallion
your beast

Hold on to my mane

Ride me

Ride with me

Feel the urge of your own fur

Horse power

 

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 As a Horse
I am the owner of horses
Yes,
I possess myself
To be godly is to be self-possessed
To own
To own oneself

No one else has claim over me

I own it
What I do
My beastly mess too
The sweat and the grit and the shit
The wicked little games
Petty petty schemes

If you don’t know grace it will feel like poison to you

Still and armoured
I clench my ass and chew
I chew
I work I prick I jab

I endure

I swim
shimmer
and slide through the tides

In the balance of still pain and active pain
Pharmakon is everywhere,
widely abundant
a web of medicine

Look up there it is
there I am
there you are
you arrived

And yet you remain suspended in an eternal cocoon
where the poison erodes and transforms you
The jelly of my divinity
Hard then soft
then hard then soft again
then hard over soft over grit
over liquified scar tissue
over fire
over sweat
over incandescent feathers
over my mane
my beastly fur
the precise dose
the exact blend

Everything congeals inside me
absorbed
sucked in

I clench my ass and chew

 

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Find out more about Daniella Valz Gen’s residency here.