unlocking

They told me that I could unlock your heart, and that this would be the thing that would consume me in my sleep, and that this would play out in perfect harmony with the changes in the weather.  And I just want to sit somewhere that no one can find us, and listen to you talk about the changes in the weather, because there is so much that we should talk about when it comes to the weather.  Para recuperarme entre las phrases, entre las lineas, entre las lenguas tan seperados, entre un camino y un otro, desconocido, casi desesparecido, casi aki y ahora.  Y aunque no puedo encontrarlo en la claridad del dia, en las vesperes es algo en cada direccion, buscando y buscando, yo me estoy como un perro con la nariz tan mojada, y como the teenage boy who stutters when the girl steps in too close & he starts to lose his sense of direction.  They told me that this ground would be dry, too dry to take in any new writing, that the words would not scratch the surface for long enough to make any impression, but inside my body it would be raining all the time, and everything would be written on me first, and that I would have to wait.  They told me that I would have to wait, and I didn't want to believe them, and the day I learned how to run, with that song in my head, that same song in my head, the one you gave me, that was the day I knew what they were telling me was true, and somewhere in learning how to run I learned how to wait, and how to fall in love with my own rain.  

and then there's more music

And it's not always so easy, oh, no no, it's not so easy, to hit the right note at just the right time, or to come in deep and low at just that particular moment, it's not easy at all, unless you slow down way down slow down everything just enough to get caught up in it, and once you're slowed down then you have the wherewithall to jump in and find the speed and the rhythm right there, it's right there in the center of it, but it's hard to get to the center, but if you're in the center, then it's all right there, it's already laid out and waiting for you...none of this is none of this any of this there's nothing of this is very hard at all from inside the storm, but i think you have to get inside the storm first and then this is not so hard...listen...i'm carrying all of this with me...there's that terribly confusing thing, that terribly crippling indecision thing that's so confusing to be inside of, there's that terribly charming thing, that absolutely charming delirious gorgeous thing, it's the same thing, they're the same thing, i'm taking you with me into this storm, and if you hear me singing and think i might be singing about you, but couldn't possibly think of you enough to sing about you, you are wrong, i took it with me and i take it with me, that bird that pecks on my ribs is writing your name inside my ribs, and that's why i sing what i sing...those terrible things about fathers and mortality, and the weight of the epic of a life behind you, his full of reflection and thought from inside the body in paid, mine full of magic and loss and a thousand cities and five or seven women with my name written on their ribs and a thousand conversations in cafes all over the world, what will we tell our daughters about the curve of a rib, the shape of a journey from here to there, what will we tell our daughters when we want them to calm down, and stop crying, and feel the pulse of this magnificent thing, even when our legs are tired and our hearts feel like this may not be worth it, those terrible anxious birds that come and go, now and then, come and go, what will we tell our daughters when we are not sure what kinds of cyclops are hiding around the bend, around that next mountain, the one that curves like a rib, i take you with me, i pull you like thread and take you with me, into the center of this storm...and that one that was me, this is me in high school, and there are girls who are distracting my attention, but i'm acting, and i have another role, and i keep acting, and this work is the place where i know who i am, and my parents think i'm too busy, and the girls are distracting, there are curves underneath a blue windbreaker that make me crazy and i keep saying my lines, and it's hard to sleep because i don't know where any of this is going, but this life is fresh and as real as the promise of a blue windbreaker on the dashboard of my father's van, this is the same song, and the same desire, there's never more than one desire it's always the same desire, and if the thrill is as strong as it ever was means i have not grown, i have not changed, then i have not changed, and i take it with me, i would have thought desire would have slowed itself down by now (with my terribly advanced years) but not so much, so be it, i'm helpless in it even if i know some things, but i'm helpless and this is all hopeless but it's thrilling and i take it with me, i take it with me into the center of the storm, and learn the chord progressions, slowwwwwwwly, and i take it with me, this is the storm, this is the center of my storm, and i did not create the storm, i just got caught in it, and i never changed i just got better at it and this is a song, this is why and what i sing, this is the song i was born with, singing from the cradle, this is the song, and it's all about you.

i don't think this is relevant

To anything at all.
So I dressed up as Jason Statham for Halloween and no one said anything.  And I practiced my accent for weeks and weeks.  Life is full of bitter disappointment.
I would love to say something without irony or distance or metaphor, but my tongue is frozen (the weather changed), and I'm trying to convince myself that the real things stand in for the metaphors just fine, except they resemble each other too much for that to be true.  I'm unhinged.  My axis is spinning, and I might be the one being spun, in a hundred different directions at once, and when I land, sprawled out on the floor dizzy and reeling, there are these things that seem true:
This may or may not be a rehearsal, but it is a repetition, this is a complex series of revolutions and repetitions, and it's impossible to figure out exactly what these repetitions are for.  But we are given roles, and all we are supposed to do is play the roles that we have been given, and, I think, I might be wrong, but I think, follow our desires, even when they are conflicted, or maybe especially when they are conflicted, or maybe even more especially, when there are road blocks everywhere.  I think that might be the game that our ancestors played, over and over, through repetitions of revolutions in a hundred countries, in a hundred dead languages.
I think this might be a poem about rescue, except it's in disguise (see above, tongue frozen, etc.)
This has happened before.  This is not my moment to figure out what is happening or why, it's a song that's sung by the dead to the living, something that follows us with their breath, hot and thick on a night like this, speaking in shadow songs through the thin veil of the moon (just got thinner, bright behind a blue tunnel made of sugar and that secret list of all the things we really want).
There are several points I would like to speak to first, several pressing issues that I want to address primarily, except I forgot all of them and can't even find a place to start (it was all theoretical probably, and I need nouns to keep me connected to the thread of things these days, and images of secret writings, hands writing in whispers across bodies that are decidedly other).  The veil between objects gets thinner, and even the living and the dead start to get themselves confused, the dead are eating and the living are too anxious to eat, lost in daydreams about the blue sugar tunnel between themselves and the moon, and it's almost too late to notice that the veil between people is also worn away, and at our most sacred moments we start to speak like each other, because the tongue is the voice of the body's sweat and muscle, and everything makes sense without any complicated introduction.
Except.  There is this, this one thing, this one pressing thing.  That I forgot, or maybe I just can't speak about it in most places.  But it's written on my tongue, on the underside, the part that is covered in sugar, waiting for the vision to kick in so that the ceremony makes sense.  But it never does, the ritual never ever makes sense until long after it's over, unless it is a poor ritual, faked by angry children who pretend they know more than they do, and charge way too much for a reading.
Those unlocked faeries come crawling out of the hole in the moon and start to watch the patterns, and the songs they sing that harmonize with the dead are the songs we like, the ones with the beat that begins on the lips and ends on the hips; seven mermaids come crying to the door, worried that no one has taken the trouble to ask them why they are so happy lately; five foxes surrounded by eight wolves, and everyone is hungry and nervous, and it would take the perfect song to remind them that the veil between one dog skin and another is very thin, and we are always at our best when we are made vulnerable to each other; under this thin light, under this thin veil, under the watchful eyes of the dead, we are best when we are vulnerable, hungry and cold but entirely sure that we are who we think we are, and a hundred other things besides.

monsters of the sea//outline

Working Title: Monsters of the Sea (or Monstrosities of the Sea)

Form: Mix of Live Performance and Media (Film & Sound)

Dates: Spring 2013 (April-ish)

Venues: Theater in My Basement living room (seats 20-30), downtown galleries, other living rooms, Tucson galleries, spaces in México, San Diego (?), living rooms in Los Angeles

What's the story:
The central story, the skeleton or frame, starts with Odysseus setting out at sea by himself, with the intention of hiding himself in the trappings of a new adventure.  He is in a state of permanent spiritual exile, and wants to make a decision to go to Ithaca, but wants to acknowledge that he will never get there.  So it's just an impulse to move into an unknown area in order to have an adventure, because he is restless and anxious.

On the way, he has a memory of someone he used to love, someone who was lost, like a Eurydice who  went to the underworld and didn't come back.  His memory of her is enough to conjure her image back from the underworld, and she joins him on this raft in the middle of the sea, surrounded by monsters.  But she is also a monster, someone who is created from memory, and is not at all who he thinks she is.  He is also a monster, because he wants to believe that she is who he wants her to be.  So she becomes this kind of Frankenstein, someone created out of desire and longing, but is stuck inhabiting a body in time, a body with its own wants and desires, but with no memory of her own to go on.  She begins to become real, making an identity based only on what happens from the moment of her conjuration.  He begins to become less real, living in an identity that only knows versions of a past that are all fragments of his imagination of that same past.  She is also in a state of permanent spiritual exile, and is looking for something to become.

At the same time, he is pulled out of these moments with her when news from the Land of the Dead comes that his father is sick.  He goes back and forth between the realms, visiting the Land of the Dead, and the Sea full of Monsters, trying to find something about his father that can heal the father.  Of course, he is the father, or has become the father archetype, and his healing will come in finding out that he's the one he is looking for.  Coming to terms with a new identity that does not feel like human skin just yet.  Her journey then starts to twist, as his visits to the underworld make her lonely for her home, which she does not yet understand is imaginary.  So she is also breaking free from an old identity, one that defined her, even though it was terribly uncomfortable, and gets to come to life for the first time.

That's the central story, but there's a lot more that revolves in and out of this.

But so far, the characters, there are five.

HE: Odysseus, son becoming father
SHE: Eurydice and Frankenstein
FATHER: A ghost figure who is not yet here and not yet there, a wounded warrior.
FERRYMAN: Trickster figure who controls passage between the here and there.
NARRATOR: She guides the central story, sometimes is a figure, sometimes appears as narrative text and voice.  Throughout the story, she becomes more entangled in it, becoming a kind of mirror of SHE, becoming real, with real desires and impulses.  The Narrator is entirely witchy, but all of these characters are witches.

This is a loose structure, then, for the performance that counters this.  In real time, there are the same characters who may have the same names, but are extensions of the performers in their real identities.  They are, in a sense, then, actors who are trying on these mythic identities, but trying to maintain their own individual lives.  As the work goes on, they become more entangled, and their real desires and impulses start to mirror the ones in the mythic story, to the point where reality and the mythic level of events will overlap.  We all enter into the project with a profound sense of spiritual exile, and  make attempts to find our way home (to our own Ithaca) through the romantic discourse of revolution.  As people/performers, we are trying to articulate a real revolution for our time, one that is based on the possibility to maintain many identities at once (through variations on themes of race, class, and gender). There is also the desire to make these realities manifest, but we are stuck inside a performance, so our tools to experiment with these revolutionary ideas are through magic spells (better to call these "works," or "kangas" in Kongolese cosmology).  There are "works" then, in the central story, but also "works" in live performance, where we can enact these mystical rituals that will also involve the spectators in some significant way (in this last one, then, I'm revealing my impulse here to play with the notions of ritual in performance, looking at how they are effective or affective when they are presented on video, and how they work when they are done by live actors.

So the bulk of the preliminary work, then, will be in setting a space where all the actors can come together and talk about their own experiences with their own constantly-shifting identities.  We will explore alternative identities, altar-egos, for ourselves, and focus on performing the versions of ourselves we most want to see representative of ourselves for any particular moment or series of moments.  Rock Stars, Magicians, Warriors, Divine Lovers, Ghost Lovers, and any extremes that suit the comfort level of the performers.  At no point should anyone feel like they're being coerced into performing a version of themselves that is not based on their own desires of what they want to be (the central story is concerned with the tangle of representations that happen when we are forced into becoming something that suits the desires of another human being, and these meta-narratives are about finding the possibilities for liberation within ourselves for who we desire to become).

So there's a story that serves as a framework, and there's a secondary reality where real life has the possibility of entering into something that will resemble art.  The secondary reality, then, ourselves performing ourselves, is the real meat and fat of the thing, and depends entirely on the involvement of the performers.  But it's basically a framework for allowing us to collectively create a space of magic, a place where magical actions are performed by ourselves on ourselves.  It sounds very time-consuming, but I'm imagining that the bulk of this material can be mined through a few sessions that should feel more like interesting people hanging out than anything else.  From these sessions, we'll pull the bits that we like the best, and integrate these into the live performance that we'd present for the spectators.  The central story is one that can be told with a combination of image, sound, and text on video.  I've put together those kinds of narratives before, and pretty quickly, but this other level, involving the actors in a more personal way, is something that I've skirted around, but never fully invested in.

So the level of experiment in this is very high, which might be anxiety-provoking, but the level of fun is also very high, and I'm much more interested in creating a situation where we can discover things about ourselves, and perform versions of ourselves in a magical act of setting ourselves in a position where we can have an empirical experience of becoming.  And I should say, at the risk of an artistic reputation, that I am always much more interested in creating spaces where we are all able to remain friends, rather than making a work of art that destroys our delight in working together.  Without that sense of delight, there is no reason for doing anything.  I would also love, love, love it if this were a bilingual production, because the myth of Odysseus, that longing for a home that is no longer there, would translate in lots of places in the Americas if this becomes something we can tour.

seamonsters/blast

Wherein he turns into the DOG and she turns into the MOON and they talk to each other for the first time in ages.

DOG: If I could say anything to you right now, I would probably overthink it and end up saying something I don't mean, so I will probably just try to lick you all over for a very long time, and it would be just very friendly that's all, and already I said too much because I was overthinking everything.

MOON: I have no idea where you are right now, and I'm feeling exactly the same way myself, and I guess that just figures when you weigh out all the weight of the years between us.

DOG: It's not years, just months, which might be close to dog years, but it's not years, I mean, look at us, we're so young.

MOON: I feel very old, you have no idea.  And you can't lick the moon, I'm sorry, but you just can't.

DOG: Then I would ask you to sneak into my room through the curtains and you could lie down for awhile, just long enough to get away from all the people and dogs like myself who are looking at you and wishing things from you, because I know you're tired and need to rest.

MOON: You wouldn't leave me alone, it would be messy and complicated.

DOG: You're right, that's very true.

MOON: I wish I got bolder the older I get, just like you.

DOG: I don't know if I'm bolder, I'm just hungry, I just missed you, that's all.

MOON: I wish I didn't change my mind all the time, but that's what I do.

DOG: I noticed that.

MOON: You're always the same.

DOG: I don't think that's really true.

MOON: You always know what you want, and it's never complicated.

DOG: I don't think that's true, I don't think that's true at all, I just miss you and I don't know what to do with you, because you're here and I can't touch you, just like every moon I ever loved, but the next moon who comes and stays will want to stay for a long time, because I've rearranged the furniture and made room, and that's probably just enough, and there's a space through the curtain, that's perfect for you, you'll fit through if you come.

MOON: That's what you have to say to the moon.

DOG: Yes.  If you come, there's room, you'll fit, if you come, that's what I want to tell the moon, there's room.

And it's already so very very late.

seamonsters/gum

SIREN/SHE: Oh my gosh I love this gum.

HE: Oh my gosh what kind of gum is it.

S: I don't know, I'm not into labels.

H: Yeah, but I might want to buy it.  I mean, if you like it that much.

S: I fucking love it, it's so fucking awesome, it's the best motherfucking gum I've ever chewed, do you want some?

H: Oh my gosh, I do, I really do.

S: I'll give you your own piece, hahaha, not one that I've already, hahaha, chewed myself.

H: Hahaha, I don't care, I mean, I'd like the gum that's been in your mouth, I mean....hahaha, give me a clean piece please.

S: Clean.  Like I'm dirty.  Hahaha.

H: Hahaha.

(They both chew.  Pause.)

(SHE looks at HE.)

H: Oh my gosh it's fucking awesome.

S: Yes, you get it, I'm so glad you get it, it's awesome motherfucking gum.

H: I know gum and this is awesome fucking gum.

S: You know what I like about it the most?  It doesn't/ break--

H: It doesn't break when you play with it with your tongue.

(Long pause.)

S: Oh my gosh, yes.

H: You can wrap your tongue around it and kind of flick at it.

S: I love that.

H: You can flick at it with the end of your tongue and it's still so goddam rubbery and it feels so fucking good on your teeth and your tongue and you can keep on flicking at it--

S: Not too fast, I mean, vary the speeds, I mean, especially for the first like 8 minutes or so.

H: 8 minutes?  I could flick it for 16 or 32 or 64.

S: 64?  That's too long, that's just fucking ridiculous.

H: Not that I would flick the gum with the tip of my tongue for 64 minutes, but I fucking well could.  I have patience.  And my tongue is like, what's the word, it's in shape, right?  Like a muscle?

S: Yeah, it's a muscle, fucking right it's a goddam motherfucking muscle.  Yes.

H: I know my way around gum, I'm not new to anything.  I'm not new at all, but not like, what's the word, old, I'm not old to it, either.

S: Seasoned.  You're seasoned.

H: No, that's like saying old.

S: Seasoned is like spiced.  You're spiced.

H: Yeah.  That's ok.  Spiced.  And you're spicy too.

S: You don't have to lie to me to get me to like you, I mean, take it easy, I mean, slow down all of a sudden.

H: I'm sorry, I just stopped listening for a second and realized I had to say something so I just said something about the last thing you said but I wasn't really listening.

S: Oh my gosh, I fucking do that, too! That's so awesome.

H: It's fucking awesome.

S: It is.  Yes.

H: Oh my gosh.

seamonster/the body in shock

Oh my gosh, that was too much, it's hard to believe he just laid it out there like that, so bold and so free.  And all without really saying anything terribly important, I mean, he sounded mad almost, but there wasn't anyone to be mad at, not at all, so it was almost like something crawled into his chest and said, "Now go howl at the moon and say the thing that you want to say," and we're all like, "Oh my gosh, that was harsh almost, except, that was it?  That was almost harsh."  And he. meanwhile, is becoming he meanwhile, and that's something very, very new.

And meanwhile almost, he is in a side stream, a channel diverted, and he is on a raft with his Daughter, and she has not been here before, but she needs to be here now.  Because without the daughter, there really is no reason for any of this.  Because it might be true that there's something being unlocked, something about another daughter, but that's very far away, and in the meantime, this generation that belongs to his daughter, and not to him, is starting to come to the surface of history, and that's where the world continues spinning, and his magic is already something of a generation that's removed, that is to say, he is confused about his place in things because his place in things is very confusing at this very moment in time.  Between fathers and lovers and daughters, there are roles that are getting clearer and roles that are getting very complex, and really, at the root, it's probably very, very easy, and simpler than it all seems.  First. there's this scene.

DAUGHTER: Daddy, there are ghost dogs all over the sea, and they're all white, pale dogs grieving in the sea.

HE: I thought it was just me.

DAUGHTER: Oh, daddy, you don't own all the hallucinations of the world, you don't own all the visions of the world, and what you gave to me, the gifts of sight you gave to me, were never yours alone to give, but came through your bloodstream, and that's very old.

HE: I think I knew that once and forgot.

DAUGHTER: I think you taught me that once, and I didn't forget.

And suddenly he is so sick, all of a sudden, that the hot peppers in his throat start to burn their way through his chest, and his heart is flaming, like hearts do when they are too hot, and now his raft turns into a classroom, and he is teaching the sirens something fun.

He is teaching again about the secrets of the ceremony, the one where you learn how to step outside your body through inhabiting it utterly, this is through song and dance and sex magic, and there's always lots of food with garlic and cinnamon and coconut milk, and everything that is good in the world pours over yourself like honey from the honey trees, and this is how we get to be transformed, by becoming ourselves so utterly that we leave ourselves finally.  He is teaching this all of his life so far because it's some of the prettiest things he ever learned, except, suddenly, here, it's starting to feel very inappropriate.

SIREN1: You've been talking this all over us for so long and you're all talky talk, you're a theory without a pulse, you're just narrating, you're not in your body, and I don't understand anything I can't inhabit.  Let's try this.  Let's try all of these theories.

HE: No, no no, no.  No.  Oh my gosh.  No.

SIREN2: I like taking notes.

HE: Oh my gosh.  That's good.  Good good good.  I like that.

SIREN#1 (WITH A BULLET): Can we try it?

HE: No, oh my gosh.  This isn't something we can do here.  We don't have the right clothes.

BURLEYSIREN: I've noticed that your clothes are getting tighter, are you working out, or are you trying to distract our attention?

HE: Nothing could be further from the truth, all of this is coincidental, everything is accidental, there are no intentions at all behind anything I do or say, I just think this is historically interesting and it will help us when we get to the final.  Which will be a multiple choice final.  Because we are becoming multiple.  And all of the answers will have to be correct, because everyone here can fit into this vast raft of knowledge.  Please don't ask me questions that will tempt me, because now, oh it's already too late, already, now just look at my head sweat, just look at the sweat coming from my head.  Oh my gosh.

But it's already too late because the music is on, it's hard techno thumping and everyone is moving, and it's like a rave movie directed by the bang brothers, just horrible, and he is trying to sleep on his desk because his back hurts.  The SIREN is crouched next to him, her head on his desk, puppy dog eyes.

HE: I feel like I'm missing out on something because I am so preoccupied about this pain in my lower lumbar-sacral-illiac region, I twisted something all out of shape, and honestly, just between you and me,  I think I did it when I was thinking about that one siren, the one who captured my attention when I first saw that first one siren, she had my attention and I was pumping hot molten iron to make myself forget her because it's just a disturbance, I have a disturbance in my blood and it looks like her, racing through my blood, and I was trying not to think about her and that's when I twisted myself out of shape.

SIREN#1: That's the sweetest thing you could have possibly ever said to me.

HE: (Now even more uncomfortable because he just spilled his heart all over the desk, and it looks so messy like that) It was just a metaphor.

SIREN#1: I love metaphors.  I could live in a metaphor for a very long time and not feel like I was missing out on anything.

HE: I twisted myself out of shape trying not to think of you.

SIREN#1: OH MY GOSH THAT IS SO GODDAM SWEET! I love that!  I don't know what kind of magic you have planned for me, Mr. Voodoo Man, but I promise you I will like it.

HE: Oh my gosh, this is very inappropriate.

SIREN#1: I don't even know what that word means, please teach me the etymology of the word.

HE: To take possession of something that does not belong to you.

SIREN#1: Oh my gosh, please do that.

HE: Oh my gosh, you remind me of that woman I met on the raft when I set off to get away from all of my obsessions and desires, and now you're right here, and my back hurts, and you want me to dance.

SIREN#1: TALK DEEPLY TO ME, THIS IS WORKING, GODDAMMIT, THIS IS REALLY WORKING.

HE: But I didn't recognize you until just now because honestly, I think I have a fever, except I'm not hot, my head is cold, please, feel my head, no, oh my gosh, don't touch my head.  See?  I'm confused.  I'm confused and indecisive because now I can't remember why I set out, unless it was to find you, and whatever happens after that might be an adventure, or it might just be something I imagined, a ghost dog, crawling across the waves, telling me stories in the dark so that I wouldn't sleep too deeply and forget everything that brought me out here.

SIREN#1: But this isn't the sea anymore, this isn't the sea at all anymore, this is something else entirely anymore, and all I want to do is pack you up in a box filled with basil and garlic, and carry you around my neck like a charm.  Because you are so charming.

HE: I'm really sick.  Oh my gosh, I feel really, really sick.

SIREN#1: THAT'S SO GODDAM CHARMING I CANNOT STAND IT ANYMORE YOU THINK I AM JUST GOING TO SIT HERE AND DO NOTHING??? OH MY GOSH!

She spends a little too much time, longer than is dramatically interesting, packing him up, which of course soothes him utterly, and he is left not so cold anymore, but with a temperature that is drastically increased, because he recognizes her as someone who can cross through many different worlds at once, and oh my gosh, he reallllly likes that.

She wears him like a charm, and the trancedance becomes so much more groovy than we would have suspected, and by the morning, everyone looks a little bit more like they did the night before.

Oh my gosh I have to take a break from this.

too personal for this right here

Somewhere on a raft, stuck in the middle of a sea of complicated relationships, and all of them or none of them are happening in time.  I can't tell.  I don't know if this is a beginning or an ending or somewhere in the middle, everything has its own music and I'm hearing a lot of different songs that I don't understand.  Somewhere between the Sirens and the song of Persephone when she's going under there are elaborate tangos, and I don't know any of the rules or protocol, but I seem to be dancing.  I liked the lightness of this at the beginning, I liked the lightness at the end, and in the middle I'm always given too much time to start to wonder if I should be here at all.  I always wonder if I should be here at all, whenever there's a break in the music, and that's the worst thing to wonder, because it tells me that I'm not enjoying or afraid to enjoy the ride.  There are sweet noises and notes, and bats fly around my head, and blackbirds come with news, and no one's saying what's really on their mind, so we're all left trying to guess each other's real hidden motives.  And I don't really know mine.  But something about another beginning, that sounds nice, but I don't know if that's really on the table, and I'm not sure if I'm in a position to offer it to the table, I don't understand the table, it looks very messy and complicated, and there have already been lots of meals and no one's cleaned up for weeks, and I'm pretty sure I was there for at least some of them.  I don't relate to myself these days.  I'm too torn around the shoulder of my father, and all the reasons why I want to live in another country.

When I come back to myself, when I'm done resolving these revolving things, I will set out a more proper meal, and it has to come after I've made the meal for the dead.  But in the meantime, let me just go on record saying that if something were offered, I would very likely take it, because the caving in of my belly recently, the new muscles under my skin, and the layers of muscle that are drawing tighter around the nervous bird in my chest tell me that I'm very hungry, but not starving to death, and that is my favorite place.  And I just imagine, in a very short amount of time, when these knots start to untangle, that I would be a good companion, especially for those kinds of journeys that don't have a clear end in sight.  If it's a planned trip, with lots of stops for sightseeing and rethinking the destination, where we wonder if we're eating right or having the right kind of fun, I don't think I need those any more, because I know more than I did yesterday, and what I'm longing for can't be written in temporary images, the ones who keep rethinking themselves for what they mean, and don't know what to make of me.  I like a very complex fruit, one whose sweetness sinks into the tongue like rain, one whose bitterness feeds my fire, one who inspires me to speak tangos in the air, one with the consistency and sureness of the earth.  

seamonster/ploddingplotting

Ok just so I have it here....
Use Susan Kozell's Body Project...skin of performer projected into space, spectators act with the projection, projection is projected to performer in remote location, who responds to their projections...an active infinite loop, like in the social world...whenever two people meet, no one knows what the other will do, that's why they are other...in this case, the other is self/performer and other/spectator...

For this, though, for sea monsters....something else....not doing an experiment with the technology, but something else....
There is an endless sea between them....they inhabit other worlds, even though they seem to be sharing the same space....he conjures her up from the depths, she comes wearing the skins of old lovers, and he doesn't recognize her as someone he doesn't know but has been missing for a very long time....likewise, she dreams about him in her depths, and when he conjures her, she shows, but she has control of her projection, and is only ever at the most half there....and when she is in her own space, her depths, she brings his dreaming body down to her to help her drown in him....

So they are always looking for the other and the self in this.  Obviously.  Hahaha.  It's all very obvious and simple.  Just like life!!!

So I want to use something like this in a more performance/theater oriented way...the idea of self inflecting and infecting the other, and being inf/l/ected (inflexion) (note to self: inflexion and inflection are the same, but I think it makes me sound clever)...

Also possibly using Paulo Henrique's Contract with the Skin, close ups of skin projected behind performers performing themselves (and so many others)....

But the idea here, the technique, technology...for the parts where they are onstage together but not together (on boat?  in hell?), it's a skype conversation...she's in other room and he is holding her on a computer....and v-v....sometimes she is projected on wall as a large face, and him too to her....and sometimes it's their whole bodies on projection...but life size, so the one missing the other can try to interact with the virtual body, and the bodies are life size...please note these need to be life size (just like in life!!!) and make sure that I want to say life size even one more time and I will not.

Oh my gosh I am so very very nervous these days and my stomach is in knots.

There is no sea in love.
You have to cross over to compassion and bring the c back...

seamonster/future

He sits with the fortune teller, already a bit of a fortune teller himself, but neither one can see the future at all, only signs that show where things are pointing, but no way of knowing how to get there, because the there is already always somewhere else.  And he is somewhere else, always somewhere else, can't keep himself in his head these days, and not here on a night when the moon is almost big enough to eat, but not yet, he's so hungry and it's just not enough, the moon in the sky is just not enough.  The dogs are always speaking, though, they always show up, and they lead the way, there are directions, and the directions always are already always the same: stay close to water, keep your eyes open, and keep your mind clear (as best you can, it's perfectly reasonable that the only thing you can see are those same shadows made by the moon on a night when it's not big enough to eat, not yet)...and it suddenly occurs to him, because there are cats around every corner, watching him to pounce on him or to hide from him, he can never tell which, he must look more menacing than he ever imagines ever, that this is a rehearsal and he is being criticized, and he might not be the only one playing.  The dead are watching very carefully, and they think this scene was played too quickly, and the clothes weren't quite right, they didn't anticipate the night, and that leather might look all right under certain lights, but under this thin (too skinny) moonlight, no one really believes that it can do anything to keep the cold out.  The dialects are all wrong, they need to be more authentic to the time and place, and should be rooted more firmly in race, class, and gender, and the pitch should be more perfect.  And his hands tremble too much, especially when he is around her, and his eye is starting to twitch too much, especially around her, because of the things that are going unsaid, and the dead want to hear the words out loud so they can believe the story, because they don't believe the story.  As much as he loves the dead, he wants to say thank you and offer them another piece of sweet bread, another cuban coffee, another shot of rum, but it comes out wrong.  He says:  I hear what you say, and I believe what you say, but this isn't your rehearsal, it's this moment that's happening in time, and it's happening to me.  I would love to play every moment perfectly, but then it would not be a moment in time, it would be something else, and this is happening to me in time.  And the worst part of everything is that it won't read right for you, it will never translate for you, and you'll never believe it, because you don't hear the music that I'm hearing in my ears right now.  This music is making me sing, it tightens my body and makes me pull myself together, sometimes so hard that I might start to tremble.  But it's not for you.  This moment is one that I live through in time, and it's something that only the living can walk through, and that's why you are jealous of me, and you can see further down the road, far enough to point out the directions for where things seem to be going, and that's why I'm jealous of you.  But there are some songs that the dead cannot hear, they are there for the living, and I'm on this side of the grass, and I'm hearing songs that make my heart start to hum, and if I tried to explain them to you, they would fall short because they are not your favorite songs, even though they might be repetitions of the ones you knew when you were living in bodies.  Living in a body is terrifying, you might remember, and I just want you to remind me of why you are jealous, because I'm too hungry by now, and forgot what it means to be waiting on the moon.

seamonster/him again

I don't know how to bring something like that to life, but I know what it feels like when it works.
If I could retrace my steps backwards, and remember every single little thing I did, in this season of falling, I don't think even then I could trace any kind of useful map, because these things always unfold through their own momentum, in their own time and space.  I think the things we do at our little altars to make something come to life are already in motion, long before we walk into the room with our robes and our candles.  But I know there are secrets that set things in motion, and if I hadn't done these secret things, I wouldn't have to pretend I didn't do them, but in truth, I did, I said your name before I knew your name, and I said it out loud in front of too many spirits who were already paying attention.  I didn't think they were watching us so closely.  But I think I understand that they were watching closely because it was already unfolding in our direction, and even though I don't know how to turn things back, I don't know if I really would, or if I really should, because your face makes me smile, and there's something here I'm supposed to learn, something I don't know yet, something waiting for me here, and when it stops being interesting for you, I'll make a prayer and blow out the candles, and I won't make a wish.  These are hard days, and I don't know why things are unfolding the way they are, and I don't see any map up ahead, all I can see are the maps we laid out behind us, the ones we unfolded when we were curious to see how these things would play out when we were awake, awake as children, making new games in a forest that already knows our secret names.