Thursday, February 26, 2009

some news

this is a loose weave of new information, this is informative information that is meant for informative purposes only, and will only help to make a contribution to the kafka information files...

thumb

here's a return:
after they shaved off more bone on all sides, to make the end of my thumb-tip-bone a tower with a point rather than a saddle with a hump, it started to heal, and ebbs and flows is how it heals, messy business with blood and bone; my concentration is good, but when it starts to hurt i am prone to go in multiple directions, and when it's working like a line of flight, it's good, and when it's upset thoughts that go toward random associations, it's still a line of flight...

but lately...on february 10th it was swelling and hurting badly (it hasn't stopped hurting yet, with the exception of a few good days, which actually get longer, it is healing, but...), and i went to the surgeon, and the assistant thought it was odd and should be something to look at, and he said it was not odd at all and everything was fine, but ordered an mri...they never made the order, tho, so i am still waiting, and meanwhile, the physical therapy, where they have me play with clay, has caused pressure on the parts that are healing, and now it's swollen again...so, it hurts like it did in november, and i think about medical systems here, and i'm luckier than most...but insurance runs out in may when my job at asu ends...everyone is working less and everything is more expensive...

i complain too much...



home

this, the weirdest part of the year so far, after finishing my yawo year and wearing clothes like people do, and starting to work with spirits, it's a lot of new open doors, and a firework world, entering into the forest and talking and working works, and the forest is thorny and brambly, and there is no love without brambles...

i am smoking a cigar on my porch at 11 at night, and i am struck by how interesting it is to be suddenly talking to a man with a rifle pointed at me, and wondering to him out loud how he would get something from me when i don't have much, which makes him not very happy, and so he wants to see the inside of my house, and of course with the rifle he is allowed in, and i have some money stashed away, and he sees an ipod and takes that too, and when he leaves he wants me to run down the street so he can run in the other direction, and i don't really run, it's more like a fake little jog, but i'm tired, and don't think hes going to shoot me now, not after all we've been through together with the tour of my house and everything, and i'm right on that, not much else, but i remember the number for 911 so get to talk to the police, who pick up someone who's wearing the same clothes as the robber, but it's not him...case unresolved...

and two weeks later i come home after tutoring (for extra money and i hope an extra source of income after the teaching ends, and also working as an artist model too lately, it pays well, and i like being still and the smell of artist studios and the way teachers talk about shapes and colors), and my backyard barricade is broken up and my little girl's pogo stick (it was mine when i was her age, so it's old school rusty and nasty looking, but bouncy and she's good) is sticking out of the gate; my neighbor who is this mystic woman who grows hundreds of prickly pear cactus in her year tells me she saw him in my yard and yelled and the police came and he had my other neighbor's bike, but they couldn't prove it so he left...and two days later i talked with the police and called for extra patrolling in the neighborhood...

and meanwhile my bike is starting to have more problems, like losing juice on the freeway, which is hard to live with comfortably, so it's being discusses while we speak so it might be fixed, and i'm on foot and buses and the rail here, which is lovely, really, and when i get home one day (yesterday), i take a nap but hear a sound, and look out my window and there's a junkie in my yard holding my old brooms, and he explains that he is just stealing them so he can sell them; it's not a big score, and not worth going to jail for, but the police think it's enough, and worth the trouble, and they're right, so i get to meet more police and watch them decide to change a nickname they had for one officer from 'cabbage patch' to 'rain man,' and rain man looks happier with the change...the junkie tho looks unhappy, but he wasn't happy to be in my yard either, he does not look happy being a junkie...and that's a third robbery, so i consider it sealed and maybe done...?

xo_xx (and then xo_xy

i like the way xo_xx is working (it's on youtube, look under xo_xx), and things are occurring to me in performing it that make it more interesting to me...in this, where the icons and images are all female, female people or female orishas, i am speaking in an electronically altered voice that is female, and added an anthropologist named susan blackwoth smith-reynolds as a character to explain santeria, and also i take polls of the audience while it goes on, to mark their level of pain on a scale of 0-10, 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain imaginable, and am happy about the quantitative results; but am also pleased with the way gender and the sacred work in this, and how this film for performance is becoming more intimate and more seductive, and looking forward to developing this more while also moving into the creation and continuing collaboration with iris méxico, and got a grant to work with her next month in d.f. and all the rabbits that whispered last year are speaking now, under the surface of the earth, i hear them especially at night, and they sound like the secrets of the depths of the ocean, which of course is true, and the rest of what i know is only accessible through walking, and so, i find myself walking in an enchanted forest just like everybody else.

love,
cd

Monday, February 9, 2009

xo_xxPOST(post)


post post
this isn't done
xo_xx
there will be more, another version, something in the basement, something longer,
o i would like to post the video here, but there is this brief nudity thing and i don't want them to take this down...what can you post that wouldn't offend their nudity regulations (and what's a way to make a public statement about it?) ((because it's sort of like, it is, or sort of like, obscenity laws, it's a new kind of censorship where the nude is no longer allowed in public discourse unless it's explicitly pornographic...))
(((um, there's more to look at on that)))

ok, this is a de-briefing,
from the weekend, the first incarnation of the new piece, xo_xx,
my mentor, violeta luna, came from sf to see it, and conversations with her, and then with her and michele ceballos, and it was lovely and i do not want to forget:


this piece, intention was to make this the second, the in between between xo_tact and xo_xy, and the last would be more with vocal and sound and using sound technologies, but this one, xo_xx, this one suddenly seems suited for that...more than any other...and i want to play with it...
the idea of a male body iterating female deities played/projected by female human beings (performance artists, artists), in context of performing narcissist looking for echo
(here echo is x, is iris meXico) ((repeated)) (((three times)))
and then presenting the findings of the "research" as a visual documentation/tone poem...
and comments to:
inhabit the body while performing (used in performance, useful), and be the male body performing the not performing, performing the body in front of the screen that does not move, and is in front of a microphone, which is not used for the first 6 or 7 minutes...useful...and then only performing speech, literal performance of a speech act...female voice...and then the orishas and world of the orishas--
on that, how much context do they need?
it's a refusal of meaning or explanation, is nice, works, but this is going to be longer, and maybe maybe
perform other voices...
a persona who is an anthropologist,
describe the deities
and get the information all wrong
but obviously wrong
inside and outsider,
and also
with this
perform the body
this orisha is working on this part of the body,
the head,
the eye,
the heart,
the stomach,
the sex,
and draw signs on the body and reveal the body and draw the signs in the color
so there is action on the body and the body is speaking female voices but also drawn on and inscribed on...
and have public draw on the body,
not the usual,
the one most uncomfortable with drawing, the one i'm most uncomfortable with drawing on me...
and so on...
and more on film as script...
keep as idea that this is independent,
and continue to conceive as independent,
and continue with the poetry of the images...
and more,
i will remember more,
but such lovely and perfect collaborators, and am grateful and this is for you...
xoxox

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...