I wrote the piece below, Salome, for a performance last year. At that time, I did a lot of research around the topic of Sacred 'Prostitution', and the Priestesses that served the Goddess of Love with their bodies in her Temple. Salome, my performance art character, was based on the Priestesses of Venus on Mount Erice, Sicily. Working with the character made me realize, more than ever, how we don't really value sexuality anymore in a sacred sense. Before the onset of Christianity, and still today in the East's tantric practices, sexuality was used as a gateway to divinity. Men visited Priestesses to commune with the Goddess through her, and the Priestesses were trained in many techniques. I also came across the book and DVD 'Women of the Light - The New Sacred Prostitute', edited by Kenneth Ray Stubbs, Ph.D., which tackles the subject more in-depth and relates it to modern society. In it, Stubbs interviewed a number of women, such as call girls, masseuses, artists and a nurse. These days, prostitution is often used as a means of control or for mercenary reasons, but when you trace back the origins, you'll find a completely different story.

At the moment, I am playing Death in a theatre play. The play is called '100' and was written by Neil Monaghan, Diene Petterle & Christopher Heimann. The play's synopsis reads: 'Imagine:That you must choose one single memory from your life - everything else will be erased forever. That choosing this memory is your only way of passing through to eternity.That you have one hour to choose.' The play is about a group of people who have died and find themselves in The Void, the place between life and death that my character, The Guide, presides over. In The Void, they have to choose a memory that is significant enough for them to be allowed to go on to the next level. In the end of the play, it turns out that The Guide is not really Death in persona, but just another dead human being who could not choose in time, and her punishment was to become The Guide, condemned to guide people across the threshold with a defensive air of superiority and without any memories to accompany her. She is in a complete void, mentally and physically, eternally listening to other people's recollections, desperately trying to grasp a glimpse of her own life. (And this in turn reminds me of a life sentence prisoner I used to know - he knew that he would never be released and he used to say that he was like a ghost, observing the world from his cell, not participating in life but nevertheless experiencing what was happening on the outside. His only interesting experiences came indirectly via the people that wrote to him. He was imprisoned in the 1960's so his only experience of progress in the world was through television, newspapers and letters - he had no direct knowledge of it).

Playing The Guide is a fascinating experience, and brought up all sorts of questions and thoughts for me. In the character journey (these are done to get into the character's head and body before a play), the main emotion I felt was frustration. There was just nothing I could hang on to: I didn't have a favourite place, favourite food, favourite people. I had nothing - only The Void and my false arrogance. All my character wanted was to be 'dead', to lie in a coffin, covered with autumn leaves, and rest - be done with all the guiding. There is a line in the play that goes 'Because it all decays... all your precious memories... everything you are, everything you think you are... you cannot hang on to it... it fades - until there is just a vague smudge of what you were.' I thought that maybe, when we die, it's like when we dream. We can hold on to our dreams for so long, they seem so real, and then slowly they slip away and decay, and we can't remember them anymore. Have you had that sensation, when you wake up from a fascinating dream and you don't write it down - and later you can't remember it at all, or just a tiny glimpse of it? Now imagine if that was the whole of your life... that sense of frustration, knowing that there was something, but not being able to remember it (and yes, that brings me on to Alzheimer's disease, lol!). Maybe it's like that with our consciousness - it seems so real to us, it defines us, but it's not who we really are: it's just 'stuff' we've accumulated. And when we die, maybe we become energy again - soul energy - and all we have left is our karma, or that one memory, and everything else slips away. And then maybe this letting go of ego consciousness can also be a blissful, liberating experience - who are we really, away from all the memories and aspirations and hopes, away from all the conditioned thoughts?

This seems a recurring topic in my life in the last couple of years: death, rebirth and transformation. I played another powerful role, the role of the Goddess Inanna in 'The Descent of Inanna', last year. In this play, Inanna has to strip all her earthly powers (defences) before she is allowed to enter the Underworld, and she hangs naked and vulnerable on a meathook before she is eventually saved and reborn transformed and more powerful than ever before. This letting-go process is endlessly fascinating to me.

Welcome.

I am glad you are here, so glad that you remember me
You see, all too many people have forgotten me
And now, I live between the worlds, in your farthest memories
In your dreams that are colourful and flowing, like reveries from a distant land

Look for me, when you close your eyes at night… search for me in your hearts, and you will find me.

I am here and I am there, I am everywhere and I am nowhere
When you try to grasp me I am gone, like a faded memory

But remember I am but an image of your radiant self .

I purr and I call to you softly at night, I jump and I tear and I devour
I slither and glide, like a snake
Like a smouldering slow-burning desert fire,

with eyes of glowing black coal I possess your senses

I am the sensual that flows like a river through moss-covered valleys
I am desire that tears at your reason like the lioness at the antelope
I am the persuasion that lures you into deep mysterious caves
I am fulfilment that satiates you like ambrosial nectar
sliding down your parched and dust-filled throat

I am the Priestess
I am the Sacred Whore
I am the Eternal Woman
Receiving you with an open heart
And ravenous loins
With healing touch, healing hands and healing spirit

Come with me and celebrate the Sacred Union
Give your soul into my keeping
Journey with me into the spiral
Deeper and deeper
Slower and slower, ecstatically, until suddenly
Unveiled and dissolved
There is only light