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.  

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.

Compleat Victrola Sessions part II

may day

I love it when words have different meanings. words, or phrases, or objects, or facial expressions, or emotions even.

A call for help from sailors or fisherman in their yellow galoshes on a boat in the middle of the ocean or the day when all the girls in the village get out their ribbons and dance and weave around the May pole. For example.

So May day it is. May. birthday incoming. spring. the birds and the bees. the flowers must be coming up...

And so they are. I am excited to report that in two weeks I will set out on an adventure of many unknowns and many points of potential wonder and wonderfulness. I go to NYC for three weeks to assistant-direct a play. Then I go to Williamstown Theater Festival for two months, where I will get to direct two one-act plays. And swim in the 'tubs' in the very nearby Great State of Vermont. I get to experience all the madness that a sort of 'theater-camp' for grown-ups might make you think of... Then, I get to go to Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod-- another Most Magical Place award-winner. I get to act in a play with a great director in a theater where the backstage is a stone's throw from the ocean. I get to spend one week living in an historic shack on the dunes in Provincetown because I won a lottery! I get to be in the same time zone as my family and driving distance for over four months!! And while I am gone the Little Bird theater company is going to do a one-act play I wrote called "Seeds" as part of a festival in June at the very beautiful Elephant theater. I feel like I am gloating or something but even as I am writing this I am in total disbelief at my incredible fortune. And I feel lucky and blessed and so much gratitude. It is CRAZY.

the one other time I felt this lucky was when I was seven or so I was visiting relatives in Saginaw, Michigan and there was some kind of fair and I kept winning all the prizes all day. I remember being so excited but then feeling like I also had to show everyone how excited I was;-- it was very exhausting. The big kahuna prize had been a large chocolate cake with chocolate frosting that was incredilbe-looking, it looked so fresh it almost looked wet, and I remember being TRULY excited about eating it and sharing it with my family. After we got home from the fair thing everyone was hanging out and doing fun stuff and I didn't want to miss anything but after much fighting it off and being defensive ("I am NOT tired") I fell asleep. I woke up and it was nighttime and everyone except my mom was gone out dancing or something and I said, "can I have a piece of cake now?" and you're not gonna believe this-- the cake was gone. They had eaten the WHOLE thing. Anyway, not exactly sure it relates but I guess I'm saying I KNOW I am very lucky. And, I haven't ALWAYS been sooo lucky... And yes by golly, I'm going to take advantage of these gifts and opportunities.

I am sinking my teeth in and I am holding on and I am traveling light because I am up for any adventure each new adventure leads me towards.

also, I found this incredibly eloquent:
(from the obituary of Albert Hoffman, Swiss chemist who accidentally discovered LSD)

"I entered into realities which were as real and even more real than the one of everyday, became more aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the plant and animal kingdom. I became very sensitive to all this and what will happen to all of us."

He died this week. He was 102.


traveling light indeed

may days

For days Alice sick with a fever STOP
Went to camp nurse for rest STOP
Didn't turn out so well STOP
Now hard comb and head burning shampoo STOP
The bed had lice but she's feeling better START



the school infirmary really did give me the willies. Wool blankets hard as brillo pads.
And did you hear about the poor acrobat in the Mexican circus? He fell in the middle of his act. Right before the Ringleader said something like, "now, boys and girls, with just the slip of a wrist or the snap of a rope, what you're about to see-- it could be fatal." Hopefully the "Ahhhhhhh" in a on-the-edge-of-their-seats-EXCITED way was the last sound the man heard, and not so much the sadly clairvoyant introduction.

RIP all the ones we've lost in flight