Saturday, March 30, 2013

the bar is a parking lot

(But this is a living room.)

(TED, oh my gosh, TED.  TED is a mess.  He's decided to shave his head and he's painting his body white, and he's doing yoga in his living room and spitting out blood.  He has pictures of Kali all over, incense is burning, and he is trying not to think about money.  For the first time in 9 years, they are all worried about money, suddenly, like they might not make rent.  We don't really know they're all worried about money, though, because this is just TED, and we can't even tell if he's worried about money because he is spitting blood.  BARNEY comes in.)

BARNEY: Did I hear someone mention the goddess of sex?
(TED is still in a trance, and BARNEY sees the pictures.)
Ah! Kali!  You fooled me again!  Kali, you destroy me! Did you see what I just did there?

TED: (Coming out of a trance.) Hello, Barney.

BARNEY: Ted.

TED: Why are you here, Barney?

BARNEY: I've got twins in handcuffs, and one of them has your name all over her.  Of course, I can't tell which one, they're identical!

(Canned laughter, but it's Kali's laughter, which is spooky, and it makes BARNEY very nervous and quiet.)

(TED starts to cry and it turns into a wail of grief, and the house starts to shake.  BARNEY is touched.)

BARNEY: You cannot chain what you love, what you chain will eat your bones.  Even love will eat your bones.  There is no escape.  We cannot escape our death.

(Meanwhile, LILY runs in, with camping gear.)

LILY: Guys, I need your help.  Marshall has been carried off by bigfoot, and I don't think he's coming back.

BARNEY: He is either torn to pieces by savage death, or he is in love with bigfoot, and either way, he is torn to pieces, he is cut open with the savage love at the heart of the world.

LILY: Please help me, guys, this is important.

TV: This just in, local news reporter Robin Sparkles has fallen off of the Statue of Liberty, and if you hurry, you might be able to catch her and save her life.

TED: It's all no use.  This world loves too much, and we are all dying.

LILY: Oh, my gosh you guys are under Kali's magic spell!  We've got to do something.

BARNEY: Destruction is everywhere.

MARSHALL (off): Oh my god, bigfoot, I love you, you're so awesome!

LILY: Oh, that's hard to hear.

TV: It's too late to save her, she's already dead.  But this just in, she's been reincarnated as the Goddess of Death, we'll be back in five.

LILY: God, I love tv.

(TED shakes it off, he shakes off all of the hoodoo going on here, he just shakes it off.  He gets them all bottles of beer and they sit at the coffee table.)

TED: I had the best day.  I think I met the one.

LILY: Where'd you meet the lucky girl?

TED: What place on earth is somewhere between heaven and hell?

BARNEY: My underwear.

(Kali laughs and BARNEY is so scared that he starts to cry.)

LILY: I don't get it.

TED: A parking lot.

BARNEY: A parking lot?  Wait, hold on.  (Takes a sip, does a spit take.) A parking lot?

TED: Yes.

LILY: That's wonderful news, although it's hard not to be thinking about Marshall.

MARSHALL (off): I'm fine, honey!  Bigfoot is awesome!

LILY: And the newly reincarnated Robin.

(A Kali picture starts to shake.)

BARNEY: Did you get her number?

TED: No, but I don't have to.

BARNEY: (slaps him upside the head.)  I was going to say something, but that's better. (slaps him again.)

TED: No, we'll meet again.  It's destiny.  And I have a plan on how to stalk her.

LILY: Oh, Ted, stalking is never a sure way to meet someone.  People move, you know.  They move, or get carried off by bigfoot, or they fall through the grates on the sidewalk, and then you're you-know-where.

BARNEY: No, where?

(KALI laughs, BARNEY cries.)

LILY: Stuck trying to find her in the underworld.

BARNEY: Uh-oh, here we go.

(And just like on tv, TED is vanished, and BARNEY and LILY are left alone.)

(And KALI comes off the wall, and sits with them.)

(Long pause.)

KALI: What?


Friday, March 29, 2013

not a glum bookmovie

So it was with furtive glances, then, something like devious stares, or maybe they're the same thing, except not really so furtive, not so furtive, not this morning, it was furtive, sure, before this morning, perhaps, it was furtive before this morning, but this morning was not furtive, but sort of bold even, on the verge of bold even, and it felt like it was happening on either side of the dividing line, but he couldn't be sure, how can anyone be sure.

So he is texting his friends and his friends are texting him.  And it's not like anyone is in school here any more, not at all like that, except he is in school, but that's something else, he's much older than that, but that shouldn't matter, it never really matters all that much, except when it's obvious, except when it's something new, and it doesn't even cross his mind that this would be something new, that age makes this something new, because it's not, and seems really typical, in every way typical as typical is typical for him, how many years difference between him and her is hard to know for sure, without knowing her age, but he imagines he would find out soon enough or later enough he is trying not to be in a hurry, this is nothing new and nothing even exceptional, except that he thinks this is something extraordinary, only in terms of other things.  only in terms of these other things, everything is contingent, everything worth thinking about is contingent anyway.

And the things that make this contingent are really just one thing, one large thing, something recent that makes all the difference in the world.  The moon went all full just yesterday, and the days before there were lots of deaths, and the night before he had a dream that everything changed and when he woke up there was a peacock at the foot of his bed who told him that he would remember that moon, that last moon, the one full right now moon, he would remember as the one where everything changed.  And he would meet someone.  There were someones already, sure, hovering, somewhere near, blackbirds hovering around nearby, and it was like birds hovering and not sure if they want to eat, and he was even aware that he had already been thinking about it for too long and now it was no longer thinking about that at all but something else, but he did not know what yet, but that did not matter so much because he would meet someone new, and that was a part of all of this, whatever was coming with the full moon, and he was supposed to just go with it, because it would be very important, and very heavy, and when he asked the dead to give him more information, they gave him the card of the hanged man, and said that she was the prince of swords, and he would be hung upside down for awhile, and the prince of swords would be the reason he was hung upside down, but the prince of swords also seemed very rare and well equipped to help cut him down.  The hanged man is never a bad card, he thinks, and it's true when the lovers are there, and the lovers are always there, with the moon, with the devil, this was very interesting but he is not thinking about it too much, but it's a stream that is open and he's in it and that's all.

And there's nothing to talk about, really, and it doesn't even need to be in his head as language, really, except there's that idea of jouissance, and the pleasure is almost more, it's almost more pleasure, it's almost more pleasurable, to talk about it than to do it.  but there are things he would like to do.  there are certainly things he would like to do.  and he thinks about them all the time, literally thinking about them all the time, and he wonders if it's normal, someone his age, is this normal, it's hard to know because every man will say yes but most of them are liars.

And his friend sends him a text even though they are not in school (except he is), and says something about her looking something like Chrissie Hyndes and he is thinking yes that, but sort of like a combination of Kali the Destroyer and Chrissie Hyndes, and that's sort of the most exceptional thing he's been inside for awhile, this idea of a combination like that, living inside that idea of a combination, and then the thing itself, the person itself, herself, conjuring the combination and she might not even know she is conjuring.  And he is under a spell, of a kind, but understands that this full moon charmed him, and he is starting to figure something very important out for the first time: that to be charmed makes you charming, because you know what it is to give in, everyone has to become the passive one, the one who receives, the one who is ravaged by the Goddess of Love, if they are to go on to the next place, the place that opens up in the middle of a full moon.

He is really thinking about jouissance when he is leaving, and he is surrounded by his friends, and she is leaving, and he sees her leave and she looks like she is turning to look at him when she is leaving, and she also looks like she has run into the door when she is leaving, and he thinks this is not the time to even have a first conversation because it's already too fraught.  and he is talking to his friends and some of it is about her and some of it is not about her and when they are in the parking lot she is talking to someone and that someone is a man and that man is very handsome and she is looking very bored, and she is smoking and that is sort of a very good thing to see this early in the morning.  but her black hair is a good thing to see, and the dark in her eyes is so good to see, and it looks as though everything about her is good to see.

And it's also a little confusing to see, because it looks as though she is walking toward him, and that's exactly what seems to be happening, and he is surrounded by friends and it might be getting complicated because how will they talk when there are friends everywhere, friends hovering like vultures and getting into everything, but when she says, "Did anyone ever tell you you look like Hunter S. Thompson?  I just started reading Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail," and as she is talking he is suddenly aware that his friends are not.  There.  At all.  Any more.

Who has friends like that?

He loves his friends.

And while they talk he is wishing he could talk about what is happening, because it would be jouissance but maybe this is something else, maybe there is something else besides those codes and projections and diagrams of desire, but maybe there is a diagram for it, and he wants to talk about it later, but he is talking to his friend, the one he was texting, and his friend says, "Her in the parking lot?  That was just like a movie."

Yes, he is thinking, this is just like a movie.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

monsters/film outline/a little more

(In the notebook.)
This is the hard part, not because it's hard to talk about now, now that we're no longer we, at least not we in the same place and time.  It's easy to talk about now because it's like remembering.
And remembering is all that I do.
It's all that I have.
It's been a long season, and my face feels like it wants to crack open, so that my other face can come out.  But I'm afraid of what that looks like, I'm afraid I'll have gotten older.
If I look in a mirror and see myself and see myself older, then this is a tragedy, because if I get older then that means I've also gotten over it, and I never intended to get over this.
No one should have to get over something like this.
This is the hard part, because it's hard to talk about while it's happening, it's hard for me to talk about it while it's happening, it's hard for me to talk about it as if it were still happening.
You want me to tell you about how it was in the meadow with him.  You want me to talk about how easy it was, being in love with him for the first time, being in love for the first time, you want me to talk about that like I thought about it when it was happening.
Except that's hard.
Because it's not what you want, it's not what you expect.

Scene: In the grass.

O: I don't want to be anywhere else.
E: I'm not asking you to be anywhere else.
O: I'm just telling you how I feel, don't be like that.
E: Where else could you be but here?
O: I understand that, I understand the implications of being somewhere, I'm just talking.
E: You're just trying to paint pretty things in the air.
O: With my tongue.
E: With your tongue. You make pretty things in the air.

What most people forget, that moment, that time, when you're in love, it's never as sweet in the moment as it is when you remember it.  Anyone who's in love is filled with doubt and is always second-guessing themselves, because love makes us all stupid, and we're all pretty well aware, even at the time, that we're doing stupid things and forgetting to do all kinds of things that we know we should be doing, and nothing really works very well.  You think about that person all the time, and you think of things you'll say to make that person want you in the same way that you want them, but no one really ever knows anybody anyway, and no one wants in the same way, and if we knew that at the outset then we would leave it for someone else, so they could be disappointed in our place.

E: What are you thinking?
O: Oh, I'm just thinking about how we haven't had anything to eat all day.
E: Oh.  We should eat?
O: Maybe.
E: I'll go get something.
O: Ok.
E: Unless you want to go.
O: No, that's ok, I trust you.
E: I'll go.
O: Don't get bit by a snake.  I would hate it if you got bit by a snake.
E: Right, I'll die from a snakebite out here in the middle of paradise.
O: Do you think this is paradise?
E: Yes.  Unless it's just a very close approximation.

Dear Diary: Today I got bit by a snake and died.  Some fucking paradise.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

monsters/film outline/opening

It's not a story about missing the one who got away.
But living in the story, knowing that the one right here is the one that will go away.
Like you're on tv.
This is like being on tv.
Where you know you're in a scene about the one who got away, but there's nothing you can do to change it, because it's already on tv, and everyone knows the story, and is watching it, and because they're watching it, it has to go in the way they know it will go.

Orpheus and Eurydice are wed, and happy for a short time.
She is bitten by a viper and dies.
Orpheus petitions to the gods to go to the Underworld and bring her back.
They grant his wish, and he vows to bring back Demeter's daughter.
In the Underworld, he finds her, and she follows him, but he is not to look back.
But he looks back.
She says, "Farewell."
And that's the last thing he hears of her ever again (except for after he gets torn limb from limb and body scattered; but until then).
And he writes all the songs about lost love.

Falling in love is a spell.
Dying is a spell.
Entering the Underworld is a spell.
Following and being followed by a lover you can't look in the eyes, is a spell.

(Drawn in a notebook, with images and scenes):
This is like being on tv.
Everything happens on tv first.
Or at the same time that you live it, it's already happened, and it's already happening on tv.
There are two people who are falling in love.
It doesn't matter if they're perfect for each other or not.
Because when they fall in love, they'll be the characters in the story that needs to be told.
They fall in love and they are in the meadow because that's what happens always.

I.
i: Have you ever lost somebody?
u: Hasn't everyone?

II.
i: Have you ever lost somebody?
u: No.  I never lose anybody.  Sometimes I send them away, but I never lose them.  I never get attached like that.

III.
i: Have you ever lost somebody?
u: How did you know?
i: It's just a guess.
u: Did you hear anything?
i: What do you mean?  About you?
u: Yes.
i: I haven't heard anything about you.  Why would I hear anything about you?
u: Because people talk about me all the time.  I'm the one that lost somebody very, very important.
i: You're the one?
u: Yes.
i: I'm pretty sure you're not the only one.
u: If I told you my story, you'd know that I was the real one, the one who lost everything.

IV:
i: Have you ever lost somebody?
u: I have, but I lose somebodies all the time.  That's kind of how it works.
i: How what works?
u: Love.  That's how love works.  You meet somebody, and you jump into the river.  You don't even think.  You shouldn't think.  You just jump into the river and that's how it goes.
i: Then what happens?
u: Then what?  You know what.  You know what happens.  Everyone knows what happens.
i: Tell me.
u: I don't have to tell you, that's what porn is for.
i: Oh, I see. That's what happens.
u: Exactly.  And when you're lucky, it happens for a long time.  Or sometimes it only happens once or twice.  But it doesn't matter, it always stops eventually.
i: I see.
u: It always stops, and then you are on the banks of the river, and you're dry, and you get so very sad and lonely, and then it happens again, and you jump in again.
i: And you don't think about it?
u: What's there to think about?
i: Aren't you afraid you'll get hurt?
u: I'm always afraid I'll get hurt.  But there's nothing to fear, because I know that I'll always get hurt, and I also know that it will always happen again.

I
i: When you lost them, did it hurt?
u: It really didn't.  Not at first.  But a month later it started to hurt.
i: And when did it stop hurting?
i: It never stops hurting.

II
i: Have you always been like that?  Not attached to anyone or anything?
u: Not always, I suppose.
i: When you hear about people losing people, does it ever make you sad?
u: I'm sorry for them, because they're missing out.
i: Missing out on what?
u: On seeing the world as a pet, a pet that does tricks.
i: Are these tricks just for you?
u: I like to think so.

III
i: So you miss her.
u: Always, I always miss her.
i: Do you think she misses you?
u: I hope so, but I don't know for sure, and it probably doesn't matter.
i: Why not?
u: Because it wouldn't change anything.
i: She's not coming back.
u: I know for sure she's not coming back.
i: How do you know for sure?
u: Because she died.

IV
i: Are you sure it'll always happen again?
u: I'm sure.
i: What if you get old?
u: That doesn't matter.  Old people fall in love all the time.  Don't you see movies?
i: I haven't seen a lot of movies, not about that, not about old people falling in love.  But then again, this isn't Europe.  Or Latin America.  Here, everyone who falls in love is around 30.
u: Around 30?  What about Romeo and Juliet?
i: No one really believes in that anymore.
u: Then they're missing out.  People fall in love all the time, and it doesn't matter if you're very young or very old, it still happens.
i: But what if you're really old and things don't work any more?
u: Then we'll just find other things to do together.  There's a lot to do in this world, there's never any chance of running out of things to do.

When Orpheus met Eurydice, he knew that he would lose Eurydice, but he met her anyway, and fell in love with her anyway, and that's why their first kiss was the first sad song he ever wrote.

And the first time they made love, it was in the meadow, because it's always in the meadow, and the grass that they used for a pillow was the same grass that would one day cover her grave, and that's the second sad song he wrote.

Eurydice was not stupid.  She knew full well that when she was born, she was born for the grave.

Eurydice also wrote songs, she keeps them in a notebook, and she writes the story of their love as it unfolds, and she writes it simply, because she knows how it will end, and she knows that she'll have nothing left but the notebook, and the nuances can't be in the words, because she'll want to remember it differently every time she reads it, so all of the flourishes are in the drawings in the margins.  Everything that's important to her takes place in the margins, in a secret code that only she knows how to read.

This symbol is for a kiss: *
And this symbol is for sex: %
And this symbol is for the rhythms of her heartbeat: +o+o+o+o






Monday, March 18, 2013

the bar of death/moor

LILY (in mourning cloak, a moment of weight): Now that the dead are interred into the ground, and now that the bodies are starting to decay, and now that the weight of the memory is heavy on the living, and the dirt is heavy and cold on the dead, now that we are mortal, now that we are heavy with the guilt of having survived, now that we know this is more fragile than we were lead to believe, now that we know that the line between us is so very thin but absolute, now that we are one day older than we were yesterday, now that we are bridges, our faces are bridges between the last generation and the next, our bodies are carriages between one place and another, our eyes are bridges between yesterday and tomorrow, now that we are not yet old, but absolutely older, now that we miss you, now that we love you, now that the lovers yesterday are coming back, now that tomorrow's lovers are already leaving their shoes at the foot of our bed, now that we are more tired than we could have imagined, now that our eyes twitch even though we know you won't come back, now that our hands shake even though we know we won't be touching your body tonight, now that we are falling in love with being alive in these frail mortal bodies, now that we are stronger than we ever guessed, now that we know we are broken and will never be whole and don't want to be whole, now that we are haunted by the ghosts of the years' dead and the year is far from over, now that we are walking thin lines, now that we are in the traffic, the sounds of the traffic come from us, the lines between lanes are crossed by us, now that we are the things that make the rude noises of this world and make it impossible to sleep through the night, now that we are the night, now that we are the lines between night and morning, now that the lines between the night and the morning are written on our stomachs by tomorrow's lovers, now that we are already just a memory, now that we are living inside a memory that we can't get our heads around, now that our hearts are drowning in the memory from which we don't wake up, now that we know we are sleeping, we are sleeping and we are night and we are memory and we are ghosts and we are falling in love with living in these bodies now we are falling in love with bodies now the weight of bodies on the earth are falling in love with us now we are closing the gates on the winter now we are the gates between the winter and the spring.  

Saturday, March 16, 2013

the bar of death and loss

(That scene was such a goddam laugh riot that it takes a very long time for everyone to calm down.  This is the next scene.  It's the bar, but calm and no one is dancing.)

(And no one should dance, because this is going to be so sad.)

ROBIN: I have big news! I'm moving to Chicago!

MARSHALL: We always knew you had it in you!

BARNEY: I wish it was me.

LILY: Who'm I gonna have erotic and confusing dreams about now, hon?  Aw, I'm gonna miss you so much.

(LILY gets weepy but she always does, and while she is weepy BARNEY tries to take a picture of her breasts.)

(But TED is so quiet.)

MARSHALL: Are you all right, Ted?

TED: That's wonderful news, Robin, I always thought you had--
(But he sobs and weeps and can't go on, and while he weeps, BARNEY tries to take a picture of his breasts.)
You won't find what you're looking for under my shirt, sir.

BARNEY: Need some bro hooters for my private collection.

ROBIN: I'm gonna miss you guys, too, but wow, this is my chance, my one shot to really make it big in a city that's not as big as this one.

MARSHALL: Everybody gather round, we're going to do a shot of their oldest whiskey.

ROBIN: I hate whiskey.

MARSHALL: You don't know this whiskey!  It's really old!  It's older than, than, than Canada!

ROBIN (bursts out laughing): I don't know what that even means!

MARSHALL: I forgot my goddam line!  Can we take that again?

(They break.  TED pulls ROBIN aside.)

TED: Can I talk to you?

ROBIN: Yes.

TED: Do you know what you're doing?

ROBIN: I do, I'm moving to Chicago.

TED:  No.  You'r losing me.

ROBIN: I don't lose you.  You don't lose me.  You'll see me again.

TED: I don't.  I lose you forever.

ROBIN: You don't know that, you don't know how it ends.

TED: Actually, I do, I know exactly how it ends, we never see each other again.

ROBIN: I don't think I know what you really want here.

TED: Of course you don't.  Listen.  What if we're really really old.

ROBIN: You are really really old.

TED: Hahaha.  No, I mean, what if we're around a lot longer than we think, than we thought, what if we've done this before.

ROBIN: This moment?

TED: This moment, yes, and the one before, all of them, what if we've done this before, and what if we've been doing this before for more than 500 years.

BARNEY: (Off camera):  500 years?! With the same woman?  Good god, give me a joint.

(They bust up.)

ROBIN: Can we take this again?

(Pause.)

ROBIN: He always makes me laugh.

TED: I really don't think I can do this scene.

ROBIN: You need to focus.

TED: No, it just, it really reminds me of something.

ROBIN: It's really personal for you, huh?

TED: It is.  I mean, I try not to think about it too much, but there are some people, a few, more than you'd think, but really, not that many, not really that many, who remind you of something, something you used to know, and all you know is that when it was happening, it lasted for a very long time, but then it went away, something happened, and it went away, they went away, at some point, you lost this person, maybe it's a lot of people, or maybe it's the same one, maybe you lose the same one, over, and over, and over again, and maybe you get to recognize the pattern, because you're supposed to do something, something to make it not happen that way again.

ROBIN: Like what?

TED: Like this.

(He kisses her.  She breaks it.)

ROBIN: You're not supposed to kiss me when we're not acting.

TED: I got caught up.

ROBIN: Go back to the beginning, please?

(Break.)


ROBIN: I have big news! I'm moving to Chicago!

MARSHALL: We always knew you had it in you!

BARNEY: I wish it was me.

LILY: Who'm I gonna have erotic and confusing dreams about now, hon?  Aw, I'm gonna miss you so much.

(LILY gets weepy but she always does, and while she is weepy BARNEY tries to take a picture of her breasts.)

(But TED is so quiet.)

MARSHALL: Are you all right, Ted?  (Pause.)  Are you all right, Ted?  (Pause.)  Are you all right, Ted?

(And no, TED is not all right.)




Friday, March 15, 2013

oh my god it's the love bar of death

(In the middle of this strange rite, something is happening to BARNEY, who is suddenly worried about his heart.  It's not about to break, but instead it is about to be filled, filled with love, with love, with love.  This same BARNEY, who was thinking about a literary life, writing the erotic stories of his time, the Henry Miller of his time, he would be called Barney Miller and that, my friends, is legen...wait for it.  Keep waiting.  No, stop waiting.  It will not come.  It cannot.  Because tonight the Love Bar is the Death Bar.)

(There are three new friends that come into the bar, but it turns out they are all old friends of BARNEYs.)

BARNEY: Oh my gosh, my friends.  I have not seen you in ages, and you all have keys to unlock my childhood.  Look, everyone, look at my friends.

THREE FRIENDS (variously, improvise like you actor-types do.): No, Barney, they cannot see us, only you can see us, we come to tell you sad news, we all died, suddenly, and out of the blue, and it should come as a shock. We are all dead now.

BARNEY: Oh, my gosh, this sucks.

(The 3 FRIENDS are at the table, drinking everyone's drinks, and eating all the peanuts out of the pretzel bowl.)

MARSHALL: Is this fun, or what?

BARNEY: Marshall, you are a fool.  You cannot see beyond this thin veil, none of us are really here, we are all phantoms.

MARSHALL: Oh, Barney, don't let my happy go lucky horny puppy dog backward ways deceive you.  I see them, too, the living and the dead, they are always mixing with each other, and in the end, there is no difference.

LILY: (Like Gary Coleman, fake black, offensive.): What choo talkin about Marshall?

MARSHALL: Barney sees the dead, Lily, and so do I.

ROBIN: I am already dead, because I am Canadian, and we know what it's like to be here but but also there, all at once, and it doesn't matter.

TED: I don't think that means anything.

ROBIN: Oh, I'm out of Canadian jokes.

LILY: Don't you mean oot?

(They all laugh, but this is no time for laughs, this is the beginning of the dance of the dead, and they all fall on the floor and shake and writhe with their own deaths, they are dancing their own deaths.  It is horrific.)

(And BARNEY dons a black robe and comes forward.)

BARNEY: Love song for this year so far.  You can suck a big dog dick.  I know you're trying, I know you have good intentions, but this isn't right.  You are death, you are as thin as a skeleton, and although I find you so very lovely, you are so thin this year, and you know how I like a little meat on the bone, I'm not keeping any kind of score, not this time, I don't want numbers, I want something with meat on the bone, and this is all death and disappointment.

MARSHALL: Wow, Barney sure gets gloomy when that girl doesn't text him back.

BARNEY: She was three, little man, she was triplets!

(And now they are on the porch smoking, talking about girls, because they are too old to be chatting online.)

MARSHALL: Triplets! You're out of control!

BARNEY: No, you're right, it was one, it was just one, one who broke my heart, and that's why I have a heart murmur that is going to give me a heart attack.  It was one.  That one, you know the one.  Her.  Ok, it's three.  But it didn't work out so that I could write this erotic memoir where there is nothing erotic happening, only talk, it's all talk.

MARSHALL: I don't think anything really ever happens anyway, not until we talk about it.

BARNEY: I see what you mean.  I do.  But I really think I'm ready to settle down, with that one, or three, woman, women.  I'm ready to settle for something really good.  I'm ready to settle for something that hasn't happened yet.  I'm ready for something that's never happened before, and I'm ready for it to happen to me.

MARSHALL: I think I'm going to ask Lily to marry me.

BARNEY: Oh shut the hell up, everybody I know just died.

(Gloomy end of scene.)

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

it's a love bar oh yes a love bar

(Now.  TED is ready to take off his monk robes and enter into the stream of desire again. But before he can, there's something he has to do, and he thinks it has to do with words, so that's how he starts.  He puts ROBIN on the table and speaks to her, hoping she will not speak back to him, because that will ruin his spell.)

TED: I want every woman I ever had a crush on to come and stand with you, but most of them couldn't make it, so you'll have to stand in for them.  Which is fine.  You're a lot of people.  This could work.  And if you were the girl from high school, the one I was with when we got caught by the police for fogging up the window's of my mom's car, I would tell you: I miss that night, and I remember wanting it to last forever, and maybe it did.  And if you were the woman I was married to once, I would tell you that I miss the apartment, not the first one, but the second one, where all the world was green, and by then I was already older, so I had things that I wanted to do, habits and needs of the body that had nothing to do with where we were at that moment, that kept me out of there, and I miss being there, and I wish I could go there again, but I can't find the road, I forgot the turn, the four-way stop before our place, I remember the stop, but I don't remember how to get there, and I have a feeling that I wouldn't recognize the right turn.

ROBIN: It was a left turn.

MARSHALL: Oh my god, Robin, this is just a metaphor!  It's just a metaphor! (He screams like a boy on a playground, he's so like that.)

TED: Please.  Let me continue.  I can't go on, I can't continue, there's too many things I want to talk about, and too many people I want to remember.  But that's ok.  Because I think I understand something now.  I have a soul mate.  In this world, I have a soul mate, but she's not from here.  And she doesn't work like you do, she isn't stuck in a body, isn't stuck in time.  And when she's happy with someone I want, she inhabits her body so that I can know her, but it's always very short.  I don't know why it's very short.  Maybe it's so she can disappear, and so I will wonder where she went, and when I go off looking again, she'll know I'm following her, and my love for her is real.  But she's not here, she doesn't live here, she can't live here.  So this, this is all impossible, it's an impossible want, and it's probably not very important that it's impossible, she likes it when I'm looking, and the world is sweet and green and everything else is possible because this singular thing is impossible, and can never be real.  But you, you're close, you were very close, you were the only one who could hold it for longer than a short while, because, not because you are a mermaid, you are not a mermaid, because you love them as much as I do, because you're looking for the same thing, and that's why my love for you will never die.  Even though you are probably a lot of different people.  But you are definitely my favorite, my very favorite one.

ROBIN: I wonder if polyamory might be a way out of all of your problems, Ted.

TED: It's not that easy, it's really not that easy.

BARNEY: I have been working out really hard and I pulled a muscle in my chest and it's on the left side near my heart and it's really freaking me out.

LILY: Nambala sonofabitch! (She breaks, this is a blooper and they all love it.  Laughs and funny comments.)  Can I take that again?

MARSHALL: I have to take a phone call.

(Cut to new scene with MARSHALL outside by a phone booth.  He uses his cell phone inside the phone booth because these kids have such an eye for retro cool.)

MARSHALL: If you came back, I would hold you tighter no matter what.  It wouldn't matter to me that you'd try to keep your distance, to protect yourself with fake coolness so I wouldn't start thinking this was permanent.  It doesn't matter.  You come back for a short time, and then you go, that's how this works, I know that.  But if you came back, I wouldn't change my plans to see you, to make you anxious that it might not go so well, and I would be disappointed.  I would keep doing what I do, but when I saw you, I would drop everything and run at you with the strength of an elephant, and no power on earth could stop me from making me wake you up, so I could see that look in your eye, the one you get when you're finally here, the one you have right as you recognize me.  This has been going on for a very long time.

(When MARSHALL comes back in, they are all dressed up as dolphins.)

(Except for ROBIN.)

MARSHALL: Sea party!  (He dances with them in a dolphin dance that is not just a little sexual.  ROBIN doesn't even watch.)

ROBIN: Dolphins freak me out more than you can imagine.

BARNEY: Oh, my heart, oh, my heart, oh, this is very weird.

LILY: (Talking like an old wizened black man)  Looks like our Barney is finally learning a life lesson, one we could all benefit from.

TED: Ow, someone is on my flipper.


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

the love bar/ more

Oh there's always more.
This night, TED is so busy not looking at all of his text messages from the last few months, that he is almost convinced to himself that none of anything really mattered all that much.  Having become recently Buddhist, he is not attached to anything.  But he's reading, oh, he's really reading, he's looking for secret signs.

TED (looking at his phone): Right here, this one right here, look at this smiley face.  Do you see that?
MARSHALL: Ted, buddy, listen.  My homegrown midwestern good horse sense is finely tuned tonight, and I can tell you that the smiley face there is nothing more than a "shucks-a-gimmee."
TED: I don't understand your ways, sir.  I don't know what that means.
(VOICE-OVER): Marshall understood it better than I did.  You see, 15 years ago when we were all just teenagers, there was one girl in class that everybody loved.  Her name was Mazzie, and she was the first goth in Minnesota.  She would put smiley faces on all the notes from all the boys and girls who wanted her, and that smiley face meant "give me death."

FLASHBACK:
MARSHALL gets a note from the GOTH GIRL, who smiles at him, and then spits out nails and blood.

BACK TO SCENE:
TED: I had no idea a smiley face meant she wants to spit blood at me.
MARSHALL: Ted, chicks always want to spit blood, we're lucky when they don't.  And when they don't, buddy, it's magic.  That's what I have with Lily.
TED: Oh, fuck off.  Just fuck off.
(Long bro silence.  He keeps looking at his phone.)
TED: On October 21st, the day after I did a voodoo spell on her hair, she wrote me this..."Hahaha, I don't know what's wrong with me today, my head is full of xs and os."  Right there, that means she wants to make out.  And I missed it.
MARSHALL: I wonder if Lily ever did voodoo on me.
TED: And right here, the day after that, she wrote this, look, this is at 7 in the morning, she's never up at 7 in the morning, she must have been sleepless, thinking about me.
BARNEY: Or still up from the night before, doing the "wah-wah-wah," with a coupla strangers, what?
TED: She writes: "You and I will never be able to wear the same clothes."
MARSHALL: Lily always wears my clothes, like she wants to possess me, possess my very soul.
TED: That sounds bad, but it's not, because of what we were talking about the week before, really, this is very sweet.  Wow, she always loved me.
MARSHALL: I don't think I ever really loved her, I think she has a doll that looks like me in her purse and she makes me do things that I wouldn't do, like pretend that I'm not Jewish.
TED: I understand what it is she wants now, I understand for the very first time.  (He goes out looking for her.)
BARNEY plays with a bottle of ketchup, squirting it on all the guests.  Haha, that Barney.
And MARSHALL is very upset, and planning revenge against the one who betrayed him with her dark dark magic.
And scene.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

this got a little weird

This might be just a little confusing.
This was a performance that I didn't intend.  
And the documentation here is hard to read, the images don't ever really resolve, and there's video, but I don't know who has it, or where it is.
This might be better than anything I could have intended, though, because something happened that turned my head somewhere else, something happened that I wasn't expecting.



There's an event here, it's in a lot of places, it's not just here, there's an event, First Friday, it happens the first Friday of every month, and it's estimated that 14,000 people come out for this.  
The galleries are open and there are food trucks and there are people selling art on the street (old men selling hand carved toy coffins with carved skeletons inside for $15, kids spray painting cardboard with stars for $10, and people at tables selling hand-made jewelry for $175.
It's unusual for Phoenix because people don't go out and see things.  As a general rule, it's one of the hardest big cities to live in if you do anything that involves an audience.  People stay in because everything is too far away, and everything is suburbs, and everyone in the suburbs thinks that it's dangerous downtown.  (I live downtown, and have only been robbed with a rifle once, when I was sitting on my porch smoking a cigar).



This happened on Friday, March 1st, my friend Lance Gharavi was given Pop-Up Park (a park on 2nd Street and Roosevelt), to do a live performance event.  This was during the Emerge Conference (an ASU event where scientists and artists mix their heads all up in each other and make things and 
talk about potential things they could make, for three days); so there would be people coming
 from Tempe to Phoenix to see whatever we did in the park, and there would be some 
other people from the general public who might stop by.  

And this is where things went so very different.
First, I want to say that I really did think that I would be in a corner where no one could see unless they were looking very closely.  There would be a dj by the street, and my friend, Chelsea Pace, would be performing in a central spot, and I had this idea that I would be doing yoga in a little corner of the park, some place that no one would see.

I really didn't think this through.  




I spent two weeks running this through the back of my mind, thinking about what this might be.  I'm sort of obsessed with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, so I decided I would do a performance where I was a phantom of Orpheus, and I would be doing a rite on Eurydice's grave, and that I would be praying to bring her back, even though I couldn't bring her back, but I would be trying.  I had a white cloth for the ground, a red sheet that could represent her body and could also cover my body.  Some fake black roses, a scissors, some red string, a candle, my ipod (so I could time the performances in my head, by pacing them according to the music, because I knew that I would probably be going into a light trance, and I would need something to keep track of time.  I also had some cascarilla (white chalk made of eggshells, sacred to children of Obatala in the Lucumi tradition (I use it to keep my head cool and for different kinds of cleaning).  Oh, and beet juice.  I made some beet juice and put it in a bottle, because I knew I would get thirsty, and I suspected it might look interesting to spit it out on white cloth.  I painted my body white, and watched a youtube video on how to make a loincloth, and was ready to do this.

The rite to Eurydice was something in my head, I figured if anyone happened to find it interesting to watch for a minute or two, they wouldn't know the context, and it might not matter.  I would keep busy doing yoga poses and that would give anyone passing by a sense that movement was happening.  I really didn't have very much planned out except for this.

So, I met some friends there, and my roommate said he'd be close by just in case someone in the crowd decided to attack me for some reason, with a rifle or whatever, and I laid down the white sheet and made the grave, and put on my iPod, and sat on the grave and did some deep breathing for a long time.
And it was terribly, terribly alarming, really, when I opened my eyes, because there were hundreds of people standing in a circle around me.

Apparently Phoenix is really hungry for live performance, and that was exhilarating, and it was also interesting trying to keep my pulse going very slow, because I was not really thinking about graves and longing for a mythic lover at all, but really more focused on the idea that I had not planned this out very well.  I suspected that if I did yoga, they would catch on pretty quickly that there wasn't much thought put into this, and they would move on, and I decided that it would be all right if they did move on, but it might be a lot nicer if they didn't, so I started focusing again on the idea of the grave and missing someone, and my movements got very slow, and the music took me away from everything, and soon I was trying to eat dirt, spitting out beet juice, and focusing on moving in the way that I move when I am trying not to weep, to move from a place of very deep mourning.  And I also decided to move from a spiritual part of me that I usually keep very hidden, because it is not quite secret, not quite public, but vulnerable, sure, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Apparently it was right, if there is a right to these things, because I eventually did three versions of this rite, each one lasting about 45 minutes, and I understand that most people stayed the whole time each time.  And some goth kids came back at the end of the night because they wanted to know more about what the hell this was.  And because it's Phoenix, there were some people who thought it was just crazy (and a little cold for sure), some who thought it was mesmerizing and didn't know why, and some who thought it was nice to see performance art in their city for a change (and I'm sure there were some who thought it was stupid, or narcissistic, or pretentious, and it's probably all these things and none of them and maybe it does not matter so much).

What excited me the most was that although I've done lots of performances and am not shy, this was by far the most exposed I've ever felt, and for the first time I didn't have a script, or a stack of poems, or any projection, no media at all except for an ipod that was just for me, just a body in space, one that could not speak above a whisper, and tons of people.  It's likely that most of them never heard of Orpheus & Eurydice, but it's certain that they know what it means to mourn somebody and miss somebody, because everybody misses somebody.  That's what makes us like phantoms, that's something phantoms have in common.





(this next bit is really not part of the thing for Transart, so if you're reading this with Transart vision, you can stop now)



(but if you want to read...)

(this next part is written after the performance, and is where I'm being a good researcher, and writing a phenomenological response to the performance, and also connecting it to the piece I'm starting to work on for Transart/Plymouth.  After doing the performance, I realize that the next piece will have more to do with Orpheus and Eurydice than I had realized)

((anyway, cheers, and thanks for reading....xo's....))




This is a scene for an elevator, where Ted is trying to tell Robin about his recent turn to performance art (keeping with the Ted & Robin thing here because I can talk about things that are very personal and think that no one knows what I'm talking about, but it's also going into a play, so it's really just me making art and nothing more than that).  ((So stop reading into it))..  (((Honestly, I don't know who that last comment was for, I think it was for me)))...
This is a scene in an elevator, and no one really looks who they are supposed to pretend to be.  It all looks a little fucked up.  Even the elevator is fucked up, it's very old fashioned, one of those pre-electricity elevators, before stairs even, this elevator is really a rock.  Ted is talking to Robin on a rock and it's very heartfelt so watch out, this will be terribly confessional.
TED: (this is a ted talk)  You would think, you would really have to think, or I would have to think, you know, being on a white sheet in a loin cloth in front of hundreds of people when it's cold, rolling around and pouring blood out of my mouth and listening to headphones, that I would be a little, you know, "I think this might be the most self-absorbed thing I've ever done, and to anyone who doesn't really know me, this would be, you know, crazy, that I look crazy," is how I would think I would feel, except no, except not at all, except no, not at all.  There was something else.  I was Orpheus, a skeleton of him, missing Eurydice, and she was underneath the ground, and we were both dead and we were on the opposite side of the worlds, and it was about missing somebody, it was like that.  Don't look at me like that, this wasn't about you, I wasn't thinking about you, not at all, except in this way of like, well, you're a lot of people, you are a lot of people to me, and I was missing that, and while I was missing that, these other people were watching and they were seeing themselves missing someone in all of it, so it was one of those kinds of things, where you take on what they give you and return it in some kind of series of ritual actions and the blood is like a purging.  But it's not real blood.  It's not my blood, it's not her blood, and it's not chicken blood, although, of course, the people who don't know me, they were thinking that it could be any of those things, and probably was something very dark, but really, it wasn't dark, it was beet juice, which is healthy.  Because, really, maybe three years ago, it might have been chicken blood, but that's not really appropriate for a park.  Not with kids and old people.  I mean, I will do these things, because this is what I know how to do, but I can do them so they are healthy, so something gets awoken in them, and something is cleaned in me.  This is exciting to me.  What we can do to each other in public spaces.  But the part I wanted to tell you, after I covered myself in small pieces of bloody cloth, covering and cleaning all of my wounds, I put my face on the ground, on the sheet on the ground, and that's when I started to think about you, this was the first time in the performance that I thought about you.  Because it was a trance, and because it wasn't a live human acting, it was all impulse, I started to chew on the ground, to try to chew the ground beneath the sheet, and my teeth couldn't get a grip on the ground, and it was endless and fruitless and wasted, it was a wasted action, except not at all wasted.  Because it told me what I wanted to do, where my heart lives right now, I want to touch you with my mouth but there is all of this grave trappings in the way, and it's a meal that I cannot have, apparently, apparently I cannot eat, I want to eat but I can't eat, and that's where I live.  Which will be either terribly disturbing or terribly sweet, depending on how you feel about me, and that's something that I'm not allowed to know, apparently.  But for me, I know, I know that, and it's not terribly revealing, really, to say that at the root of all of this is this strange recognition of a whole bunch of ancestors underneath all of this, under my clothes, under your clothes, we're not unclothed but utterly naked in the presence of other spirits, those who came before, and for whatever reason, they are speaking, and they are speaking of holiness and that same fire of hunger that was there at the beginning of everything.  Except when you live forward in time, in time that moves forward, there are all the usual confusions that go with living in a body with memories and children and lovers and burials, except, the second layer of except is more than the first, except.  When you live in the circle, in time that moves in a circle, there is no death, only birth, one birth that leads naturally into the next birth, and I am starting to see for the very first time that these metaphors for birth really don't refer to the physical act of birth, of being born, because our own physical birth is already a metaphor for something else, some very important secret that can only be answered in being born.


































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...