Medea by Brian E Turner
The scene is a restaurant/gallery. There is an exhibition of two 'paintings'
which consist of full length mirrors covered by curtains.
CAST:
JACKSON: Jackson Hindmarsh. A businessman. Middle aged.
ZENNAH: Zennah Starlight, witch and tarot card reader. Dresses in
bright colours with jewellery and rings. She has an outstanding coffiere
which is dyed in at least two colours selected from red, orange, yellow,
blue, green, indigo and violet. Middle aged.
FRANCISCO: A Waiter
(Zennah is sitting at a table. Jackson enters and joins her.)
ZENNAH: You are well today?
JACKSON: I'm here.
ZENNAH: We can order then.
JACKSON: Look I'm here damnit. If we have something to discuss then we
can discuss it. I don't have the time to sit here supping coffee and passing
the time of day. I'm a busy man.
ZENNAH: You will act like a gentleman Jackson Hindmarsh. And you will
treat me with the respect you owe me.
JACKSON: Oh God. (Pause) What's on the menu then? (Picking it up.)
ZENNAH: Angel cake.
JACKSON: We could do with something like that. (Francisco comes to the table.) We'll have angel cake and coffee black. Do you have Turkish delight?
FRANCISCO: We did in one play. Unfortunately the actor only pretended to
eat it so the custom has been discontinued.
JACKSON: A piece of cake for her to pretend to eat. And two black
coffees. (Francisco goes.) Well what is it you brought me here to talk about
then?
ZENNAH: I'll tell you when you decide to be civil. (Pause) You should
inspect the exhibition.
JACKSON: What exhibition? I don't see any exhibition.
ZENNAH: There are two works of art behind those curtains. (Indicates)
JACKSON: What sort on nonsense is this?
ZENNAH: Modern art, Jackson, modern art.
JACKSON: You know I don't have any time for modern art.
ZENNAH: Well it's time you did. It might teach you something.
(Pause)
JACKSON: You've seen the paintings?
ZENNAH: Yes.
JACKSON: Well tell me about them then.
ZENNAH: They are mirrors.
JACKSON: A mirror? A work of art, a mirror?
ZENNAH: Why not? A mirror reflects the illusion of Maya. That's the
magic of art.
JACKSON: You know I was quite fond of you until you descended in tarot
cards and quackery.
ZENNAH: You'd better have been.
JACKSON: You're full of tricks. You mask the truth with your pretence of
magic. I can never recognise the truth in anything you say.
ZENNAH: Your trouble is you're a lawyer. Someone whose profession lies
in distorting the truth will always have problems in recognising it. (Pause)
Do you have something on your mind?
JACKSON: No.
ZENNAH: Let me look into my magic ball. (Looks into an imaginary ball.) I see a young woman. Her name is Penelope.
JACKSON: Penelope is none of your damn business.
ZENNAH: I would think she is. You left me for her. And for that I turned the children against you.
JACKSON: I didn't come here to discuss our personal affairs.
(Francisco returns with coffee and cake.)
ZENNAH: Thank you Francisco.
JACKSON: Hmm. Do you know anything about this so-called exhibition eh?
FRANCISCO: The works of art on these walls signor?
JACKSON: Well explain it to me. Apparently it's just a couple of mirrors.
FRANCISCO: That is what it would appear to be signor. However the mirrors are constructed with a mystical craft. What you see when you inspect the image is a reflection of inner reality.
JACKSON: You are quite amusing. Do you know this chap Zennah?
ZENNAH: Yes. When he's not a waiter he's a magician in the carnival.
JACKSON: Ah, another quark.
FRANCISCO: Indeed signor, a dog may bark and a duck may quark but who is to say that the pretence of reality as espoused by the fairground barker is not to be most highly valued. Would you like to look at yourself in the
mirror?
ZENNAH: Go on Jackson. You asked the question.
JACKSON: Rubbish. Tomfoolery.
ZENNAH: I'll tell you why I asked you to come here.
JACKSON: (Stands) Show me your mirror then.
(They go to one of the mirrors and draw back the curtain. There is a young couple in the frame, embracing. Jackson is distressed and quickly closes the curtain.)
FRANCISCO: Is that not a fine imitation of reality?
JACKSON: I can see what you are both up to. You brought me here to humiliate me.
FRANCISCO: But that which is in the mirror is what you see, not what I put there.
JACKSON: Do you mean to say that?
FRANCISCO: Yes, the mirror portrays the real truth. It reflects that which concerns you.
JACKSON: Some sort of quackery.
FRANCISCO: Magic signor. (Francisco goes. Jackson returns to the table.)
ZENNAH: Now you understand the meaning of modern art?
JACKSON: Modern delusion.
ZENNAH: Maya, I said.
(Pause)
JACKSON: Well, now you can tell me, why did you ask me to come?
ZENNAH: To crow at your discomfort. To show you the truth behind the illusion.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Universe Gives Me the Creeps by Danielle Billington -- Issue 10
The Universe Gives me the Creeps
Your music IS the universe, the night skies, black holes, love and everything in-between. Infinity, the edge of the universe, entropy and the impossibility of quantum mechanics. Thank you.
Learning as the splitting of terminology (ezra pound)
what is red?
a color.
what is a color?
a vibration or refraction of light.
what is a vibration?
a mode of energy
look at them and invent means of seeing them better
simplified form reduced to the essentials
red, rose, cherry –
She held my hand on the snow covered bridge, flakes whirling and dropping in front and behind of us, and told me I was the most spiritually, carnally, and intellectually satisfying person she had ever or could ever be with. As she nestled into my shoulder, I knew she would leave.
Writers toil in obscurity, for no recognition and even less money.
Yes, Blank reads a lot of philosophy, and poetry. Many biographies of artists, novelists, philosphers and poets. Blank refuses to capitalize appropriately. Blank thinks a lot too. All day in fact, and sometimes at night Blank can’t sleep for fear that Blank will think Blankself to death. Why are there no women heroes? They are always victims to be rescued, or sacrifcers.
Should I tell you I read all of these things so I can constantly imagine that I am someone else? We all want to be someone else.
You don’t need to know my real name to understand what I am talking about, what I am getting to. Am I even a man? You will never know, I can say anything I want, and you can’t disprove it. Am I a reliable narrator, or character? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
God! Save me from having to write about used car salesman and General Sherman!
See, in that creative writing class I had to sit there day after day with these boys and girls who thought they were so special, better than everyone else because they could write ‘fiction’ stories. (Do you really need me to go into an explanation of how or why I was in this class? Tell you what they looked like? No, because the minute I put you into a scenario, you do it yourself.) But they were some of the least special people I’d ever met. So ordinary. So afraid of being so ordinary that it made them even ordinarier. Would you want to read a story titled, “Josh Lewin, Loser? About a not so suave guy who thinks he’s suave who gives his landlord hand jobs for cheap rent, falls for a teenage girl and let’s her rob him and thinks going to Paris will save him from failure? If you do, and maybe, sadly, you do— this is all the information you need, because to extrapolate would make it not so interesting. Or how about a story about a static man who does nothing and lets a dog die rather than face that he is static and obsessed? The frightening thing is, I am making these stories sound far more interesting than they actually were. Or how about this one, the hero’s name is creet or greet or something to that effect (I can’t even remember how to spell it correctly, but that’s how it sounds) who walks down the beach in sandals. Hmmm…or what about the teenage girl obsessed with pop culture who is into drugs and denying her sexuality? Oh wait, you have heard all these stories before? Well me too, and I am not interested in hearing them again, especially when written haltingly, with inelegant and ordinary prose. I know I have because I wrote them in the third grade and got bored. I called this class, the “stab myself in the eye” class. That’s what I would have rather been doing than sitting there listening to them say “meta-language” as if it made them smart just to say it.
Jackson Pollock is my hero even though he was a drunk and incapable of even halfway human relationships. Pollock was innately talented, intuitively marked, intuitively genius. He couldn’t express verbally, anything really…but when he touched a canvas, it was shocked into beauty. He just knew what was good. And so many people just didn’t get it. Still don’t get it. Copying things from the world is not art. So many professors are passionately anti-Pollock because they secretly wish they could be that creative. Creating things that have never been seen, that is art. I’m not saying it doesn’t take talent to paint forests or a person, but it takes genius to destroy the figure. It also takes courage to be different. Especially when you know almost no one will ever get it.
I will only tell stories that I care about. They are my stories. I will not lie to the reader, inventing plot, character, narrative. Who is anyone to tell me what a story is? I could write the stories they write the way they write them, as good or better, but why would I?
MFA FUCKER .You think your Ben Folds, or John Cheever. You want to be like someone else, rather than yourself. I know you—standing drunk clutching onto your pudgy hipster wife talking to the singer in drunken tongue slumber as if he cares (which he clearly doesn’t).
I don’t look like a success (definition of success here).
Blank, slowly evolving lost poetic soul stuck (but not that unhappily so) in an office job that allows Blank to muse philosophically and poetically. Cannot leave Blank’s part time bookstore job because, c’mon, books! Sometimes drinks too much, but not often. prefers the easy praise for his/her poetry and fiction, it comes to him/her without effort (even when he/she knows he/she could do great things if he/she actually tried) an extremely shy lazy faux intellectual who would rather live in dreams than motivate himself/herself to do more because he/she fears change to the extreme.
Short story in which characters speak only in song lyrics?
See, this writing is life. Neat boxes and categories are not real fiction, they are counterfeits.
Intent and its definitions:
1. That which is intended; purpose. The state of mind operative at the time of an action. Meaning, purport. Connotation-adj. firmly fixed; concentrated. Engrossed. Having the mind fastened upon some purpose.
You could continue to define by also defining the words within the definitions to gather all the many nuances of words. Many want, or demand that I state some sort of intent in what I write. I despise the concept of intent. I intend nothing in particular; I have no grand scheme or plan. I write what needs to be written when it needs to be written in the way it demands to be written. That is all. If forced, I can lie. I can say; I write my life and those in it into myths. I write love. I write dreams, I write of deaths innumerable. I write hopes fears and fantasies of interest to myself and sometimes to others. I write desire, beauty and truth, in my way. It seems when we define and intend, things often lose their meaning and become something else completely. Intent comes without thought, not with it. For each person who reads, the intent is different. This is the beauty and mutability of words. In most writing I see common stories told in common ways. This does not blind me. I turn on more lights. My intent without much thinking is to make the room brighter. If you were in the room, my intent may have been to annoy you, to disturb the perfect amount of light for you. Heidegger contends there is no meta-language, that language itself is a house of being. Wittgenstein says: the limits of my language are the limits of my world. It is true, one needs endless amounts of time, solitude and emptiness to write good things.
See how life swims in memory? Sitting in a café reading fever 103, seeking meaning and someone mentions a certain kind of beer and it’s like I’m shot through a time/space canon into the old cabin. Her and I (why can I remember everything and she remembers nothing?) Drinking sickly sweet beer after a long nap she sat in my lap and I was king/queen of everything.
Why am I so different from the ones who surround me? Why are they equally intrigued and disgusted—Am I so overwhelming?
I am supposed to talk about punctuation, lineation, syntax and diction, people punctuate where necessary without symbols for signifying.
It’s as if whomever I fall for slips away instantly into memory ending before they begin. See, you are nothing but a wish, smoke and mirrors, unsolvable equations, chalk screeching on blackboard, haunted houses, fun houses fun for no one.
The work of chemistry and poetry/enlightenment and sin. I take you in like I take in air.
And how can this psychologist/scientist in a poetry class be the first to understand? Her cheeks turn red, she unleashes unexpected laughter, she reads my poems and says:
She says: Someone doesn’t appreciate the bird you are.
She says: They do not sacrifice, they don’t deserve you.
She says: Pure beauty.
She says: Emotions running wild, with wild abandon. Now that is seduction.
She asks: Are you in love?
“I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body hurts me as the world hurts God.”
She believes me to be things I never was. Creating in her memory what she wants.
Angry large moods vast woman. And see…I love you without reward.
My lot my lot
to be obsessed wrapped up
baby in blanket with love (or lack thereof)
all I can do is dream it
filmed you with focus zoom
that was my eye on you
you said: “ I always felt like you were watching me.”
and I was love, I was
you were food to me, and smiles, and the rain that made everything green and the eyes that made me see…even after you’d left me.
knowing I would rot rancid in your memories
LOVE is all. It is meat and drink. I am starving for lack.
what an elaborate prank your words
were. such a terrible joke.
now I am enmeshed , trapped, like the swirling clouds of oil and gas in dirty summer strophe.
now, I am regrets daughter.
I sometimes think hands should have lips with which to speak.
I watch your hands. I want to take your right hand in mine, the tiny slivers of fingers, rough, straws…and write. Write down love for you.
Discrete airs. Hollow mysteries.
I dreamed of turtle stories and ghosts.
My dream last night was stunning. I was in a hospital elevator, there was a well dressed woman standing in front of the doors. She had on a mid length leather jacket and was holding a cane. She looked tired. We looked at each other in that desperate way with no pretensions…. and she started to slide down to the floor, as if someone were pulling strings underneath her. I went forward asking if she was ok as she fell into my arms. She started crying, like someone who was soon to lose the weight of the world. She said, I’ve got tumors all over, I’m dying, and I’ve just wet myself, as I held her up she held on to me tightly. Looking directly into my eyes she said I looked like the kind of person one could fall into.
You have intense dreams, they often satiate your hunger. You reach a place of peace with your solitary life. In a way, you are even happy. Then it happens. Someone sets you up. A SET UP. Oh god, why did I say yes? You ask yourself all week as the day looms ever nearer. What if she’s hideous? What if she thinks I’m repugnant? Or even worse, what if we like each other and once again, all aboard steamship relationship? Destination nowhere and everywhere at once. With all of its expectations and early excitements, with its labor and discontent, with its hope and doom. With its careful manipulations and microscopic lies.
There you are, after having tried on all your clothes two or three times, after spraying yourself with various scents, after thinking of every endless possibility, you arrive. Early.
Now, already, though she claims she wants to go slowly, she looks at you from underneath and says, “You know I’m falling in love with you, right?” And yes, it sounds sweet and is sweet, yet, how? She has yet to hear you complain endlessly. She has yet to realize you rarely leave the house. She has seen you angry, that’s something. Is it because I don’t believe, is it that I realize saying these things too soon is no favor to either of us?
The next section:
I am like the kind of person my father was before he found religion. Quiet, obsessive, sometimes third eye of wisdom.
Come, walk the city with me, see the things I see.
My family, all quietly obsessive full of compulsions and afraid to leave our zones of comfort, all convinced failures, certain no one wants us.
I did apologize preemptively…warned you subtly and not so subtly that I would be the tiny little Buddha in your presence, that I would tell stories.
Winter Nights
All is quiet, darkly lit moonlit snow and most often silent-- empty of people, only tracks in the snow and your breath disappearing behind me.
And in the streetlamps there is a path I choose not to follow.
We have time and no time simultaneously.
Sleep and dreams are no waste-- time to make the meanings that keep us awake.
The only thing that could make this moment more perfect-- You, standing beautifully next to me. There is a light to the right, but when I turn to look, it extinguishes.
The quiet snowy crunch and the crinkle of paper and thoughts.
Stop wishing for what is not and start appreciating what is. This is the hardest part of living. It is nearly impossible to stop wishing for what is wanted.
A woman as beautiful as you should be completely appreciated. A woman as beautiful as you sees me, but does not see me.
The minds movement from thought to thought without pausing to think, this is stream of consciousness, this is truth.
Entry:
Sometimes I wonder if it is good that I retreat to my own minds company so readily and frequently? That I generally prefer my own minds company to most anyone else’s, and that when I enjoy others I enjoy them too much. And well, wherever you go, there you are. It seems simple, but sometimes you shouldn’t go where there is.
So quiet and empty after a snowstorm, oddly comforting to think no one lives in these houses built by fools and I'm driven I'm driven to write because of all of you who I have mistakenly assigned meaning to the tightness in my chest is you, The tightness in my chest is you, from my heart to my lungs I'm drowning, I cannot breath while you are leaving me. Already every woman small, luxurious brown hair you. What I started with. It's possibility that destroys me, not no-thing. Wayside leaves, it's the prairie in my heart, flat and lonely—solitude touched by the wind. In your eyes there are sphinxes. What I stayed with and what I became. A small cat begins a conversation...she is tiny and slinks. And it is hard for me to see that I am all of these people, and they are me. And it is impossible for them. It seems this woman needs something like passion, something like intense. She is older, academic, lost in cavernous house and guests of thought. What I supply is awkward, indescribable fear. What I have is innate and cannot be taught.
Secretly
“Seeing you today
My heart broke into a thousand pieces
I wouldn’t lose one”
Seeing you today memory scatters thoughts like sand elemental particles portrait of curves rises, gasps from my heart splintered tiny shards like glass break like rays of light
from skin disperse into tiny fragments from these shine moments we sauntered from star to star black night sky foreshadowed one of us would tumble burn out in a streak explode
I will not lose feeling the size of desire weighing the want interpreting sighs and looks translating into the language of touch my words are fierce but cant be forced seeing you today, keep trying and the contradictions will seem like truth and not like part of a circle angelic, beautiful past is present is future is past and they’re all in the river Siddhartha would row his little boat across when I am happy the words don’t come language swims through eternity am I beautiful without poetry? cradled in my strange strong arms sleep in perfection I want to tear words from the air seeing you today I do not command them, they command and I say a presentiment (foreboding), so timorous (nervous) am I nothing but a chauffer of words? first falling into things fluid words fell like rushing waters down skins marble smoothness touching you washing away past indecencies making you new 30 seconds or 60 where everything is dispersed blissful, non existent peace in pleasure my pen is lightening but I’m speaking concretely beauty and death beauty and longing quietly beautiful slowly sinking falling and dispersing like the people who watch them something must touch me spark words from thin air more pleasure in anticipation than action caught a glimpse of you today sometimes I feel like a word whore every journal, scrap of paper nakedly lazily laying around me all to make words for you for me dreams of a starry night forced. anger and nightmares rainless skies incandescent light Cupid and his rosy pink snout are hunting me skies full of rain and truth behind erotic curtains time has come sun breaks through peace, love, all my cards will soon be on the table nothing is hidden in sleep shameless so that you will hear me I write I watch my words consumed to be translated into you these words are mine I give them to you and I watch you from a long way off making them into endless streams imagined meanings welcoming them at a distance will I return with empty hands? you are the essential form I can admire as an idea pathways of blue veins nerves blood so clearly transparent so painfully real still I am spinning my wordy web I carry the letters with me, as if they were sacred documents, holy scriptures hieroglyphs knowing one day they will be found out as fakes reproductions, my faith mocked lofty girl divination ripe too soon in your eyes longing for someplace else and Kerouac says write! write! on endless scrolls of paper disembodied poetics for every 5 or 20 pages 1 or 3 lines spectacular but you must keep writing mind sniffs, pauses words appear my hands electric I’m meditating on you you are my sacred Aum my intellect undeveloped unripe feeling is so much simpler look, from three lines, this…started dreaming in diagrams reaching out at floating crumpled balls of paper folding them out like falling like snow sentimental fool A drunk A cynic the ever elusive (your) words come to me in dreams upon waking or walking I rarely force them if I do, they are empty and ugly when they are good they come secretly, surreptitiously from some secret place the your could be you dear reader, or it could be me imaginary the fiction of numbers, the fiction of words signifier signified Sign these days upon waking thinking of you of words theorem of a shooting star fluid words fell from her mouth down marble smoothness of skin your words sometimes breathe like stars into my mouth celestial air sniff for traces of sibilance for silence for things I’ve left behind my words are kisses waiting to tumble ardor, affinity autumnal hours skies darken, birds decree I could close my hands in prayer stare at the fine downy brown hair along the length of an arm burn out in a streak explode sometimes words come alone as falling stars unexpected 1 or 2 mind brightens then disappears your words streams of non sensical beauty falling around me truth the night sky ethnographies crashing star theorems and now, the end playing on the tip of my tongue a wish unfulfilled “Writing you today My heart broke into a thousand pieces I wouldn’t lose one word”
Bring me no more words no words mouthed from heart to head bring me outstretched hands sighs only to love before love imagining with open eyes hands outstretched clichéd but truthful expectant thundercrack skies break open rain down I feel you, like another skin covering me as I lay in the tangled sheets you left me there will be no fall thoughts I’m not thinking lying awaking what your hands have touched suns rays beat down on me, but I will not confess half pursuing half waiting safe harbor dreams feeling blankets your words between being and non being between time and sand between elementary particles and distant lands there can be no true solution ne plus ultra (beyond us there is nothing) someone is turning my negatives into positive radicals speaking words of poetry I’ve never memorized I’m speaking to you across cloudless skies my eyes, are they too sensitive to see? little births tiny collisions emissions she slips away, barely perceptible missions of pleasure what hides in your folded paper books? can you show me proof by contradiction? a poetical discussion?
Of course, Narrator, you chose your life. Your time and place of birth.
The Universe
Your music IS the universe, the night skies, black holes, love and everything in-between. Infinity, the edge of the universe, entropy and the impossibility of quantum mechanics. Thank you.
Learning as the splitting of terminology (ezra pound)
what is red?
a color.
what is a color?
a vibration or refraction of light.
what is a vibration?
a mode of energy
look at them and invent means of seeing them better
simplified form reduced to the essentials
red, rose, cherry –
She held my hand on the snow covered bridge, flakes whirling and dropping in front and behind of us, and told me I was the most spiritually, carnally, and intellectually satisfying person she had ever or could ever be with. As she nestled into my shoulder, I knew she would leave.
Writers toil in obscurity, for no recognition and even less money.
Yes, Blank reads a lot of philosophy, and poetry. Many biographies of artists, novelists, philosphers and poets. Blank refuses to capitalize appropriately. Blank thinks a lot too. All day in fact, and sometimes at night Blank can’t sleep for fear that Blank will think Blankself to death. Why are there no women heroes? They are always victims to be rescued, or sacrifcers.
Should I tell you I read all of these things so I can constantly imagine that I am someone else? We all want to be someone else.
You don’t need to know my real name to understand what I am talking about, what I am getting to. Am I even a man? You will never know, I can say anything I want, and you can’t disprove it. Am I a reliable narrator, or character? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
God! Save me from having to write about used car salesman and General Sherman!
See, in that creative writing class I had to sit there day after day with these boys and girls who thought they were so special, better than everyone else because they could write ‘fiction’ stories. (Do you really need me to go into an explanation of how or why I was in this class? Tell you what they looked like? No, because the minute I put you into a scenario, you do it yourself.) But they were some of the least special people I’d ever met. So ordinary. So afraid of being so ordinary that it made them even ordinarier. Would you want to read a story titled, “Josh Lewin, Loser? About a not so suave guy who thinks he’s suave who gives his landlord hand jobs for cheap rent, falls for a teenage girl and let’s her rob him and thinks going to Paris will save him from failure? If you do, and maybe, sadly, you do— this is all the information you need, because to extrapolate would make it not so interesting. Or how about a story about a static man who does nothing and lets a dog die rather than face that he is static and obsessed? The frightening thing is, I am making these stories sound far more interesting than they actually were. Or how about this one, the hero’s name is creet or greet or something to that effect (I can’t even remember how to spell it correctly, but that’s how it sounds) who walks down the beach in sandals. Hmmm…or what about the teenage girl obsessed with pop culture who is into drugs and denying her sexuality? Oh wait, you have heard all these stories before? Well me too, and I am not interested in hearing them again, especially when written haltingly, with inelegant and ordinary prose. I know I have because I wrote them in the third grade and got bored. I called this class, the “stab myself in the eye” class. That’s what I would have rather been doing than sitting there listening to them say “meta-language” as if it made them smart just to say it.
Jackson Pollock is my hero even though he was a drunk and incapable of even halfway human relationships. Pollock was innately talented, intuitively marked, intuitively genius. He couldn’t express verbally, anything really…but when he touched a canvas, it was shocked into beauty. He just knew what was good. And so many people just didn’t get it. Still don’t get it. Copying things from the world is not art. So many professors are passionately anti-Pollock because they secretly wish they could be that creative. Creating things that have never been seen, that is art. I’m not saying it doesn’t take talent to paint forests or a person, but it takes genius to destroy the figure. It also takes courage to be different. Especially when you know almost no one will ever get it.
I will only tell stories that I care about. They are my stories. I will not lie to the reader, inventing plot, character, narrative. Who is anyone to tell me what a story is? I could write the stories they write the way they write them, as good or better, but why would I?
MFA FUCKER .You think your Ben Folds, or John Cheever. You want to be like someone else, rather than yourself. I know you—standing drunk clutching onto your pudgy hipster wife talking to the singer in drunken tongue slumber as if he cares (which he clearly doesn’t).
I don’t look like a success (definition of success here).
Blank, slowly evolving lost poetic soul stuck (but not that unhappily so) in an office job that allows Blank to muse philosophically and poetically. Cannot leave Blank’s part time bookstore job because, c’mon, books! Sometimes drinks too much, but not often. prefers the easy praise for his/her poetry and fiction, it comes to him/her without effort (even when he/she knows he/she could do great things if he/she actually tried) an extremely shy lazy faux intellectual who would rather live in dreams than motivate himself/herself to do more because he/she fears change to the extreme.
Short story in which characters speak only in song lyrics?
See, this writing is life. Neat boxes and categories are not real fiction, they are counterfeits.
Intent and its definitions:
1. That which is intended; purpose. The state of mind operative at the time of an action. Meaning, purport. Connotation-adj. firmly fixed; concentrated. Engrossed. Having the mind fastened upon some purpose.
You could continue to define by also defining the words within the definitions to gather all the many nuances of words. Many want, or demand that I state some sort of intent in what I write. I despise the concept of intent. I intend nothing in particular; I have no grand scheme or plan. I write what needs to be written when it needs to be written in the way it demands to be written. That is all. If forced, I can lie. I can say; I write my life and those in it into myths. I write love. I write dreams, I write of deaths innumerable. I write hopes fears and fantasies of interest to myself and sometimes to others. I write desire, beauty and truth, in my way. It seems when we define and intend, things often lose their meaning and become something else completely. Intent comes without thought, not with it. For each person who reads, the intent is different. This is the beauty and mutability of words. In most writing I see common stories told in common ways. This does not blind me. I turn on more lights. My intent without much thinking is to make the room brighter. If you were in the room, my intent may have been to annoy you, to disturb the perfect amount of light for you. Heidegger contends there is no meta-language, that language itself is a house of being. Wittgenstein says: the limits of my language are the limits of my world. It is true, one needs endless amounts of time, solitude and emptiness to write good things.
See how life swims in memory? Sitting in a café reading fever 103, seeking meaning and someone mentions a certain kind of beer and it’s like I’m shot through a time/space canon into the old cabin. Her and I (why can I remember everything and she remembers nothing?) Drinking sickly sweet beer after a long nap she sat in my lap and I was king/queen of everything.
Why am I so different from the ones who surround me? Why are they equally intrigued and disgusted—Am I so overwhelming?
I am supposed to talk about punctuation, lineation, syntax and diction, people punctuate where necessary without symbols for signifying.
It’s as if whomever I fall for slips away instantly into memory ending before they begin. See, you are nothing but a wish, smoke and mirrors, unsolvable equations, chalk screeching on blackboard, haunted houses, fun houses fun for no one.
The work of chemistry and poetry/enlightenment and sin. I take you in like I take in air.
And how can this psychologist/scientist in a poetry class be the first to understand? Her cheeks turn red, she unleashes unexpected laughter, she reads my poems and says:
She says: Someone doesn’t appreciate the bird you are.
She says: They do not sacrifice, they don’t deserve you.
She says: Pure beauty.
She says: Emotions running wild, with wild abandon. Now that is seduction.
She asks: Are you in love?
“I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body hurts me as the world hurts God.”
She believes me to be things I never was. Creating in her memory what she wants.
Angry large moods vast woman. And see…I love you without reward.
My lot my lot
to be obsessed wrapped up
baby in blanket with love (or lack thereof)
all I can do is dream it
filmed you with focus zoom
that was my eye on you
you said: “ I always felt like you were watching me.”
and I was love, I was
you were food to me, and smiles, and the rain that made everything green and the eyes that made me see…even after you’d left me.
knowing I would rot rancid in your memories
LOVE is all. It is meat and drink. I am starving for lack.
what an elaborate prank your words
were. such a terrible joke.
now I am enmeshed , trapped, like the swirling clouds of oil and gas in dirty summer strophe.
now, I am regrets daughter.
I sometimes think hands should have lips with which to speak.
I watch your hands. I want to take your right hand in mine, the tiny slivers of fingers, rough, straws…and write. Write down love for you.
Discrete airs. Hollow mysteries.
I dreamed of turtle stories and ghosts.
My dream last night was stunning. I was in a hospital elevator, there was a well dressed woman standing in front of the doors. She had on a mid length leather jacket and was holding a cane. She looked tired. We looked at each other in that desperate way with no pretensions…. and she started to slide down to the floor, as if someone were pulling strings underneath her. I went forward asking if she was ok as she fell into my arms. She started crying, like someone who was soon to lose the weight of the world. She said, I’ve got tumors all over, I’m dying, and I’ve just wet myself, as I held her up she held on to me tightly. Looking directly into my eyes she said I looked like the kind of person one could fall into.
You have intense dreams, they often satiate your hunger. You reach a place of peace with your solitary life. In a way, you are even happy. Then it happens. Someone sets you up. A SET UP. Oh god, why did I say yes? You ask yourself all week as the day looms ever nearer. What if she’s hideous? What if she thinks I’m repugnant? Or even worse, what if we like each other and once again, all aboard steamship relationship? Destination nowhere and everywhere at once. With all of its expectations and early excitements, with its labor and discontent, with its hope and doom. With its careful manipulations and microscopic lies.
There you are, after having tried on all your clothes two or three times, after spraying yourself with various scents, after thinking of every endless possibility, you arrive. Early.
Now, already, though she claims she wants to go slowly, she looks at you from underneath and says, “You know I’m falling in love with you, right?” And yes, it sounds sweet and is sweet, yet, how? She has yet to hear you complain endlessly. She has yet to realize you rarely leave the house. She has seen you angry, that’s something. Is it because I don’t believe, is it that I realize saying these things too soon is no favor to either of us?
The next section:
I am like the kind of person my father was before he found religion. Quiet, obsessive, sometimes third eye of wisdom.
Come, walk the city with me, see the things I see.
My family, all quietly obsessive full of compulsions and afraid to leave our zones of comfort, all convinced failures, certain no one wants us.
I did apologize preemptively…warned you subtly and not so subtly that I would be the tiny little Buddha in your presence, that I would tell stories.
Winter Nights
All is quiet, darkly lit moonlit snow and most often silent-- empty of people, only tracks in the snow and your breath disappearing behind me.
And in the streetlamps there is a path I choose not to follow.
We have time and no time simultaneously.
Sleep and dreams are no waste-- time to make the meanings that keep us awake.
The only thing that could make this moment more perfect-- You, standing beautifully next to me. There is a light to the right, but when I turn to look, it extinguishes.
The quiet snowy crunch and the crinkle of paper and thoughts.
Stop wishing for what is not and start appreciating what is. This is the hardest part of living. It is nearly impossible to stop wishing for what is wanted.
A woman as beautiful as you should be completely appreciated. A woman as beautiful as you sees me, but does not see me.
The minds movement from thought to thought without pausing to think, this is stream of consciousness, this is truth.
Entry:
Sometimes I wonder if it is good that I retreat to my own minds company so readily and frequently? That I generally prefer my own minds company to most anyone else’s, and that when I enjoy others I enjoy them too much. And well, wherever you go, there you are. It seems simple, but sometimes you shouldn’t go where there is.
So quiet and empty after a snowstorm, oddly comforting to think no one lives in these houses built by fools and I'm driven I'm driven to write because of all of you who I have mistakenly assigned meaning to the tightness in my chest is you, The tightness in my chest is you, from my heart to my lungs I'm drowning, I cannot breath while you are leaving me. Already every woman small, luxurious brown hair you. What I started with. It's possibility that destroys me, not no-thing. Wayside leaves, it's the prairie in my heart, flat and lonely—solitude touched by the wind. In your eyes there are sphinxes. What I stayed with and what I became. A small cat begins a conversation...she is tiny and slinks. And it is hard for me to see that I am all of these people, and they are me. And it is impossible for them. It seems this woman needs something like passion, something like intense. She is older, academic, lost in cavernous house and guests of thought. What I supply is awkward, indescribable fear. What I have is innate and cannot be taught.
Secretly
“Seeing you today
My heart broke into a thousand pieces
I wouldn’t lose one”
Seeing you today memory scatters thoughts like sand elemental particles portrait of curves rises, gasps from my heart splintered tiny shards like glass break like rays of light
from skin disperse into tiny fragments from these shine moments we sauntered from star to star black night sky foreshadowed one of us would tumble burn out in a streak explode
I will not lose feeling the size of desire weighing the want interpreting sighs and looks translating into the language of touch my words are fierce but cant be forced seeing you today, keep trying and the contradictions will seem like truth and not like part of a circle angelic, beautiful past is present is future is past and they’re all in the river Siddhartha would row his little boat across when I am happy the words don’t come language swims through eternity am I beautiful without poetry? cradled in my strange strong arms sleep in perfection I want to tear words from the air seeing you today I do not command them, they command and I say a presentiment (foreboding), so timorous (nervous) am I nothing but a chauffer of words? first falling into things fluid words fell like rushing waters down skins marble smoothness touching you washing away past indecencies making you new 30 seconds or 60 where everything is dispersed blissful, non existent peace in pleasure my pen is lightening but I’m speaking concretely beauty and death beauty and longing quietly beautiful slowly sinking falling and dispersing like the people who watch them something must touch me spark words from thin air more pleasure in anticipation than action caught a glimpse of you today sometimes I feel like a word whore every journal, scrap of paper nakedly lazily laying around me all to make words for you for me dreams of a starry night forced. anger and nightmares rainless skies incandescent light Cupid and his rosy pink snout are hunting me skies full of rain and truth behind erotic curtains time has come sun breaks through peace, love, all my cards will soon be on the table nothing is hidden in sleep shameless so that you will hear me I write I watch my words consumed to be translated into you these words are mine I give them to you and I watch you from a long way off making them into endless streams imagined meanings welcoming them at a distance will I return with empty hands? you are the essential form I can admire as an idea pathways of blue veins nerves blood so clearly transparent so painfully real still I am spinning my wordy web I carry the letters with me, as if they were sacred documents, holy scriptures hieroglyphs knowing one day they will be found out as fakes reproductions, my faith mocked lofty girl divination ripe too soon in your eyes longing for someplace else and Kerouac says write! write! on endless scrolls of paper disembodied poetics for every 5 or 20 pages 1 or 3 lines spectacular but you must keep writing mind sniffs, pauses words appear my hands electric I’m meditating on you you are my sacred Aum my intellect undeveloped unripe feeling is so much simpler look, from three lines, this…started dreaming in diagrams reaching out at floating crumpled balls of paper folding them out like falling like snow sentimental fool A drunk A cynic the ever elusive (your) words come to me in dreams upon waking or walking I rarely force them if I do, they are empty and ugly when they are good they come secretly, surreptitiously from some secret place the your could be you dear reader, or it could be me imaginary the fiction of numbers, the fiction of words signifier signified Sign these days upon waking thinking of you of words theorem of a shooting star fluid words fell from her mouth down marble smoothness of skin your words sometimes breathe like stars into my mouth celestial air sniff for traces of sibilance for silence for things I’ve left behind my words are kisses waiting to tumble ardor, affinity autumnal hours skies darken, birds decree I could close my hands in prayer stare at the fine downy brown hair along the length of an arm burn out in a streak explode sometimes words come alone as falling stars unexpected 1 or 2 mind brightens then disappears your words streams of non sensical beauty falling around me truth the night sky ethnographies crashing star theorems and now, the end playing on the tip of my tongue a wish unfulfilled “Writing you today My heart broke into a thousand pieces I wouldn’t lose one word”
Bring me no more words no words mouthed from heart to head bring me outstretched hands sighs only to love before love imagining with open eyes hands outstretched clichéd but truthful expectant thundercrack skies break open rain down I feel you, like another skin covering me as I lay in the tangled sheets you left me there will be no fall thoughts I’m not thinking lying awaking what your hands have touched suns rays beat down on me, but I will not confess half pursuing half waiting safe harbor dreams feeling blankets your words between being and non being between time and sand between elementary particles and distant lands there can be no true solution ne plus ultra (beyond us there is nothing) someone is turning my negatives into positive radicals speaking words of poetry I’ve never memorized I’m speaking to you across cloudless skies my eyes, are they too sensitive to see? little births tiny collisions emissions she slips away, barely perceptible missions of pleasure what hides in your folded paper books? can you show me proof by contradiction? a poetical discussion?
Of course, Narrator, you chose your life. Your time and place of birth.
The Universe
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Excerpt from For Your Eyes Only by Elliott Durko Lynch
Editor's Note: This issue has been the longest in publishing that I think we've ever done. Originally we started putting the issue together in 2007, we finally got to press in 2008 and 2009 and are still getting copies out to people! I have been very remiss in at least getting things onto to the blog or the website, which I also blame on a lack of internet connection at home and a lot of personal issues. But here is the first of several pieces that we've "recently" published.
Mea culpa! Mea Culpa!
Excerpt from the show ‘For Your Eyes Only’
Performed October 19 – 21 2006 Intermedia Arts Naked Stages Program,
Generously Funded by the Jerome Foundation
Performed by Elliott Durko Lynch, with Sara Shaylie, Anna Marie Shogren, and Matt Alto.
Written by Elliott Durko Lynch
Among other things, the fictitious character Howard Nobody, who makes a few appearances in the show, has a myspace page. The password unfortunately was lost on October 21st 2006. It is available for view at www.myspace.com/howard_nobody.
Among other things, the fictitious character US_POSTAL WORKER, also has a myspace page, which has suffered the same fate. www.myspace.com/the_postal_worker
Neither of them appear in this script.
Before the performance starts, with theatrical knowledge that the show ‘hasn’t started’ Elliott sits on floor with his laptop and watches YouTube Videos, the screen is mirrored on the Big Screen (the cyke wall). Preferably with Audio.
The Videos/Pages visited/played are:
Billy Idol, Eyes Without A Face (Official Music Video)
Celine Dion, All By Myself (Official Music Video)
Someone to Watch Over Me (Covered by a young teenage woman)
Two Mypace Pages:
Myspace Website US POSTAL WORKER (the videos of “Wait a Minute Mr. Postman” are played).
Myspace Website Elliott’s Myspace Memorial
Elliott strikes the laptop, the stage is empty with the exception of a table in the front corner of the stage, with chair, microphone, Amplifier, lamp, tape recorder, and manila folder. He sits in the chair, turns on the amplifier under the table, opens the folder and begins to read.
I've been writing letters, like an act of rebellion. I do this because over a year ago, one month after graduating from University, and five months before I began to pay for it, I received a letter in the mail, from my friend Ryan Hagen.
He is my oldest friend outside of my family. We knew each other in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where I grew up.
<< Out of the Folder Elliott takes out the letter >>
His letter starts,
June 7th 2005,
“Elliott, I'm sitting now in a little coffee house in Bar Harbor, Maine, on a clear Tuesday afternoon. With some effort I carried my 15 pound typewriter in my backpack as I made the 8-mile bike ride across the interior of the island from my house in Seal Harbor.
I mention that its a Tuesday because the meat of this letter is actually another letter altogether, one I have tried to write you for at least a year -- tried and failed, I suppose. It’s about another clear Tuesday from our pasts, one that left its marks on me in ways I have only just begun to understand and only barely begun to put to paper in the correct way.”
<< Elliott puts the letter aside >>
That Tuesday, the Tuesday from our pasts, was the second Tuesday of college for Ryan and me. He was in New York, and I was in Minneapolis. That Tuesday was September 11th, 2001, and we were realizing the how enormously privileged our lives were.
This performance is about privilege,
This performance is about necessity
I was compelled, by a force.
My brain has changed, my life has changed. I never thought I would despise myself, despise what I did, or despise what we do. but I do.
I can't live without my computer. I grew up with it. I remember it. I remember it well.
I remember with it.
I was compelled to save everything, by a force.
Mea culpa! Mea Culpa!
Excerpt from the show ‘For Your Eyes Only’
Performed October 19 – 21 2006 Intermedia Arts Naked Stages Program,
Generously Funded by the Jerome Foundation
Performed by Elliott Durko Lynch, with Sara Shaylie, Anna Marie Shogren, and Matt Alto.
Written by Elliott Durko Lynch
Among other things, the fictitious character Howard Nobody, who makes a few appearances in the show, has a myspace page. The password unfortunately was lost on October 21st 2006. It is available for view at www.myspace.com/howard_nobody.
Among other things, the fictitious character US_POSTAL WORKER, also has a myspace page, which has suffered the same fate. www.myspace.com/the_postal_worker
Neither of them appear in this script.
Before the performance starts, with theatrical knowledge that the show ‘hasn’t started’ Elliott sits on floor with his laptop and watches YouTube Videos, the screen is mirrored on the Big Screen (the cyke wall). Preferably with Audio.
The Videos/Pages visited/played are:
Billy Idol, Eyes Without A Face (Official Music Video)
Celine Dion, All By Myself (Official Music Video)
Someone to Watch Over Me (Covered by a young teenage woman)
Two Mypace Pages:
Myspace Website US POSTAL WORKER (the videos of “Wait a Minute Mr. Postman” are played).
Myspace Website Elliott’s Myspace Memorial
Elliott strikes the laptop, the stage is empty with the exception of a table in the front corner of the stage, with chair, microphone, Amplifier, lamp, tape recorder, and manila folder. He sits in the chair, turns on the amplifier under the table, opens the folder and begins to read.
I've been writing letters, like an act of rebellion. I do this because over a year ago, one month after graduating from University, and five months before I began to pay for it, I received a letter in the mail, from my friend Ryan Hagen.
He is my oldest friend outside of my family. We knew each other in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where I grew up.
<< Out of the Folder Elliott takes out the letter >>
His letter starts,
June 7th 2005,
“Elliott, I'm sitting now in a little coffee house in Bar Harbor, Maine, on a clear Tuesday afternoon. With some effort I carried my 15 pound typewriter in my backpack as I made the 8-mile bike ride across the interior of the island from my house in Seal Harbor.
I mention that its a Tuesday because the meat of this letter is actually another letter altogether, one I have tried to write you for at least a year -- tried and failed, I suppose. It’s about another clear Tuesday from our pasts, one that left its marks on me in ways I have only just begun to understand and only barely begun to put to paper in the correct way.”
<< Elliott puts the letter aside >>
That Tuesday, the Tuesday from our pasts, was the second Tuesday of college for Ryan and me. He was in New York, and I was in Minneapolis. That Tuesday was September 11th, 2001, and we were realizing the how enormously privileged our lives were.
This performance is about privilege,
This performance is about necessity
I was compelled, by a force.
My brain has changed, my life has changed. I never thought I would despise myself, despise what I did, or despise what we do. but I do.
I can't live without my computer. I grew up with it. I remember it. I remember it well.
I remember with it.
I was compelled to save everything, by a force.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Student Responses: What is a Performance Text
Here are some responses from my brilliant Dramatic Lit students. The question posed to them was this. If, as Richard Schechner says, everything can be read as a performance, and if, as the semioticians say, everything can be read as a text, then what constitutes a performance text?
What is a performance text?
The nature of a performance text is as simple as it seems, it is finding an appropriate venue for the sharing of the text that is the challenge. Anything written and extant falls under the umbrella of "performance text." Thanks in a great deal to Dada and surrealist artists, many of the standards a text was held to in order for it to be considered a "performance text" have been shattered. Today’s theater has no way of policing or authorizing what qualifies as a performance text. The concept of formalizing some expression as "Performance Text" would be useless because even a piece everyone may agree upon as a model is, by its nature as a performance piece, an extremely protean entity. No performance of any piece will ever be repeated and every production will be necessarily unique. The words written in a text cannot be interpreted the same way twice and once the play lives for an audience it cannot be compared to the carcass of a text it came from. There is a certain inherent anarchy to any performance, with no way of calculating the final results accurately beforehand despite the exactness a piece may be written with. The script, or roadmap for maneuvering through the journey, must be as flexible and open a medium as possible in order to allow writers to explore and incorporate such extreme possibilities for expression.
--Sam Gromoll
In order for anything to be considered a performance text, it has to be read in such a way to make performance possible. Given the example of an apple, this can be read in many ways. Most people think of an apple as a fruit to eat, or if you are a devious little child a blunt object to throw at a sibling. But, if you take the time to read it as a performance text, you will soon see it soft swooping curves that blossomed out of a flower after it was pollinated by a swarm of bees. It, coming in to its strength and glory of its bright red form only to fall to the earth, wilt, and die. But, hidden in that death, comes the life of a new apple tree and the cycle begins again. This story read solely of the suggestion of "apple" can be portrayed to an audience. It is a rather extreme example of performance text, but it is none the less as valid as other more common place forms.
Poetry is considered to be literature from most people and not even dramatic literature at that. However, I argue that a poem can be a performance text if its words and mean are read and acted out by a person. For instance, Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is a poem that was published for performance. I further argue that if a text is read for its story and not with the intent of being performed, it is not a performance text. This is true even if the text in question happens to fall into the category of dramatic literature. One might read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for the story. And, even though it would be written in the form of a piece of dramatic literature, it should not, in that case, be considered a performance text. It is not what something is that makes it a performance text, but how it is read. The most mundane object, such as an apple, or even the suggestion of an apple, can be considered to be a performance text.
-- Andrew Brackett
A "performance text" can be spoken, written, read, or simply remembered. It can include dialogue, or it can specify a series of actions to be performed without language. It has become more common for larger groups to collaborate on the development of a text intended for performance. Some published texts serve as documentation of performances that were "unwritten" before they took place. Radical theatre practitioner Augusto Boal often includes in his written works the historical documentation of revealing improvisations that took place during his workshops with low-income Brazilian youth and adults.
Performances can also draw from texts that were not specifically intended for theatrical use. Augusto Boal encouraged the creation of performances based on newspaper articles, with the play action exposing and criticizing the hypocrisies of both the media and its subjects. Performances can animate historical events, utilizing the exact words of people known or "unknown" to mainstream history. Performances are able to creatively transform even texts that are not considered "true literature" by most. Shopping lists, for instance, could be compiled and developed into a fascinating performance, even though they are not generally considered literary.
The term "dramatic literature" seems to imply only works that have been selected by the mainstream for publication, only works that could be placed on bookstore shelves for upwards of $15.00. The term seems to encompass only texts that maintain literary value outside the world of live performance. They can acceptably be read, without being experienced. They exist distinct and separate from the performances that they map. "Performance text," on the other hand, emphasizes the need for performance, for action, for active engagement with the material, for the human-to-human interactions that make theatre interesting. Unlike "dramatic literature," this term reminds us of the mad stew that simmers under the written word, waiting to boil over, if only we'll let it.
-- Kat Wodtke
A performance text is anything that influences physical expression in front of an audience. That definition may be too simplistic—what is it ruling out and what are the exceptions? . . . . This brings me to consider what constitutes a performance—not just actors or performers on a stage, but, also, the performances and rituals of everyday life. What is the "text" for those performances?
-- Liz O'Connell
What is a performance text?
The nature of a performance text is as simple as it seems, it is finding an appropriate venue for the sharing of the text that is the challenge. Anything written and extant falls under the umbrella of "performance text." Thanks in a great deal to Dada and surrealist artists, many of the standards a text was held to in order for it to be considered a "performance text" have been shattered. Today’s theater has no way of policing or authorizing what qualifies as a performance text. The concept of formalizing some expression as "Performance Text" would be useless because even a piece everyone may agree upon as a model is, by its nature as a performance piece, an extremely protean entity. No performance of any piece will ever be repeated and every production will be necessarily unique. The words written in a text cannot be interpreted the same way twice and once the play lives for an audience it cannot be compared to the carcass of a text it came from. There is a certain inherent anarchy to any performance, with no way of calculating the final results accurately beforehand despite the exactness a piece may be written with. The script, or roadmap for maneuvering through the journey, must be as flexible and open a medium as possible in order to allow writers to explore and incorporate such extreme possibilities for expression.
--Sam Gromoll
In order for anything to be considered a performance text, it has to be read in such a way to make performance possible. Given the example of an apple, this can be read in many ways. Most people think of an apple as a fruit to eat, or if you are a devious little child a blunt object to throw at a sibling. But, if you take the time to read it as a performance text, you will soon see it soft swooping curves that blossomed out of a flower after it was pollinated by a swarm of bees. It, coming in to its strength and glory of its bright red form only to fall to the earth, wilt, and die. But, hidden in that death, comes the life of a new apple tree and the cycle begins again. This story read solely of the suggestion of "apple" can be portrayed to an audience. It is a rather extreme example of performance text, but it is none the less as valid as other more common place forms.
Poetry is considered to be literature from most people and not even dramatic literature at that. However, I argue that a poem can be a performance text if its words and mean are read and acted out by a person. For instance, Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is a poem that was published for performance. I further argue that if a text is read for its story and not with the intent of being performed, it is not a performance text. This is true even if the text in question happens to fall into the category of dramatic literature. One might read Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for the story. And, even though it would be written in the form of a piece of dramatic literature, it should not, in that case, be considered a performance text. It is not what something is that makes it a performance text, but how it is read. The most mundane object, such as an apple, or even the suggestion of an apple, can be considered to be a performance text.
-- Andrew Brackett
A "performance text" can be spoken, written, read, or simply remembered. It can include dialogue, or it can specify a series of actions to be performed without language. It has become more common for larger groups to collaborate on the development of a text intended for performance. Some published texts serve as documentation of performances that were "unwritten" before they took place. Radical theatre practitioner Augusto Boal often includes in his written works the historical documentation of revealing improvisations that took place during his workshops with low-income Brazilian youth and adults.
Performances can also draw from texts that were not specifically intended for theatrical use. Augusto Boal encouraged the creation of performances based on newspaper articles, with the play action exposing and criticizing the hypocrisies of both the media and its subjects. Performances can animate historical events, utilizing the exact words of people known or "unknown" to mainstream history. Performances are able to creatively transform even texts that are not considered "true literature" by most. Shopping lists, for instance, could be compiled and developed into a fascinating performance, even though they are not generally considered literary.
The term "dramatic literature" seems to imply only works that have been selected by the mainstream for publication, only works that could be placed on bookstore shelves for upwards of $15.00. The term seems to encompass only texts that maintain literary value outside the world of live performance. They can acceptably be read, without being experienced. They exist distinct and separate from the performances that they map. "Performance text," on the other hand, emphasizes the need for performance, for action, for active engagement with the material, for the human-to-human interactions that make theatre interesting. Unlike "dramatic literature," this term reminds us of the mad stew that simmers under the written word, waiting to boil over, if only we'll let it.
-- Kat Wodtke
A performance text is anything that influences physical expression in front of an audience. That definition may be too simplistic—what is it ruling out and what are the exceptions? . . . . This brings me to consider what constitutes a performance—not just actors or performers on a stage, but, also, the performances and rituals of everyday life. What is the "text" for those performances?
-- Liz O'Connell
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Issue 9, 2007: Peculiar by Jason Sweeney
A selection of texts from
Peculiar
A performance by UNREASONABLE ADULTS, 2003
Written by Jason Sweeney
Richmond, SA Australia
PECULIAR – welcome
(Spoken by a video-mediated Jason direct to an audience of 40)
There is some allure in gathering groups of people, assembling them in some dark, intimate space, allowing them time to arrange themselves, assume a position, take a seat, or to stand there, awkward or otherwise, see the looks in their eyes, watch the muscles flinch in their faces. Taking note of particular signs: an aversion to direct eye contact is a giveaway, folded arms, aha, the licking of lips, pervert, the crossing of legs, you know. Some nervous whispering. We've heard things about this guy and we're not convinced. Look. There's an aggressive posture. Lean forward, like you've seen this all before. Like you've been there. Done that. But here you are, doing it again. You've got some kind of personal agenda and you're ticking the boxes off as you go. Is this different or just indifferent? This is just an observation. This is the point at which you're told to leave your bags at the door. This is the point at which you're given the shadow of a doubt, but take a chance anyway. This is the point at which you say to yourself - hey, he's kinda cute, but I wouldn't want to cross him. I wouldn't want to be stuck next to him on a crowded bus. Get trapped in a bar. This is the point at which you realise you might have to take a stand, where you might be asked to get up off your seat and follow the instructions. You know the procedure. There is irony and sincerity. There is parody and melancholy. This is not all fun and games. Laughter echoes off. This is the point at which you're told to stop crying. To put that version of your life to the side, file away, negotiate some new kind of fear.
Do not ask me back to your house. You do not know what you are getting yourself in for. Do not cross that line with me. Do not pass over that threshold. Meet me somewhere else. Some non-space, liminal. Do not count on speech or seduction. Be careful to go easy on the booze. Smoke one less cigarette. Dance close to me. Just move slow. Dance close. Don't say another word.
++
HAND IN GLOVE
(for cardboard signs and naked men in a basement with t-shirts over their heads are projected)
These are the basement shots. I sucked this guy's finger at a party. The night I passed out on a kitchen floor in Perth, Australia. It was a mess. One of those awkward potential homewrecker scenarios after 6 weeks of unrecognised sexual tension. It's possible. These other two guys on the screen are performers, paid in pints of beer. I recall one of them mumbling beneath his t-shirt "oh my god. oh my god". They are performers on the verge of perfomance art. Nothing like three full bodied men naked in a condemned basement on a Monday afternoon. When I asked the finger sucker to fake masturbation he was hand straight to the dick. No questions. I wanted answers but I've never been good at asking for it. In retrospect I realised he would have come for me. Anyhow, these shots were an idea going nowhere. But they look good and use a button called night-shot on my mini-DV camera. I had this vision of Kenneth Anger meets The Blair Witch Project. Like these butt shots. Not an ass man, particularly. I more into hands and that space between the navel and pubic bone. And noses. Yes. Big noses. The finger sucker had a nose to die for. Like Joshua, my undeclared husband of Copenhagen. Let me tell you about the long distance. That place I spend in between knowing and the never-knowing. The promises and mistakes. The waiting and distractions. The photos sent and then hidden. Another performance experiment, a way to tell you I love you. So anyway I guess I went into the basement to jerk off but then realised being alone and just doing that was pretty dumb. So I got the men in. The instructions were simple. I'm making a video for a live art work that forms part of a research project about interdisciplinary performance practice and queer submergence that finds itself crawling into underground zones of haunted tunnels and forgotten lives and buries itself there. OK maybe I didn't go into as much detail. I think I pretty much said: do ya wanna be in a video? The idea is that you have your t-shirt over your head and your jocks around your ankles. Something about cruising and toilet sex and head jobs and death and ghosts. They were way into it. I was genuinely surprised. Lubed up with a slab of Coopers stubbies. The one with the green label. Pale Ale. Whatever. You know, someone told me that Coopers is the only beer that is truly vegan? Doesn't have fish oil. It's got to account for something.
SOON ALL THIS WILL BE PICTURESQUE RUINS
(Read by Jason into a filtered microphone while destroyed cities and empty places are projected)
Four boys swing like monkeys from the handrails on the last train home. They're shaking the carriage. One of the boys stands kinda too nearish: a cute anglo with a quiff. His friends carry baseball bats. Their T-Shirts are numbered. The train pulls to a halt. Empties out. It moves onto the next station. Apart from these boys I’m the only other passenger left in this carriage. I can’t help but stare the quiff boy. He glares full back at me. Without hesitation he says: you saw us swinging like monkeys on the hand-rails but how much attention did you really pay? Do you think that calling us cute somehow validates your sense of distance and objectivity? Do you really think we're just idle boys standing with our asses firmly packed and tactile with our pale clean complexions with our discofunk with our basketball boy arrogance with our stolen clothes with our fathers who beat the shit out of our beautiful angel faces and the scars that crease it seems cool and filmstar sexy well listen to us you fucker you've got it all wrong right cos you see those baseball bats we carry yeah well we're gonna jump off this train take those metal poles and smash some fucking faggot's brains onto the pavement until his fucking skin and teeth stick to the sidewalk until his queer cocksucking mouth is driven into the ratshit and cockroaches of the gutter until the pressure inside his skull bursts and the blood spurts from his ears till his ass is blown out by a shotgun and all those boys that entered it are blown away with it yeah and we're so really cute now just like your dreams of River Phoenix before the club scene so coy but rough around the edges well we say get out of our faces get off of our train and thank god it's still light outside. It'll soon be dark ...
+++
YOUNG BLOOD
( A letter for an audience member to read)
Dear Jason,
He is tall, strong, good-looking. He walks into the blackness of the night. They drive around trying to find him but he has disappeared.
His body is still fresh. Decomposition has not yet started.
They were lovers, they were in love.
He is stuffed into a plastic bag. To make him fit into the bag, his head and legs are cut off, his intestines removed and his legs shoved inside his carcass. The head is tied to the torso with yellow plastic cord, which passes up through the severed neck and back through the mouth and looped through the top ribs. The resulting sight is bizarre ... His feet stuck out of the carcass but the body is now small enough to fit in the bag, which is then wrapped with cord to hold everything together.
After he is killed, a saw is used to cut his spine in two places. His head is sawn off at the neck. His arms and legs neatly cut from his body at the joints. All fingers and thumbs cut off and the pelvis separated from his torso and backbone.The teeth marks from the saw can be seen on the C 4 verterbrae where the head is cut off from the body. The same marks can be seen on L 4 of the spine, where the pelvis bones have been separated from the body.
As well as being dissected, (the boy’s) flesh and muscle tissue has been removed from his arms and upper legs leaving bare bones. All internal organs - the heart, lungs, liver, kidney and intestines - have been removed. His scrotum has been cut open and his testicles have been removed. The head of his penis has been cut off and his penis shaft has been cut open down the middle. One testicle is missing. (The boy’s) tattoos are cut from his arms and legs and placed in separate plastic bags and placed inside his torso along with his arms and legs.
With love…
+++
PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION
(Cards given to audience with a cup of cheap red wine)
He's beautiful. Did you hear what I said? Are we over? Did we begin? What more proof do you need? It’s a matter of taking that glass, any reflective surface and smashing it into that face, destroy those looks, wipe that smile, erase it, all the way down, down, don’t wanna miss a fraction, every slice matters, no slither missed.
He's repulsive. I’ve taken care of everything.
But instead. He's taking me home.
His bedroom. Right there.
He's a liar.
His note. It never came. So I wait a bit longer.
His phonecall. Expected. House empty.
His voice. Radio frequency. Stuck. Dials, fucking twisted.
His distance.
He's with someone.
He's with someone else.
His blood. For dinner.
Forget about him. OK.
He means it (this time), baby. He's never coming back.
His new boyfriend. The traveller. The street kid. Maybe a girl.
He disgusts you (now).
You will never see him (again).
He's open to other suggestions. Other. Never going back.
Ever. Again. From the top.
++
CIRCUMCISIONAL EVIDENCE
(read on mini-disc recording while masturbation close-ups and remixed K. Anger play)
He’d say to me at the height of romance and on sports fields: from that hockey stick to the axe to a chainsaw, it’s all downhill from here, bro’. He was my brother, I loved my brother, loved my brother like only a brother can, in the throat. We swam in those lakes, we kissed in the forests, rode naked on horseback and bathed at low tide. We fucked each other under a jetty when I was seventeen. I jerked him off on a bunk bed, he was on top. I’d just put my hand under the covers and make him cum in silence. Then he’d fall asleep and I’d dream of him. He had the hugest cock I’d ever seen. He used to show me when he’d lie on our bedroom floor and do weight training. He’d get this massive hard-on, take off his shorts and lift dumb bells, smiling. He had this taut, hairless body, the kind you dream over looking at pictures in Outrage or Campaign. He’d ask me to stop doing my homework (he’d call me ‘square fucker’ which I found endearing) and tell me to come over and lay by his side. He’d squirt this sweet smelling oil into my hand. I knew what this meant. I began by rubbing it into his chest while he flexed his pecs. He said he liked to feel my hands against his skin. He’d tell me to lick his stomach, circle my tongue around his belly button. I loved this bit. His skin always tasted like caramel. From here I knew where to go. My mouth travelled to his sweaty groin, his balls, all so hot, I wanted to dive in, I could have slept in there. I’d guide my tongue up the length of his cock, I’d do this over and over, I could hear him groaning (a sign of approval) until my mouth reached the shaft and I’d gently suck on that, only to the point that I knew, instinctively (cos he was my brother) that I had to start swallowing so I’d take him in full, full and wide, yeah, he’s loving it, I can’t help pulling my dick out of my pyjama shorts, it’s pushing against his leg and he’d say that’s it kid (cos I was younger) and he’d be running those firm football fingers through my hair, thrusting my mouth onto that familiar cock, that cock I know, like another home, a place to go to and after a while he’d do the work and jerk that thing into my mouth (not too rough, kinda lovingly) and I’d just wait until he shot into my throat a warm stream of cum and he’s inside me, in me, once more. So now every time I jerk off I think of my brother, the brother I never had.
++
QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS
(Read by computer voice against blue screen death)
Are we entering into territories of horror?
Did I really hear you say "I like to watch"?
Do you like to Feast and go home comfortable?
Did you expect me to become your go between rent boy?
What kind of heaven do you want?
Between me saying come on over and you saying I desire you, were you really just saying nothing?
How much did you expect to pay?
Can we get through this?
Can we lose the sad excuses?
Can I delete this message before I am forced to read them as incantation?
Do I end up the loser?
Does this shelf look attractive?
Was I about to become freeze-framed and out of range?
Tell me again: how much did you like the way I walked?
You said something about lips?
How could I know that you were feeling this way?
Why can't you look into my eyes and say it like you mean it?
How could I not regret?
Would you like to suggest a method for 'moving on'?
Why is it so hard to shed a single tear?
Why can't I cry?
Do my eyes well up?
Would it be easier to write it all down?
How difficult is it to forget?
I've done it once, can I do it again?
Do you believe in all things in moderation?
Am I stating the obvious?
Why does it take so long for you to reply?
Is this really the end of romance?
Why did you never show at the airport?
Why did you never call when you said you would?
Why do you always speak so bitterly?
Why this wall, this locked door, this line cut-off?
Where did this anti-gay gay man tag come from?
Did the community apply it?
Why this night and never day?
When well it stop raining?
Why do I feel like dying?
Have you ever looked down from the top of a 15 storey building and thought: hasn't this been done before?
Why the crack in the ceiling?
Where does the heat come from?
Why is it always so fucking cold?
Do I create the barriers?
Do I assign the blame?
Somebody said: is it because I desire the unattainable?
What is my strange fascination with prisons?
Why did Derek and David have to die?
Why was Jean left alone?
How can I fall out of love with you?
Why do you want to destroy me with your stare, your silence?
Where did all these dead bodies come from?
How much did I really love Ricardo?
Do I miss him?
Why can’t you just say: Yes?
Could you please drop the performance poetry?
What are those two men whispering about in the back row?
Would you like to stop using my name?
Are you just nasty little scavengers?
Do you have a problem?
Are your intentions pure or pure filth?
Do you have nothing to say to me?
Upper case or lower case?
Serif or sans-serif?
Verdana or Geneva?
Are you gonna drive me home?
Is that your car?
Would you please drop me off at the corner?
Will you have to step over my body to leave this place?
Will you leave me a note?
Will you help me dress?
Would you please say you love me?
Would you take some time out?
Would you be prepared to talk to me without an agenda?
Would you please give me some time?
Would you please leave me alone?
Would you mind leaving now?
Would you mind using the exit to your left?
Will you ever make a decision?
Would you please leave quietly?
Would you please leave quietly?
Would you please leave quietly?
Do you not know how to end things.
Do you not know how to say goodbye.
Do you find it hard to get up and go.
Do you find it hard to wake up in the morning.
Do you find it hard to face those familiar bodies in those familiar clubs.
Do you find it hard to keep up with the fashion.
Do you find it hard to stay up all night and still look like hot shit.
Do you like to fuck and fuck and fuck and still feel unhappy.
How many drugs do you have to take?
Do you have to be such a sleaze?
Do you like me the same way I like you?
Haven't you left yet?
Are you still here?
I told you not to call.
I told you not to come back.
I told you you weren't welcome anymore.
Did you think I'd crumble?
So now go. Walk out the door.
Don't turn around now.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You are not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You are not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
You're not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
You are not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
You're not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
You are not welcome anymore.
Email: dubhustler@va.com.au
Website: http://unreasonableadults.va.com.au
Peculiar
A performance by UNREASONABLE ADULTS, 2003
Written by Jason Sweeney
Richmond, SA Australia
PECULIAR – welcome
(Spoken by a video-mediated Jason direct to an audience of 40)
There is some allure in gathering groups of people, assembling them in some dark, intimate space, allowing them time to arrange themselves, assume a position, take a seat, or to stand there, awkward or otherwise, see the looks in their eyes, watch the muscles flinch in their faces. Taking note of particular signs: an aversion to direct eye contact is a giveaway, folded arms, aha, the licking of lips, pervert, the crossing of legs, you know. Some nervous whispering. We've heard things about this guy and we're not convinced. Look. There's an aggressive posture. Lean forward, like you've seen this all before. Like you've been there. Done that. But here you are, doing it again. You've got some kind of personal agenda and you're ticking the boxes off as you go. Is this different or just indifferent? This is just an observation. This is the point at which you're told to leave your bags at the door. This is the point at which you're given the shadow of a doubt, but take a chance anyway. This is the point at which you say to yourself - hey, he's kinda cute, but I wouldn't want to cross him. I wouldn't want to be stuck next to him on a crowded bus. Get trapped in a bar. This is the point at which you realise you might have to take a stand, where you might be asked to get up off your seat and follow the instructions. You know the procedure. There is irony and sincerity. There is parody and melancholy. This is not all fun and games. Laughter echoes off. This is the point at which you're told to stop crying. To put that version of your life to the side, file away, negotiate some new kind of fear.
Do not ask me back to your house. You do not know what you are getting yourself in for. Do not cross that line with me. Do not pass over that threshold. Meet me somewhere else. Some non-space, liminal. Do not count on speech or seduction. Be careful to go easy on the booze. Smoke one less cigarette. Dance close to me. Just move slow. Dance close. Don't say another word.
++
HAND IN GLOVE
(for cardboard signs and naked men in a basement with t-shirts over their heads are projected)
These are the basement shots. I sucked this guy's finger at a party. The night I passed out on a kitchen floor in Perth, Australia. It was a mess. One of those awkward potential homewrecker scenarios after 6 weeks of unrecognised sexual tension. It's possible. These other two guys on the screen are performers, paid in pints of beer. I recall one of them mumbling beneath his t-shirt "oh my god. oh my god". They are performers on the verge of perfomance art. Nothing like three full bodied men naked in a condemned basement on a Monday afternoon. When I asked the finger sucker to fake masturbation he was hand straight to the dick. No questions. I wanted answers but I've never been good at asking for it. In retrospect I realised he would have come for me. Anyhow, these shots were an idea going nowhere. But they look good and use a button called night-shot on my mini-DV camera. I had this vision of Kenneth Anger meets The Blair Witch Project. Like these butt shots. Not an ass man, particularly. I more into hands and that space between the navel and pubic bone. And noses. Yes. Big noses. The finger sucker had a nose to die for. Like Joshua, my undeclared husband of Copenhagen. Let me tell you about the long distance. That place I spend in between knowing and the never-knowing. The promises and mistakes. The waiting and distractions. The photos sent and then hidden. Another performance experiment, a way to tell you I love you. So anyway I guess I went into the basement to jerk off but then realised being alone and just doing that was pretty dumb. So I got the men in. The instructions were simple. I'm making a video for a live art work that forms part of a research project about interdisciplinary performance practice and queer submergence that finds itself crawling into underground zones of haunted tunnels and forgotten lives and buries itself there. OK maybe I didn't go into as much detail. I think I pretty much said: do ya wanna be in a video? The idea is that you have your t-shirt over your head and your jocks around your ankles. Something about cruising and toilet sex and head jobs and death and ghosts. They were way into it. I was genuinely surprised. Lubed up with a slab of Coopers stubbies. The one with the green label. Pale Ale. Whatever. You know, someone told me that Coopers is the only beer that is truly vegan? Doesn't have fish oil. It's got to account for something.
SOON ALL THIS WILL BE PICTURESQUE RUINS
(Read by Jason into a filtered microphone while destroyed cities and empty places are projected)
Four boys swing like monkeys from the handrails on the last train home. They're shaking the carriage. One of the boys stands kinda too nearish: a cute anglo with a quiff. His friends carry baseball bats. Their T-Shirts are numbered. The train pulls to a halt. Empties out. It moves onto the next station. Apart from these boys I’m the only other passenger left in this carriage. I can’t help but stare the quiff boy. He glares full back at me. Without hesitation he says: you saw us swinging like monkeys on the hand-rails but how much attention did you really pay? Do you think that calling us cute somehow validates your sense of distance and objectivity? Do you really think we're just idle boys standing with our asses firmly packed and tactile with our pale clean complexions with our discofunk with our basketball boy arrogance with our stolen clothes with our fathers who beat the shit out of our beautiful angel faces and the scars that crease it seems cool and filmstar sexy well listen to us you fucker you've got it all wrong right cos you see those baseball bats we carry yeah well we're gonna jump off this train take those metal poles and smash some fucking faggot's brains onto the pavement until his fucking skin and teeth stick to the sidewalk until his queer cocksucking mouth is driven into the ratshit and cockroaches of the gutter until the pressure inside his skull bursts and the blood spurts from his ears till his ass is blown out by a shotgun and all those boys that entered it are blown away with it yeah and we're so really cute now just like your dreams of River Phoenix before the club scene so coy but rough around the edges well we say get out of our faces get off of our train and thank god it's still light outside. It'll soon be dark ...
+++
YOUNG BLOOD
( A letter for an audience member to read)
Dear Jason,
He is tall, strong, good-looking. He walks into the blackness of the night. They drive around trying to find him but he has disappeared.
His body is still fresh. Decomposition has not yet started.
They were lovers, they were in love.
He is stuffed into a plastic bag. To make him fit into the bag, his head and legs are cut off, his intestines removed and his legs shoved inside his carcass. The head is tied to the torso with yellow plastic cord, which passes up through the severed neck and back through the mouth and looped through the top ribs. The resulting sight is bizarre ... His feet stuck out of the carcass but the body is now small enough to fit in the bag, which is then wrapped with cord to hold everything together.
After he is killed, a saw is used to cut his spine in two places. His head is sawn off at the neck. His arms and legs neatly cut from his body at the joints. All fingers and thumbs cut off and the pelvis separated from his torso and backbone.The teeth marks from the saw can be seen on the C 4 verterbrae where the head is cut off from the body. The same marks can be seen on L 4 of the spine, where the pelvis bones have been separated from the body.
As well as being dissected, (the boy’s) flesh and muscle tissue has been removed from his arms and upper legs leaving bare bones. All internal organs - the heart, lungs, liver, kidney and intestines - have been removed. His scrotum has been cut open and his testicles have been removed. The head of his penis has been cut off and his penis shaft has been cut open down the middle. One testicle is missing. (The boy’s) tattoos are cut from his arms and legs and placed in separate plastic bags and placed inside his torso along with his arms and legs.
With love…
+++
PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION
(Cards given to audience with a cup of cheap red wine)
He's beautiful. Did you hear what I said? Are we over? Did we begin? What more proof do you need? It’s a matter of taking that glass, any reflective surface and smashing it into that face, destroy those looks, wipe that smile, erase it, all the way down, down, don’t wanna miss a fraction, every slice matters, no slither missed.
He's repulsive. I’ve taken care of everything.
But instead. He's taking me home.
His bedroom. Right there.
He's a liar.
His note. It never came. So I wait a bit longer.
His phonecall. Expected. House empty.
His voice. Radio frequency. Stuck. Dials, fucking twisted.
His distance.
He's with someone.
He's with someone else.
His blood. For dinner.
Forget about him. OK.
He means it (this time), baby. He's never coming back.
His new boyfriend. The traveller. The street kid. Maybe a girl.
He disgusts you (now).
You will never see him (again).
He's open to other suggestions. Other. Never going back.
Ever. Again. From the top.
++
CIRCUMCISIONAL EVIDENCE
(read on mini-disc recording while masturbation close-ups and remixed K. Anger play)
He’d say to me at the height of romance and on sports fields: from that hockey stick to the axe to a chainsaw, it’s all downhill from here, bro’. He was my brother, I loved my brother, loved my brother like only a brother can, in the throat. We swam in those lakes, we kissed in the forests, rode naked on horseback and bathed at low tide. We fucked each other under a jetty when I was seventeen. I jerked him off on a bunk bed, he was on top. I’d just put my hand under the covers and make him cum in silence. Then he’d fall asleep and I’d dream of him. He had the hugest cock I’d ever seen. He used to show me when he’d lie on our bedroom floor and do weight training. He’d get this massive hard-on, take off his shorts and lift dumb bells, smiling. He had this taut, hairless body, the kind you dream over looking at pictures in Outrage or Campaign. He’d ask me to stop doing my homework (he’d call me ‘square fucker’ which I found endearing) and tell me to come over and lay by his side. He’d squirt this sweet smelling oil into my hand. I knew what this meant. I began by rubbing it into his chest while he flexed his pecs. He said he liked to feel my hands against his skin. He’d tell me to lick his stomach, circle my tongue around his belly button. I loved this bit. His skin always tasted like caramel. From here I knew where to go. My mouth travelled to his sweaty groin, his balls, all so hot, I wanted to dive in, I could have slept in there. I’d guide my tongue up the length of his cock, I’d do this over and over, I could hear him groaning (a sign of approval) until my mouth reached the shaft and I’d gently suck on that, only to the point that I knew, instinctively (cos he was my brother) that I had to start swallowing so I’d take him in full, full and wide, yeah, he’s loving it, I can’t help pulling my dick out of my pyjama shorts, it’s pushing against his leg and he’d say that’s it kid (cos I was younger) and he’d be running those firm football fingers through my hair, thrusting my mouth onto that familiar cock, that cock I know, like another home, a place to go to and after a while he’d do the work and jerk that thing into my mouth (not too rough, kinda lovingly) and I’d just wait until he shot into my throat a warm stream of cum and he’s inside me, in me, once more. So now every time I jerk off I think of my brother, the brother I never had.
++
QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS
(Read by computer voice against blue screen death)
Are we entering into territories of horror?
Did I really hear you say "I like to watch"?
Do you like to Feast and go home comfortable?
Did you expect me to become your go between rent boy?
What kind of heaven do you want?
Between me saying come on over and you saying I desire you, were you really just saying nothing?
How much did you expect to pay?
Can we get through this?
Can we lose the sad excuses?
Can I delete this message before I am forced to read them as incantation?
Do I end up the loser?
Does this shelf look attractive?
Was I about to become freeze-framed and out of range?
Tell me again: how much did you like the way I walked?
You said something about lips?
How could I know that you were feeling this way?
Why can't you look into my eyes and say it like you mean it?
How could I not regret?
Would you like to suggest a method for 'moving on'?
Why is it so hard to shed a single tear?
Why can't I cry?
Do my eyes well up?
Would it be easier to write it all down?
How difficult is it to forget?
I've done it once, can I do it again?
Do you believe in all things in moderation?
Am I stating the obvious?
Why does it take so long for you to reply?
Is this really the end of romance?
Why did you never show at the airport?
Why did you never call when you said you would?
Why do you always speak so bitterly?
Why this wall, this locked door, this line cut-off?
Where did this anti-gay gay man tag come from?
Did the community apply it?
Why this night and never day?
When well it stop raining?
Why do I feel like dying?
Have you ever looked down from the top of a 15 storey building and thought: hasn't this been done before?
Why the crack in the ceiling?
Where does the heat come from?
Why is it always so fucking cold?
Do I create the barriers?
Do I assign the blame?
Somebody said: is it because I desire the unattainable?
What is my strange fascination with prisons?
Why did Derek and David have to die?
Why was Jean left alone?
How can I fall out of love with you?
Why do you want to destroy me with your stare, your silence?
Where did all these dead bodies come from?
How much did I really love Ricardo?
Do I miss him?
Why can’t you just say: Yes?
Could you please drop the performance poetry?
What are those two men whispering about in the back row?
Would you like to stop using my name?
Are you just nasty little scavengers?
Do you have a problem?
Are your intentions pure or pure filth?
Do you have nothing to say to me?
Upper case or lower case?
Serif or sans-serif?
Verdana or Geneva?
Are you gonna drive me home?
Is that your car?
Would you please drop me off at the corner?
Will you have to step over my body to leave this place?
Will you leave me a note?
Will you help me dress?
Would you please say you love me?
Would you take some time out?
Would you be prepared to talk to me without an agenda?
Would you please give me some time?
Would you please leave me alone?
Would you mind leaving now?
Would you mind using the exit to your left?
Will you ever make a decision?
Would you please leave quietly?
Would you please leave quietly?
Would you please leave quietly?
Do you not know how to end things.
Do you not know how to say goodbye.
Do you find it hard to get up and go.
Do you find it hard to wake up in the morning.
Do you find it hard to face those familiar bodies in those familiar clubs.
Do you find it hard to keep up with the fashion.
Do you find it hard to stay up all night and still look like hot shit.
Do you like to fuck and fuck and fuck and still feel unhappy.
How many drugs do you have to take?
Do you have to be such a sleaze?
Do you like me the same way I like you?
Haven't you left yet?
Are you still here?
I told you not to call.
I told you not to come back.
I told you you weren't welcome anymore.
Did you think I'd crumble?
So now go. Walk out the door.
Don't turn around now.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You are not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You are not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
You're not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
You're not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
You are not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
You're not welcome anymore.
Will you survive?
Will you survive?
Will you survive.
You are not welcome anymore.
Email: dubhustler@va.com.au
Website: http://unreasonableadults.va.com.au
Issue 8, 2003: He Had by Jennifer Triton
He Had
still sing his eyes like
jazz in my head, an
unstoppable blue, he was
perfectly sky in my
cloudy grey day, he was
sharp as angles, as
sweet as cider & warm
like sunset on brick, he was
cayenne pepper, the
terraced French Quarter,
all voodoo and Miles
rippling thru me- jazz
in my head, he was
mine, in my head he was
sharp with those eyes that
cut me wide, open I was,
honest I was, all angles
and sky he was
unstoppable blue, it was
sharp and unspoken this
bleeding between us this
jazz.
Jennifer Triton
no rhythm at all, but i
still sing his eyes like
jazz in my head, an
unstoppable blue, he was
perfectly sky in my
cloudy grey day, he was
sharp as angles, as
sweet as cider & warm
like sunset on brick, he was
cayenne pepper, the
terraced French Quarter,
all voodoo and Miles
rippling thru me- jazz
in my head, he was
mine, in my head he was
sharp with those eyes that
cut me wide, open I was,
honest I was, all angles
and sky he was
unstoppable blue, it was
sharp and unspoken this
bleeding between us this
jazz.
Leigh Herrick, Summer 1998: Poem for Judy Chicago
Poem for Judy Chicago
Leigh Herrick
I understand why the plates -- each
its own horizon, reaching across the dinner table --
And I understand the sexuality of shapes --
the point that these are women's plates, reflective,
each, its proper satisfaction reaching within itself,
announcing its presence, who it is, and who it speaks to --
at least in many of us -- and in you --
And I understand the pulse of expression,
the wave of art embracing the hand the soul
that insists on its existence
lets it move
sets it fee
lets it say it's here.
I understand why the plates, the table --
How very thoughtful to invite us all to dine
on the accomplishments of our predecessors.
Here, to come, to eat and never fill, to feed
without a single chew -- I understand necessity --
And I understand how, quietly, our bodies are the silent link,
still, to our grandmothers' china,
how the cups, saucers, and stemware of genetics and history,
of politics and culture, bear, inherently, our losses and
our gains.
I understand the bodies tied to life, Artemis unfurling
the umbilical flecks found within our ancestors' pottery.
There's fortitude in this communion. I understand
The Dinner Party.
Tied to the tide, swollen, swollen the soul of art.
We eat, drink what we are.
And in the long, tall halls that lead to the showing,
the talk is low beneath our energies.
We enjoy this supper of sounds
until, at last, all Heaven is astir, and all the angels
bent in whisper
that even God is jealous.
Leigh Herrick
I understand why the plates -- each
its own horizon, reaching across the dinner table --
And I understand the sexuality of shapes --
the point that these are women's plates, reflective,
each, its proper satisfaction reaching within itself,
announcing its presence, who it is, and who it speaks to --
at least in many of us -- and in you --
And I understand the pulse of expression,
the wave of art embracing the hand the soul
that insists on its existence
lets it move
sets it fee
lets it say it's here.
I understand why the plates, the table --
How very thoughtful to invite us all to dine
on the accomplishments of our predecessors.
Here, to come, to eat and never fill, to feed
without a single chew -- I understand necessity --
And I understand how, quietly, our bodies are the silent link,
still, to our grandmothers' china,
how the cups, saucers, and stemware of genetics and history,
of politics and culture, bear, inherently, our losses and
our gains.
I understand the bodies tied to life, Artemis unfurling
the umbilical flecks found within our ancestors' pottery.
There's fortitude in this communion. I understand
The Dinner Party.
Tied to the tide, swollen, swollen the soul of art.
We eat, drink what we are.
And in the long, tall halls that lead to the showing,
the talk is low beneath our energies.
We enjoy this supper of sounds
until, at last, all Heaven is astir, and all the angels
bent in whisper
that even God is jealous.
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