Meet me in the middle of the air
and if these wings don’t fail me
I will meet you anywhere
aint no grave can hold my body down…
-Odetta, Aint no grave
To describe the relationship between a body and forces acting upon it we must discuss how a body falls in space. A human falls no different than any other thing when there is no air resistance. According to Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion, objects that are said to be undergoing free fall (not encountering a force of air resistance atmosphere provides), are falling under the influence of gravity alone. Objects, (human and non) will fall at the same rate and will continue to fall together, meeting in the middle of the air. Under these conditions, all objects, humans, animals, etc. fall at the same rate of acceleration, regardless of their mass, gravity has no bias, humans are already on the same plane as objects. What causes the feather to fall at a different rate than the elephant is a matter of air resistance against a given body’s difference. The reason why a parachuter expands their apparatus, to reduce impact. The word resistance has an array of meanings, extending into the social. What does it mean then to become object(s) among others who fall with varying degrees of resistance in the social? Where perhaps one body wielding a toy gun produces a fatal impact with a real bullet?
When reading Diana Taylor’s essay on ‘Dead Capital’ I couldn’t get past the moment of ‘holding’ when Taylor tends to the elderly woman walking beside her, noticing her vulnerability, she holds her arm through the ‘treacherous sidewalks’. The stakes are high when it comes to falling, “what if she falls and breaks something?”(Taylor, 2). Acknowledging the woman’s vulnerability is a happening of the performance, and in turn, “Everything takes on a new intentionality.” Noticing this vulnerability animates Taylor and changes her proximity to the woman, in order to protect the performance and the woman’s participation in it, sustaining its collective life. In the social as we move together, we shift in and out of proximity with one another and someone’s strength could be another’s weakness. And what is vulnerability but to be exposed in some kind of way? For someone’s difference to be noticed, to be kept alive and defended? This is a call to break the illusion of isolation, to strive to envision more deeply an already existent interconnectivity as we fall through the air together.
Taylor, Diana. "Dead Capital: Teatro da Vertigem, Bom Retiro" . . : , 2018.