magnetic fields

this is a blog without caps
tonight, jfk pageant, jeff falk's brainchild, a room of people waiting to have the party for him, he never showed, and we go back to 1963, november 22nd, stuck in a space of waiting, a performance about memory, 7 participants making new memory work about a memory that shifts as much as the zapruder film, marcelino quiñones channeling rfk, barton doing monroe stand up, and exploding watermelons, and jeff giving his santa claus story about the year after the shooting, and memory comes in to talk to us about what it's done to us, and what have we done to memory, avoiding it most of the time...
but here we are making new work, and it seems like on the verge of something again, something done before and something new like unfermented pomegranate wine (just cuz i don't drink, you can have fermented it doesn't bother me)...
somehow sitting in the dark i'm thinking about the festival, and haven't been able to put what i wrote to publish, so many mixed feelings about that, and don't want to hurt anyone's feelings (but most people would not be hurt, but still, don't want to be gossipy).
marcelino and klute both talking about the way it works in phoenix, people will not come after a wave has hit, and the last one in phoenix crested in 2006 maybe? it reaches a high water mark here, the high mark is still low, and that's the 'this far and no further' for art here,
maybe another generation can see this shift, and not be true, i hope you read this and i hope it's you...
but at some point it has to be clear that this is about getting people in, but then it's never about that, after all...the best work i've done has been in small places, with small eyes that connect in the dark (big eyes fine too but all eyes look small in the dark)...performing in large spaces, done that too, and i like it, large crowds, but it's never the same as a small packed room where everyone is humming,
so, we're doing this work, and it's fulfilling while we're doing it, and it's something that seems like a history written as we work it, and so what there are only a few people, and then some more, and then some more...how it works, in phoenix, people do brave and innovative things, and small crowds see it and they talk, and a month later everyone in town says they saw it...talking and texting are almost the same as showing up...
but it's always been small crowds watching revolutions.
we could do a history lesson on it, but safer just to say: dada cabaret did not draw the crowds as much as mama mia, and one of these meant something essential to the history of art...and aimed to hit that bullet hole of memory, and hit, even if it didn't feel like it at the time,
so, we take our best talents and make things in small rooms and wish it were larger, and our chronic dissatisfaction follows us all over like a strange, nervous dog,
but spirit dogs are starting to gather, and they know when it means something, that something's happening...and it's up to us to let them tell us when it's working, and only they can know, and maybe we perform for them...
the next work, on obsession, a birthday party, i am enjoying watching energy gather for this, and gathering the energy is also helping, note to self: gather when u are feeling like nothing is happening, and nothing is good.
today it is good, and good enough, and just that.
and there's a spark in my eyes besides, because something is starting to make me feel like my head is on its way to turning in a new direction...
the work tonight: i have the zapruder film, about 8 seconds, and play with loops on fcp, making slower and slower then faster, and distortions, like memory distortions, the film always cuts right before the shot, so it's sweet and so nostalgic, because everyone still has a nose, and by the end it is like black and white jagged fire,
this projected over my naked body, i meditate in lotus, covered with cascarilla, a white ghost, or a monk on the verge of self-immolation...(thank u ralph cordova for getting that, and seeing more things in it than i knew), the film is on my belly, history written on the body, a trope but it's a generation's trope, and i am claiming it for the one following the boomers, too, but so is everyone else not a boomer in the room, we are in this together...
over my head a ziplock bag filled with water, and a needle prick is enough to make drops fall, small enough to make them fall slow enough so that you can see the water falling through the light of the projector...
and the soundtrack is jfk talking about conspiracy and media, gunpowder & the printing press,
and this powder added at the end, that turns to blood when water hits it,
so watching the film is watching a belly breathing, but then images distorting, and all the while sympathy for the devil plays and builds, and when the water hits the head it sprays just a bit, the dust on the head makes a splash of dirt that looks like smoke, and then it drips down to blood,
and i writhe and feel something like a dog running through the veins, and fall forward, and drops on the back drops on the back, and hm...
my friend says this is an interesting part of a cycle and to keep pushing this,
and i think he might be right.
and i'm charmed by this, and charmed by something i can't even speak about right now, hoping that in a month you might remember it as if you were there,
but here in my cold house, getting ready to sleep under 4 blankets and a dog, i think about you, and bid you a good night, wondering about the stories that are about to pour out of your mouth like water and smoke and ghosts of the dogs that follow us between these worlds where art does something that resembles matter.