Ne vouz faites pas de souci

I am obsessed with the artist Sophie Calle. I was first exposed to her in an exhibition at Mass MOCA in 1999 and I have been hungry for more ever since.  That exhibition included photographs and diary entries from a stint where she pursued a monochromatic diet (i.e. she ate only pink food for a week, followed by only white food…), photographs and writing from a stint as a maid in a Paris hotel (primarily of the personal effects she encountered in the rooms she ‘cleaned’), and photographs and writing collected by a private investigator who Calle had entreated her mother to hire to follow Calle.  Other work I’ve been fascinated by since then includes a late 1980s phone booth installation in lower Manhattan where she offered snacks, pillows, dimes, and positive aphorisms for passersby looking for some TLC and/or connection.  

On Friday I visited the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest uptown forher latest exhibition, “Rachel, Monique,” which is inspired by the loss of her mother. The exhibit presents a variety of elements; photos, audio, diary entries, and a video: Couldn’t Capture Death. On this video, you see the last chest expansion, and then, several minutes later the rituals of letting go: stunned stillness, checking for pulse and breath, tender kisses on the cheek, ultimately – one version of the spiritually ineffable.

Ever since I was first exposed to Calle – I felt a deep artistic kinship with her. We are both insatiably curious about strangers’ private lives, and especially the clues people’s personal effects tell us about them.  Like Calle, I prefer an immersive installation experience in my art, rather than a traditional ‘framing.’ I am also interested in excavating the deepest depths of my and my collaborators’ personal lives and psyches for public consumption.  I am influenced by her playfulness and sense of humor, as well as her willingness to probe and confront the most challenging feelings and concepts through art.  

detroit and america

Dina just sent me this article because we've been talking about the play Detroit, by Lisa D'Amour... I'm so glad she did. It's a long piece but so moving and so important. And it has great pictures.

I have some people from Michigan, from Saginaw and Flint. And one of my best friends is from Detroit. And I loved the book Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. So, I'm really interested in Detroit. Also because it is potent. It is a real place that is also a reflection of empty promises and corruption and really terrible thinking. 

The article also reminded me of the fascinating recent profile of Theaster Gates in the New Yorker.  I'm so happy these people exist in the world and they're at it every day doing their good work.

I'm also really glad I wanted to hyperlink Lisa's name. It made me do a little internet-stalking and I learned more about Lisa from her website. I knew I really liked her world view and way with language and all that from reading (and seeing the production of) Detroit. Now I know we are also very kindred. She recently did an installation called Nest that was part environmental installation, part devised theater piece, part social inquiry. I also have my Nest... that endeavored to engage similarly.  And she wrote and directed a theater piece called "Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea" for Swoon's moving installation of homemade barges a few years back. I love Swoon and that project especially. I wish I could have seen the show.

Ahh, theater... ephemeral as neighborhoods. 

holding on to the balloon

Next week's I'm going to see Daniel Kitson's show at St. Ann's Warehouse. I'm really excited. I loved the last show of his that I saw. (In December 2011 or January 2012?)
Last week I was very wobbly-hearted and in one more inspired moment I cracked open one of Pema Chodron's books. When I originally read the book it was speaking to me about heartbreak and heart ache in terms of romantic love.  This time I was not reading it that way. This time I was reading into it of potential loss. The passage that struck me most was:
Inspiration and wretchedness are inseparable. We always want to get rid of misery rather than see how it works together with joy.  The point isn't to cultivate one thing as opposed to another, but to relate properly to where we are. Inspiration and wretchedness complement each other. With only inspiration, we become arrogant. With only wretchedness, we lose our vision.  Feeling inspired cheers us up, makes us realize how vast and wonderful our world is.  Feeling wretched humbles us.  The gloriousness of our inspiration connects us with the sacredness of the world.  But when the tables are turned and we feel wretched, that softens us up. It ripens our hearts.

Fortunately, the loss did not happen. My heart did soften though. And even my brain I think, in a good way. A little less rigid.

Also, there will be loss. Inevitably. Impermanence. Forever. But at least loss makes us value what we have. Or it can.

foot falls

In the Summer of 2004 Oscar Olivo and I made a piece together called Radio Sintesi (simultaneous translation) that we performed in my studio at Nest. It included an excerpt from Beckett's Footfalls. I played May, or Amy as she is referred to later, and he played my mother. He lay on the floor in a hospital gown and I was also in a hospital gown, and socks. It was done in almost total darkness as the sort of prologue to what went on to become a very chaotic piece. (The piece used a matrix of sections and several bells and timers and 'chance', and also included me ACTUALLY washing the audience member's feet whilst wearing a bubble wrap plastic bag on my head and speaking fake Asian languages. There were also 14 televisions and 14 vcrs (this was a long time ago) between the 'audience' and the 'playing space' in a low, crumbling-ish wall. Each television had a super long cord plugged into it and each of the 14 audience seats had a headset through which the audience could listen to the audio, and watch the video, on one of the screens. The video footage consisted of a combination of major life events in my family (birthday parties, prom, weddings, etc), Oscar and I talking about culture, and also just very casually sort of gossiping about life. He had just recently been diagnosed at that point, and though he was a spry 22 year old, mortality weighed heavily on both of our minds. Today, that section of time feels so close. I can imagine walking through the side door to the building (68 Washington Street) and entering that whole world. I can remember the smells and the sounds and the angst I felt and the freedom too.
One of the reasons all of these memories came flooding back is that I went to see Hoi Polloi's production of Beckett Solos (Cascando, Footfalls, and Rockaby) tonight. Alec Duffy directed and Leila Goldoni performed. Julian Rozzell, Jr. lent his voice to the first play, a radio play. The major thrust of Mimi Lien's scenic installation was the tinfoil paper that covered the walls, (or is that a permanent element of Jack, HP's new theater?), but it wasn't two-dimensional, it looked like half-eaten mounds of ice cream or a volcano-speckled lunar landscape. Leila Goldoni is 77 and starred in Cassavetes' Shadows among other films. As she told us in the casual conversation after the performance, she was also a dancer and is a "very physical person." She talked about how her modern dance background meant she was used to abstract things and didn't need a play to be linear. She felt like she really got Beckett, when you 'look at the words on a page it looks crazy' but 'when you come off the page' it's alive. Knud asked her about the first time she saw a Beckett play and she said it was 1959, at the old Beverly movie theater in LA. Waiting for Godot. She loved it. She also met Groucho Marx and told that story too. About how he said she was very funny and she asked him if she could be a comic and he said, :no! You're too beautiful. Nobody can laugh at a beautiful woman!"
Anyway, I loved the production. It made me think of so many things and also gave me so much room to explore in my own head. You could check in and check out. I love that about the repetition in Beckett. The rhythm.
It also made me think so much about the last two weeks. My close-up window onto the cycle of life. Time with an 89 year old and time with a 1 year old. Both blood relatives. As my mom pointed out, in many ways, these two ladies are struggling with the same basic physical things.  Of course, the hardest part about aging, when your mind doesn't go, is that you know you are helpless. You have all of your faculties, all of your self-consciousness, all of your ego, all of your pride, all of your wisdom, and none of the physical strength or stamina you used to have. You lose the ability to feed yourself. To clean yourself. To dress yourself. To do all the things you know how to do.

we are all earthlings. we are all made of the stuff of stars.

This video is extraordinary. It's the first time I've heard astronauts speak so freely about the feeling of transcendence. Of one-ness. It made me think of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's discovery in the 1920s, that we are all made of the stuff of stars... and it made me want to go back to that play I've been working on forever. Cecilia and the Universe.

I'm still here and I still love music videos

Sometimes I think this place should be re-named 'my favorite things my favorite people send me.' This is no exception. (Thank you Erica.)

You may have heard about that video with Shia Labeouf? This is not that.
This is a Sigur Ros music video / dance film / mind trip.
It is beautiful and grotesque, sexy and sterile. It is both very complex and very simple.
Okay, enough words. Cue the music and the wings and the fur-feathers.

Sigur Rós - Fjögur píanó from Sigur Rós Valtari Mystery Films on Vimeo.

So, music videos. I love that music and movement and the visual rule and story is secondary. Gravy almost. I love that because the music world is so effing cool and sensual a music video feels successful if it is
a) an emotional experience
b) dynamic in rhythm, tone, color, or something else entirely
c) things don't have to make sense.

Music video's legacy is so young and so modern that there's no interest in realism or naturalism at all. I love that. I love music videos.

A few of the ones that stand out in my mind are November Rain, of course, Aphex Twin, Right Now by Van Halen, No Rain by Blind Melon, so many Nirvana ones... hmmm, was the golden age of the music video the mid 90s or was that just when I was watching MTV? What are the kids watching now?

Beyonce's had some gems, obviously. Who else?
Elephant Gun by Beirut -- also, like this featuring the choreography and performance of one Ryan Heffington. I got to work with Ryan once. On a dance film. God that was fun.

my favorite things

The experience of watching this is, for me, almost as good as going on a picnic at the beach, falling in love, playing catch, or dancing. The section around 4:11 really slays me.
Also, the story of how this film/video project came to be is powerful and unusual. A happy accident. Why did Michael Chesterman's mother have these films? And thank goodness for Colleen.
And also, as always, for Stella.

Were I a tree

Caleb told me Robert Creeley wrote this poem for his dear friend Pen, who had passed away a few years before. He sent it in response to a piece I shared with him by Roger Ebert called I Do Not Fear Death.

PICTURES
1
This distance
between pane of glass,
eye's sight —
the far wavering green edge
of trees, sun's
reflection, light
yellow — and sky there too
light blue.

2
I will sit here
till breeze, ambient,
enfolds me and I
lift away. I will
sit here as sun
warms my hands, my
body eases, and sounds
grow soft and intimate
in my ears. I will sit
here and the back of the house
behind me will last
disappear. I will sit here.

3
"Harry's gone out for a pizza.
Mabel's home all alone.
Mother just left for Ibiza.
Give the old man a bone?

Remember when Barkis was willing?
When onions grew on the lawn?
When airplanes just cost a shilling?
Where have the good times gone?"

4
If one look back
or thinks to look
in that uselessly opaque direction,
little enough's ever there.

What is it one stares into,
thinks still to recover
as it all fades out—
mind's vagary?

I call to you brutally,
I remember the day we met
I remember how you sat, impatient
to get out.
"Back is no direction...
Tout passe?"
Life is the river
we've carried with us.

5
Sun's shadows aslant
across opening expansive
various green fields down
from door
here ajar on box tower's
third floor—
look out on
wonder.
This morning.

6
I never met you afterward
nor seemingly knew you before.
Our lives were interfolded,
wrapped like a present.
The odors, the tastes, the surfaces
of our bodies were the map—
the mind a distraction,
trying to keep up.

I could not compare you to anything.
You were not like rhubarb
or clean sheets—or, dear as it may be,
sudden rain in the street.
All those years ago, on the beach in Dover,
with that time so ominous,
and the couple so human,
pledging their faith to one another,
now again such a time seems here—
not to fear
death or what's been so given—
to yield one's own despair.

7
Like sitting in back seat,
can't see what street
we're on or what the
one driving sees
or where we're going.
Waiting for what's to happen,
can't quite hear the conversation,
the big people, sitting up front.

8
"Death be not proud... "
Days be not done.
Air be not gone.
Head be not cowed.

Bird be not dead.
Thoughts be not fled.
Come back instead,
Heart's hopeful wedding.
Face faint in mirror.
Why does it stay there?
What's become
Of person who was here?

9
Wet
water
warm
fire.
Rough
wood
cold
stone.
Hot
coals
shining
star.
Physical hill still my will.
Mind's ambience alters all.

10
As I rode out one morning
just at break of day
a pain came upon me
unexpectedly—
As I thought one day
not to think anymore,
I thought again,
caught, and could not stop—
Were I the horse I rode,
were I the bridge I crossed,
were I a tree
unable to move,
the lake would have
no reflections,
the sweet, soft air
no sounds.
So I hear, I see,
tell still the echoing story
of all that lives in a forest,
all that surrounds me.

[Thank you Caleb for sharing this hauntingly beautiful poem.]

it's the little things

I just love dimmers on light switches. They feel truly Late-20th Century. They let everyone play 'director' or 'gaffer' or is it 'best boy'? Just how much light do you want to shed on this situation? You know what... don't tell me. Just show me. Turn that dial.
My roommate is watching something in the other room that sounds like a major cultural event. Somewhere. I don't know if it's live or not. He is watching it on a screen. It could have been dvr-ed. I know the Superbowl passed already and I don't think it's Grammy time. (Is it Grammy time?)
It's more musical than the Oscars and has more young fans cheering than most sporting events. Maybe Justin Bieber is playing catch or zip-zap-zop with Rihanna and every time they feel good about something they sing a little bit and the crowd goes wild. As crowds do. What it must feel like to be part of that crowd? I'm imagining a lots of tank tops and skinny girl-ish elbows and too much mascara and glittery eye shadow and purses filled with secrets.

when look and feel unite

WOW.
I thought that shot from Requiem from a Dream where Jennifer Connelly's character wears the Steadicam after she leaves the terrible guy's apartment was powerful and about as intimate as a camera could get... (each step conveys rhythm and emotion) but that was only the beginning.
This is the future.

tea-time

by Paul Octavious (thank you Stella)

a poem for the new year

No Longer at Sea
I was at sea for four days
(or ten years depending on how you count)

the ocean swelling and folding over itself
swallowing serenity and trading stillness for terror
the winds enough to carry you even without your sails amast

I swam with sea turtles and nurse sharks
which everyone says are harmless
but a name is still a name

On an island I met a man named Righteous
which is funny
because he's always in jail
he was clearing a road
in his prison garb

and I thought of you
and I thought of you
and I looked for the Big Dipper and her little friend
and I found Orion's Belt
and there were so many stars
and I thought of you

after the storm

I just watched this video and I really liked it.

"... como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si..."

This piece premiered in Wuppertal in June 2009. It was the final piece Pina Bausch created.

I remember feeling so much grief when Pina passed away (also in 2009). I wrote on here about it, it was the same week Dorrit Hoffleit (astronomer) passed. Tonight I saw Danztheater Wuppertal perform Pina's final piece at BAM. It was revelatory. It was the most minimal set of any of her work that I've seen live, though of course the design was very considered and simple and powerful. (It was a vast white floor that periodically, surreptitiously, broke apart like land masses turning to islands. Plate tectonics. Swaths of splintered darkness amidst the light.) Also, her sense of humor. She makes me laugh so much.
And the most beautiful women. In gowns but with their hair down-- and all that that suggests.
The piece began and ended with a woman on all fours. Down stage right at a 45 degree angle. Her hair cascading over the back of her head and falling on the floor. Men came and lifted her, working together they maintained her exact position even as she was over their heads. The only difference was whenever they lifted her she would bark like a dog. When she returned to the floor, she was silent and placid again. Pina consistently achieves my favorite possibilities of performance:
- evoking giant themes (the need for love, for intimacy, for emotional security, for freedom) with the lightest touch
- the sense of 'losing' your mind, of elevating the body, the spirit, the animal above the cerebral, the psychological
- humor in the most imaginative constructions
- communion/community

Thank you Pina. Always and forever.

clear tuesday morning

This day is many things to many people. It's crazy how so many of the past 11 years it has felt similarly crisp and suddenly fall-like. Blues skies and the tiniest nip to the air. Scarves for the first time. In 2001, it was the first day of school of my senior year in college. Ever since then, it has been a memorial day.

silent movie

Since I'm in California film is even more on my mind than usual. The 2-dimensional spectacle afforded by the car window speeding along freeways or winding through canyons and parks (one of the most common surnames for neighborhoods in LA) or even just stopped in traffic at all of these intersections of abutting and wildly divergent paths and populations-- it's no wonder so many people feel like filmmakers here. We are all gathered at the fountain of inspiration and every standstill is a potential frame in a future story. I love being in different cities because the physical geography of the place lays out like a map in my brain and my brain in turn shifts its own patterns and processes to mimic the shape of the city itself. I feel like my coding mechanisms shift from vertical orientations to wide and flat sprawls of information and memories and thoughts with pockets of room around them to breathe in. I sit in large rooms in large houses or hike in canyons with vistas stretching from mountains to the sea and without another human being in sight and the thoughts in my head un-stack each other too and the little thoughts that might have been towards the bottom of the pile, or maybe just kept being piled on top of, those thoughts can suddenly stretch out and unpack their insides and exist with all the space they need again. It feels expansive here. I feel expansive. Two of my film-world heroes passed away recently and I want to share a few details about them here. Chris Marker was an 'experimental' filmmaker-- experimental in the sense that he tried things that no one had ever tried before to marvelous and powerful effect and was a major force in modern cinema-- passed away yesterday in Paris. He was 91. His full obituary is here but my favorite part is at the end: "Mr. Marker gave one of his final interviews-- in 2008 to the French magazing Les Inrockuptibles-- through the virtual medium of Second Life. In response to a question about pseudonyms as masks, he said: "I'm much more pragmatic than that. I chose a pseudonym, Chris Marker, pronounceable in most languages, because I was very intent on traveling. No need to delve further." (He was 87 at the time of this quote.) His objective as an artist was to: "capture life in the process of becoming history." Another hero of mine, Andrew Sarris, passed away in June at the age of 83. I had the pleasure of taking Sarris' Modern Film class at Columbia where every Friday 10 or so of us would gather in the screening room at Dodge and make our way through great and sometimes obscure films from the likes of Bunuel, Rohmer, Resnais, Kurosawa, Varda and Godard. Each viewing would be followed by an animated conversation and we were tasked with writing a paper in response as well. Sarris was one of the first professors to offer encouragement about my attention to detail, or maybe his attention just made me feel more special than other professors because I admired him so much. He loved to provoke contentious debate in the class-- and was just as happy to hear how much somebody hated a film as how much they liked it. Like many of my favorite teachers and artists-- he seemed nostalgic for the late 50s - early 70s, when, I get the sense anyway, art mattered so much more to people. [From his NYT obituary:] “We were so gloriously contentious, everyone bitching at everyone,” Mr. Sarris recalled in a 2009 interview with The New York Times. “We all said some stupid things, but film seemed to matter so much. “Urgency” — his smile on this point was wistful — “seemed unavoidable.”

buffalo cherry

I love traveling. I'm sitting in the Buffalo airport, which is, you know... pretty glamourous. It feels exotic though. It feels like an Alexander Payne movie. As we were landing I was staring out the window and I was struck by all the windmills. Is that really what they're called? It seems so 'Don Quixote' and old-fashioned of a word. Anyway, the woman sitting next to me on the airplane must have noticed my intrigue because she said, "Wow, lot of 'em. Huh? Must be Wyoming County." I nodded, "Must be." It sounds right. Then she told me that she read somewhere the 20% of the wind in the world could power everything we need today in the whole world. That sounds interesting and good too. It might even be true. Anyway, this airport is called Buffalo/Niagara Falls and I was really hoping to see the falls from the plane. No dice on that front though. Just a lot of windmills. Tonight I go to a picnic in Chautauqua at the theater where I'm doing a play in July. Tomorrow is casting and then back to NYC for a couple weeks. I'm listening to this great song by Crystal Arnette's band Ladybird and looking at these images and feeling good and open and full. Once the musicians' instruments arrive on the carousel we will get in a van and make a road-trip and at the end of it there'll be hotdogs. Great day. Also, Erica had her twins since my last post. Congratulations Erica and Gabriel. And Milo and Katherine. You are going to have the best lives.

rainy monday

I just went for a great run in the rain.I know for a fact I've said this before but since it's still true-- sometimes running in the rain is a good time for a cry. That's okay. Crying is okay. It's good to feel things. Life is really incredible sometimes. And people. Like this girl. And her basil plants. And her big, big heart. You have to sort of lean in because she's really quiet. But it's worth it.

only skin

I'm obsessed with this song right now. The band is called Spring Standards and I saw them play at Ars Nova on Monday night. I really love them and Heather's voice epsecially. I want to work with them. Or just play this song again and again and again. I have a little free time today, and the past couple days, and whenever that happens I feel compelled to do three things: 1. Reach out to friends I've been out of touch with 2. Read the books I've been meaning to read and watch the movies I've been meaning to watch. 3. Write a great script. The third one is the hardest of course. For me writing is often a way to try to put into words something I've experienced or am trying to remember. The act of describing it, trying to be as specific and truthful as possible, is a way of getting closer to the thing itself. Or the time and place. Or the person. Even though I really love words and feel like a 'verbal' person, I really do think more in images and movement. When I can't think of the word for something I can usually see the thing happening (in my mind's eye, as Hunter would say), and my body moves into it's idea of the expression or quality of that word. I can also see some of the letters. The same thing happens on a larger scale when I'm trying to tell a story. Like in a play. I see what it should look like (to me) and how people should move before I hear how the words sound. I guess that makes me a 'visual' person. I also love when storytelling happens 'non-verbally.' Like in transitions or in dance or at a rock show. Or a silent meditation probably. There are probably all kinds of stories being told at silent rituals. Even though I love improvising and generating dialogue out loud, when I try to write scripts they are often really full of descriptions of what the camera or the audience sees. I think that is not so good. When I try to write dialogue, I feel like I'm subconsciously playing some sort of memory game where I'm trying to get down what happened once, between me and some other person. I might do something really crazy like switch the genders or the time period or something, but it's not completely original either. Not at all. Alright, enough jibber jabber. I'm going to stop making excuses and try to write now. Right now.

jump jump jump

The past week and a half have afforded me a bunch of extremely wonderful and one truly horrible occasion to reflect on life and death and babies and peanuts and growing up and expressing oneself. Colt Coeur did our (2nd annual!) free play-making workshop with Brooklyn middle school students and over the course of a week 18 original plays were created... and all kinds of other magic that can be quantified occurred too. The other thing is too sad to talk about and there's no silver lining so I'm not going to try and slap one on there. When in Boston I also got to visit with 6-week old Carys and 4 year-old Callum though. They are my "bee's knees" ... even though I don't know what that means exactly. Callum is doing a lot of counting and some basic addition and he kept pointing out that Carys "isn't even 1 yet... she's just zero." My sister likes to say how much Carys likes this or that outfit, or this or that 'jumping' activity, which I find really funny and endearing. Carys can't talk yet but she does look really happy in all the outfits and when my sister lifts her up quickly and says, "Jump jump jump." She has already changed so much since she was born. Callum was also asking me how old I would be when he is 40 and if we would ever be the same age. I said no because I didn't want to confuse him. The he said "I'm going to have a bigger life than you," which, when pressed, seemed to mean that he is going to live longer because he is younger than me. He explained, "not everybody dies at the same time... that's silly." When I started to look a little sad thinking about how old I'll be when he will be 40, he immediately offered, "We'll still have a long life together." Which is so true. And for that I am grateful. Steven Levenson sent me this today and I love it.