There is a special kind of synergy that comes when you co-tie with people you know very well. Our rope family wasn’t a planned creation and we don’t get to gather as much as we would like, but when we do, we always make something magic.
This is thanks primarily to our dear friend SimplyDiane, who is just an exceptionally capable rope bottom. But I think equally important is that we have all had ongoing rope relationships with each other, spanning several years. There really is no substitute for time and experience.
I also think there is something very interesting to co-topping. It’s an exercise I do pretty often, firstly with my students I find it is a great tool to understand someone’s progress. When I co-tie with another top, I can get a very clear sense of how well they read a tie, what their go-to ideas are, and where they may be struggling with fluidity or pacing (or for that matter, where they are doing well!). Co-topping can also bring an extra element for the bottom, to create a more overwhelming sensation being pulled in multiple directions and handled by 2 sets of hands.
I am also thinking lately about how useful it is to cultivate peer relationships with other tops. Vento and I have spent countless hours critiquing each other’s rope, workshopping ideas, tying each other, and watching each other’s ties. And because we have both really come up together in our tying, the synergistic flow when we do it in tandem is just so smooth. It’s another whole level of play when you are working well as a team and seemingly reading each other’s mind. It also makes me reflect on the ways each of us have specialized. Where I move fast and build structures improvisationally, he is more methodical and precise. We push each other.
I never would have guessed this weird little hobby would lead to such friendships. But man, I just love these people so much. Thanks for everything ❤
And as is customary, we end with a poem.
Home Home is a faith called annoyance. It’s where people go, when they’re done loving the same woman as me, an object in motion. A wind who tortures the tree. This urban thing, divorced from where it came. A dropped seedpod, helicopter spinning to the ground. And held aloft, on wires made from grass. A tightrope walker, running across the street without looking both ways, is any way it can be had. And held. It can’t be seen, only felt. Wind. Damn wind. In your hair, and how it feels on bare skin, and how it feels to smash together on a couch, warm bodies. Talking about the past, in reverence an elegy. “The good times” old days that just get older. And it keeps returning, this annoyed thing, the cat who wants attention and to not be touched, the incessant attention paid. And faith that she will return. To where each cup of tea is shared. And this will be home again - a temporary permanence.
boshai 