already i can't see. i came back after looking into the secret cave where reflections ask you what is the matter, and then make you matter by speaking you back into being. i came back after having a thousand things done to the insides, small adjustments that would make sense somewhere down the road when i was speaking with dogs about the things that the dead might teach us. i came back after fighting every impulse to avoid thinking about the things that i could lose, after losing my attachment to all of them, and after deciding which ones i wanted to keep, and which ones might keep me. these things became like spiders, weaving images of each other over the back of my eyelids, until i woke up and could not see any more. this is the weaker eye that is there for minor adjustments, things that cannot make sense when i see them, but will make themselves matter down the road.
this is a speaking subject dog, this dog says that it is time for the dead to enter into the realm of the living, this dog says that after a certain point, we cease to matter, and become spirits that occasionally haunt our own bodies. i would haunt my own body if it gave me license to haunt other bodies, but there is no license for that, it only comes with a desire for flight, for an escape out of the present through the holes in the body that mark a present that matters, and gives birth to other matters. i can't see, and i wonder what i have become, buying wine at 7 in the morning when i don't drink, and hoping these eye drops take the sting out of the things i did see, things that won't make sense until further down the road, and things that already matter. i already see that already there are things that matter, and making them matter is only a question of touching them in the dark to make sure there are not phantoms. i have no idea if the iroko scratches up and down my arm are the maps of a time when a real tree touched real skin, but i know that when i smell the leaf of something that is always already alive, i remember things i could not possibly know from empirical experience. in this new empire, there is nothing to fall, and no one to fiddle, because there are no leaders, and on my best days, there are no agendas in my pocket, and i.m not looking to uncover things from people who's intentions might not be honest.
this is the sight of an honest dog, cut to half, white and red to feed an obsession, and a command to stop looking forward and look down at the feet, because the future is told through our bones, on our bodies, in a moment that matters, that passes too quickly, that's too far to arrange with any swiss precision, but entirely possible, and it matters that it has started to matter to me.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
deterritorializing the institutionalized body without organs
i want to see you leaving the hospital without any scars, but no one leaves without scars.
i want to see you leaving the things that were poisoning you back there where they can be put to earth, so they can become the next thing, and you can become the next thing.
i want to see you pushing forward with your head to taste the gorgeous holes in the world, the ones, only the ones that are capable of giving birth to you.
i want to see you spasming and twitching like a visionary saint during a 30-day fast when the godhead is deciding to explode you in a spiritual ecstasy in your heart in your soul & spilling over your pelvic bones.
i want to see you open your mouth for a sugar cube that will make you see sweet things, & tell me sweet things about what you do see.
i want to see you close some doors behind you until your least favorite bats suffocate to death, because there will always be new bats born on the walls of the caves of the world made of roads.
i want to see you want so much that your want becomes like clay, tangible and ripe for animation, dense enough to carry itself on a shallow river, & thick enough to cover over the holes in the roads of the world so you don't fall through, so you can't fall through, so you won't fall through when my head is turned.
i want to see your flickering faces growing still with zen or age, narcotics or laughter, still enough to hear me tell you that i want to make it so that you can't disappear if i turn around to see if you're still behind me, because my throat hurts too much to sing in the underworld today, and i'm scarred & spilled & sweet, and thirsty to taste your salt.
i want to see you leaving the things that were poisoning you back there where they can be put to earth, so they can become the next thing, and you can become the next thing.
i want to see you pushing forward with your head to taste the gorgeous holes in the world, the ones, only the ones that are capable of giving birth to you.
i want to see you spasming and twitching like a visionary saint during a 30-day fast when the godhead is deciding to explode you in a spiritual ecstasy in your heart in your soul & spilling over your pelvic bones.
i want to see you open your mouth for a sugar cube that will make you see sweet things, & tell me sweet things about what you do see.
i want to see you close some doors behind you until your least favorite bats suffocate to death, because there will always be new bats born on the walls of the caves of the world made of roads.
i want to see you want so much that your want becomes like clay, tangible and ripe for animation, dense enough to carry itself on a shallow river, & thick enough to cover over the holes in the roads of the world so you don't fall through, so you can't fall through, so you won't fall through when my head is turned.
i want to see your flickering faces growing still with zen or age, narcotics or laughter, still enough to hear me tell you that i want to make it so that you can't disappear if i turn around to see if you're still behind me, because my throat hurts too much to sing in the underworld today, and i'm scarred & spilled & sweet, and thirsty to taste your salt.
Monday, February 28, 2011
wolf horse half moon
this is the morning when wild horses come calling,
come calling through busting fences, come calling through re-arranging random objects,
this thing that was once here is no longer, and that thing that was once held is now lost,
they come frantically moving hearts through chests that can move civilizations,
making small things into enormous troubles, they are come to call things into
question to make more trouble, this is the morning when they stomp too close
to the wolves that get in their way, wolves too tired to move quickly on a morning
that is too cold for words. this is the morning when their brands all show
alliances that don't connect to each other, and never will, brought to the heat of
white metal, and they don't fetishize the smell of their own skin burning, this is
the morning when taboos and totems are placed on opposite sides of the beam
and there is no balance. it's a day when a moon starts off slow, a sliver of a
conversation that gets lost in a dream outside a courtroom, this is a wild heart that's
been caught swimming in its own bloodstream, unable to separate the blood
that marks wounds or the blood that runs from the familial river, this is the
morning when a wild horse gets caught in time and struck silent, considering alliances
by the faint light of the moon, unable to make sense of the sound of the blood rushing
through the ears. these wolves that gather, waiting for the moon to grow,
mark their territories with the smells that please them the most, circling the young and
making space for a new collection of objects that have secret power. this tooth is
the one that came off on me when you had your face buried in my neck, this
is the nail that was left in my back after a night that turned too quickly into a morning,
this is the carbon that fell off my skin after that fire. i'm becoming someone
something else, on a cold morning, i hope it's you, but all i can see is the heat
of my own breath, and the bones of a hundred generations of ancestors come calling,
calling horses on one side of the mirror or another, but it's too early in the day, or
too late in the month, to decide what belongs where, what needs to be shed for the
spring, or what new lives might decide to stay.
come calling through busting fences, come calling through re-arranging random objects,
this thing that was once here is no longer, and that thing that was once held is now lost,
they come frantically moving hearts through chests that can move civilizations,
making small things into enormous troubles, they are come to call things into
question to make more trouble, this is the morning when they stomp too close
to the wolves that get in their way, wolves too tired to move quickly on a morning
that is too cold for words. this is the morning when their brands all show
alliances that don't connect to each other, and never will, brought to the heat of
white metal, and they don't fetishize the smell of their own skin burning, this is
the morning when taboos and totems are placed on opposite sides of the beam
and there is no balance. it's a day when a moon starts off slow, a sliver of a
conversation that gets lost in a dream outside a courtroom, this is a wild heart that's
been caught swimming in its own bloodstream, unable to separate the blood
that marks wounds or the blood that runs from the familial river, this is the
morning when a wild horse gets caught in time and struck silent, considering alliances
by the faint light of the moon, unable to make sense of the sound of the blood rushing
through the ears. these wolves that gather, waiting for the moon to grow,
mark their territories with the smells that please them the most, circling the young and
making space for a new collection of objects that have secret power. this tooth is
the one that came off on me when you had your face buried in my neck, this
is the nail that was left in my back after a night that turned too quickly into a morning,
this is the carbon that fell off my skin after that fire. i'm becoming someone
something else, on a cold morning, i hope it's you, but all i can see is the heat
of my own breath, and the bones of a hundred generations of ancestors come calling,
calling horses on one side of the mirror or another, but it's too early in the day, or
too late in the month, to decide what belongs where, what needs to be shed for the
spring, or what new lives might decide to stay.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
poli-trance
the divide between the mind and body, that makes it possible for us to go to war, comes to a crossroads over the course of a week, over and over again, over the course of a week, and bleeds into another week, and comes to the edges of a forest or a desert, no one knows because the road's not talking (can't, no mouth), and not even the dogs are giving hints...but the hour between day and night, the wolves wake up, and they always say, this is what i want what i really really want, but the shadows of hands obscure the words until the words make no more sense, and the touch of a hand on a hand causes the flesh to cry like it was woken up from a long dream, and there's nothing to suggest this isn't true...and her eyes grow softer behind the spectacles of a speaking subject representing polygonal identities, speaking arguments that play like a tango, and dreams that play like complex social mathematics...but this is not a love poem...and her eyes grow wise under the moon, half wolf, half irish folk singer, laying bare the weight and witness of nights spent alone when the lightning in the blood sends pain to unsuspecting places in the body, and there is war, and there is love, and there is war and love...but this is not a love poem...and her eyes growl with fire under the spell of a yellow candle, spelling words with small fingers under hands that won't try to bend her weight, and not waiting to bend anything but the river, which does these things on her own, and this is when the wolf is louder than the human, and the notion of becoming animal falls at the feet of a hundred french intellectuals, waiting on the floor at her feet, so many feet, and so many tracks from boots on the bed, but only one hunger, only one hunger, that succumbs to the whispers from the river who's kept possibility hiding in her banks...no one can speak when they have left the human world and entered into the animal realm, and so half-possessed, there is no better time than to plan a difficult freedom that is not an escape from this...his jealous bones buried where even the dogs can't reach, to be dug up later as a reminder of another time, when institutions mattered...now mothers matter, bodies matter, and light is the matter that passes between one tongue to another, constructing texts underneath a moon, and even this moon won't dare to speak for the road, it unravels like fingers and find the stories on the tongues of lovers who want to remember...again, not a love poem...and they are so shellshocked by the holes in the day, when the phantoms of the past or the future come in like stuttering tracks on a glitching video, urgent and indecipherable messages that would make anyone anxious, but pulled by the same spirit who comes to say, "this is what sweetness tastes like, and this is the only way to make you remember..."...he wants to write her poems, about how the smooth hands belie the talking bellies, about how this is more complicated than it seemed, about how the puzzles of the moon are like puzzles out of borges, and the same tango music is still playing in the background, and about how this plays like the answer to a thousand dormant charms, come to full power in a year haunted by 11s, about how the idea of twins is never far from the same hands and the same stomachs, but his wolf tongue is too tangled up by the jewels in his mouth...and it rests here, somewhere on this bank, under a moonless sky, the sand covered with the scripts of a thousand possible identities, where fear of water and fear of dehyrdration bounce around like nervous birds, until words are no longer necessary, and the river wakes them up to sing what sounds like impossible words for a love poem written just for them.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
favorite movies
this one, this dream of a movie, where all the characters are capable of chameleon-like feats, and trained in the tactics of transgression, making small revolutions in the air, hands circling around stories like rings around the moon, and no one represents a force they have not contended with personally, burned and branded by the fires of a thousand desires, and every moment another flight in another direction...a travel movie that takes place on the road, which, if it had a mouth, would start singing sweet songs in the middle of these thunderstorms...this movie, like any film, is tracking movements in time, complicated narrations intersecting with social realism and exploding into the library at the edges of revolution...this movie is a dream of a movie, beginning with a revolution, the theme songs written on the insides of the collars, too close to the heart to be heard by anyone but the spirits at the bottom of the sea...
Monday, February 7, 2011
heartbreak and identity in winter
This is a dream about London (last week was Italy, revolutions in love and art, and sunny people): I'm getting ready to go buy pints of ale and french cigarettes (oh, but I don't drink, and am quitting smoking these days, so this is kind of an anitthesis to the Italy dream where no one smoked because we didn't want to, because it was a love and art revolution, and we needed to work on our stylish motorcycles, and there was no time, just like in real life), but before I can leave to go out drinking (I don't drink), I get something in my room, and there's this woman I used to know, sitting on my bed, and she's facing away from me, combing her long, black (and curly, yes, it was you) hair. I was happy to see her at 3 in the morning, but she was not so happy to see me. She tells me that she has a new boy and doesn't care how I am, and I tell her that I didn't invite her to comb her hair on my bed at 3 in the morning, and why does everyone tell me she has a new boy, this is just too much, I was trying to be affable.
This was not the heartbreak, though, because something about her was very Oshun-y, with the comb and that sweet way she has of telling me that I'm still in love (with who? this is a complicated question, and not even 8 1/2 projects will answer, but Kassandra knows) and wrong about everything (thank u, Yalorde, one day I will appreciate all this, but not at 3 in the morning), and a way of waking me up way before the light, which it is, and I am, and this is a day, one where things will come to be revealed. Some jobs, some news about jobs, a lot of writing, and some more news.
Something about her was also very not Oshun-y, and very Banshee-y, and this is how she spent the day visiting me. It's a perfect beginning of a day when Death comes calling, or looming, around the men in my family, and in not so subtle ways...some of the destruction is self-imposed, the way some men have of calling their survival into question by testing it, because they want to stay uncommitted to their love with the world (for the record, I love you and I adore you, and I will never leave you, but I know one day you will leave me, that's worth the price of the heartbreak). I would rather be torn up about a new love or an old love or a possibly maybe, than to watch the men I've learned from fall to pieces, but we all have our own ways of falling to pieces.
I was put back together at the side of the river more than once, and I will do it again, but never with the same people, because you are always a different river, and you find new ways of charming me...and at the end of a long stay in a cafe, I find a long, thick black hair in my helmet, I don't know whose it is, but I have suspicions, or rather, wishes, & so I wrap the hair in my gum and swallow it, even if Ana Mendieta is the only one who understands my longing for home, or what home means to me.
Good night, I'm going to Spain, and I don't care what you had for breakfast (oh, but I really do...u know me, I always will...)
This was not the heartbreak, though, because something about her was very Oshun-y, with the comb and that sweet way she has of telling me that I'm still in love (with who? this is a complicated question, and not even 8 1/2 projects will answer, but Kassandra knows) and wrong about everything (thank u, Yalorde, one day I will appreciate all this, but not at 3 in the morning), and a way of waking me up way before the light, which it is, and I am, and this is a day, one where things will come to be revealed. Some jobs, some news about jobs, a lot of writing, and some more news.
Something about her was also very not Oshun-y, and very Banshee-y, and this is how she spent the day visiting me. It's a perfect beginning of a day when Death comes calling, or looming, around the men in my family, and in not so subtle ways...some of the destruction is self-imposed, the way some men have of calling their survival into question by testing it, because they want to stay uncommitted to their love with the world (for the record, I love you and I adore you, and I will never leave you, but I know one day you will leave me, that's worth the price of the heartbreak). I would rather be torn up about a new love or an old love or a possibly maybe, than to watch the men I've learned from fall to pieces, but we all have our own ways of falling to pieces.
I was put back together at the side of the river more than once, and I will do it again, but never with the same people, because you are always a different river, and you find new ways of charming me...and at the end of a long stay in a cafe, I find a long, thick black hair in my helmet, I don't know whose it is, but I have suspicions, or rather, wishes, & so I wrap the hair in my gum and swallow it, even if Ana Mendieta is the only one who understands my longing for home, or what home means to me.
Good night, I'm going to Spain, and I don't care what you had for breakfast (oh, but I really do...u know me, I always will...)
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
3rd part/restricted manifesto
More structures:
Structure of meditation:
- clarifying
- exertion of muscle, breath body bone, and more clarifying
- then release into the dream/vision (flood)
- drowning
- and then an answer
(she says, "i never got over you, and you'll never get over me, and the only way to resolve this is to turn on each other, move through each other until there is nothing left, until we are like tigers running around the tree and spinning into butter," and i say "we tried that and it didn't work, we still live to fight again another day, and i carry this list of precious things, but i don't know what it's for" and someone else interrupts, but this year we all decide not to ask for advice about anything except work, so they cannot speak in this place)
((if they were smart, they might say, "this is a call that was answered, but you forgot the words, because you forgot to make them up as you went along, and that's the only way to win the sweetness from the river, reckless invention and a larger capacity for tenderness, prepare for war and cultivate the capacity for innovation..."))
(((and leave a message)))
(((like in, dont invoke if there's no message)))
(-I couldn't love you until you broke in a thousand pieces, and there are those I do not recognize, but this one, for this one, I would do anything-)
Kassandra has to wander.
We get so far from the ancestral home that not even the stars can recognize who we are (and when someone tells us that the constellations have changed, we might believe them).
I was told to give up the search for the Grail and get lost in the Art, and to make my work the arrow and the target. When I set out, I didn't get to the point where I couldn't see the shore before I remembered that the search was also the art. But by that point, I was far enough away to see that what haunted me had three faces: one was madness, delight, destruction; one was caught between the flat image and the one between two pieces of cloth; one was able to change faces nine times at the edges of the water, unable to decide between the cemetery and the sea.
The face I couldn't see was the one that was always just on the verge of disappearing, black and cafe c/crema, and just enough red to make things dangerous, always just on the edges of the next wave, so I went off looking for that one, while taking the other three with me, tied to my back and sometimes hooked into the skin, and somewhere in this the work started to take shape. An ancestral tree with twisted roots, or a mermaid who insists on her right to change her face with the moon.
And then it struck me that these moons were not there to take me further away from her, but were always bringing me closer. I was entranced by all the faces, and deeply in love, and she said, "then start chasing me, now that you recognize me."
The moment I walked into the future, everything changed, but it took months before I could believe it.
This did not look like happiness.
This did not feel like happiness.
Not how I expected.
But it did look and feel like a dream where magic was not just a possibility, but a law. And I was eating and sleeping, tasting the food and remembering my dreams, and this was better than happiness. & the unbearable heat on the road had been cooled, and movement was easy. I would have everything I wanted when I needed it, and the moments began to fall into an order that was charmingly chronological. She was not who I wanted her to be, and she was not who I wanted to think her to be, she was this, and this is the one I was thinking of, and that was all, and it would probably change again, and for the moment that was all right.
In this dream, we cannot control what the others do, and because magic guides us, we know better than to try. And the rest falls into place from there, subject to the same laws of gravity that make the moon the best light for the dark.
Structure of meditation:
- clarifying
- exertion of muscle, breath body bone, and more clarifying
- then release into the dream/vision (flood)
- drowning
- and then an answer
(she says, "i never got over you, and you'll never get over me, and the only way to resolve this is to turn on each other, move through each other until there is nothing left, until we are like tigers running around the tree and spinning into butter," and i say "we tried that and it didn't work, we still live to fight again another day, and i carry this list of precious things, but i don't know what it's for" and someone else interrupts, but this year we all decide not to ask for advice about anything except work, so they cannot speak in this place)
((if they were smart, they might say, "this is a call that was answered, but you forgot the words, because you forgot to make them up as you went along, and that's the only way to win the sweetness from the river, reckless invention and a larger capacity for tenderness, prepare for war and cultivate the capacity for innovation..."))
(((and leave a message)))
(((like in, dont invoke if there's no message)))
(-I couldn't love you until you broke in a thousand pieces, and there are those I do not recognize, but this one, for this one, I would do anything-)
Kassandra has to wander.
We get so far from the ancestral home that not even the stars can recognize who we are (and when someone tells us that the constellations have changed, we might believe them).
I was told to give up the search for the Grail and get lost in the Art, and to make my work the arrow and the target. When I set out, I didn't get to the point where I couldn't see the shore before I remembered that the search was also the art. But by that point, I was far enough away to see that what haunted me had three faces: one was madness, delight, destruction; one was caught between the flat image and the one between two pieces of cloth; one was able to change faces nine times at the edges of the water, unable to decide between the cemetery and the sea.
The face I couldn't see was the one that was always just on the verge of disappearing, black and cafe c/crema, and just enough red to make things dangerous, always just on the edges of the next wave, so I went off looking for that one, while taking the other three with me, tied to my back and sometimes hooked into the skin, and somewhere in this the work started to take shape. An ancestral tree with twisted roots, or a mermaid who insists on her right to change her face with the moon.
And then it struck me that these moons were not there to take me further away from her, but were always bringing me closer. I was entranced by all the faces, and deeply in love, and she said, "then start chasing me, now that you recognize me."
The moment I walked into the future, everything changed, but it took months before I could believe it.
This did not look like happiness.
This did not feel like happiness.
Not how I expected.
But it did look and feel like a dream where magic was not just a possibility, but a law. And I was eating and sleeping, tasting the food and remembering my dreams, and this was better than happiness. & the unbearable heat on the road had been cooled, and movement was easy. I would have everything I wanted when I needed it, and the moments began to fall into an order that was charmingly chronological. She was not who I wanted her to be, and she was not who I wanted to think her to be, she was this, and this is the one I was thinking of, and that was all, and it would probably change again, and for the moment that was all right.
In this dream, we cannot control what the others do, and because magic guides us, we know better than to try. And the rest falls into place from there, subject to the same laws of gravity that make the moon the best light for the dark.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Second part of a beginning of a manifesto
There is something entirely erotic about the way the diviner's hands move along the straw mat, touching the shells and rubbing them with chalk, something that happens before the chanting starts, and for me, it's a little bit like falling in love, because at that moment, everything is possible.
For all the eves and the eyes that passed through these flying windows over the course of 12 seasons, nothing could light up the visions of a night like the promise of things to come, and when they are laid out in succession, there is hope and sadness; hope, because some of these things seem likely, and sadness, because so many of them are true. Touching the air where the diviner is touching the tongues of the Orishas is planting the twisted roots of the feet & the spine in the center of a hurricane (sometimes it's the mountain, and sometimes it's the sea, but it always feels like a hurricane, because the Dead always come to pay their due, and ask for what they're owed for what they do).
I want to write you the poem that only you could understand, one that speaks to you like they speak to me, and if it's like trying to become divine while inhabiting this body, then that's what I'll do, even if I am torn apart again and again. Because I love to write you poems, and the ones I wrote on your belly are nothing like the ones you wrote on my back, so we're still even, and I never thanked you for your poems, and you never thanked me for mine, love means never having to say thank you, or I'm sorry, because that's up to the Dead to decide which nights gratitude and regret come out to tango, shadows of the thing we were, or maybe we were the shadows of this. This is the night when the melancholy of the moon comes through the window and says that this is just another phase. But even in the smallest sliver, I see traces of you, and when there is no moon, I listen to your absence and wonder if you hear the sounds of me not speaking a word about you, and not remembering a thing.
This phase of the moon is the space where the shells fall over the windows of the year, and the story begins with the black bird that flies above me while I fly through the streets, she is haunting me because she sees another cycle of grieving ahead, these months ahead are like waves, and in one breath I find you, and in another breath you lose me again, and these losses are never forever (which I did not suspect), and finding is never forever (which you told me), but goes on relentlessly. You are so many people. I love your faces. I watch them rise and fall on the mat of the moon, where some signs I recognize, and some are entirely new, and there are those that hint at something entirely unknowable from this vantage point. Eye can't see, and the evening is fading, just like every other version of you that I loved, lost, and mourned.
I wanted to write you a poem that had nothing to do with you, one where you couldn't see yourself reflected at all, but all these words do is try to reflect, because the words are like shells, making patterns that you are meant to learn and understand. And I haven't learned a thing. Except. Your mother taught me some things. Those nights when I was out on the sea, waiting for the storm to bring the next landlove closer, and you were dancing with the ugly boys, she taught me some things. There is a stone in my mouth where your heart used to be, and there are seven signs written on seven bones on my back. They add to the songs that you wrote there. The ones about everything being forgotten, the ones about everything being forgiven, and the ones about everything turning inside out. When you crawled into my skin you stained the third layer, the one that can't be reached except by knife point, and there's no music without blood, and no life.
This window will open and birds will fly back and forth, and no one will speak a word, because there's nothing left to be said, because it's a story that gets told on the bones of the living while they live, pulling us into another story, another version of you and another version of me. You, like a cold baby bird in my throat, never leaving my mouth, and since I can't throw you off, I will carry you with me, until you turn into something else, until your faces become the faces that I can't predict, that no diviner could account for, and no Orisha would ever announce. You come without warning, a sudden storm on a still night, and when I ask how you found me, you open your mouth and take out my heart, and show me the places where I invited you, in between the lines of waiting and sadness, and when you say if I find you I will lose you, I tell you that when you lose me you will find me.
For all the eves and the eyes that passed through these flying windows over the course of 12 seasons, nothing could light up the visions of a night like the promise of things to come, and when they are laid out in succession, there is hope and sadness; hope, because some of these things seem likely, and sadness, because so many of them are true. Touching the air where the diviner is touching the tongues of the Orishas is planting the twisted roots of the feet & the spine in the center of a hurricane (sometimes it's the mountain, and sometimes it's the sea, but it always feels like a hurricane, because the Dead always come to pay their due, and ask for what they're owed for what they do).
I want to write you the poem that only you could understand, one that speaks to you like they speak to me, and if it's like trying to become divine while inhabiting this body, then that's what I'll do, even if I am torn apart again and again. Because I love to write you poems, and the ones I wrote on your belly are nothing like the ones you wrote on my back, so we're still even, and I never thanked you for your poems, and you never thanked me for mine, love means never having to say thank you, or I'm sorry, because that's up to the Dead to decide which nights gratitude and regret come out to tango, shadows of the thing we were, or maybe we were the shadows of this. This is the night when the melancholy of the moon comes through the window and says that this is just another phase. But even in the smallest sliver, I see traces of you, and when there is no moon, I listen to your absence and wonder if you hear the sounds of me not speaking a word about you, and not remembering a thing.
This phase of the moon is the space where the shells fall over the windows of the year, and the story begins with the black bird that flies above me while I fly through the streets, she is haunting me because she sees another cycle of grieving ahead, these months ahead are like waves, and in one breath I find you, and in another breath you lose me again, and these losses are never forever (which I did not suspect), and finding is never forever (which you told me), but goes on relentlessly. You are so many people. I love your faces. I watch them rise and fall on the mat of the moon, where some signs I recognize, and some are entirely new, and there are those that hint at something entirely unknowable from this vantage point. Eye can't see, and the evening is fading, just like every other version of you that I loved, lost, and mourned.
I wanted to write you a poem that had nothing to do with you, one where you couldn't see yourself reflected at all, but all these words do is try to reflect, because the words are like shells, making patterns that you are meant to learn and understand. And I haven't learned a thing. Except. Your mother taught me some things. Those nights when I was out on the sea, waiting for the storm to bring the next landlove closer, and you were dancing with the ugly boys, she taught me some things. There is a stone in my mouth where your heart used to be, and there are seven signs written on seven bones on my back. They add to the songs that you wrote there. The ones about everything being forgotten, the ones about everything being forgiven, and the ones about everything turning inside out. When you crawled into my skin you stained the third layer, the one that can't be reached except by knife point, and there's no music without blood, and no life.
This window will open and birds will fly back and forth, and no one will speak a word, because there's nothing left to be said, because it's a story that gets told on the bones of the living while they live, pulling us into another story, another version of you and another version of me. You, like a cold baby bird in my throat, never leaving my mouth, and since I can't throw you off, I will carry you with me, until you turn into something else, until your faces become the faces that I can't predict, that no diviner could account for, and no Orisha would ever announce. You come without warning, a sudden storm on a still night, and when I ask how you found me, you open your mouth and take out my heart, and show me the places where I invited you, in between the lines of waiting and sadness, and when you say if I find you I will lose you, I tell you that when you lose me you will find me.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Beginning of a manifesto of Prophecy
Invocation for a year to start, with outlines for a map to leave the shore and launch into the sea.
Theater of Longing: Done. Really, this is done. No desire to return to that sea or that shore (that's a lie). Have we mined it all to find ourselves comfortable with the one we found (the place where longing can sit on the tongue, burning words into the mouth without dissolving it?)? ???
Like grief, this longing, this one that stays, the one that lasts at the bottom of the stomach of the stomach (inux5), this is only and nothing less than the amount that we can still live with. No one of us is able to live with the same amount, and this is why we can no longer use the word we. We simply have to stopped, and this is why we no longer say "we."
But we long, oh, we still long, but not for the same things (a lie) from the same source (oh, we are so lying tonight!). Lying lied laying or well lain.
Theater of Death: Done, and not by us. (here, by us I mean we).
Theater of Death and Longing: Oh, this was good, and not done, this was sexy and spooky and reminded me of you (just like everything) ((and by you, I mean we)). Sexy & spooky enough to get all the spirits up and howling through the house, and they always told me to keep saying your name until it burned a hole through my tongue (but it never burned through, that was their joke). ((ha ha very fucking funny they are)). (((oh, this is already too personal, and i'm exposing too much, but here's a secret: I said too much to the wrong people, but I never gave them a glimpse of the best parts of you, because I buried them in the dark part of my stone heart when you showed them to me in the dark and by the end of that first night, when I was trying not to see your name on the walls in the dark I was torn in a thousand pieces in the dark, and put back together in the dark, and I will show you what they taught me in the dark when you come to see my new work in the dark, and I promise I will recognize you, because you know how I know how to recognize you in the dark))).
Death and Longing: this involves-/involved/will done has involved/lagrimas para todos involucrados-the future and the past, just enough, to lay the foundations for a theater of Divination.
Divination, nation, nation (better with the sound effects in my head, and pictures of exploding giraffes).
Theater of Divination: a place where multiple realities and levels of meaning intersect and interact so that the perceiver makes connections and recognizes patterns (and patters) ((but not like easy like, I mean, we're not going to spell it out for you, the bones don't spell words, although sometimes they whisper, "your lover is an asshole, and it's time, oh, it's time to go...")) ((that kind of thing never happened to me, though, and by that I mean we, and so, and so, this is not about you, and here, by you I mean my first real love, Kristi Cook, who left me because she did not like my Sam Cobra doll, oh, I remember, I do, I remember everything))
These patterns that the perceiver can recognize are in themselves the very act of divination, so they can see the patterns of their own desire laid before their feet, and reflect on where they are, and what they want, and what they have to do to get to where they want to be, given the circumstances (not so mutable, I mean, this isn't about creating a kind of art that tells people they can realize their dreams, because it is apparent that things are indeed even stupider than we could have imagined, and that our intelligence cannot save us, but it can make other things possible...some dreams are for the children, and some are for the ones not even born...(that is not a lie).
Death & the Unborn: (the love not yet is the one that we really miss, the love that is never born is one that never dies and that one can never be mourned...the love not yet carries its own seeds of death not yet, and if we live in the future as well as the past, we can mourn for the already even if it is not yet, but oh, "What a lover gives is better than justice." - Gandhi)--
The present, the performers or the perceivers, the land of the living-->mourning & desiring all at once, but also breathing, and investing that breath in this space, this place right here, so. So, so, so.
A cycle that begins with Prophecy. Taking the order of diloggun, and speaking as if from the mouths of the wives of Orunmila: Oshun, Yemaya, Yewa, and how their energies make them particularly adept at designing and divining futures, with promises, threats, and a deep and burning love (right through the tongue) ((I never met anyone who could do that)) (((if i did I would marry her, and by her I mean you, and by I, I mean eyes, I mean, just watch this next part)))
(not yet. not yet the next part. you will have to come back to see)
We are going to start working on a new project on January 20th, because that's enough time by now to say this new year is well under way, and so far is filled with tremendous hope and angst, and the ghosts that may come have already revealed themselves, and all the longing from the last year is dead, as dead as the dirt, where things come back to life.....o don't read too much into that, but there's so much I want to tell you, it's been too long since you were here, and suddenly, suddenly this is an art where lovers meet and say I am sorry, but they don't know what they're sorry for, because no one knew the future before it happened...)))))))))
Oh, oh, oh, but Kassandra does, and this next one is going to be about her.
You should come.
(yes, I mean like that)
((we can help))
(((and by we, I mean tongues)))
Lies<-->Revolve
Liar<-->Revolution
And I thank you once again.
Let's go.
Theater of Longing: Done. Really, this is done. No desire to return to that sea or that shore (that's a lie). Have we mined it all to find ourselves comfortable with the one we found (the place where longing can sit on the tongue, burning words into the mouth without dissolving it?)? ???
Like grief, this longing, this one that stays, the one that lasts at the bottom of the stomach of the stomach (inux5), this is only and nothing less than the amount that we can still live with. No one of us is able to live with the same amount, and this is why we can no longer use the word we. We simply have to stopped, and this is why we no longer say "we."
But we long, oh, we still long, but not for the same things (a lie) from the same source (oh, we are so lying tonight!). Lying lied laying or well lain.
Theater of Death: Done, and not by us. (here, by us I mean we).
Theater of Death and Longing: Oh, this was good, and not done, this was sexy and spooky and reminded me of you (just like everything) ((and by you, I mean we)). Sexy & spooky enough to get all the spirits up and howling through the house, and they always told me to keep saying your name until it burned a hole through my tongue (but it never burned through, that was their joke). ((ha ha very fucking funny they are)). (((oh, this is already too personal, and i'm exposing too much, but here's a secret: I said too much to the wrong people, but I never gave them a glimpse of the best parts of you, because I buried them in the dark part of my stone heart when you showed them to me in the dark and by the end of that first night, when I was trying not to see your name on the walls in the dark I was torn in a thousand pieces in the dark, and put back together in the dark, and I will show you what they taught me in the dark when you come to see my new work in the dark, and I promise I will recognize you, because you know how I know how to recognize you in the dark))).
Death and Longing: this involves-/involved/will done has involved/lagrimas para todos involucrados-the future and the past, just enough, to lay the foundations for a theater of Divination.
Divination, nation, nation (better with the sound effects in my head, and pictures of exploding giraffes).
Theater of Divination: a place where multiple realities and levels of meaning intersect and interact so that the perceiver makes connections and recognizes patterns (and patters) ((but not like easy like, I mean, we're not going to spell it out for you, the bones don't spell words, although sometimes they whisper, "your lover is an asshole, and it's time, oh, it's time to go...")) ((that kind of thing never happened to me, though, and by that I mean we, and so, and so, this is not about you, and here, by you I mean my first real love, Kristi Cook, who left me because she did not like my Sam Cobra doll, oh, I remember, I do, I remember everything))
These patterns that the perceiver can recognize are in themselves the very act of divination, so they can see the patterns of their own desire laid before their feet, and reflect on where they are, and what they want, and what they have to do to get to where they want to be, given the circumstances (not so mutable, I mean, this isn't about creating a kind of art that tells people they can realize their dreams, because it is apparent that things are indeed even stupider than we could have imagined, and that our intelligence cannot save us, but it can make other things possible...some dreams are for the children, and some are for the ones not even born...(that is not a lie).
Death & the Unborn: (the love not yet is the one that we really miss, the love that is never born is one that never dies and that one can never be mourned...the love not yet carries its own seeds of death not yet, and if we live in the future as well as the past, we can mourn for the already even if it is not yet, but oh, "What a lover gives is better than justice." - Gandhi)--
The present, the performers or the perceivers, the land of the living-->mourning & desiring all at once, but also breathing, and investing that breath in this space, this place right here, so. So, so, so.
A cycle that begins with Prophecy. Taking the order of diloggun, and speaking as if from the mouths of the wives of Orunmila: Oshun, Yemaya, Yewa, and how their energies make them particularly adept at designing and divining futures, with promises, threats, and a deep and burning love (right through the tongue) ((I never met anyone who could do that)) (((if i did I would marry her, and by her I mean you, and by I, I mean eyes, I mean, just watch this next part)))
(not yet. not yet the next part. you will have to come back to see)
We are going to start working on a new project on January 20th, because that's enough time by now to say this new year is well under way, and so far is filled with tremendous hope and angst, and the ghosts that may come have already revealed themselves, and all the longing from the last year is dead, as dead as the dirt, where things come back to life.....o don't read too much into that, but there's so much I want to tell you, it's been too long since you were here, and suddenly, suddenly this is an art where lovers meet and say I am sorry, but they don't know what they're sorry for, because no one knew the future before it happened...)))))))))
Oh, oh, oh, but Kassandra does, and this next one is going to be about her.
You should come.
(yes, I mean like that)
((we can help))
(((and by we, I mean tongues)))
Lies<-->Revolve
Liar<-->Revolution
And I thank you once again.
Let's go.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Next Thing/s (2)
(Now it's getting decidedly stranger, a rainy night after the moon went and changed everything around, this retrograde Mercury is decidedly flirty, and carries lots of old ghosts on her shoulders, and she's dual nature, too, which means that everything that is Mercurial is more slippery than ever, but that could just be from all the rain. This segment was captured while doing yoga during a storm, but not like romantic and looking through foggy windows, but really fucking wet, out in the rain, to see if the balance could hold even here in all this.)
I: Thanks for being so candid.
CD: So far.
(This catches her off guard and she laughs uncontrollably, even though we all know this just wasn't that funny.)
I: But we wanted to ask about the next thing, more on that, but specifically, the next project. Can you talk about that?
CD: Interesting, mm, yes, mm. The new incarnation of whatever this performance thing will turn out to be, Revoltosa #8.5, or whatever whatever, is still unformed enough to keep most of that under wraps, but the projects, those I think are pretty clear.
I: Good, this is what's important for right now.
CD: What do you mean?
I: Well...in a sense, it doesn't matter what the vehicle is called, or what it looks like, but what it's doing.
CD: That's true, but if it has only two wheels instead of the usual four, that's going to be important, because we either need an air freshener, or there's no rear view mirror, and we don't.
I: Why an air freshener?
CD: Every car has one.
(She wants to get the joke, but again, it's not that funny.)
I: The road is more important than the thing you travel on.
CD: Huh, that sounds true. I guess that's really the most important thing, these days, where the good and the bad are kind of jumbled up in each other, best friends are worst enemies, and the ones that got written off suddenly start to show their flare, and right and wrong are under suspicion for impersonating each other. But some things just feel true. You know what I mean? It just feels true, and if it does, that's enough for me, and I trust it.
I: Totally trust it?
CD: Well, as much as possible, I mean, enough to play the role as its given. So, we're looking at Cassandra.
I: Another Greek thing.
CD: I know! Weird, huh? They keep speaking to me, because the stories are so dense, and because it's easy to remember them, because of the history of oral tradition, which is very important to me, of course, and because wikipedia is so succinct in milking the life out of things so that they're easy to consume, all these things play a part.
I: What about Cassandra, specifically?
CD: It has to do with the whole thing about knowing the future and no one believing you, that whole curse. I mean, I've studied it for years, but wikipedia reminded me that Apollo plays a big part, like he gave her the gift of prophecy, but she was supposed to sleep with him. But instead, she spits in his mouth, and then he makes it so that no one believes her. I mean, what an asshole. He's a god, and the big rational one, too, so he could like, well, it can't be hard for him to find somebody else, I mean, and just move on. But instead he curses her. That's interesting to me. But even more, the idea of divination, the Lucumi tradition invokes a lot of divination, and the sacred text there is oral, too, so it has concentric circles, that I also like. But there's this question I have, about how, if you know something is going to happen, and you try to stop it, but the people it's going to hurt the most don't believe you, then what's it for? What's this information for? Because there's a sense that at least some things are predetermined, and if those things are known through divination, then the divination is also predetermined, and maybe the part about no one believing you is also pre-determined.
I: Interesting and it sounds like there should be lots of grants for this, or people who hear about it should decide to donate lots of money to the project.
CD: Ni modo.
I: And it's also telling that this one isn't another project about doomed love or desire or bla bla bla.
CD: Right. We're staying away from that altogether. Except for the thing about Cassandra and Apollo, which is really central to it, and uh, there's stuff with Agememnon who falls in love with her, and uh, well, it's pretty sticky, and I guess it has everything to do with doomed love and desire, too.
I: Well, that does make sense, in a sense.
(Now he laughs uncontrollably, even though it wasn't all that funny, but there's electricity here that we can't possibly see.)
I: Because all stories are songs, and all songs are the same song, and it's always a love song. Tragedies are more interesting, because love stories that turn out well are just--
CD:--Pornography.
I:--Pornography, exactly, jinx, buy me a coke.
(They share a nice laugh but then it gets uncomfortably quiet, and the rain starts to pick up, and it's the beginning of a very wet winter.)
I: Thanks for being so candid.
CD: So far.
(This catches her off guard and she laughs uncontrollably, even though we all know this just wasn't that funny.)
I: But we wanted to ask about the next thing, more on that, but specifically, the next project. Can you talk about that?
CD: Interesting, mm, yes, mm. The new incarnation of whatever this performance thing will turn out to be, Revoltosa #8.5, or whatever whatever, is still unformed enough to keep most of that under wraps, but the projects, those I think are pretty clear.
I: Good, this is what's important for right now.
CD: What do you mean?
I: Well...in a sense, it doesn't matter what the vehicle is called, or what it looks like, but what it's doing.
CD: That's true, but if it has only two wheels instead of the usual four, that's going to be important, because we either need an air freshener, or there's no rear view mirror, and we don't.
I: Why an air freshener?
CD: Every car has one.
(She wants to get the joke, but again, it's not that funny.)
I: The road is more important than the thing you travel on.
CD: Huh, that sounds true. I guess that's really the most important thing, these days, where the good and the bad are kind of jumbled up in each other, best friends are worst enemies, and the ones that got written off suddenly start to show their flare, and right and wrong are under suspicion for impersonating each other. But some things just feel true. You know what I mean? It just feels true, and if it does, that's enough for me, and I trust it.
I: Totally trust it?
CD: Well, as much as possible, I mean, enough to play the role as its given. So, we're looking at Cassandra.
I: Another Greek thing.
CD: I know! Weird, huh? They keep speaking to me, because the stories are so dense, and because it's easy to remember them, because of the history of oral tradition, which is very important to me, of course, and because wikipedia is so succinct in milking the life out of things so that they're easy to consume, all these things play a part.
I: What about Cassandra, specifically?
CD: It has to do with the whole thing about knowing the future and no one believing you, that whole curse. I mean, I've studied it for years, but wikipedia reminded me that Apollo plays a big part, like he gave her the gift of prophecy, but she was supposed to sleep with him. But instead, she spits in his mouth, and then he makes it so that no one believes her. I mean, what an asshole. He's a god, and the big rational one, too, so he could like, well, it can't be hard for him to find somebody else, I mean, and just move on. But instead he curses her. That's interesting to me. But even more, the idea of divination, the Lucumi tradition invokes a lot of divination, and the sacred text there is oral, too, so it has concentric circles, that I also like. But there's this question I have, about how, if you know something is going to happen, and you try to stop it, but the people it's going to hurt the most don't believe you, then what's it for? What's this information for? Because there's a sense that at least some things are predetermined, and if those things are known through divination, then the divination is also predetermined, and maybe the part about no one believing you is also pre-determined.
I: Interesting and it sounds like there should be lots of grants for this, or people who hear about it should decide to donate lots of money to the project.
CD: Ni modo.
I: And it's also telling that this one isn't another project about doomed love or desire or bla bla bla.
CD: Right. We're staying away from that altogether. Except for the thing about Cassandra and Apollo, which is really central to it, and uh, there's stuff with Agememnon who falls in love with her, and uh, well, it's pretty sticky, and I guess it has everything to do with doomed love and desire, too.
I: Well, that does make sense, in a sense.
(Now he laughs uncontrollably, even though it wasn't all that funny, but there's electricity here that we can't possibly see.)
I: Because all stories are songs, and all songs are the same song, and it's always a love song. Tragedies are more interesting, because love stories that turn out well are just--
CD:--Pornography.
I:--Pornography, exactly, jinx, buy me a coke.
(They share a nice laugh but then it gets uncomfortably quiet, and the rain starts to pick up, and it's the beginning of a very wet winter.)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Next Thing
(This is an excerpt of the first part of an interview with the founder of TIMB, about the new direction of TIMB. In this, he is remarkably candid, but always a gentleman, using a discretion and charm that is unusual for someone of his generation, suggesting one of the reasons, perhaps, why he is always involved in new adventures, even though he is old enough to be your father. This particular interview was conducted right after he finished a long ride to Vancouver and back for a double espresso. On the way, he was abducted by a woman who claimed to have Gypsy blood--she did, actually--and introduced him to a talking cow who told his future. It was not a particularly comfortable future, but the hoofmarks indicated that there would be hints of cardemon and sandalwood on the road, along with a jasmine undertone, and that seemed evidence enough that continuing on the road would be a good idea.)
INTERVIEWING SPEAKING SUBJECT: Ok, first, we want to ask about the new direction of TIMB.
CD: That's a good place to start. It's direction is very clear, and in a state of non-direction.
ISS: Meaning?
CD: It's done. We've pretty much wrapped it up, and by the end of the year, it won't be.
ISS: That seems a little drastic, all things considered.
CD: Why?
ISS: Well, as far as these things go, I mean, an experimental performance operation in Phoenix, it's been rather successful, hasn't it?
CD: Oh, well, that's nice of you to say, but really, in the end, not so much. These last couple of years have seen a pretty substantial decrease in funding, grant-wise, and that's been enough to suggest that the city simply can't support it. We're shutting the doors and moving on, and right now we're all looking at what the next project will be.
ISS: So it's not really over.
CD: Art isn't over, no, not what we do, the close circle of collaborators, no, we're going to be doing other things, but under different auspices. Look, this is something that didn't come easy, I mean, it wasn't a simple decision, but it's obviously the end of the cycle of whatever it was, and this is the start of a new cycle, so we're all more excited about the next thing, which is still undefined.
ISS: Can you give us an idea of what it might be?
CD: Well, we've been playing with names, and it has to be something that reflects the trans-disciplinary nature of what we're doing, not so much theater, but still, closer to theater than most other art forms we use. But it's been moving toward a more mediated form, with more recorded media, for a long time. So we want to call it something extremely hip, and perhaps even impenetrable, so that no one will really understand what we're doing, not even us.
ISS: What names are you considering?
CD: The favorites so far are "The xx," and Erikah Badu, but there may be copyright issues. We're also thinking about "El 28," because of that song.
ISS: By Oreja de Van Gogh.
CD: Exactly.
ISS: That's such a sad song, do you know the lyrics off the top of your head?
CD: Of course. They're like this: nerviosa miro el reloj ,
la lluvia conmigo empieza
un día de pleno sol,
a lo lejos aparece el
recuerdo de un amor,
no me ve, camina
ausente, hace mucho que pasó.
Empecé a recordar.
Y paseé
por mi mente y encontré,
aquel rincón que te dejé,
donde guardo los
momentos que no olvidé.
Revivo aquella noche en que
olvidamos lo demás,
el cielo se volvió rojo al sol
vimos bostezar,
se ha perdido entre la gente,
me he perdido yo también,
ya se ha ido el 28 la memoria de
un ayer.
Empecé a recordar
Y paseé
por mi mente y encontré,
aquel rincón que te dejé,
donde guardo los momentos
que no olvidé.
Si quiero saber, si tú también,
recuerdas algo de aquel café,
espero a veces sin entender,
por qué.
Y paseé
por mi mente y encontré,
aquel rincón que te dejé,
donde guardo los momentos que
no olvidé.
ISS: Well, that makes sense, but it seems to me that this might be just another regurgitation of the themes of longing and impossible love, and there's something here about nostalgia that strikes me as a little problematic, especially considering the crimes against humanity from the 20th and 21st centuries, the history of world holocausts, as well as their relationship to Latin America, and particularly its under-representation in the dominant discourses of resistance and memory.
CD: I know, right? But there's also something about the song that's very corny, and that's why we're looking at other names, and that's why lately we're starting to think about something simple, like Angry and Crazy.
ISS: That's particularly interesting, considering the criticisms against you about your being somewhat infatuated, or obsessed, or maybe fixated, on angry and insane women.
CD: Who says that?
ISS: I've heard things.
CD: Ok, listen, I'm very uncomfortable about putting my personal life in all of this, because I firmly believe that the line between art and life is very fixed. I mean, my work has nothing to do with me, not at all, otherwise this would be a huge experiment in narcissism.
ISS: Didn't you once say that all art is narcissism?
CD: That's true, I did, oh, that's very true, yes. Hm. Well. In that case, the line between art and life is very thin, it's thinner than a mirror, the one that separates us from our text messages, and those of course are where life becomes a performance.
ISS: I don't follow.
CD: It doesn't matter, you will some day. For now, it's probably important to unpack some of that. Angry and insane are things that I've always been attracted to, because that's me. That's who I am. Angry, all of our work, all of the collaborators, we're angry, angry because this is a place of enormous potential, where the multiple identities, cultural, sexual, even historical, that are both migratory in this space, and also indigenous, means that there is fertile ground for some extraordinary art, and still, it gets swept under the rugs because it makes the majority uncomfortable. Also, we're angry because we sense that there is a deep connection to the land that, if approached, not necessarily even embraced, but just approached, would mean a revolution in thought and feeling, and that experience is one that is hard to speak about in art, unless the viewer already has some sense of it, but there's so very little sense here, that well.
ISS: It's maddening.
CD: Right. And that's where anger turns to madness. I know people think we're crazy, and I hear it all the time, where I make art that is way over everyone's head, as if I'm trying to be smart on purpose, to make people feel dumb, and we use this madness to confuse people, but the truth is, people are not stupid. Not even here. They're just not stupid. And they deserve art that respects their abilities to comprehend, on deeper and more complex levels than they are usually accustomed to. I suppose that's true here as well as anywhere. So, they don't understand, and then they come up with the label crazy. I'm not crazy, at least on most days, but I can see further than most people. To repeat: I'm not crazy, I can just see very far. And sometimes I can see your soul. So most of the work is speaking to that thing that's far away, or perhaps even deep within, you know?
ISS: No, you lost me.
CD: There are people who are very confused, indecisive, stuck, because they know that deep in the marrow of their bones that this experience of living is more that is apparent, more than what's on the surface, that somewhere else, there are shadows of ourselves living out our lives on a mythic level, one that is entirely corporeal and simultaneously entirely spiritual, but the access to this shadow world seems shut, so there's a kind of, a default, to living in a state of paralysis. At our best, when the work is at its best, we move right into the shadow worlds, from this mundane starting point. So that this particular heartbreak, this particular new infatuation, or this particular new inspiration, is not allowed to live in a place of, "Oh, this is a small thing, it doesn't matter." It does matter, and if one sees it represented, then it can be allowed to catch fire, like it deserves, and move us into another realm, where the soul starts to learn how to turn itself into gold.
ISS: Mm, hm, well, it sounds like what we've seen already, can you really call it a new direction, then?
CD: We can, because now we know what the fuck we're doing, and that hasn't happened before.
(Oh, this is getting entirely more interesting than all of this, but you can't see it here, but the furtive looks and gestures speak volumes, and there is an exciting soundtrack to the conversation that prepares the blood for something very much like ecstasy, but at the same time, there is suddenly a flash of black and red, that could be hair, or it could be a spirit, but who knows, because he has decided to leave the interview and follow the rabbit, who is obviously late, and suddenly, it's almost time for the lunar eclipse, and eclipses always speak of love from 400 years ago, come back to test the water, to see if the land wants to play again for awhile...)
(end of part one)
INTERVIEWING SPEAKING SUBJECT: Ok, first, we want to ask about the new direction of TIMB.
CD: That's a good place to start. It's direction is very clear, and in a state of non-direction.
ISS: Meaning?
CD: It's done. We've pretty much wrapped it up, and by the end of the year, it won't be.
ISS: That seems a little drastic, all things considered.
CD: Why?
ISS: Well, as far as these things go, I mean, an experimental performance operation in Phoenix, it's been rather successful, hasn't it?
CD: Oh, well, that's nice of you to say, but really, in the end, not so much. These last couple of years have seen a pretty substantial decrease in funding, grant-wise, and that's been enough to suggest that the city simply can't support it. We're shutting the doors and moving on, and right now we're all looking at what the next project will be.
ISS: So it's not really over.
CD: Art isn't over, no, not what we do, the close circle of collaborators, no, we're going to be doing other things, but under different auspices. Look, this is something that didn't come easy, I mean, it wasn't a simple decision, but it's obviously the end of the cycle of whatever it was, and this is the start of a new cycle, so we're all more excited about the next thing, which is still undefined.
ISS: Can you give us an idea of what it might be?
CD: Well, we've been playing with names, and it has to be something that reflects the trans-disciplinary nature of what we're doing, not so much theater, but still, closer to theater than most other art forms we use. But it's been moving toward a more mediated form, with more recorded media, for a long time. So we want to call it something extremely hip, and perhaps even impenetrable, so that no one will really understand what we're doing, not even us.
ISS: What names are you considering?
CD: The favorites so far are "The xx," and Erikah Badu, but there may be copyright issues. We're also thinking about "El 28," because of that song.
ISS: By Oreja de Van Gogh.
CD: Exactly.
ISS: That's such a sad song, do you know the lyrics off the top of your head?
CD: Of course. They're like this: nerviosa miro el reloj ,
la lluvia conmigo empieza
un día de pleno sol,
a lo lejos aparece el
recuerdo de un amor,
no me ve, camina
ausente, hace mucho que pasó.
Empecé a recordar.
Y paseé
por mi mente y encontré,
aquel rincón que te dejé,
donde guardo los
momentos que no olvidé.
Revivo aquella noche en que
olvidamos lo demás,
el cielo se volvió rojo al sol
vimos bostezar,
se ha perdido entre la gente,
me he perdido yo también,
ya se ha ido el 28 la memoria de
un ayer.
Empecé a recordar
Y paseé
por mi mente y encontré,
aquel rincón que te dejé,
donde guardo los momentos
que no olvidé.
Si quiero saber, si tú también,
recuerdas algo de aquel café,
espero a veces sin entender,
por qué.
Y paseé
por mi mente y encontré,
aquel rincón que te dejé,
donde guardo los momentos que
no olvidé.
ISS: Well, that makes sense, but it seems to me that this might be just another regurgitation of the themes of longing and impossible love, and there's something here about nostalgia that strikes me as a little problematic, especially considering the crimes against humanity from the 20th and 21st centuries, the history of world holocausts, as well as their relationship to Latin America, and particularly its under-representation in the dominant discourses of resistance and memory.
CD: I know, right? But there's also something about the song that's very corny, and that's why we're looking at other names, and that's why lately we're starting to think about something simple, like Angry and Crazy.
ISS: That's particularly interesting, considering the criticisms against you about your being somewhat infatuated, or obsessed, or maybe fixated, on angry and insane women.
CD: Who says that?
ISS: I've heard things.
CD: Ok, listen, I'm very uncomfortable about putting my personal life in all of this, because I firmly believe that the line between art and life is very fixed. I mean, my work has nothing to do with me, not at all, otherwise this would be a huge experiment in narcissism.
ISS: Didn't you once say that all art is narcissism?
CD: That's true, I did, oh, that's very true, yes. Hm. Well. In that case, the line between art and life is very thin, it's thinner than a mirror, the one that separates us from our text messages, and those of course are where life becomes a performance.
ISS: I don't follow.
CD: It doesn't matter, you will some day. For now, it's probably important to unpack some of that. Angry and insane are things that I've always been attracted to, because that's me. That's who I am. Angry, all of our work, all of the collaborators, we're angry, angry because this is a place of enormous potential, where the multiple identities, cultural, sexual, even historical, that are both migratory in this space, and also indigenous, means that there is fertile ground for some extraordinary art, and still, it gets swept under the rugs because it makes the majority uncomfortable. Also, we're angry because we sense that there is a deep connection to the land that, if approached, not necessarily even embraced, but just approached, would mean a revolution in thought and feeling, and that experience is one that is hard to speak about in art, unless the viewer already has some sense of it, but there's so very little sense here, that well.
ISS: It's maddening.
CD: Right. And that's where anger turns to madness. I know people think we're crazy, and I hear it all the time, where I make art that is way over everyone's head, as if I'm trying to be smart on purpose, to make people feel dumb, and we use this madness to confuse people, but the truth is, people are not stupid. Not even here. They're just not stupid. And they deserve art that respects their abilities to comprehend, on deeper and more complex levels than they are usually accustomed to. I suppose that's true here as well as anywhere. So, they don't understand, and then they come up with the label crazy. I'm not crazy, at least on most days, but I can see further than most people. To repeat: I'm not crazy, I can just see very far. And sometimes I can see your soul. So most of the work is speaking to that thing that's far away, or perhaps even deep within, you know?
ISS: No, you lost me.
CD: There are people who are very confused, indecisive, stuck, because they know that deep in the marrow of their bones that this experience of living is more that is apparent, more than what's on the surface, that somewhere else, there are shadows of ourselves living out our lives on a mythic level, one that is entirely corporeal and simultaneously entirely spiritual, but the access to this shadow world seems shut, so there's a kind of, a default, to living in a state of paralysis. At our best, when the work is at its best, we move right into the shadow worlds, from this mundane starting point. So that this particular heartbreak, this particular new infatuation, or this particular new inspiration, is not allowed to live in a place of, "Oh, this is a small thing, it doesn't matter." It does matter, and if one sees it represented, then it can be allowed to catch fire, like it deserves, and move us into another realm, where the soul starts to learn how to turn itself into gold.
ISS: Mm, hm, well, it sounds like what we've seen already, can you really call it a new direction, then?
CD: We can, because now we know what the fuck we're doing, and that hasn't happened before.
(Oh, this is getting entirely more interesting than all of this, but you can't see it here, but the furtive looks and gestures speak volumes, and there is an exciting soundtrack to the conversation that prepares the blood for something very much like ecstasy, but at the same time, there is suddenly a flash of black and red, that could be hair, or it could be a spirit, but who knows, because he has decided to leave the interview and follow the rabbit, who is obviously late, and suddenly, it's almost time for the lunar eclipse, and eclipses always speak of love from 400 years ago, come back to test the water, to see if the land wants to play again for awhile...)
(end of part one)
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