ILIOKI

Wonder Voyages were journeys taken by Celtic saints in ancient times. they would set sail across the ocean and return with tales of new places, people and experiences that wove together real and imagined geographies, embodied and transcendent experience.

The images and words here are stories of new mythologies, drawn from experiences living and seeking queer gods, goddesses, spirit guides and vibrant lives through light, dark and the grey spaces in between.

Episode 1

These are stories of my friend Silver. They inhabit a mutable body all flow, they exist as mutual bodies all peace. And Silver walks with bare feet in urban places for fun or insanity or the deep connection; it’s hard to tell which. Their beauty is the flesh opening to all the possibilities of what it means to be human and more than human. Open to the possibilities of ways of being that the minds have not imagined before. They are tender and fierce with eyes that express terror of the infinite or so it seems to those who have the courage to gaze into them because Silver is not afraid. Any fear is in the beholder who cannot comprehend the endless possibilities that such a person can inhabit. Surely we are just one thing? One body, one right path through life, one way of being, one story. But when Silver speaks with friends in bars whilst drinking cocktails and eating mangoes they laugh with delight when they encounter such petty ideas. The boxes seem so small, and friends cling to the old worn frameworks. Even the contemporary speeds of thought leaping from one idea to another, from one opinion to a more extreme version of the same view to a community where everyone thinks alike for fear of exclusion. It’s all the same. But Silver’s flow is more ancient, neither better nor worse in some respects for who can judge another’s deep sense of self? But so different that the ancient appears as novelty. Provoking delight or fear or incomprehension, Silver accepts all these responses with a smile, their lipstick deep purple, mouth a ripe fruit for sucking and plucking.

Silver would insert themselves into any hole: openings and lacunae attracted them and activated their instinct to push in. One winter morning they had found themselves by an old sewer pipe in the park. The protective railing had fallen away, and they pushed through the gap. Stopped to read graffiti on bricks in wonder at the colours of vibrant paint on dirt. And then, on their hands and knees had crawled into the dark circle: an open iris. Filth water soaking into the cloth around their knees and fingers sinking into the foetid mulch of a city’s detritus. They gasped as they shuffled deeper and deeper into the gloaming until their breaths became an orgasmic scream of abandon and in the playground a child on the swing began to cry.

I love Silver so; the seduction was subtle and neither intended nor avoided. It simply unfolded from their presence. Words intrigued me but words are frail forms.

“Discard words quickly” Silver told me

To linger too long with a form of words or any particular language is like pinning a butterfly to a board: the beauty may remain, but the life is gone. Words need to be breathed, they play on our tongues and insinuate themselves in heart, soul and above all the mind where they ossify over time.”

I can still feel Silver’s tongue on me, in me. Darting quick or saliva slow. Kisses and expression of more than love. Full of falls away. Their tasting me was an invitation to possibility. To an opening up that they express with their life in rapture and despair as well as in the ennui of the quotidian.