Ritual, Anorexia and Sarah Kane

Ritual, Faith, Anorexia and Sarah Kane

Ritual can help give you purpose, distract you from the realities of life and act as a coping mechanism to neutralize anxiety.

“A: A horror so deep only ritual can contain it.

M: Express it.

B: Explain it.

A: Maintain it.

B: Besosbrujos que me matan”

(Sarah Kane ‘Crave’)

Rituals are little things we do day to day which give us purpose. They give us purpose because we have faith that they do. They are essential in the life of a happy human being and essential in the shaping of a person and their contributions to the world. 

 “That does it, then. I’m not going to believe in any damned 

revolution. Love is all I’m going to believe in” (Kazuo Ishiguro 

p237). 

Hope, belief, faith and curiosity are important in order to help us 

believe that what we do day to day serves a purpose. They keep us 

searching and striving which in turn keeps us living and breathing. 

Imagine someone told you that nothing you believed in or hoped for 

was true or ever going to happen. Imagine a life without faith. What would you do?

KATIE  I’m so glad we didn’t find one another when I was 26

BEN Why do you say that?

KATIE I was so young and you were so old. It happened when

 it was supposed to.

·  Benjamin Button

"No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don’t 

believe in fairies, and every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe I

n fairies,’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead" (Peter

 Pan by J.M. Barrie 1967 p 45).

 “The function of ritual, as I understand it, is to give form to human life, not in the way of mere surface arrangement, but in depth.” (Cambell). 

“The day depicts the night

 Want to be empty, as human as possible, not filled with food.

As pure and human as possible.

 Anything else taints my insides

and I need to be perfect not for you,

 but for myself. Maybe you. Maybe Dad”

They give access to emotional states that are not language based therefore are not part of the symbolic order, something which has it's roots deep in constrictions and limitations: "...she clasped her hands in prayer before she learned to speak and relied on there and other gestures to communicate her deepest feelings throughout her life...” - ritual before language. 

We need them in our life to give ourselves a little structure and control in a world simply to big and too chaotic. A liminal space is one that is restricted only to you, a place where you can be yourself and natural without the thoughts of anything else outside of it. And this is where rituals take place: “Liminal spaces provide an abnormal experience of a world without social structure...an experience of what is potential but unrealised in normal life, a brief but intoxicating wiff of utopia or heaven”. Rituals can soothe, make us feel as if we belong, have purpose and reason to exist “In short, the terrible insecurity of daily life created an un-quenchable demand for ritual, for rituals that assisted fertility succored the afflicted, eased grief”.

Rituals have greater connotations with religious ceremonies and this is perhaps because it is where they are strongest - the church is huge and powerful and was a fundamental aspect in many peoples lives back in time. The liminal space was a church and the ritual was the ceremonies and worship and this gave and gives people comfort and reason to life good lives: “Rituals brought the cosmic order into daily life by giving persons access to divine power” These days less and less people are strongly religious or rely on it like we have done in the past. You can have ritual in supporting a sports team, raising your children, creating art, helping people, your job, getting healthier, murder (see Dexter), education...anything that gives you a reason to get up in the morning and anything that is not to do with the people you love - rituals are about the individual, love is as important as ritual but is completely separate. Sometimes ritual can be a harmful or medical for example eating disorders, alcoholism, drug abuse, criminality and murder.

“freaky eating as a coping mechanism to mask underlying mental health problems, such as depression or anxiety”.

“...give a sense of control, order, and meaning"

“Either way, food becomes the ritual that fills up a person inside.”

“Eating disorders as a source of meaning, religion, and ritual”.

Rituals tend to be psychological and unfortunately can be a result of something traumatic and in turn create trauma for other people. I have experience in eating disorders and I can tell you that it does indeed become a source of meaning, but more than anything else it gives you control and certainty and this gives you a reason to wake up in the morning. The day ahead is all about sticking to a set of rules with an imagined reward at the end "...people can judge themselves as better or worse depending on their food choices...can be reassuring to someone who craves certainty...becomes a preverse sort of religion...heaven of certainty while a higher weight plunges one into hell  of terror. It can afford a level of drama and intensity unmatched by anything else in the person’s life” (Newmark). 

Ritual is disconnected from the real world around us and having it in our lives allows us to live with a little fantasy and hope “Ritual attempting to explain human behavior in animated terms, blurring lines between ‘art’ and‘life’” (Pink).

Childhood Belief

When we are young we believe everything because we have no reason not to. We did not need purpose because we were living out the “Design” without being aware of it. We don’t have rituals when we are children e.g. checking under the bed for monsters because we truly believe that there are monsters. But eventually we stop believing and we learn the truth. As adults faced with reality, we develop rituals to help us get through the day so that we have something to believe in again. The only difference is that deep down, you know it is not true (e.g your prayer will not save a loved ones life). We deal with hardships by trying to control them and most of the time this is also what a ritual is. Ritual can make us feel content, ignorant, organised, prepared, reassured of existence and when we don’t do it it can make us feel out of control.

I wanted to create something about the transition of childhood ritual into adult ritual.

When I was younger I used to say a prayer every night. This became my ritual of hope but this religion was replaced by another religion; one I created: “a perverse sort of religion”. I could control this religion and it had certainty which gave me meaning and purpose in life: “food becomes the ritual that fills the person up”.

I played a French song in the background of my piece, specifically because you could not understand the lyrics. On top of this, a young girl spoke the lines of my prayer over and over again off stage.

On stage was a table and in the middle of the table was a see through box which had cling film on one end and inside it was a teddy bear. On one side of the box there was a teaspoon, a cup, scales, and a pint of water. On the other side was jam (crafted ‘sugar free’ label on the front), milk (crafted fat free label on the front), a jug of water, and a box of porridge oats.

Apron, Porridge, Milk, Measuring Jug, Jam, Bowl, Teddy Bear, Spoon, Cup, Water, Scales

No Fat, Wee bit of Fat, Half Fat

The actress enters downstage stage after a short while and approaches the table. She has a bowl in her hand. She turns the box around and takes the teddy out and puts it in her back pocket. She then replaces it with the bowl and turns the box back around so that the cling filmed front is facing the audience. The prayer begins to be recited a little differently. First she drinks the entire pint of water and proceeds to make the porridge never moving from directly in front of the hollow box (we can see through it to her stomach). She measures the oats and then empties them into the bowl; then pours water into a cup and pours this into the bowl; then pours milk into the cup and pours this into the bowl; and then measures a teaspoon of jam and puts this in also. She then retrieves the lid for the box and places it on the upright box in front of her turning it around with the bowl still inside. We can no longer see through it to her stomach and only the box is her torso. The praying stops at the same time as the music.

The Prayer

Prayer One: “Dear God.Thank you for everything and everyone in the whole wide world. Please blesseveryone and everything. Amen.”

Prayer Two: “Dear God.Thank you for everyone and everything in the whole wide world, and me. Thank you for everyone and everything, and me. Amen.”

“In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice

, they called it; but what it really was that they no longer believed” 

(Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie 1967 p 208).

Sarah Kane's Play

“I want to feel physically like I feel - emotionally starved.”(Kane).

“I tried to explain that I don’t want to sleep with someone who wont appreciate how hard it was for me the following morning, but he’d passed out by the time I finished my sentence” (Kane).

“My entire life is waiting to see the person with whom I am currently obsessed starving the weeks away until our next fifteen minute appointment” (Kane).

“I write the truth and it kills me” (Kane).

“Don’t fill my stomach, fill my heart” (Kane).

“No one survives life” (Kane).

“I'm not ill. I just know that life is not worth living” (Kane).

“Lost.”

“I do not trust”

“I love you”

“Need change”

“You've fallen in love with someone that does not exist”

“I knew this”

“Why cant I learn?”

(Kane)