A Black and White image of a women wearing black stood in nature. A masquerade mask over her eyes.

Tom Meilleur

ODYSSEYS: a series of walks

Walking is important to me. I know of no other activity that is as honest and direct as walking is. I am always looking for ways to disrupt and elevate this act into a creative practice, mixing the pedestrian with the profound, the everyday with the dreamworld.

A black and white photograph of a man and a woman in outdoor clothing, stood side on to the camera, looking and smiling at something.

a black and white photograph of three people stood at the base of a lamppost. two of them look up and one looks lower down.

The Walk,

the Drift

...I like to call it Drifting.

It’s not like spacing out, it’s more like tuning out of the conventional and habitual ways we walk, and ‘tuning in’ to the world as a creative and collaborative ever-changing stage.

...we are told that in our dreams that every character we meet is really an aspect of our own self...

Sometimes it’s helpful to employ some kinds of tactics on a drift to help gently dislodge ourselves from our conventions... follow a cloud... talk to a lamppost, tell it about your day... only turn left...

A black and white photograph of three people with their faces obscured. one holds string around a metal pole.

A black and White photograph of a woman crouched inside a graffitied mushroom on a wall

A black and white photo of a man gesturing to a woman who is stood laughing in front of a graffitied mushroom

We will know it when we find it...

it will invite us...

it will have a sense of openness...

of peaceful expectation...

The Movement

The Place

“Do you have the courage to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear... can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself” ~ Lao-tzu.

Man stands in a forest looking towards the distance, trees, and leaves.

Two people run in a forest with tall trees and dense foliage.

A man - Tom (Adyern Bran) - in forest tying a stick to a tree near foliage.

The extraordinary ordinary

I think it’s important to also be ordinary on a drift. Don’t make it too sacred.

Disrupt your own disruption.

A Reflection.

I’d heard about dérives

, even taken myself on one

, but this was something entirely different.

Being in a car with a b l i n d f o l d e d passenger who was listening to a stone for directions felt so right…

…like how do we manage to operate our lives from any other basis than this?

Met-a-phor s e e p e d into everything.

The r o u n d s and r o u n d s of c i r c l e s landing us right in the heart of a place so well known, a seemingly boring path leading to a sacred grove which none of us knew about.

Tom holds space in a way apart from all others.

There is no facade.

I think what he actually holds is truth.

And that is the place from which the dance arose.

It was gnarly, uncompromising, gentle and beautiful.

None of us could escape ourselves in this set up.

We literally w

d ourselves right into it.

This is the kind of dance that I want to engage in and I’d love to see a community of truth-seeking dancers form around it.

Man gestures in woods, woman walks away, black and white photo.