Reflections from September 2025 Beyond the Clock with Viktor le. Givens
Beyond the Clock Resident Artist Reflection, Written by Eliza Blue
I have never experienced a more embodied presence or practice than what we all took part in for Viktor's virtual BTC event. It was nothing short of astonishing. I don't think anyone left the conversation unmoved, and I've struggled ever since with how to describe that hour. I always end up lapsing into the very unhelpful, "You had to be there..."
Thank goodness we have Anna and Ash's podcast offering with Viktor, which was equally beautiful and unexpected! I encourage anyone and everyone to seek out his work and words with the podcast as a wonderful jumping-off point. His creative undertakings are a salve and path toward deep, authentic healing. It's hard to write about him without falling into hyperbole, so I'll just say: If you don't already believe in magic, Viktor might convince you, and if you do already believe, you will be assured that there are many ways to slow river our way home to ourselves.
As for Viktor's song, most of the lyrics are taken from a piece he read as an opening into the live event. I asked his permission to use those words more or less directly, and he said, "Be sure to credit the ancestors as they mused me..."
Gratitude to you, Viktor, and to your ancestors, and to the many-bodied muses who surround us, inviting us to be inspired toward wholeness.
VIKTOR’S SONG
by Eliza Blue
Head bowed, heart constricted
Your breath is reluctant to rise
There was a time
When men walked in wonder
Back when the earth knew their name
And they in turn, knew the language of stars
And the soft illumination of dreams
Where is your tenderness
Keeper of quiet strength
Where is your mercy now
Where is the prayer that moves
Like a forgotten hymn
Holding the weight of holy things
Carrying peace
In the cavern, at the altar,
By the hearthside, in the fellowship
Of those who’ve laid
Their burdens down
Lay your burdens down
Lay your burdens down
You are not lost
You are not lost
You are not lost
You’re found
Eliza Blue is an author, folk-singer, and accidental rancher on the wild, wild western prairie. Visit her website here, and subscribe to her weekly newsletter here.
About Viktor: Viktor le. Givens is a multimodal installation performance artist whose practice centers around the gathering and arrangement of ancestral objects to recontextualize the seemingly mundane into the spectacularly sacred. His material archive is comprised mostly of forgotten and discarded domestic items found during excavations of his families East Texas estate. Givens has examined the under-celebrated and largely forgotten technologies of agrarian Black cultural production in spaces such as shotgun houses, African American cemeteries, and the many types of nourishment provided in a simple piece of homemade cornbread, pot of stewing peas or simmering collard greens. His work is thorough, deep, interstitial, ever evolving and refusing to stand still; continually looking and seeing what there is to be dreamed, felt and heard.