Magus: A Tribute in Poetry and Film to Donald Miller

by Vanessa Skantze


for Donald Miller guitarist extraordinaire

You brought the sea.

You brought the sea.

Where there was an arid space I sought to infect and encompass;

with words and sound and tensile fighting form–

I and I alone, making a world in a realm of affliction.

Of countless bars not reached.

I had no trust that space was waiting for me and that something could hold me, join me,

allow me a place to, at last, listen.

Listen.

And hear the inside space more keenly than ever I had

when all the outside pressed upon me

with its unceasing dare for me to pierce it and push through…

You brought the sea.

And I dove, and I surfaced.

And I heard the waves and remembered them inside my skin.

I heard the cries of birds cascading toward surf and rearing up again

and I was with them

I was them

I could be other, Other! in a realm not of my desperate making

and the weight of the line of arid, severed ones I came from fell away

And I was of, was within, the sea.

The sea beckoned to me: enter! and I dove, I crested, I drifted and dreamed

and there you were! a companion I had never known to seek.

You brought the sea.

You brought the forest.

A vibration of life so thick: a palpable verdancy filling the throat of silence

the deep breath and low hum of the ancients who knew time before the marauders;

before the severing and casting out from a place where the word home was not known

For there had never been anything else but home

The greengold become sound.

And I remembered bark like a second skin and sap like a blood twin

The scent of the loam thick with the fallen ones returned to earth

this was the moment of birth before breath was a slap and the cord cut and cast off.

You brought the forest.

You brought abandoned streets

the distaff of industry and ambition.

Ground charnel yet fecund for rats, crows, feral cats and all beasts scavenging

Where machines cast away from use

have become the talking drums of the dispossessed.

I listened.

I listened

I listened and this! was the way into the spirit life I felt but could not fall into and feel caught, held

For the burden of proof was a lead carapace I thrashed within never finding the frequency

to immolate it or myself

In yr sound came dissolution of that which I bore to save my skin

In yr sound came the awakening of what waited for the time when the realms returned to me.

The sea.

The forest.

The desolate streets teeming with anarchic scavengers and creatures reveling in their uselessness.

You brought the sound that reminded me I was instrument

And creator of worlds

with you

with any that would enter! Who would listen. Who would go.

You brought the sound that was sea and everything else.

I would not have become this now that I am without you.

This everything but myself; and more myself than I had ever been.

I bow to yr artistry; I embrace yr spirit.

You are with me in every dance. Beloved friend, bright star.

Fly swift. Fly strong on strings bowed to shudder and wave into infinity.

I will ride that with you.

A wave.

The sea.

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The passage between my life as a solo spoken word performance artist and my life as a Butoh dancer was traveled in collaboration with the extraordinary musician Donald Miller, the Magus to whom this work is dedicated. Along with Rob Cambre we founded The Death Posture, a sound/movement ensemble in New Orleans. Improvised music is an art of deep listening. In creating performance with these prepared, bowed, and distorted guitars I was also an instrument: a part of a ritual weaving of an unforeseen realm in spacetime, absorbing and transmitting my part of the resonant intensities of feeling we three shaped. In this immersion came forth unknown spirits in ecstasy and in mourning. Spirits of the shattered beauty of this world cherished in their shuddering and fleeting presence. Here the intercessor of language was collapsed and I crawled forth broken and trembling. The sound, at once oceanic and industrial, furious and tender allowed me to open to the wild nature and the harsh world as an initiate, as a mendicant offering emptiness and receiving gods. 

From art as act of thrusting myself forward in solitary sacrifice I was graced to enter—beckoned by my beloved friend, teacher and collaborator Donald Miller—a realm where revelation was a kaleidoscopic unraveling and a willed possession by what wanted to enter through us to be known, to be felt, by our witnesses. I bow to this bold and sensitive being, this magnificent artist without whom I would not have become this that I am: this Butoh dancer. In our practices, in our performances, we simply began, opened, shuddered, and listened. And the land, the machinery, the assault, the ever-upsurging love for the intensity of life expressed in sound and body entered through us and played in the space where our skins, our field, were disturbed, made porous thus to collide; to entwine and together create a realm arriving in all its need as a glorious tear in the fabric of existence.

Hali Autumn and I filmed on the Olympic Peninsula in July 2023. The footage was edited to accompany an upcoming To End It All performance. After Donald’s passing I wrote and recorded Magus. Donald’s wife, Cree McCree, asked for a video for his tribute so I asked Hali if she could swiftly edit something to accompany the recorded piece which she graciously agreed to do and came through beautifully.  It was moving to see this film translating to entwine with the writing.

Magus is my song for Donald Miller, in word and in dance.

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