Friday, December 15, 2006
friends,
i am in berlin composing on a german keyboard so forgive any punctuation today that may prove even more annoying than my usual punctuation. its taken me some time to get settled here but i shall return to regular blogging form starting tomorrow.
neil young once said of a town in north ontario All my changes were there…i could say the same about berlin…maybe not all my changes…but some big ones…i used to say i became an adult in berlin…i said that cuz it sounded cool and because i thought it was true…but it wasnt… perhaps the more accurate sentence would be in berlin i stopped being a kid…what went on between then and now can best be described as a long day in limbo…
im thrilled to be taking a passing strange brain break for the remainder of the year and there are a multitude of things to distract me from it. the usual large number of compelling exhibitions which i plan on attending and writing about here. plus im going to be taking in a bit of theater here which im very excited about. heidi and annie join me here in about 3 weeks. it will be really interesting to work on the play while in europe. heidi and i have cruised berlin before and played here…she loves it here…annies been here too… but im excited to show annie all the old PS related haunts…
berlin is still its wonderfully complex self. that will never change. if you dont have mixed feelings about berlin yer not paying attention. its both a pain in the ass and the most important city in the occident. if you think you know a western city that has been the nexus for more darkness and light meet me in a bar and i will set you right. and i dont mean the pageantry of capitalist triumphantilism that passes for culture…stop spreading that news…i mean the long blurry walk home from the bar when history sneaks up on you in the dead of night in the shape of a looming facade and you get scared…scared because here even the all night decadent hoopla cant distract from the fact that history has you in its vice grip…its punking you…history as airborne virus…history as an outbreak on your skin… ugly, pretty, elegantly bruised…when history checks it look in the mirror… it looks just like berlin…somewhere george grosz is painting us clutching our cell phones like zombies…buy a jar of face cream…apply it liberally to your skin…now stand before the mirror…nice try…you still look like berlin……
.s
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
…the show is gone but berkeley carries on…as do we…we who never saw the sun rest its rays on Shattuck and Center quite like it did today…it seemed to shine in a whole new way…perhaps we’d been too distracted to see it…perhaps we’d been too busy to be it…sunlight burnished the horde…and onto every corner light was poured…and the people shone like jewels…some shone like sapphire, some like gold…the homeless shone like diamonds…and you shone like emerald…I tell you my friend, the people shone like jewels today…and they shone like jewels until the sun moved away…
rodewald and I had lunch at that “hey-we’re-kinda-frenchy†joint with the roast chicken (poulet? It was great.)…kept feeling this strange sense of panic…had to remind myself I was in no hurry cuz there was no show today…or tomorrow…monday night: dinner with a table full of new friends… exquisite…the food, the conversation, the people…everyone at the table fell under the definition of Friend: the one of which you always ask: when will we see us again? We hope to return in Feb to do a show…when all is set we’ll be sure to let you know…
/s
ps: i’m new the this whole blogging thing and i still haven’t worked responding to your comments into my rhythm yet…but please continue to comment…because i WILL respond to them, i promise.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
…during the acid trip she bows gracefully like i imagine some nobleperson in a shakespeare play would…she bows exactly like one would bow if one was tripping in the privacy of terry’s living room… while feeling like they were in front of an audience of 400…only she IS in front of an audience of 400…nothings cooler than that shit…
except for when she is trying to groove to youth’s “shower hum song”…she loves him so much she shows it by trying to dance to this utterly wacked tape loop collage…i almost lost it when i saw her do this for the first time…when i’m able to write genius shit like that call me a playwright…but for the time being call rebecca jones…inspired.
/s
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
i didnt realize it’d been a week since i’d written anything here…we closed last night…great tight perfectly explosive show to end on…and what a brief yet soul crunching hangover i enjoyed this morning…thanks to homemade cafe for curing it…it was a wild vulnerable night…emotions too widescreen to go into right now…later…i have no voice…but i have lotsa photos…i need to spend the next few days getting my PS Berkeley Life into boxes…we arrived here in, what, mid sept? It feels like both a long and short time ago…But it’s all time…And I can clock this time in joys and sorrows…in downtown’s gin and tonics…in cigarettes smoked in beckett’s alcove…i can clock the time in longing, my friend…sitting on your couch…with you there on the floor…and your face turned naked… cuz i opened up a door…and your face turned softer…sweeter…more innocent than a child’s…and then we drove somewhere…and the party was wild…but you were not there…
/s
Sunday, November 26, 2006
there have been one or two evenings recently where doing the play felt like we were some surreal version of the carol burnett show…we broke each other up in moments but not to the point where things fell apart…i like that this play can go there CONSCIOUSLY and then come back…the play should be like elastic not stone…it seems like everyone is really starting to get comfy with exploring the parameters of this piece…like where to push and pull and when…
((I hear De’Adre playing with the notes of the Church Lady’s monologue from night to night just like a jazz musician would…she takes a fresh solo in every show…she’s a shape shifter…she doesn’t become the Church Lady – she IS the Church Lady…and it gets so real sometimes I gotta just look away…))
but back to the subject of the collective…we aren’t yet the Lakers of the 80’s or some psychic jazz combo or a couple that’s been dancing together for 40 years…but it is utterly clear to me that that is exactly where we are heading…we are on our way to becoming One…all our talk about merging the “rock show” and the “play” is really happening…not just conceptually but in actuality…not just in theory but in practice…we’re turning into a third thing…and if it sounds like i’m excited about it, i am…i’m not even bragging about it – as i have very little to do with it…it’s an utterly collective phenomenon which would be totally impossible to achieve without the right people involved…Annie Dorsen designed the path and the right people are walking down it…and every time we take that road we see new things along the way to play with…
lately i’ve been really into taking the audience out of the “play reality” more and more…not just reminding them of what day it is but making more references to band members as well as people in the audience and stage crew…basically, doing exactly what i’d do at one of my night club shows: reminding the audience that what they are watching is alive. I’m doing this because I feel the need more and more to conjure that night club comfort zone…I’m perhaps getting a bit homesick for it…
last time i looked at the clock it was two hours ago…i hate when that happens…and it only happens when i’m on a computer…of all the things i need to buy i can never get excited about buying a new computer…it’s such a time killer…
we’re in the middle of a five show weekend…so i guess i should sleep…until we meet again, visualize a one hour version of passing strange for high schoolers…of course the sex and the drugs may make it impossible for the play to get staged for kids…i mean god knows they never hear references to sex and drugs anywhere else in their lives…
/s
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
My entire “art god†collection
Could fit inside a midget’s change purse.
But Robert Altman’s got a suite in there.
His whole punk rock approach…The American artist forever blessed and doomed
To be in conflict with narrow minded powers that be…the beauty of his filmic chaos…
the poetry of his curious camera…always searching…
It never “showed†as much as it “looked†for things…and we just followed along…
Me and a lot of other people have always thought that one of life’s great ironies was that so called “avant garde†art (frinstince the kind that fucked with linear narrative) was actually a lot more like real life than the mainstream art that passed for “realistic.†Is this then why “avant†stuff is ultimately off putting to the masses: because, in the words of Eliot’s bird “human kind cannot bear very much reality†? I think so.
A performance piece in which someone sits for a half hour reading a magazine might seem quite “odd” to the average person…and yet who has not done this very thing in actual life countless times? Yet everyone loves a film about a man with x-ray vision who can fly and who has a large New York city apartment. Indeed, human kind cannot bear very much reality. Surely no one made films that looked more like reality felt than Altman.
I was really into auteurs
From Italy and France
When I happened upon
‘3 Women’ by chance
I was tripping at the time
And I loved its freaky feel
Then I watched it when I was straight
And it was even more surreal
/s
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
If a simile to me
In the right way came
At late afternoon
In a nine car train
I’d give it my seat
And let it try to explain
What today was “like.â€
I could’ve hung until Tuesday
In that Haight St. café
Playing musical chairs
With my cherished off day
And if I’m lost in thought
On a nine car train
Headed Richmond way
And I’m not on my game
And I miss my stop
I only have Rumsfeld’s demise
And my tired eyes to blame
Cuz I’m kind of in a daze
And I’ll never be the same
Because Monday to me
In such a right way came
/s
Monday, November 20, 2006
SHE
I make pictures with dirt and sand and rocks
and wax and stacks of branches.
I see myself more as nature’s Co-conspirator than an artist.
HE
I’m into math. And what do you do?
IT
I make songs up out of the blue
SHE
What kind?
IT
The kind you listen to
SHE
Very funny
IT
Or say one day I’m thinking of
The way you wear that hat.
HE
I like math.
IT
I’d scribble some notes
And in a minute or two
I’d sing you a song about that.
SHE
So do it.
(pause)
HE
Like math.
/s
Monday, November 20, 2006
Dear Ms. Dunaway
I viewed you with the sound down
You served such a mean beat down
Even the gangsters had to bow down
Kabuki Joan Crawford
Estranged from her gourd
At Chez Domingo’s WE the Academy
Please accept our award
And allow me to say, Ms. Faye,
When you squatted down low
And went straight sumo
You got ‘ta pimpin’ that role
Like it was a ho
(it was as if Bonnie had kept going after putting Clyde in a rest home)
Then air-body at the party sang
“Stop! Look!
Listen to your heart
Hear what it’s sayingâ€
And then you pulled out that hanger
And we knew you wasn’t playin’
/s
Sunday, November 19, 2006
it’s such an honor and a blessing to have someone as spellbindingly talented as colman domingo bringing our character mr. franklin to life. and to those of you who have sent emails asking: mr. franklin is not based on one person. yes, i’ve known more than a few gay choir directors who were openly closeted and had interests beyond the hood. But franklin is really a composite of all those people who ever used the power of language to describe worlds beyond…the people who essentially sang private arias to you about the beauty and mystery of life…travel guides for your soul…being with these people was like sitting next to a movie trailer for your future… if only you could muster the courage to buy the ticket … and he’s also a composite of all the people who handed you things that changed your life…books, records…the people who handed you things that were gonna blow your mind…and the people who stuck around to help you pick up the pieces…the people who, after you got back to their place after the club and all the noise, would sit you down at 2:30am and play you david ackles for the first time…i’m talking about those 2am kinda people…(holler if you hear me…but not too loud, you might wake somebody up)…those quiet moments of sharing and discovery…records just SOUND different in the wee small hours…like notes being passed…anyway, franklin is the cat who took you to your first french movie…and he is the withdrawn girl who sat in the back of the class who you had a crush on who told you that nine stories was just as important as catcher in the rye and then never talked to you again…franklin is the first one you could tell out loud all the jokes you’d been laughing at all by yourself for your entire life…
i once had a hippy teacher in 9th grade who was supposed to teach us Geography but at the end of the first week he asked the class “How many people would like to learn about the geography of the mind?” The following Monday 25 inner city kids were sitting in the dark looking at a slide show of drawings made by schizophrenics while listening to Pink Floyd’s Meddle. We were SO into it and we’d never been that energized by a teacher before. He taught us about Freud and after a few weeks we were all able to deconstruct advertisements and make jokes about the real meaning of kicking a football through the goal post…he put the bad kid in the middle of the circle and made him fall..it sounds like hippy shit but until you’ve seen a kid who wouldn’t think twice about stabbing someone suddenly crying in front of a whole classroom after he finally mustered up the courage to fall you haven’t really lived…and then the school authorities found out and told Mr. Franklin he had to teach the boring kind of geography.
I still don’t know where Ohio really is.
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