Issue10 - Karawane

Transcription

Issue10 - Karawane

Karawane
Or, the temporary death of the Bruitist
A journal of experimental performance texts
* Spoken word *theatre *performance art *oratory * reviews * music scores*
Issue 10
10th anniversary year!
A Journal of Experimental Performance Texts •
contents & credits
Artwork
Mail 1979, by Tom Cassidy ___________________________________________________________ Front Cover
Tom Lewis, Small Dark Figures _______________________________________________________13, 54, 58, 60
Texts
Notes from the Editrix __________________________________________________________ 3
For Your Eyes Only, Elliott Durko Lynch , Photos by Usry Alleyne ____________________________________ 4
Ira’s World, Compromised, David Christopher LaTerre___________________________________________ 13
What is a performance text?, Liz O’Connell ___________________________________________________ 13
Atmospheric Poetry, Ric Royer ______________________________________________________________ 13
Pacemakers & Cigarettes, Bison Kiln _________________________________________________________ 14
The Temp Job, Laura Winton ________________________________________________________________ 15
Touché, J. Otis Powell!______________________________________________________________________ 17
Sleep Action, Ric Royer_____________________________________________________________________ 19
A Cure for Alpinism, Christopher Shillock ______________________________________________________ 19
Make a Body Image, Marc Jensen ___________________________________________________________ 20
It Was Cold Outside When You Were Here, Ashley Williams _____________________________________ 20
14 UnNatural Acts, Lian Amaris Sifuentes & Roberto Sifuentes _____________________________________ 21
Feel Spiritual, Ric Royer ____________________________________________________________________ 30
What is a performance text? Kat Wodtke _____________________________________________________ 30
Punctured Equilibrium, Marc Jensen _________________________________________________________ 31
Love Letter, Ric Royer______________________________________________________________________ 33
Masturbation, Ric Royer____________________________________________________________________ 33
Booby, Mama! Hedwig Irene Gorski ___________________________________________________________ 34
Ghosts in Numbers, Richard Kostelanetz ______________________________________________________ 39
You Will Prosper, Lenora Drowns ____________________________________________________________ 39
Piece after John Cage, David Christopher LaTerre_______________________________________________ 39
Hall of Mirrors, Brian Turner ________________________________________________________________ 40
Firefly Circle, Marc Jensen & Heath Matthews ___________________________________________________ 54
Stand Up for Something, Ric Royer __________________________________________________________ 54
The Universe Gives Me the Creeps, Danielle Billington __________________________________________ 55
Upgrade, David Christopher LaTerre___________________________________________________________ 60
What is a performance text? Andrew Brackett ________________________________________________ 60
Credits
Publisher: Laura Winton
Layout: Marc Jensen, Laura Winton
Editorial collective/readers: Lian Sifuentes, Laura Winton, Mike Saar
STOREFROT OF GROOVIESS
Check out groovy Karawane stuff on the web, including mousepads, buttons, t-shirts, and so much more.
Designs include original artwork and poetry by Karawane
artists, our own unique dada spam poetry t-shirts and our
signature chalk outline merchandise.
http://www.cafepress.com/karawane
2 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Notes from the Editrix
Dog years. I live in dog years. From the time of the previous issue to the time I begin the new one to the time the new one actually gets finished, so many ideas come and go, so many things happen. As I wrote this, I had just returned from two research trips—
one to a Conceptual Poetics Conference in Tucson where I had the
chance to meet Tracie Morris, Charles Bernstein, Craig Dworkin and
Marjorie Perloff and hear some awesome work from Christian Bok,
with whom I was not familiar. The other was a trip to Chicago to
check out the infamous Green Mill poetry slam where slam began
and to hit some open mics. I was very heartened by Chicago, where the slam did not sound like the
slams do in Minneapolis or at the Nuyorican or Bowery Poetry Club or Bar 13. The slams sound like energetic poetry readings and performances by people with good performance styles. Period. I attended
an open mic at Trace Bar in Wrigleyville (at the tail end of a Cubs game) and found a fun, lively community full of banter and wit and a variety of poetry and performances from the Drunken Flute to a George
Carlin tribute to my own surrealist poetry. I found a community like the one I felt here in Minneapolis at
the end of the 1990s, a community where I was told “you have a home here.” What I felt in Chicago
were people committed to sharing poetry, to being in a live space together , not constantly auditioning
for Def Poetry Jam or their 15 minutes of fame/infamy. I met people who were anxious to talk about
poetry, performance, and experimental work and how to bring those things together. I didn’t want to
leave. I’m a former Illinois girl until my late 20s and Chicago is not only one of those great cities in
America, but a place I call home and the pull of the community I felt there reinforced that. Every time
that happens, I feel more committed to my own work and to the work we do here in Karawane, to building a community on paper, online, to taking that to one another and finding kindred souls wherever they
may be. At the same time, editing this issue reminds me that there is still very much a community for
me here in Minneapolis, as more than half of the issue comes from the Twin Cities area—people I’ve
worked with for years, people I’ve newly met in the past 2-3 years. There is an amazing collection of
artists of all stripes here from whom I draw inspiration. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you find
an artistic and communal home here and on our websites.
In the coming days/few weeks, I’ll be blogging a little about the conference (which I have already) and
my Chitown trip. In the meantime, write us. Send us your work. Tell us about your poetry communities. Try something outrageous and unlike anything you’ve ever done before at your next open mic or
slam. Break out of what you know and what you think your audience expects and blow their minds and
your own. Be a revolutionary poet. Not because you preach revolution per se, but because you open
up new worlds your audience could never have imagined before.
For the next issue, I’m going to give special attention to the theme of “hidden performances.” If this
resonates with you, send us a script, instruction piece or reflection for/of/on hidden performances you’ve
done or created. Or just send us some cool work, tell us about what’s going on with you. Make some
noise and let us know you’re out there. Below are the multitudinous ways to contact us.
Xxx ooo Fluffy Singler aka Laura Winton, your humble (or not) editrix
http://www.karawanemagazine.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/karawane
http://www.karawane.homestead.com
Email: [email protected]
http://www.fluffysingler.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/fluffysingler
http://www.fluffysingler.homestead.com
email: [email protected]
Left—the Chopin Theatre at Ashland & Division,
location of the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards.
Right — Funky Buddha Lounge, home of the monthly
Mental Graffiti reading, which I missed this time around.
Photos by Laura Winton
A Journal of Experimental Performance Texts • 3
FORYOUREYESONLY
ELLIOTTDURKOLYNCH
The Script of 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.
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 ficticious 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.”
4 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
<< 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.
The force that asked me to take my Grandparents chairs from their house in Chicago. The
force that saved everything I had in High School in a box named High School, and keep it
in the basement of my apartment building. The force that has boxes of videotapes of me
at my grandparents house.
The same force that covets random slides, pictures, and notes found on the street. The
same force that found a man’s letters slides sheet music and diaries in my partner’s basement, a man’s life, and
marveled at it. Wondered what mine would look like someday.
I am compelled to save everything.
Everything you would usually just throw away.
Over 10 hours of my own cell phone messages recorded on cd,
Why throw it away?
As a young person I was encouraged by those older and wiser to magically reset their flashing VCR clock, rewarded
with Cookies, and phrases like, “How does he know that?”
Myspace.com didn't yet exist, and Rupert Murdoch did not own it. My mother had just completed a Library Science
Degree and was fully versed in knowledge of ‘Gopher,’ search engines, and the new internet which she imparted to
me.
In 1996, it took more time to use Altavista.com trolling for information on your friends. There were many fewer pictures, and not much information at all. All it was good for then was instant messaging. The internet was only a little
younger than me.
It makes us all pretend we’re closer, because it does make us pretend, with visual aids, that we’re all connected. But
the map of connections has become so large it almost covers our own world. If you don't exist in this virtual world,
you have no ties. Even to the people you see on a regular basis. Did you see my post didn't you see where I talked
about you? Did you see?
I don’t remember you Ryan, I remember the picture of you. I don’t remember you Jeff, I remember your instant
messages. I don’t remember you Michelle, I remember the music you listened to. The only reason we were friends
Jonathan, is because we liked the same video games. The only reason we are ‘friends’ Caffetto Cafe, is that
Myspace provides the space to be friends.
Our relationships are branded, as if they're a new way to speak. What better way to make money than to brand a
language?
Myspace, Friendster, Olio, Black Planet, Youtube, Livejournal, Facebook, Frappr, Dodgeball, Match.com, friend-oA Journal of Experimental Performance Texts • 5
rama, dark starlings,
Online, each and every action is recorded. Saved. creating, checking and rechecking one of these profiles, is well, it
takes time, every day. Sometimes hours.
Living in the ‘real’ world everything disappears, there is emptiness, quiet, nothing.
There’s TIME. And thought.
In the lives of the digitally enhanced each moment hangs forever. Staring back at you.
Things that you “delete” actually leave a trace. When an email is sent, in less than a few seconds, copies are stored
on various transfer servers. They’re like those Green Post Office Boxes that you still see out here on Minneapolis
streets; Mailboxes that let mail Carriers drop some of their load. You’re not necessarily supposed to notice those
boxes, and you don’t see the copies of your email or voicemails or text messages or GPS signals that get transmitted
with or without your permission, but they do exist. Sometimes for brief moments, sometimes for years.
There are many many copies, and there are a lot of things to copy. And whether or not we think we've deleted
them, what else do we have to save today anyway?
On May 11th 2006, my hard drive just stopped working. A lot of things disappeared. They weren’t recorded anymore. As if one room stacked high with thirty boxes full of mementos just went up in smoke, 12,000 emails sent,
and received, pictures from the last eight years, some of this text you’re hearing right now, disappeared. It didn’t
stop existing, they never did exist. Their compressed magnetically coded plastic ... life just ... passed on.
In human to human contact, space, proximity, is important. Distance is distance.
I’m very lucky to live with my partner Anna. We’ve lived together for over a year. Our friends, who we used to see
everyday at University, have engaged the new social rules for instantaneous information, telepresence, cell phone
connection. The definition of Friendship is different than it was five years ago.
If you didn't have a phone and you went out to meet someone, no one would ever call to worry about being three
minutes late. You wouldn't be able to call and say I've been waiting because if you waited that was okay. Today if
you were minutes late for someone they would be angry. That would be cause for cancellation for a relationship. For
de-friending. Because I should have been able to call them because I had a cell phone didn't I?
It’s rather sad to be de-friended.
One day, browsing your arrangement of people's faces that have been marked as your friends, you'll wonder where
one went. After another look, you’ll realize they're not there anymore. What does that mean? It means, they purposely de-friended you.
Popular Music That Will Live Forever. Upon the death of the artist, your favorite CD does not disappear. And in the
Online world, neither will that friend disappear off your list, if they were to say, die. They couldn't quickly jump up
and delete their account.
Last winter, there was a woman here in Minneapolis who fell off a grain elevator. She was a University student; I
wondered if I had known her, so I looked her up on Facebook, and found her. Still there.
I sent a message to the Facebook administrators: asking if they were able to contact anyone in her family about
deactivating her account.
SUBJECT: RE: Germain Vigeant is dead.
Hi,
I have de-actived this account.
6 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Thanks for contacting us about this loss.
Kate
Customer Service Representative
Facebook
On Sat Feb 04 19:30:37 2006: [email protected] wrote:
SUBJECT RE: Germain Vigeant is dead.
Is there a policy for such situations?
On Sat Feb 04 21:25:41 [email protected] wrote:
Hi,
We are about to institute a new policy in which we convert the deceased's Facebook account into a memorial page,
which will be active for 30 days after. However, since Germain Vigeant’s account was not [actively visited], I deactived it, since it did not contain her personal information or links to other facebook users, and hence would not
make a natural memorial forum.
I hope this helps.
Kate
Customer Service Representative
Facebook
This was morbid, but there’s more. There is a website which catalogs those that pass away and have a profile on
the social networking site, Myspace.com This website, is called Mydeathspace.com.
There is a force that compels me to save everything.
It gets more complicated, Theodora Stites wrote in a NYTIMES article from July entitled, “Modern Love, Someone to
Watch Over Me (on a Google Map)” all about Dodgeball.com, a site that connects the online community to your cellphone, allowing you to send out public announcements with your location to all the people in your Dodgeball network with cell phones in the neighborhood.
She writes, I scroll through the messages (I received) to see where my friends went last night, and when, tracking
their progress through various bars and noting the crossed paths. I check the Google map that displays their locations and proximity to one another. I note how close Christopher and Tom were last night, only a block away, but
see that they never met up.”
At the end, she states plainly, “I can't wait to log back in.”
I checked out Dodgeball.com, it lists itself as a New York based service that focuses on using technology to facilitate
serendipity. Once you log into Dodgeball... it seems that George Orwell has written your life; but no, you have actually forced it upon yourself.
<_Can I have the Slides Please_>
Anna Marie Shogren enters the stage and wheels out an overhead cart.
Receiving this letter from my old friend Ryan, made me question this Space where we all knew everything. Ryan
himself had introduced me to this online world, just three years ago. What would happen to my life if I give up my
profiles? Could it be possible. So I went about, ending my virtual life. Can I have the first slide please?
The overhead turns on and < IMAGE OF DELETION NOTICE from Myspace.com >
Posters were put up, with a warning dates weeks ahead.
The day approached and I went through the meticulous process of removing myself from these profiling services,
Myspace, Friendster, Facebook.
< A series of slides are put up, showing the many “confirmation pages” one has to go through to delete themselves.
>
Finally it was over, the deletion occurred. I never received one message, one response back from anyone, about
how they would miss me or be sad they wouldn't be able to reach me.
The network doesn't work that way.
So how do you rebel, how do you do direct protest against something in which, there are no bodies? The answer
was simple, lie. Lie, throw those wrenches in, make people wonder. That's how Howard_Nobody was born;
< A new Myspace page, in Black and White overhead form of HOWARD NOBODY appears on the back wall. >
and even though he's very clearly nobody, no one seems to mind.
< An image of HOWARDS FRIENDS>
So I made a memorial to myself being on Myspace, and very clearly everyone wanted to be a part of it. He has 98
friends and growing:
< IMaGe OF MYSPACE MEMORIAL >
So no, I’m not on myspace. But there’s a Memorial to My Deletion on Myspace. Yes of course these profiles, and my
third the US Postal Office worker, is, of course, me. Of course, I am on Myspace, it’s all fake.
Technology shock. I’m on the phone, I'm holding a cell phone to my ear, I'm using an earbud connected to my cell
phone, I’m using an imperceptible piece of plastic jammed inside my ear to communicate, to know the information,
and all I need to do is say their name. The year drones on.
We start to hear a coffeeshop in the theater… and people enter, sitting at various locations, one at the table Elliott
speaks from, reading and drinking from Coffee Cups. One pulls out a desk from the back, opens a laptop and begins
to type away on the back wall.
I watch people commune with Myspace ignoring those around them at the coffeeshops. I am obsessed with a cell
phone ringtone. Every blue light glowing from an ear, is my endless horror film. They're all around me, closing in.
Everywhere, they're everybody, they all have them, and they are them. They're producing and receiving, they’re
the Living Breathing Zombie Profile People.
I cannot wake up every morning, and tell you who I am. I would not be able to get out of bed. It’s almost that hard
already because I believe they're out there, the cameras on the phones, on the laptops. I believe each copy of my
email is read, and interpreted by a machine, as are my internet searches, my cell phone messages, my every move.
I cannot wake up every morning, believing all that. I would not be able to get out of bed. I try to forget.
Elliott leaves the table, moves to the overhead projector, and slides a black and white cutout of a coffeeshop over
the screen (onto the back wall), next to the performer at her table with her laptop and her lamp. Then goes to the
base of the stage, pulls out another cart, with a video projector, inserts a VHS tape, and an actual video image of a
coffee shop and the window appear next to the cut out.
Elliott crosses back and pulls out his laptop again, and sits facing the laptop, his back to the audience for a few moments.
Turning around…
8 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Oh Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. Oh sorry, I was worried I had a message on Instant Messenger, but, I'm not
sure. So. Oh well. Hold on I just need to put up an away message.
Runs off stage, grabs large newsprint pad and writes
BRB LOL,
PERFORMING
After showing to the audience, it is taped to the back wall, backwards, with masking tape.
Stuttering… too fast.
the thing is, that I really would like to write a letter.
But. I'm not sure how. You see. So. Well, instead of going to the library, I thought I’d do a World Wide
Web search.
Right. So I went to Altavista.com and searched for ‘write’ and ‘letter,’ but then I didn’t really get what I
wanted. I found 337 results, and they talked about people who write letters, and how to write, and why
alphabets exist, and what are your favorite type faces, and uh fonts, and how email started, but still, I was
confused. I couldn't find anything about letters.
So I refined my search using the Booleon search language. So I kept “write and letter,” and then put in
“not ‘alphabet’” not ‘e-mail’, not ‘communication,’ not ‘font,’
Finally, How to write a letter.
He mumbles to himself.
Well, oh yes, I looked up, writing a letter, and uh, well, first, it
says you need to have someone to write it to.
Someone. To. Write. To.
To.
Someone to.
I can’t see anybody, there’s nobody in front of me.
There must be someone. Somebody I could write to, yes.
Elliott pulls out a television which is held in front of his body, on which he plays the opening of James Burke,
“Connections.”. An image of the World Trade Center, a man in a grey trenchcoat walks into the picture. Among
other things he says, “Look at the room you’re in right now, the telephone, the TV, the lights, and ask just what
those things do to your life, just because they’re there.Go ahead…”
As James speaks, Elliott puts on a similar garb, trenchcoat, glasses, and begins to dance to his text. James Burke
enters an elevator inside the World Trade Center, and states “Do I bother myself with the reality of what happens
when I get into a big steel box, press a button, and rise into the sky? Of course I don’t.”
Elliott dances across the space, then runs back and presses stop on the Television.
As James Burke:
THE DOT-COM BURST. Just how far it’s gone, when I grew up in Milwaukee Wisconsin, I watched daily as miles and
miles and miles were laid under the streets of my city.
Elliott slowly rips off his Guise and accent and returns to himself.
I had seven computers in my elementary classroom. It was the dot com bubble that put this railroad track of our
information superhighway into the ground. The companies are gone and yet the information still flows the same
route the same ways.
I was a favorite of Mr. Hagen. I was his favorite. That’s it. He sent me a letter.
What is that. Ryan Loved James Burke, in High School in Milwaukee.
That’s it where is Ryan that’s how this started. SANTA CLAUSE Left me notes on Floppy Drives. Floppy Floppy.
Elliott pulls out a Over To Typewriter
DEAR GRANDMA, WHERE ARE YOU, I CAN’T FIND YOU, I LOOKED ON MYSPACE FOR MANY HOURS. WHERE ARE
YOU? I CAN’T FIND YOU?
WHY DON’T I TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE?
But what do I do with this. He refers to the laptop in the back of the space.
They’re so precious, it’s not just a book, it’s not just a picture, it’s inside of this. I have what I pretend is you, here,
said a thousand times in words I have you here, in pictures, in films, they’re all here, Inside these little boxes. These
precious little Boxes.
I don’t think you could be stacked, like the letters I found in the basement.
I had never known the person and his whole life was right there, in the boxes, on the pieces of papers.
Not in this, You could not be stacked.
If you drop this, what I pretend is you will be gone. What I pretend is you, will no longer be able to be accessed, it
will be gone. Flimsy 1’s and 0s they’ll be scattered out of order.
Its coded, compressed, to save it from scattering to nothing it needs to be uncoded.
I don’t have enough room in my apartment for EVERYTHING to be uncoded.
Elliott takes the laptop from the coffee shop customer at the back wall. They begin to fight over it while he talks.
But what if here, and there, and here isn’t enough someday,
I don’t know how to connect this, It doesn’t fit inside my laptop, its not compatible, it doesn’t fit inside my laptop it
doesn’t fit inside the OLD PC in the basement it doesn’t fit inside the VCR it doesn’t fit inside the PHONE it doesn’t fit
inside the NINTENDO, NONE OF THE BOXES, NONE OF THEM. IT DOESN’T FIT Its not compatible, I can’t access
what I pretend is you!
The Laptop Falls to the floor, breaking apart.
Elliott enters Neurasthenic Shock
Act 2: Neurasthenic Shock
A section that cannot be put into words.
After all of it.
Act 3: The Funeral
Elliott, surrounded by people masked as James Burke as a book, Elliott as a Myspace icon
image, and Mr Rogers as an LP cover, along with a cardboard Post Box, while images of
Broken Televisions, vertically roll on the back wall.
Elliott reads the eulogy:
The old Media gave us so much, the Medium was the Message. It showed us the Authority to covet, and the Talking Heads to follow. You were there in our homes, and we were so happy to share our dinner table with you, each
night. Because of you, now there is power to the electronic mediation of anything, my diary, a memoir, a picture, or
a video that I made. We all have the ironic power of making our own Media, our own Television, our own public
News and our own daily blog celebrity. Thank you for that feeling of importance, irony, and the illusion of power.
We will miss you broadcast Network Television. We will miss you Fred Rogers.
10 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Elliott sits at the table at the front of the space again.
Change your Behavior, that’s gotta be one of the harder things to commit to.
How did you learn to mourn, or to bottle it up deep inside.
Pretend it’s for the better. Pretend it’s because its your only option. Pretend that
you’re poor, Pretend the world understands that there are poor people. Pretend your
parents understand you make less than they ever did.
Change your behavior, and become someone who likes the company of others.
Make believe your friends are meaningful, pretend they won’t die suddenly.
Trust that even though their companionship isn’t backed up by years of planning, multimillion dollar deals with starbucks-vivendi-texaco and confirmation emails -- they’ll still be there for you.
Maybe start by just being there for them.
Your nation may have scared you into believe you can’t have medical treatment without insurance, but don’t be
afraid.
Don’t be afraid to make friends, you don’t have to own them, to add them, just pretend that they’re there with you,
wherever you go. You may not be advertised like popular music or have the backing of pop music, but you don’t
need to be a popstar to live forever. Not anymore. Just think of them fondly.
The plastic will all melt. It will all decay, it will disappear, and you'll drop your ipod. It won't last very much longer. I
could snap all of your CDs. I could snap them on your head. I'm sorry, it’s the truth. People are not as breakable as
the material you keep them on.
Until this age of Digital Reproduction a copy was always plagued by imperfections. the dark areas would blotch and
bleed. Lenses on Xerox machines would add black specks, and they would grow and multiply. Every play of a VHS,
or Audio Cassette tape adds more and more dirt and imperfection to a magnetic signal.
Every duplication, every playback would have a different nuance, each time.
the truth, fidelity, was always only the near-truth.
Today, things are different. Now, each 1 and 0 can be copied, perfectly. It’s a quick mouse click, an option c, an
option v. A duplicate, a forward, an attachment. It’s easier to copy than to translate, it’s easier to make one thing
out of copies and copy it to everyone, than to tell the same stories over and over to different people.
I am a young person,
I'm not going to pretend I'm not young. People five years younger than I are dying in a war right now. The soldiers
in Iraq. They’re there on Myspace. How can you not believe it? They die, and their 23-year old teenaged pinkhaired wives are upset, and talk to their friends every minute, in memory of them on myspace. They long for them.
Just the same. They may not see their friends, but they believe they're there.
Somewhere between the time I deleted myself on Myspace, and put up a memorial to myself on Myspace, Ryan left
Myspace. Around that time he left me this message:
<< Play Message >>
It is Ryan on the voicemail.
Elliott, its Ryan, I’m broke, and hanging out. Give me a call someday, talk to you soon.
In my life, what had changed? Had anything changed? Despite 20 letters sent back and forth to many people in my
life, they still were no closer than if we had still been Myspace friends.
But really, Writing letters is still a transferring of very intimate aspects of ourselves via a medium that is paradoxically very material, physical. In the end, if anything, it is still just like writing an email, or leaving a voicemail, still a
mediation.
But, writing letters is most definitely not like making a profile, writing mass emails, and writing blog posts.
Receiving something that has been tailored just for you. And when I say “just” I mean it’s For Your Eyes Only;
someone who cares about you made this story, this text, this thing, just for you. And you have been the first person to see it. And the honest truth, is that unlike electronic-mail, unlike instant messages, or any of that stuff,
there's a great likelihood that the person who wrote you long ago has already forgotten exactly what it was that
they told you; they sent you their only copy.
The ritual of thinking about you had brought forth ideas, images, messages from the past, feelings, memories, and
they gave those to you.
To sit and think of someone for two hours, drink a cup of coffee, fully witness the privilege and ease of a society
overtaken by speed and perceived mediocrity, allowed me to realize just how easy America has it. To fold the piece
of paper, put it in an envelope, address the envelope, put a stamp on the envelope, get up and walk, and Take the
letter to the post box, and watch it fall inside that box. A reassuring feeling that, yes, things have happened in my
life, I do exist.
And in the end sitting here with you all today, those people are still not in this room. There still was no human contact. No skin against skin. But I'd like to think that it was one step closer to that real person. Their hands, their
folds, their mistakes. Take care of yourself, Write back soon.
Who do you miss?
If you would now, I want you to indulge me for a moment, dear dear audience member, and I have some instructions, for you. What I want you to do right now, is reach under your chair. If you haven't already. I want you to
reach under your chair and there you'll find an envelope. I want you to grab it off the chair, right now, hold it in
your hand.
Now, I want you to stop watching me, and close your eyes.
Now I’m going to stop talking for a moment, and when I do, I want you to think about who you’re going to write a
letter to. Who in your life has been a servant to you… who has helped you love the good that grows within you?
Let’s just take ten seconds to think of some of those people who have loved us and wanted what was best for us in
life—those who have encouraged us to become who we are tonight –just ten seconds of silence.
Imagine how pleased those people must be to know that you thought of them right now.
We all have the choice of living life the way we’re told or sold, or to choose creative, imaginative ways; and help
others do the same in their own unique personal imaginative way. Maybe someone will be thinking of you and
sending you a letter someday.
The Post Office is closing tomorrow. The government cut funding. You have some letters to write. Dear audience
member, thank you for being you today. Thank you for listening, and being bombarded. Thank you for watching,
thank you for imagining, and pretending. Now if you excuse me, I need to _______ .
Elliott presses the tape recorder to the microphone, which plays Mr. Rogers singing
“Its such a Good Feeling.”
Elliott and friends dance with cardboard replicas of Electronic Messaging devices as a
GOOGLEMAP Satellite image sequence PLAYS on the backwall, rising up from Intermedia Arts, the audience flies over South Minneapolis, crashing through the virtual
towers of downtown. Then they scoop out over Minnesota, over Wisconsin, the entire
Midwest, it pans back to America, and then zooms all the way to the World Trade
Center sight in lower Manhattan, then pulls back to the spinning Earth. And Black.
12 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Snapshot of ELLIOTT¹S MYSPACE MEMORIAL EST MARCH 1 2006 (as of September 2007)
http://www.myspace.com/elliottsmyspacememorial
History of this Profile: ELLIOTT'S MYSPACE RESURRECTED was established on the 1 year anniversary of the
death of ELLIOTT on Myspace, March 1st 2007. THIS PROFILE WAS FORMERLY A MEMORIAL ONLY, NOT A
METHOD OF CONTACT.
ELLIOTT WILL NOW RESPOND TO YOU
ELLIOTT's MYSPACE PAGE PASSED ON MARCH 1st 2006.
http://www.myspace.com/elliottdurkolynch/
THIS WAS A MEMORIAL OF ELLIOTT's MYSPACE PAGE, on which you would have seen a representation of a
representation of ELLIOTT DURKO LYNCH THE PERSON. IT OPENED ON JULY 6th 2006.
THE MEMORIAL CLOSED on March 1st 2007, the 1 year anniversary of the death of ELLIOTT¹s REPRESENTATION on MYSPACE.
Because this service was formerly not actually ELLIOTT or even a direct representation, it was very important
that you realized there were (and still are) better ways to message or communicate with ELLIOTT, you should
have, and still could:
A. Email Elliott at "[email protected]"
B. Call him using a number provided at the above email address.
C. Write him a letter using an address provided at the above email address (stamps, envelopes, paper etc, not
provided.)
Whatisa
Performance
Text?
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
Ira’s world, compromised
In this German bar in Minneapolis with more dark beers than light there’s
sushi a la carte & cell phones on the bar. I can’t get used to it. The bus boys
swarm around our humble sniff-in, looking bony & coy. Outside there are agro
children-of-hippies slacking heavenward; a little before suppertime/waning
Happy Hour …the day’s business doled out as anecdotal. There’s no TV thank
Ghod. There’s no Hooters waitresses; more like a James Brown’s Man’s Man’s
Man’s Man’s Man’s World.org where you won’t see any goat cheese or dolmas. You won’t see any Miami Vice casual wear. & Gohd to thank: I guess. Is
weltsmertz a German word or a Yiddish word? The old guys talk & the women
get bored. It’s no longer a world of men … drink is the mediocre equalizer/
stave off the gun
- David Christopher LaTerre
7-18-06
Atmospheric Poetry
Ric Royer
Speak into a paper bag.
When the paper bag is full of air,
hold it up and pop it. Watch the
words float around.
pace makers and cigarettes
BISON KILN
Donuts lay out on the table leading to the door in front of a carousel fragment, jutting forth from the membrane
that makes this room white. The same membrane that allows sunshine to rinse through our holiday sheets.
>PIT<1011
We soak the library in processing matter and thrill on the sewer opening, lifting our harmony up to the sauce which
pouring over the side, leaks into place in a small hole of the membrane, where the ceiling is.
Now a tree rises through the bedroom .
It grows in electric light, bottling up the symmetry of ions and juices.
The port of the root systematically unfurls from the floor boards, shifting the ashes in the lake of our foundation.
This is a dying moment for the visitors. No one sits down. People stand in the corners of the room, watching the
slime grow into the tree.
I get a transmission from somewhere explaining an abstract in code.
{UNDER GONE>} FEVER OF THREE?>> HEART BREAKING VESSEL_PAIN>}
{PAUL KING>NEW SEZIUUUREE< MOUTH JOIN>
CARDIAC ARREST>
PASS ME THAT CIGARETTE}
{OPERATION COMPLETE?}
CIGARETTE YARN/ BUNK SYNAPSES
"The view was excellent; My mind had somehow conquered ageless barriers and had definitely slipped and fell upon
this new form of a human race, built on top of basins of rubber and plastic. There was a main source humming in
front of my eyes, down the hill, raising from out of the ground, resting in plastic basins; a giant bubble or half
sphere as well as thirty four or more similar structures, glowing in hues of orange blurring pollution that made the
way only slightly into my retina as I walked."" PLEASE HURRY UP AND SHOW ME HOW HIGH THE PRE_HISTORIC
BLEED LINE IS>>> IN THE DARK>>> YES I WANT TO SEE HOW YOU WILL FIND ME IN HERE>"GUESS
AGAIN.THE PRE-history falters into some subtler fragrants capturing human joy. "What about the pig feet's?"
NEVER ASK THIS QUESTION, human. Don't look up... VIRTUAL MADNESS COMES OVER US IN THIS DARK ORANGE
CITY>THEY PRETEND I AM NOT WATCHED FROM AFAR< YET THEY ARE THE ONES WATCHING ME HERE>-YIKES-
What is a Performance Text?
Linguists and semioticians contend that everything can be read as a text. For example, Roland Barthes asserted that
fashion could be “read” as a text that tells us something about an individual or a culture or subculture. Richard
Schechner says that everything can be read through the lens of performance. So if we live in a world that we are
constantly “reading” and “performing” then as theatre practitioners and scholars, what exactly constitutes a
“performance text”? Where does the “text” of a performance come from? How do “texts” from our world become
(adapted for) performances? As a journal of experimental performance texts, we at Karawane are interested in
how performances become texts, how texts of all kinds become performances. The question was posted to students
of Dramatic Literature at the University of Minnesota, and their responses are peppered throughout the issue. We
welcome your responses as well. Please email us at [email protected]. We’ll post your responses on our
blogs.
14 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Wednesday
THE TEMP JOB: A
PERFORMANCE PIECE
BY LAURA WINTON
The Set Up
This is the original documentation of three out of five days spent on a temp
assignment in a major corporation wherein I had virtually no work to do
whatsoever. After I had done two books of crossword puzzles and attempted to read a few books, which proved difficult to stay with after 8
hours of sitting in one place under fluorescent lights, I began to write down
every time I looked at the clock and how much time was left in my day. On
Friday, I began writing down some things about what I was doing at the
time.
Documentation
Director and theorist Richard Schechner describes performance as “twice
behaved behavior.” What follows here is the “documentation” of the original impetus for this performance—the transcription of my time logs from my
temp job. These logs can serve as the basis for a performance, reading,
etc. as well as serving as the blueprint or instructions for a newly generated
piece.
Theorizing
As Andy Warhol once said, "we figured out how much we thought the audience could take and went about 10 minutes beyond that. Leave them wanting less was always our motto."
The point, of course, of an installation piece such as this is to highlight the
passing, often slow, of time and to emphasize both temporality and space.
In this case, it is the confining of space and time into a cubicle and a workday.
The Performance
In a theatrical (re)performance of this piece, a desk should be placed in
some public place and the performer should go there eight hours a day,
preferably for at least a week. Every time the performer looks at the clock
he or she will say the time out loud and make some kind of repetitive action. Whenever anyone comes near the performance piece, they will be
asked "are you the new temp?" When some smart ass says yes, he or she
should be "trained" on how to do the performance and then the original
performer can take a break.
This can also, of course, be “performed” in its original milieu, as a “hidden”
performance on your own temp job, merely through the act of documenting
your own (pointless) work day.
8:29
7:30
7:21
7:16
7:00
6:47
6:25
6:09
6:06
6:00
5:27
5:20
5:19
5:12
5:04
4:50
4:37
4:25
4:20
4:19
4:16
4:15
3:50
3:45
3:34
3:20
3:17
3:10
3:07
3:04
2:55
2:49
2:40
2:15
2:00
1:35
1:21
1:17 zzzz (fell asleep briefly)
1:08
:56
:47
:40
:30
:25
:22
:18
:16
:09
:08
:06
:03
:02
Thursday
Friday variation
8:20
8:09
7:59
7:40
7:20
6:37
6:10
6:01
4:55
4:39
4:38
4:01
3:43
3;33
3:24
3:22
3:17
3:10
3:09
3:08
3:01
2:44
2:20
2:19
2:15
2:10
2:02
1:57
1:51
1:46
1:40
1:20
1:14
1:11
1:06
1:04
1:00
:55
:39
:37
:36
:33
:24
:21
:19
:15
:14
:10
:07
I left early today, so starting with 8:00 rather than 8:30.
8:04
7:56
7:45
7:44
7:39
7:33 Called to check my bank balance
7:20
7:04
6:54
6:37
6:34
6:33
6:26 Took a bathroom break
6:18 Made a phone call
6:13
6:08 Distributed mail
6:03
5:49 Went to the store to get money and buy a chocolate milk
5:23 Read Skyway News
4:58 Went to the 4th floor to visit old co-workers
4:52
4:43 Talked on the phone
4:35 Spilled water on the message book. Copied over 1 page of phone messages
4:29
4:01 Did the daily crossword puzzles. Could not finish New York Times Puzzle in the
Strib. Finished LA Times Puzzle.
3:32
3:30
3:03 Lunch
2:53 Talked to Cheryl on the phone
2:48 Called Aramark about the beeping vending machine
2:43
2:41 Personal phone call
2:29
2:00 Read the Star Tribune Front section
1:44
1:40
1:32
1:02 Hung out with Ryan, former co-worker, in the breakroom. I ate popcorn. He
spilled ice on the table and on me.
:51
:39 Copied over my notes from a seminar in December
:38
:21 Had a coughing attack. Had to run to the bathroom. Hacked and spit up a little.
Hurt my throat for the rest of the day. Ish.
:18
:15
:09
:08 Boss told me to go ahead and leave and thanks for covering this week.
16 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Touché
J. Otis Powell!
An exploration in improvisational performance prose
Part 1 Drapetomania of the Andoumboulou
My story is a runaway hiding in plain site and telling truth no one really wants to hear while pretending that my
perceptions can save the world. I'm running in a race for equality with handicaps, lameness, Astigmatism, doubts,
insecurity, dyslexia, obsessive compulsive behavior and wells of unresolved self loathing. Under educated and over
restricted I'm committed to catching up with my own shadow and dancing with my absurd reflection. My narrative
is a story that can be described as absurd and onomatopoeic; as a saga barely remembered because it's mired in
such atrocities that I've forgotten how terrible it is. I can't dwell in the brutal realism that scarred this life because
it would make my days unbearable and my nights marish.
Weather or not to run was never an option but to run toward or to run away from is the constant critical dilemma.
What? I asked myself is there to get inside of and what is there to shed like snake back rainbows. A narrative of
questions justifies my stunningly unusual plight and helps me feel more certain of my direction. Our story is how
we meet in the middle of a river of contradictions and smile at each other not understanding why but feeling the
need to embrace what each other needs. The new world is made of this. The world is only ours if we can change it
and somehow we understand that. Not ours as in real estate but ours as in the product of what we dream into
form. Already the ghost of Sekou Sundiata haunts me with Go back Drapetomaniac; you can’t be free by yourself.
The loneliness alone will kill you. So I came back; I looked back and I went back to the wisdom of another time
and found voices ready to lick my ears with music and words of the Andoumboulou.
Rise/raise on up out of here to some place no one has ever been said the voice of the Dogon through thickness
and faux silence And sing! Seduced for the moment by doubt I asked But how can I sing in a strange land?
Strangely, the voice replied. Then like a great idea the voice wrapped in the wisdom of the Nommo offered: Sing
in the spirit of L’inconnu. To which I broke all illusion of quite with a squeaking, What? My expression was a wet
squint-eyed compliant when I said But there is never not another set of stairs to climb – never not another room
to clean – never not another wind to blow in bad weather – never not another stack of bills to pay. By now names
that spoke of the absurdity of our human condition emerged from the thickness like metaphors.
Sun Ra answered me in a Birmingham Alabama accent that whiplashed my memory almost all the way back home
(to Huntsville) when he said And there is never not another po` excuse for assuming yo`self stapled to the
ground. Touché I said before making an attempt to recover with Lift every voice and sing! We can only lift our
own voice volleyed Billie Holiday, God bless the child that’s got the blues. Then our song must be contagious insisted John Coltrane And our voice must be an unimpeachable force. Our song I remembered from reading Nathaniel Mackey is of the Andoumboulou; our song is the blues rising as dust to become air. We reclaim ourselves
through strange songs as we struggle like fledglings to ascend.
Part 2 Since There Is No Silence Anyway, Pump Up the Volume
Ironically, looking back for Buddy Bolden is like searching for silence, longing for solitude or Walking the Cat back
to rediscover the Dogon. In the Tradition - I heard Imamu Amiri Baraka say - In the Tradition of our Terribleness.
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say, Baraka wrote: You’re awful you’re terrible, then he asked the kind of question
only he could fathom, Lester why you want to be the president of all this - of the blues and slow sideways horns
and it follows - and so much terribleness? And why you standing behind that transblusent fog blowing such
strange music? In the funklore of his day Lester
Young might have answered, Because there’s already a King, a Lion, a Fats, a Duke, a Count, a
Satchel Mouth, a Lady Day, a Bessie, a Ma, a Sun
Ra, a Sassy and a Jellyroll; somebody’s gotta be the
president. Lester might have said Somebody’s gotta
be The Prez, and as an after thought You've got to
be original, man. You dig? From King Oliver, to Louis
Armstrong blowing the Satchel Mouth Blues to Mary
Lou Williams, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday blowing
the shut-yo-mouth blues the silence was broken.
From Willie the Lion Smith, Fats Waller and Jellyroll
to Bud Powell and Thelonious’ left handed bass lines
on the ivory keys any remnant of silence disappeared.
Then in a cloud of white powder blown in from just
the other side of the Mason Dixon line a selfpossessed Bird flew in talking ‘bout cop this fools!
And Dizzy said Yeah cats Um Pop A Da; to which
Monk responded Tinkle Tinkle on the Hudson if you
bad enough. It’s All Blues Miles hissed between eggshell solos and Coltrane cool as he was simply said I
WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOU. You, me, all of us are
the Andoumboulou. We’re still searching for the primordial egg we lost long ago. We’re still searching
for our twin. We’re still waiting to find the twin
Nommo, the Amma to our Yurugu. I know what
you’re thinking: Slow down Mister Give You a Minute
and You’ll Take a Millennium I’m still exhausted from
living in silhouetted realities and wearing curses like
wet blankets draped around my soul. Me too; I’m
thinking. I think I heard Sun Ra say I’m ready to rise
and I said Yeah, let’s do that!.
Like a river music represents the paradoxical relationship between eternity and change; the ever
changing same is a metaphor that epitomizes the
timelessness of the ephemeral and the frankness of
forever. The river is never the same - always the
same river. The river is always the same- never the
same river. We have sung the cradlesongs of human
civilization on every continent while exploring the
future songs of generations far away and unheard.
The singing/playing of our songs is often said to be
Out but everything about an immortal song seems to
draw from sources deep within. Perhaps it’s outside
the banks of a river already tamed and our songs
flood places straightened out by the dammed systems of progress, but emotional memories and
rushes of imagination flow through our music as if
18 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
searching for points of departure. Freedom is what
our song is after because (unconsciously) it’s what
we know the most about. We’re out - out of bounds,
and free to play/sing The New Thing like a river running
relentlessly
to
a
sea.
We have stood with eyes shut to the madness - to
the muddiness - to the white noise - to the errors of
the era and sang/played truth as if mendacity is
mere air. We sing it; we play it because to merely
say it is a rhetorical trap. We are still the Andoumboulou, searching for silence and for our twin - we
are still the Andoumboulou trying to ascend by returning to an original idea of creation through thickness and complications. We are rough drafts of humanity rewriting ourselves from fragments of memory and active imaginations into fictionalized realities. Like rivers, Great Lakes, oceans and seas our
songs are timeless metaphors that bare our stories
like scars and birth marks. Drapetomania may be
responsible for onomatopoetic sounds and quick
staccato rhythms that often express a mortal terribleness as a noble sound. What great use it is of an
absurd diagnosis to make it legendary for its
strangeness and respectable for its persistence.
Part 3 Notes Between Our notes
The music that broke the faux silence is known by
God and the will of the wisp as sounds that left the
welkin singing/saying /praying and moving on to
new appointments and other dimensions of perpetual motion. The improvising organism that eliminated quiet is known by other names but we call it
by it’s most musical one; we call it Song of One
Heart. Song of One Heart is inside/outside of time,
tempo and melodic structure - Song of One Heart is
free. Eric Dolphy explained his use of quartertones
when playing flute. That's the way birds do, he said.
Birds have notes in between our notes - you try to
imitate something they do and, like, maybe it's between F and F#, and you'll have to go up or come
down on the pitch. It's really something! And so,
when you get playing, this comes. You try to do
some things on it. Indian music has something of
the same quality - different scales and quartertones.
I don't know how you label it, but it's pretty.
Buddy Bolden couldn’t have known that music would
come to this or maybe he did know and wanted to
accelerate the evolution by blowing something beyond our notes. Perhaps the scenario was fictional already when
he sat down on it, when he begin playing strangely and loudly and out of bounds and every follower after him
heard the call to reach further out for the sound. Going further out led back to the original search for silence because it led back to an original sound and the true voice that resonates deep within. Is it in or is it out aficionados
asked when they heard the noble sound. Is it free or is it raw? Then as if he had a great idea a notorious music
aficionado requested of the players on the bandstand Play something by the Mystic Horn Society. To which John
Gilmore replied But that’s a fictional band. Exactly! He said Play a song by a fictional band that will lift us up. Play
a song by the Mystic Horn Society so that we can Rise/raise on up out of here to some place no one has ever
been. Touché! Is all I said.
Sleep Action
Piles, piles, piles.
Goodnight, sleep tight
under piles.
Ric Royer
A cure for alpinism
Christopher Shillock
MAKE A BODY IMAGE
By Marc Jensen
For two people
One person leads the
other to a favorite spot
and lies down. The
second person should
then find whatever
loose objects are lying
around this space,
using them to make an
outline around the
person on the ground.
When the outline is
complete, the outliner
should help the
outlinee to stand
without disturbing the
image.
The two together then
add whatever internal
or external features of
the body image seem
appropriate, leaving it
there when finished.
Talking should not be
necessary.
it was cold outside when you were
posting scattered ideas on boards crawling with
leeches that want to suck through the advertisement
and breech your organs its something humiliating at
best especially when dyslexia of recognition screws
up who you knew today and who you really saw in
passing but box cutters are just sharp objects that
were used to cleanly tear open dusty boxes filled
with bad habits that you innocently put into storage- scream open the boxes and slather yourself with
the mud of a good time and the sludge of profanity
and you look up at the sky and say in a stately manner 'oh god Delilah why?' while walking down dirty
streets filled with broken bottles and cold remainders of what happens when you have your hat on
backwards and you aren't looking but i will tear
away for one minute of nonsense and say ever so
seriously:
"You cannot revoke what you have shelled out"
the wooden frames that support the house of broken
figures is releasing its last energies to keep the store
open, the shelter from collapsing a heart a child
begging for comfort but in the end the weather becomes too warm and we just sweat at our labor and
decidedly put down the hammer and pick up something less constructive and something more suggestive.
Ashley Williams
20 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
14 UnNatural Acts
By Lián Amaris Sifuentes and Roberto Sifuentes
The following are excerpts from 14 UnNatural Acts, written and performed by Lián Amaris Sifuentes and Roberto Sifuentes, which premiered at P.S. 122 in New York, NY on November 4,
2004.
ARTIST STATEMENT
We are living in the time of the monologue and the hypertext. We hear one voice- at once the voice of consumption, of war, of intolerance- and that voice never asks us into a dialogue, but gives us only a master narrative. To find a dialogue we must enter the hypertext. Within the hypertext, worlds are built and destroyed
with the click of a mouse or the changing of a channel. We no longer need the beginning nor end of the master narrative, because we experience an idea in the few moments it can hold our attention.
This work is a meditation on these forms of communication. The episodes in this piece are conceptually
linked, but are entire worlds unto themselves, straining for a dialogue. This is an exploration of how information changes when images of love, death, desire, violence are made and destroyed in just one moment- like a
teaser before the nightly news or a banner ad on your home page. This is militant evangelism dressed up in
retro kitsch, Nazism found in a Powerpoint presentation, and Beauty spread on a slice of Wonder bread. We
are struggling against the hostile policing of our borders and our bodies, and we are looking for a way
through.
LIAN is a border patrol officer dressed in a flight attendant’s uniform. She holds a large red, white, and blue
lollypop, which she wields as a metal detector.
LIAN:
(in a saccharine sweet voice) Hello and Welcome to America!
The U.S. is a free, democratic and open society where you, citizens from around the world are welcome to
visit, study, and do business in our country however, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
there have been changes in US immigration laws.
I had to do something to take control of my safety.
To take control
of my county.
I was afraid all the time.
You know what I’m talking about!
Just walk down the street alone as a woman in this city and see what happens!
(in a man’s voice) Hey mamasita!
Yo Yo Yo…baby…Yo!
Come heeya.
You want some of dis?
I want sum o dat!
Yo….
(in an angry voice) YO…FUCK YOU!
GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM!
LEARN FUCKING ENGLISH!
STOP HAVING BABIES OVER HERE!
GET OFF WELFARE!
YOUR STUDENT VISA’S EXPIRED!
GO BLOW YOURSELF UP BACK IN AFGANISTAN!
(in a calm voice) Control
Control
Regain control
Control myself,
So I ask myself,
what can I do to help my country in a time of crisis?
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is addressing the terrorist threat 24-hours a day and are evolving hourly
to face it and keep America safe.
I choose border patrol because I actually get to meet the people entering my country.
And I am the first American that they meet.
It’s like being an ambassador
Like being a hostess in the great restaurant that is America
You in New York understand
Its like I am personally welcoming each person into the coolest club in town
I’m the person at the velvet ropes of America
So we can’t just let anyone in…
(in an angry voice)
WHAT KIND OF FUCKING PLACE WOULD THIS BE IF WE LET ANYONE IN! QUEENS IS ALREADY A THIRD
WORLD COUNTY!
So we get sensitivity training on how to communicate better with foreigners, for example
(speaking very slowly):
“How long are you staying?”
“Are you carrying any Weapons of Mass Destruction?”
“Would you please remove you shoes so I can check?”
(in a sexy voice)
You would be amazed at the places we have to search.
We reach inside of your intimate secret zones
So have your identity out and available for inspection
Oooo, what have you got hidden you bad, bad, smuggler…
You think you’re so bad
YOU THINK YOUR SO FUCKING BAD!
I’M THE FUCKING KEEPER OF THE GATE BAD BOY!
Just you wait for the body cavity search
Open your body for me and let me look inside
What you got hidden in there?
Shit it out! Baby!
Montezuma’s revenge won’t let you hide anything from me
Cause we’ve got time
Time
Time to run you through the system
Time to identify who you really are
(as a tantrum-throwing little girl)
It is very difficult to know our enemy these days because everyone hates America!
So we get lessons…um…training
Arab men have beards, they’re, brownish, with turbans, sandals, robes
Mexican men sometimes wear cowboy hats, they have mustaches, they wear sandals too
(in a saccharine sweet voice)
In the end, I don’t really have to tell the difference.
22 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
The Mexicans love us, and they want to be here.
They just don’t know that it’s really hurting our country for them to be there.
Lots of people hate us but the Arabs are the only people who just want to kill us.
Okay, not all Arabs are like that, there are lots of good Arab Americans
but as we know, the world is a dangerous place
and the only way to win is to stay on the offensive.
Look, I don’t discriminate.
If you’re an American and you can prove it, you don’t have any problem getting by me.
If you’re not American, well you just have to answer my questions with a smile, and tell me why I should let
you into my country.
And if you love America like I love America, and you want to better yourself by coming here, then America and
I will open our doors and welcome you to a new and better way of life.
(pause)
Just don’t fuck with it.
LIAN, dressed in a flight suit, is a disaffected, robotic narrator for a video game. ROBERTO, as a soldier
dressed in fatigues, is engaging in an intense, violent ritual.
LIAN: You are about to become the most honorable of warriors- the Volunteer Virtual Freedom Fighter.
Your mission to become the Virtual Freedom Fighter begins here.
The character attributes you select will determine the assignments you will receive and the experiences you
will have.
After character creation, your Inherent Skills will be determined. You will be trained in skills you are lacking
after you have chosen your character attributes.
Please remember that each characteristic you choose will be integral in determining your fate.
Please press Select to begin Virtual Freedom Fighter Creation.
Thank you.
Please select Appearance:
Light-Skinned
Dark-Skinned
Darker, Darker, Darker, Darker…
Good…you have selected Dark-Skinned. Well I certainly prefer Dark Skinned- they don’t burn as quickly in the
hot desert sun.
Please select Language Proficiency:
English Only
English and UnAmerican Language – including Spanish, French, German, Russian, Korean, or Arabic.
UnAmerican Language Only
You have selected English Only. You are the Perfect American! No miscommunication here.
Please select Sexual Preference:
Heterosexual
Homosexual
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning
Top
Bottom
Other
You have selected Top. I’m sorry, trick question. Unless you choose the correct answer “Heterosexual”, please
choose “Other,” and we won’t ask.
Please select Highest Degree of Education:
Graduate School
Undergraduate School
High School/GED
You have selected High School/GED. Perfect. Your mind has not been poisoned by liberal propaganda or leftist
“free thinkers.”
Please select Social Class Status:
Upper Class
Middle Class
Lower Class
You have selected Middle Class. I’m Sorry- that option is no longer available. Please select another option.
You have selected Upper Class. I’m Sorry- that option was never available.
Please select another option.
You have selected Lower Class. Only Available Option. Don’t Worry- With Us you will be fed, clothed, housed
and re-educated.
Congratulations, you have created the Ultimate Virtual Freedom Fighter.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, your mission begins immediately- there is no time to
consult your family or friends- in fact you will no longer have any communication with them.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, you will no longer be an economic strain on our society,
and you will for the first time, be an asset to the country that has supported you and your family.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, your Inherent Skills include Mastery of the following
weapons: Gat, Glock, Switch-Blade, Broken Bottle and Crowbar.
Your Combat Mastery includes: Street Fighting, Drive-By- Shooting, Lock Picking and Mugging.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, your Critical Combat Training will include Code Breaking,
Stealth, Target Recognition, Mastery of Civilized Defensive Weaponry, BioPoison Tolerance and Sand-Castle
Construction.
Training for other skills will occur throughout game play.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, you will be at the front line of all future missions.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, your missions will be harder, more dangerous and less
honorable than the missions of your counterparts.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, your Fatality Index is significantly higher than that of
other soldiers.
Because of the character attributes you have chosen, we expect your mission to be a success, but your survival unlikely.
24 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
(speaking very fast, like a commercial warning)
Warning: with an all-volunteer force, the burden of war falls disproportionately on minorities and lowerincome families.
Please also be aware that should a draft be reinstated, policy-makers would be less likely to support war with
the consideration their own children might have to fight.
Assumption of honor and respect lies solely with the player.
Amount of respect afforded by the American People is directly proportional to perceived victory or defeat.
Declaration of victory is for political purposes only and is not relevant to your mission.
All rights to your physical likeness, living or deceased, become property of AOL Time Warner.
Remain steadfast in your resolve, though we make no statement, implied or otherwise that any player with
your character attributes will advance beyond Level Two.
.
Good luck Soldier and Welcome to Virtual Freedom.
Please press Play to begin.
LIAN is dressed as a 50’s housewife. She is mopping obsessively while ROBERTO stands with a martini in his
hand.
ROBERTO:
There is an unmistakable clean,
it's the way you smile
you light up the room
breeding germs
one stronger paper towel
a mop, a pad, a wet blanket
it’s a choosy mother’s responsibility
don’t scuff the floor
smudge your makeup
as we enter the twenty first century
designers went their separate ways on coats, from form-fitting abstract statements to luxe, roomy wraps
drama the common denominator
neurological side effects include headache, tremor, dizziness
Shake, stir, and swivel
these lovely little dresses make a case for bringing back the after-five soirée
the guidelines for social conduct have changed
all of our customers are kept confidential
the best cosmetic is great-looking skin
behavioral side effects include insomnia, anxiety, nervousness
you'll almost forget they're meant to be utilitarian
this season, the bags themselves are the treasure
take care of yourself
take a bubble bath and build up your soul with positive slogans
hallucinations, manic reaction, paranoid reaction,
pause in between sentences don't babble on out of nervousness
prepare your lapels for heavy duty
the favorite flourish of fall is a healthy scattering of big, glittery brooches
psychosis, depersonalization, apathy, euphoria, hostility
listen attentively, look demurely, never stare, breathe slowly
abnormal dreams, drowsiness and fatigue.
remember, you never know who has access to your e-mail
so keep all romance off the screen and save it for saturday nights
chills and fever, excessive sweating
don't waste time on a fantasy relationship
from tissue-weight knits to bulky Aran cardigans that could ward off an Arctic draft
we have thousands of friendly, highly trained representatives ready to take your call.
the “me, me, me…” approach to social interaction is quickly being replaced by a return to traditional values,
kinder, gentler,
jaw pain, neck pain, pelvic pain, hangover effect and malaise
more respectful behaviors
designers took fur into new realms with wild colors, inventive cuts, and modern shapes
when you see something you like, simply add that item to your Shopping Cart
slim pencil skirts pack a delightful double meaning
do not make the mistake of thinking that an e-mail replaces a hand written note or a personal telephone call
fall's footwear vies for center stage with plenty of rich detail, from whiffs of fur to piles of rhinestones
achieve an angelically fresh face
gastrointestinal side effects include nausea, disturbances of appetite, diarrhea
erase the line between skin and makeup
a clean white shirt, a sheer wisp of chiffon, or perhaps a plethora of dainty pin-tucks
the 90's tolerance for rudeness and apathy for the rules of social conduct is being replaced by an expectation
of common courtesy, decency and respect
painful menstruation, sexual dysfunction, urinary tract infection
our fast, convenient ordering process takes only a couple of minutes to complete
the jacket's status makes even more impact when it's cropped trim and snug
respiratory side effects include bronchitis, hyperventilation, pneumonia, hiccups
the knee-length hem says demure, but the hip-hugging fit makes every step a samba
starting from the outside in is the best way to avoid a faux pas
there is an unmistakable clean
it's the way you smile
you light up the room
don’t scuff the floor don’t smudge your makeup
a warm supper is the greatest turn-on and creative napkin folding can light a spark.
starting from the outside in is the best way to avoid a faux pas.
LIAN is an all-business politician dressed in her flight attendant outfit. She is giving a Powerpoint presentation.
LIAN:
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Mexican Council for Reproductive Management, thank you for inviting me to
speak with you today. As a representative of the U.S. Department of Reproductive Regulation, I am here to
speak about the federal implementation of the Reproductive Tax Incentive Program. Because of our great success in the U.S., I have been invited here to speak with you, in the hopes of initiating this Incentive Program
here.
This program had its inception in 2002 when the U.S. delegation to the U.N. denied global peoples the fundamental right to determine the number of children they could have. We at the DRR had studied the China example, with its unfortunate gender inequities, but we were concerned with controlling the specific demo26 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
graphic of financially and morally impoverished Americans. The failure of welfare reforms, the development of
the illegal underground abortion railroad, and the failure of the Healthy Marriage Initiative caused the federal
government come to us.
After months of research, the DRR determined that an average family income was inversely proportional to the
number of children a family had— this meant that a smaller income yielded a larger family. This counterintuitive practice of childbearing was obviously a cause of the ever-rising poverty rate all over the country. In
an attempt to reverse this destructive trend, we at the DRR proposed and implemented a lump sum birth tax
to deter families from having more children than they could afford.
For several years, studies showed a decrease in the number of children being born to low-income families. Unfortunately, however, the number of women dying from illegal abortions rose so quickly that the government
had to take drastic action to protect its citizens.
The U.S. Census Bureau, in conjunction with the American Medical Association worked with us at Reproductive
Regulation to develop the Program that successfully functions today. Every woman of child-bearing age was
profiled according to a variety of criteria, including her parents’ income, her educational potential and her skill
sets. If her projected income potential did not reflect an ability to pay the tax, the woman was given a minor
surgery, free of charge, which would prevent pregnancy in perpetuity. This alleviated the financial burden of
contraceptives, and ensured abstinence. While I wont go into the medical specifics of this minor procedure at
this time, a woman could be in and out of the hospital within a day. In plain language, if a
woman was projected to be able to pay the tax, she could have a child in the future. If her projected potential
did not reflect the ability to pay the tax, she was given the procedure, free of charge.
We at the DRR believe that the backbone of the United States is a strong husband, a supportive wife and the
number of kids a working husband can support comfortably. And we also understand that our society is constantly changing. If a woman has been given the procedure, and later in life marries a man of means who can
pay her tax, the married couple can appeal to have the procedure reversed. An intensive appeal process is to
ensure the integrity of the both the program and the American family.
I am proud to tell you that since the full implementation of the Incentive Program, the number of impoverished families in the United States has decreased by seventy percent. The yearly income of the lowest earners
in the U.S. has more than doubled. A husband and wife have more options than they ever did before, because
they are no longer paying out to poverty.
Because we in the U.S. cannot make choices for your government, it is the responsibility of your Council to
implement the Reproductive Tax Incentive Program. It is our hope that the implementation of this plan here
in Mexico will open the floodgates to the rest of the Third World, thereby improving the quality of life for all of
us in the Western Hemisphere. Thank you for your interest this evening, and God Bless the American Family.
LIAN is sitting at a Vanity in the dark. ROBERTO is capturing her with a live feed camera set to night-shot
lighting, which is being projected onto a large screen. Entire text is delivered as a monotone computer voice,
except for “Users’” comments.
ROBERTO:
Login Message:
Pure entertainment can only exist in the real time of the camera
Please Login with Username and password
Login successful
You are now entering a secure area
The information you transmit may not be read in transit
Log entry for today
Welcome to my RE-A-LI TV
Involuntary Subject Number 26:
Age: 24 years
Hair: Black
Height: 5’ 9”
Weight: 125
Race: Undetermined Caucasian
Entry, Day 14
11AM
Subject Rises
Subject wears a black camisole
She takes her daily doses of contraceptives, anti-depressants, vitamins and herbal supplements
She drinks a raspberry smoothie fortified with 14 grams of protein powder.
11:30AM
Subject begins TAE BO Video
Comment: User Jsizzle
(“surfer dude” voice)
Do you think she feels safer kickboxing herself into exhaustion?
Comment: User ClubfootWilly13
(“commercial promoter” voice)
I give 5 stars for Billy Blanks “2004 Capture the Power” workout system. I lost ten lbs in just a couple of weeks.
Go to billyblanks.com
11:45AM
TAE BO Workout Complete
12:00 noon
Subject puts in contact lenses and disrobes
Enters shower
Product preferences:
Aveda Mint Rosemary Shampoo
Sponsored link:
Conscious choices/Healing Traditions/Caring for you and the Earth/
Aveda: the art and science of pure flower and plant essences
Close link.
Subject Shaves body:
Both Legs to mid thigh and Armpits.
Pubic area remains untouched for the 14th day of surveillance.
Comment: Grommet 523
(“skater kid” voice)
Dude! When is she gonna to wax that shit it’s totally gross! Are those fake or real?
She’s sweet!
12:30pm
Subject checks email on Apple Ibook G4
Microsoft Entourage/Yahoo, Earthlink, and student account
235 unread messages from student listserve
28 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
2 auctions closing on Ebay
Vintage Pucci Strappy Shoes and Excellent Quality 900,000 Volt Stun Gun
Link:
Click here to Hack into all mail accounts of Subject 26 in real time.
Extra charge Applies
Close Link:
1pm
Subject surfs internet.
Click here for sites visited while surfing:
EBAY.COM
GAP.com
Victoria Secret
Ebags.com
Comment: MigratingMonarch
(“Hippie” girl voice)
I think she’s totally shallow.
Everything need to know about a person is contained in their Internet Explorer Cache. Hey Sizzle, IM me later
when she’s gone.
2:30PM
Subject does homework
Subject begins with Derrida
Subject falls asleep after seven minutes.
Comment:
User: Backalleyboy2
(Bad German accent)
Why can’t we accept that post-modernism is dead. Books are obsolete. Media rocks! All the information of
mankind is at the tip of my fingers and I can do whatever I want with it. I love watching this chick. Subject 26
is the best ever – I don’t know where you find them.
5:00PM
Subject Turns on Television
Watches Recorded Television
Choices:
“Desperately Seeking Susan”
Info: A bored housewife (Rosanna Arquette) with amnesia thinks she is ``Susan,'' a wild woman (Madonna)
on the run.
“The Bachelor” from previous night.
Info: series, reality
7:00PM
Subject Orders Delivery Food
Dials Japanese restaurant located 1 block east of apartment.
Orders one half order of beef chow fun.
Changes television to the channel that shows the surveillance camera outside the building.
Link:
Click here to view live feed from security camera outside of apartment of Subject 26
Close Link
ERROR:
SECURITY COMPROMISED
INFORMATION MAY BE READ IN TRANSIT
ACCOUNT DISABLED
YOU MUST RELOGIN TO ACCESS ACOUNT.
Login Message:
Pure entertainment can only exist in the real time of the camera
Feel Spiritual
Ric Royer
“NA
TA KA
CHA”
(Arrange in any combination and repeat as necessary. This should do it.)
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 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. 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
30 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Punctuated Equilibrium
Marc Jensen
duration: 9:00
This piece was commissioned and premiered by the NeXT Ens
Instructions
The score given on the following page shows a large-scale overview of the piece’s timing. There are six
independent parts, which create structure but no actual sounds. Each player’s part consists of a series of
Roman numerals giving timing indications in seconds. For each Roman numeral point, each player should
individually select a sound that can be produced on his or her instrument. These sounds may be as similar or dissimilar as desired, but should not be identical. Specify the character of these sounds as exactly
as possible (pitch, dynamic, timbre, duration, playing technique, and any changes to these parameters
over the duration of the sound). The density, duration, and dynamics may vary freely over the course of
the piece, and it is up to the individual player to decide on the piece’s overall shape.
Each player should begin by individually selecting a set of sounds with no knowledge of the other players’
choices. However, simultaneous events in the score are enclosed in a rectangular box linking them together (underlined in the parts). Whenever this occurs, the players involved must either collaboratively
merge their individual sounds at that point into a single sound, or simply choose new sounds to produce
at that point that are as similar as possible to one another, given the timbral differences between instruPlayer 1 Part
I
II
III
0:10
0:31
0:52
1:13
1:34
1:55
2:16
2:37
2:58
3:19
3:22
3:25
3:28
3:31
3:34
3:37
3:40
3:43
3:46
3:48
3:50
3:52
3:54
3:56
IV
V
VI
3:58
4:00
4:02
4:04
4:13
4:22
4:31
4:40
4:49
4:58
5:07
5:16
5:25
5:48
6:11
6:34
6:57
7:20
7:43
8:06
8:29
8:52
8:54
8:56
8:58
9:00
9:02
9:04
9:06
9:08
VII 9:10
Player 2 Part
I
0:10
0:17
0:24
0:31
0:38
0:45
0:52
0:59
1:06
II 1:13
1:16
1:19
1:22
1:25
1:28
1:31
1:34
III
IV
V
1:37
1:40
1:56
2:12
2:28
2:44
3:00
3:16
3:32
3:48
4:06
4:14
4:24
4:34
4:44
4:54
5:04
5:14
5:24
5:34
5:37
5:40
5:43
5:46
5:49
5:52
5:55
5:58
VI 6:01
6:22
6:43
7:04
7:25
7:46
8:07
8:28
8:49
VII 9:10
Player 3 Part
I
0:10
0:18
0:26
0:34
0:42
0:50
0:58
1:06
1:14
II 1:22
III
IV
V
1:24
1:26
1:28
1:30
1:34
1:36
1:38
1:40
1:59
2:18
2:37
2:56
3:15
3:34
3:53
4:12
4:31
4:36
4:41
4:46
4:51
4:56
5:01
5:06
5:11
5:16
5:25
5:34
5:43
5:54
6:01
6:10
6:19
VI 6:28
6:46
7:04
7:22
7:40
7:58
8:16
8:34
8:52
VII 9:10
Player 4 Part
I
0:10
0:21
0:32
0:43
0:54
ments. In this way, the total effect will be one of independently flowing sounds and timescales that periodically come into partial timbral alignment at the points where simultaneous events occur.
At least one of the parts should be realized electronically, either recording a realization to a fixed medium,
or preferably using a program such as Max/MSP to spontaneously generate new sounds each time it is
played.
Part Preparation
Between each Roman numeral event, each player will interpolate nine intermediate steps that transition
as smoothly as possible from one sound to the next. Each of these steps represents a discrete event,
rather than ongoing action (in other words, if two timings in a part were at 0:21 and 0:42, that player
would produce a single statement of a sound at each of these times, rather than repeating that sound to
fill in the empty space). Blank parts have been prepared that reflect the time divisions given in the score.
It will probably be necessary to transfer the part timings to a sheet of staff paper in order to create a usable part. The intermediate steps between any two events are evenly spaced, but because the events in
the score are separated by different amounts of time, the intervals vary between different events. This
factor may influence the selection of sounds (for example, if sound times are less than one second apart
in one section, then that player cannot expect to produce sounds with a duration longer than one second
at that point).
1. Each player should begin filling the blank parts in by writing his or her Roman numeral sound selections at the indicated points (after conferring with the players with whom he or she shares simultaneous
sound).
II
III
IV
1:05
1:16
1:27
1:38
1:49
1:58
2:07
2:16
2:25
2:34
2:43
2:52
3:01
3:10
3:21
3:32
3:43
3:54
4:05
4:16
4:27
4:38
4:49
4:57
5:05
5:13
5:21
5:29
5:37
5:45
5:53
V 6:01
6:03
6:05
6:07
6:09
6:11
6:13
6:15
6:17
VI 6:19
6:38
6:57
7:16
7:35
7:54
8:13
8:32
8:51
VII 9:10
32 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
Player 5 Part
0:10
I
0:25
0:40
0:55
1:10
1:25
1:40
1:55
2:10
II 2:25
2:34
2:43
2:52
3:01
3:10
3:19
3:28
3:37
III 3:46
3:56
4:06
4:16
4:26
4:36
IV
V
VI
4:46
4:56
5:06
5:16
5:19
5:22
5:25
5:28
5:31
5:24
5:37
5:40
5:43
5:46
5:49
5:52
5:55
5:58
6:01
6:04
6:07
6:10
6:30
6:50
7:10
7:30
7:50
8:10
8:30
8:50
VII 9:10
Player 6 Part
I
0:10
0:19
0:28
0:37
0:46
0:55
1:04
1:13
1:22
II 1:31
1:42
1:53
2:04
2:15
2:26
2:37
2:48
III
IV
V
2:59
3:10
3:20
3:30
3:40
3:50
4:00
4:10
4:20
4:30
4:40
4:47
4:24
5:01
5:08
5:15
5:22
5:29
5:36
5:43
5:56
6:09
6:22
6:35
6:48
7:01
7:14
7:27
VI 7:40
7:50
8:00
8:10
8:20
8:30
8:40
8:50
9:00
VII 9:10
2. Determine what sound would lie exactly halfway between the characteristics of two subsequent
events. Put this sound in the middle time value between them. If there are an even number of time values separating them, pick one of the two middle values arbitrarily.
3. Continue using this midpoint technique to fill in all of the gaps in the line as smoothly as possible. The
process of determining what sound would lie exactly between two others is ultimately creative and openended, and should not be thought of as purely mechanical. What exactly constitutes change and continuity between sounds?
4. When the timeline is completely filled in, it becomes that player’s part.
Performance
Every player will need a stopwatch. Synchronize the stopwatches and begin simultaneously (if the stopwatches are all initialized at 0:00, there is 0:10 of silence at the beginning of the piece). Each player
should follow the clock and execute the events on his or her timeline, ignoring the other players as much
as possible.
instruction
pieces
Ric Royer
Love Letter
Masturbation
Cover yourself in
blood. Pull the letter
from the envelope.
Scream.
Two people are in a room.
One leaves.
BOOBY, MAMA!
By Hedwig Irene Gorski
Published in entirety in a memoir about the production and events by
Slough Press, College Station, Texas, 2007
Book Title:
Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street
VOICES
ALFRED JARRY— Characterization of the Dada Art precursor and author of the play Ubu Roi during the finde-siecle of the 19th century. He wears a suit made of newspapers.
RED LIGHT— Strong, sincere, gaudy, middle-aged woman. She is attractive in a surreal way. She symbolizes intelligence in search of individual wisdom. She carries a red flashlight.
KRZYSTA— Physical and spiritual hermaphrodite who makes observations from a male‑female perspective.
(The part can be played by a pre-operation transsexual.) She carries a white flashlight.
CITY— Hyperactive, handsome, young street-wise guy experienced at cruising bars. He uses gestures and
noises as much as words to express himself. He carries a green flashlight.
COWBOY— Slow speaking, middle-aged man with a drawl. He symbolizes complacency and is socialized
completely into the teachings of church, school, and government. He carries a blue flashlight.
BARTENDER— Stands behind the bar of his café wearing a t‑shirt, top hat, and a rag over his shoulder. He
symbolizes the owner in anybody's life: employer, parent, politician, bureaucrat, or any authority figure making the rules for those in his/her sphere.
OLD MAN— Stooped-over-old man in worn out overcoat and old felt hat.
WRITER— Played by Alfred Jarry wearing a dress.
ALFRED JARRY: (Wrinkled brow, sitting still, staring out at audience, spaced out, mumbling to himself fairly
loudly. Gets into choreography of sitting—cross-legged-neurotic and fidgets with pens, papers, and silverware,
etc., on the table. Crosses and uncrosses legs while writing a letter to his mother.)
Ma mere! What fond memories I miss of you. But as with all who question things, memories can be boring. And I'm wondering if the Museum of Old Age has received your application for room and food. But,
as you know, ma mere, honih, honih, honih, dear, the Mo Ma oh the Museum of Old Age and Memories
also contains modern art. I know you kiss, (toying furthermore) say Flower Boy! Jackamo doing down!
Hello Ma, my name is Alfred Jarry; could it be, Ma, honih, honih!
But Mrs. Madame Ma, this is from your notorious communist son--you poor dear, oh--but then, politics
is irrelevant, Mama honih, because I say so (as you used to say). In Paris I learned that everything you
taught me is merely your viewpoint, n'est ce pas? It seems too irrelevant, Mamah honih, to me now, just
as all is as irrelevant as politics, except for ....a moment. For a fraction of someone's belief in time.
We have no more to converse, n'est ce pas?
We have no more to converse, n'est ce pas?
But oh, darling, you are welcome. I have a room. We can meet at the cabaret, with my interesting
friends. We can talk, n'est ce pas, about the jungle of the intellect to which have flown so many of my
34 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
birds which I foolishly tried to hold back with shots against jungle disease.
And thus they left telling jokes about the great... Jarry...that he also is victimized by time and ego.
Love,
Your son the fool who chases cockroaches instead of eating your home-baked sugar cookies that always
tasted so sweet.
(Finished with the letter, his attention wanders around his surroundings as he continues to talk to himself. Notices RED LIGHT in trenchcoat and hat, with red rhinestone earrings peering at JARRY in the
spotlight through the venetian blinds. Only RED's light is turned on and she shines it through the venetian blinds.)
Hmmm....These guerillas of the bars who drop in daily. But ooooh....I see a....ah! That woman! A monster peers in every window, and I Jarrrrrrry in my sanity, must see, that flashlight.....in the window.
(MUSIC PIECE # 2 BEGINS. Accompanies JARRY as he recites his impromptu poem to himself.)
unbuttoned black shirt...
slipped down...
Excuse me Mo, I mean Ma, uh, no, I mean, like my attention has drifted....
slipped past uncovered gleaming toenails,
in the middle of the night.
ooooh, this open target.
(Aside) I am a man after all.
how unfortunate that you, a woman,
and I have not learned how you are a woman.
looking at you as my nurturing mother with one of the breasts that feeds me.
now, I, a man, and mature, sit vulnerable,
Not knowing.
(Aside) and misunderstanding women, their dignity. (gazes at the venetian blinds)
target, a poem.
vulnerable with pinkness sticking to it, uh...
all that caucasian flesh
in this dignified, subdued night.
(Aside) Yet this one is different. She means to do something.
gleaming red toenails, padding black prickly ground, spreading legs to leap snares,
showing, uh ma! the hunted pussy cat with the
womanly second fist clenching each drop of blood of a moon that can neither bleed nor be logical.
(to himself) But that's irrelevant.
This that sounds like a venomous tongue is insecurity.
Hmmmmmmm, I'm flying! Don't tell me what I'm doing is wrong! This, the king of my own brain's jungles and alleys--decipherations and abbreviations. Who are you to say!
(At times, delivers some lines in an exaggerated French accent for humor.)
Oooooooooh that pussy cat, n'est ce pas, she looks,
n'est ce pas?
(speaking poetically again)
Her lips have tasted blood to stain the rouge.
(Aside) She looks like an American, n'est ce pas? A spy. Clever lioness, has roamed into my thoughts
once again. I dare not forget any such union with a guerilla of the cabarets? Who distracts me so violently from my own introspective moments? But my dear Ma, I must forget you in my distraction. If that
young lioness will seek out that old lost library book, junkie of a man sitting by the window, then she will
wisely take away libraries of ancient wisdom into her realm of anarchy. Merdre on your so‑called reality.
The only demand of questions is a keener mind.
(RED LIGHT shines her light on the old man. Moves from the venetian blinds to stand SL near the OLD
MAN who sits stooped over, legs crossed facing SR.)
RED LIGHT: (compassionately) You look like you need some new blood.
(OLD MAN lifts arm and holds it out like a ballerina, twists and looks at RED and the audience. Hugs
knees. SOUND EFFECT of bones cracking. Thunder in the distance. GRAY flashes for 5 seconds.
WHITE flashes for 4 seconds.
SOUND EFFECT of electricity crackling. Brief drum roll introduces the OLD MAN, and he pauses to bow
gracefully and deeply toward the audience. SOUND EFFECT of low, rolling thunder.)
OLD MAN: I spy, I lie, but I answer questions and wait for the future. Here lies the knowledge of the past,
maybe irrelevant, maybe wise. I wait, write while listening to songs that don't stir me….for years. Something will show in these greasy fingerprints. I try to understand everything, and until I do, I wait rocking
on this point in my back pocket.
(Rain is heavy and OLD MAN gazes off introspectively. WHITE NOISE.)
RED LIGHT: What kind of culture creates artifacts like these? That numbs with discourtesy! What kind of
fool, young or old, can't respect wisdom? Do only a few do the understanding for all? Or must we learn it
all for ourselves. Aaaaaah, I stand listening to the rain finally, which whispers in its petting tones, that Nature is harmony.
(MUSIC PIECE # 2 BEGINS. RED LIGHT shuts off her flashlight. OLD MAN gets up out of his chair and
slowly, humped over, walks to KRZYSTA. He stands a few feet away. Slide shows a wall on the
Champs-Elysée upon which they lean in the wet, drizzly evening. KRZYSTA'S light is on. She makes
geese‑like noises mimicked by a reed instrument.)
KRZYSTA: Boola, boola Boston Boy, who stands on the Champs-Elysée w-w-where the air fogged mist. Uh,
"tish" both agreed staring at the street. But One thought, the Kid, about Boston. His steamed little jeans
under raincoats. I'm a hermaphrodite, belonging to you--and to you, too.
(She/he points to different parts of the audience with the light, alternating one male then one female.
The large stage spotlight points at KRZYSTA'S targets simultaneously.)
"I don't have any quarrels either," said the old man. This old guy here thinks he's part of some philosophy, just not too sure of the wording. And translated into every day life: hanging out old man, talking
English to the young boys about the war. Things are changing fast! Moving, moving-(MUSIC PIECE # 3 BEGINS. Low bellowing fog-horn music, then a clarinet occasionally does a muted
bleating effect beginning during KRZYSTA’S pause, and ending after she says, “Da Dry Surf Champ
Bronco is dead!")
moving...fog....fog rolling to the pleasant wet sounds of horns blowing....somewhere out there at the
docks of a technical chain of fog....uh....yes....no....time.
(pause)
36 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
I'm carrying bleeping pinballs, 15 million programmed pinballs rubbing the excrement of their existence
and activity on my brow! 15 million a second, at least, pumping out of a titty in the dark. Da Dry Surf
Champ Bronco is dead! Open your legs Mama, bring on the new! And to everything else say, "beri beri
bimba!"
(OLD MAN walks back to venetian blinds and pulls them up revealing the bar and BARTENDER. OLD
MAN'S coat and hat are dripping wet since he just came in from outside.)
KRZYSTA: Look at this old guy here, stumbling into a bar mumbling, "Ah. I'ah fill a need for relaxation."
(OLD MAN moves his chair to periphery of vacant spotlight in center of stage and sits down. SOUND
EFFECT of thunder accompanied by light drum roll as OLD MAN extends his arm into the spotlight
while shaking the water off his hat. Then OLD MAN sits in the semi-dark with his back to the audience. Reeds imitate jungle bird calls. RED-ORANGE color field on scrim. RED LIGHT shines her light
and dances the following choreography:
Shines flashlight at her face. Lifts arm shoulder high. Makes an elongated oval shape with mouth.
Juts head forward as she moves toward audience. Stands with knees bent and spread, feet pointing
out. Bends forward at waist. Slowly moves flashlight from left to right hand shining at her face. Lifts
her right arm shoulder high with sloping fingers. Wiggles fingers. Slopes her torso making a circle,
then twirls around and takes a few steps towards the bar. With both arms lifted gracefully, she moves
swaying like a reed. COWBOY slowly shuffles towards her to start a conversation. LATIN PERCUSSION. He languidly pulls out his blue flashlight from his pocket and shines at his face. He faces RED
LIGHT who turns gracefully to face him while lowering her arms. They shine their flashlights at each
other's faces, then back at their own.)
RED LIGHT: I hear you were in South America. I just came from there, where I uncovered my talents and
claimed my intelligence.
COWBOY: (Talking with an exaggerated slow drawl.)
Yeah, I went all around. I was down in South America. Down on a goose hunt, down in Esquelle with Edmondo. It was a jungle. Oh, it was flying! (whistles carelessly)
RED LIGHT: (Makes a face with lips in elongated oval with hand on hip.)
Ju-ju-ju-ju-j-j-jungle ju ju?
[SECTION EDITED OUT HERE]
ALFRED JARRY: I am no one. A saint. If they would take me, I'd live on marble and dust inside the common
halls of public buildings. But no.....no-no-no....these are the types of things one does not do for admiration. Even though a human being can't please everyone, statues of gods do. The paintings, the statues,
the freaks, the rebels who use their time the way they choose, articulate life for me.
Make up my own mind.....I dis‑own what chains me to...to....the..oh….unpleasant. Oh, I have an allergy
to the pollen of status quo that gives me seizures.
(He turns to look at RED LIGHT and notices the similarity of her pose to the statue's pose.)
Aaaaah....full of grace. Sainted by the Pope. Blessed among the rest. An homage to Dali in Figueres.
Run little doe, to vegetated serenity. Take that old junkie with you...hah, hah, hah. He needs a rest.
Take the baton. Run...run...
to your jungle and hunt yourself. Yeah....yeah...my bet's on delusion.
(KRZYSTA stands on the pedestal. Slide changes to outdoor brick wall. CITY, COWBOY, BARTENDER
lean on it.)
KRZYSTA: (sensitively) The skinny kid put her little-girl, pretty pink lips on an orange from the garbage; sucking cool sweetness from the inside; as the green mold on the skin couldn't resist the pull of her littlegirlness and snuck inside as she sucked.
(BARTENDER fingers in sign language what KRZYSTA says.)
"You don't have enough money to buy a piece of candy,"
(SOUND EFFECT of child crying with trumpet fades in and out for a few seconds.)
fingered the owner to the deaf girl.
(JARRY brushes the papers off the table with a sweep of his forearm. Statue falls off and shatters. He
gets up and walks off stage to sit in audience.)
(RED LIGHT stands next to venetian blinds and lowers them leaving slats open. Only the BARTENDER
and RED LIGHT remain on stage. He's wearing a top hat, apron, and carrying a bar rag on his shoulder.)
RED LIGHT: (to audience) I was just feeling a little lonely and they brought me in here. I couldn't tell
whether this was the loony bin, or what. They said, "No, lady. This is a bar in Paris! Where are you
from? You are free to partake in the equilibrium of scorn either here....or there. B-b-but I was on my way
to Brazil, I said!
(Jazz DRUM while BARTENDER opens the venetian blinds and gestures in slow motion to RED LIGHT to
come over. She turns around after rubbing the back of her head, sees him gesturing. She begins to
move towards him in exaggerated slow motion.)
BARTENDER: What a laugh lady! You should stay with us a little bit longer!
(short jazzy DRUM roll)
RED LIGHT: I'm going to the jungle!
(RED LIGHT and the BARTENDER move toward the audience together.)
BARTENDER: (mocking) Awh....that's only in the song....and...you don't look that rugged!
RED LIGHT: You lied! I'm trapped!!
BARTENDER: No. I'm your father. And the only way out is to think.
(BARTENDER and RED LIGHT move and speak in extreme slow motion.)
RED LIGHT: That's hard for an alcoholic, Daddy. Why did you let me drink?
38 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
GHOSTS IN NUMBERS
By Richard Kostelanatz
OE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVE
EIGHT
NIE
TE
ELEVE
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEE
SIXTEE
SEVETEEN
EIGHTEE
INETEE
TWETY
You Will Prosper
By Lenora Drowns
The bright low hanging light in the corner booth
would make anyone look strange
The Chinese waitress smiles as she scurries by with a
handful of plates
you wave and try to get her to stop
No success
Suburban ladies chatter loudly across the room
Steam surrounds your face as you lift the
silver cover
You draw me on a paper napkin
not a very good likeness
you laugh and blame it on the light
I draw you
better likeness
with fangs and bushy eyebrows and horns
The competition is still there
Tense silence as we open our fortune cookies
The lucky numbers are incorrect
My lucky numbers turn out to be
the date
I said good-bye
and never returned
pleez publish th following - very John Cage:
thank yu;
d.c. latree/as letters to me are sometimes address’d
HallofMirrors
A collection of flash plays
Brian E Turner
Crossings
Medea
A Rose
Furtive Love
Bridezilla
A Cup of Tea
Get On With the Play
Brandy Snaps
Crossings
Cast:
JILL:
Attractive and young.
JACK:
Likewise.
FRANCISCO:
Setting:
A table in a café.
[Jack is sitting at table with cheese and crackers. Jill enters. Jack rises and moves to adjust her chair.]
JACK: I’m glad you came.
JILL:
I’m quite capable of sitting without your assistance Jack. [Jack defers. Jill sits.] You know how I feel
about equality.
JACK: Of course. [Pause] Have some cheese, it’s quite nice.
JILL:
[Picks up plate.] What sort of cheese is this?
JACK: It’s a cream cheese. Francisco recommended it.
JILL:
Well that doesn’t tell me what kind it is.
JACK: I don’t know the name. All he said was that it was made from duck’s milk. A cheese by any name
would taste as sweet.
JILL:
I didn’t come here to listen to your ridiculous jokes. I don’t want any cheese that comes from a duck.
Coffee will do.
JACK: I’ve already ordered.
JILL:
How do you know what I want?
JACK: Your usual. Latte with cinnamon.
JILL:
Things have changed. I don’t feel like latte today. Order me a small black.
40 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
JACK: You can have mine.
[Francisco arrives with coffees on a tray.] I’ll have the latte Francisco. Jill will
have the black.
FRANCISCO: As you wish signor. [Serves] It is most pleasing to see you again Signorina. It is some time
since you graced our establishment.
JILL:
Things change Francisco.
FRANCISCO: Sadly. [Goes]
[Silence]
JILL:
So. I’m here. Are we going to talk?
JACK:
Talk? Yes. Have you been getting on all right?
JILL:
Of course.
JACK:
You don’t miss me?
JILL:
Would I miss you? [Pause] I’ve been getting back in touch with old friends.
JACK:
So have I. I spent the weekend in the country.
JILL:
How nice for you.
JACK:
At the Levershams. Their animal farm.
JILL:
A cut above you aren’t they. I hear they train the ducks to say quark instead of quack.
JACK:
Very droll. [Silence]
JILL:
Well are we going to talk?
JACK:
We are. Chatting.
JILL:
I didn’t come here to chat. I thought you had something you wanted to talk about.
JACK:
Not in particular.
JILL:
Well what’s the point in my coming here then?
JACK:
I mean we have really broken up have we? There’s no chance of us getting back together?
JILL:
So that’s why you asked… No I don’t think there is. If that’s what you’re thinking of you’re
wasting your time. I had a relationship with you. I thought we might be together for life. That’s
all ended. My trust was betrayed. What more is there to know?!
JACK:
I thought… it might be possible… to make a new start.
JILL:
I don’t want to make a new start. I don’t want to live with a man who chases after every stray
piece of skirt that he sees and then denies that he ever did it.
JACK:
I told you I didn’t chase after a stray piece…
JILL:
No. You chased after my best friend. Penelope. And you never had the gumption to tell me the
truth about the affair.
JACK:
No. Penelope had the gumption.
JILL:
I don’t blame Penelope. Two pink gins and she’s putty in any man’s hands. You knew that full
well and you took advantage of it.
JACK:
I tell you, it never happened.
JILL:
One thing I know is Penelope would never lie to me. But that’s men for you. You men have
been cheating on women since time began. Well now we are starting to stick up for ourselves
and give you back what you deserve.
JACK:
But I didn’t do it.
JILL:
[A tremor of the voice] It was the ultimate betrayal.
JACK:
I… I…
JILL:
How could I live with someone I could never trust? [Takes out her handkerchief] Excuse me.
You’ve upset me. [She goes – to the toilet – the opposite direction from her entry. Jack puts
cheese on a cracker. Francisco comes to the table.]
FRANCISCO: Signorina has a mote in her eye?
JACK:
A veritable mote.
FRANCISCO: It is sad, is it not, when young lovers have a tiff.
JACK:
Not a tiff Francisco. A termination.
FRANCISCO: Ah, you make me sad. But confide in me. Perhaps I can offer advice.
JACK:
Advice from my waiter?
FRANCISCO: We waiters are eternal observers of the passing show.
JACK:
Perhaps you are [Pause] Penelope told Jill that I’d gone to bed with her.
FRANCISCO: And you denied it?
JACK:
Of course.
FRANCISCO: You should admit to your sin.
JACK:
But I didn’t go to bed with Penelope. I couldn’t possibly live with her, she wears pink satin
knickers.
FRANCISCO: Pink satin knickers are an anathema. But how does signor know that she wears them?
JACK:
We had a fling. But it was after Jill and I broke up.
FRANCISCO: Signorina Penelope is fond of you?
JACK:
She was. I didn’t reciprocate. I told her to shove off.
FRANCISCO: Why do you think then that Penelope told your Jill a lie?
JACK:
I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. I was so funked out with the break up.
FRANCISCO: I believe I see a resolution in this. Do you think that Miss Penelope might want you for herself?
Perhaps she was hoping to destroy your friendship with Signorina?
JACK:
My God. The double-crossing bitch. That’s why she plied me with Scotch whisky and cigars.
FRANCISCO: You see. If you look at the situation with equanimity you will find the answer.
JACK:
Indeed.
FRANCISCO: And you now know what to do?
JACK:
Yes. That is clear. I have to tell Jill a lie. So she will trust me forever.
FRANCISCO: But it is not really a lie.
JACK:
No. [Pause] How do I do this?
FRANCISCO: I’m sure signor will find the answer.
[Francisco goes. Jill returns.]
JILL:
I have to go.
JACK:
Will you stay a moment? I have a confession.
JILL:
You have a confession? Make it quick. [Sits]
JACK:
I want to admit that I went to bed with Penelope.
JILL:
So at last you tell the truth.
JACK:
I can’t offer any explanation and I don’t expect you to forgive me. I did something that was
completely wrong. Completely outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour. If I ever fall in love
again I shall never be unfaithful because I know what I have lost. All I can do is treasure
memories now.
JILL:
Do you expect me to fall for that pile of crap?
JACK:
But it’s what you wanted to hear.
42 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
JILL:
When you talk like that you are always telling a lie.
JACK: So you know all about me do you?
JILL:
Enough. You never went to bed with Penelope at all.
JACK: Oh yes I did. She lured me in with Scotch whisky and a cigar. You know what I’m like when I’ve had a
couple of scotches. I’m putty in any woman’s hands.
JILL:
The bitch.
JACK: She’s your best friend.
JILL:
She’s a double-crossing bitch.
JACK: How can you talk about Penelope like that?
JILL:
[Pause] Will you exchange coffees?
JACK: I’ll order fresh latte.
JILL:
And I’d like to try some of that cheese.
Medea
Cast:
JACKSON:
ZENNAH:
Jackson Hindmarsh. A businessman. Middle aged.
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
Setting: A restaurant/gallery. There is an exhibition of two 'paintings' which consist of full length mirrors covered
by curtains. 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:
ZENNAH:
JACKSON:
ZENNAH:
JACKSON:
ZENNAH:
JACKSON:
ZENNAH:
JACKSON:
ZENNAH:
JACKSON:
You know I don't have any time for modern art.
Well it's time you did. It might teach you something. (Pause)
You've seen the paintings?
Yes.
Well tell me about them then.
They are mirrors.
A mirror? A work of art, a mirror?
Why not? A mirror reflects the illusion of Maya. That's the magic of art.
You know I was quite fond of you until you descended in tarot cards and quackery.
You'd better have been.
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 sgnor. (Francisco goes. Jackson returns to the table.)
ZENNAH: Now you understand the meaning of modern art?
44 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
JACKSON:
ZENNAH:
JACKSON:
ZENNAH:
Modern delusion.
Maya, I said. (Pause)
Well, now you can tell me, why did you ask me to come?
To crow at your discomfort. To show you the truth behind the illusion.
A Rose
Cast:
PENELOPE:
FRANCISCO:
SETTING:
FRANCISCO:
PENELOPE:
FRANCISCO:
PENELOPE:
FRANCISCO:
PENELOPE:
FRANCISCO:
PENELOPE:
FRANCISCO:
PENELOPE:
FRANCISCO:
PENELOPE:
FRANCISCO:
PENELOPE:
A young woman with a pink satin ribbon in her hair.
A waiter.
Penelope is sitting alone at a table in the restaurant. Francisco approaches with a single red rose.
Am I speaking with Signorina Penelope?
That is my name. How did you know?
I was advised that you were fond of pink satin.
[Double take.] Oh, my ribbon.
Of course. What else could it be? I have a rose for you, from an admirer.
Who would send me a rose?
Unfortunately I cannot tell. The management have been sworn to secrecy and would not inform
me. All I can say is that it was delivered to the restaurant early this morning. Does Signorina require refreshment?
May I have a Crème de Menthe milkshake?
Of course.
And you are certain you do not know who sent the rose?
Perhaps Signorina can search her mind for the answer. [Goes]
Who could it be? Was it Herman Pratt? I saw him looking at me the other day in that special
way. Herman isn’t very attractive, he’s sort of squat and wears horn rimmed glasses. Some of
the girls think he’s brainy, because he’s an expert on matchbox cars, but anyone who was as
bad at sports as he is would have to compensate in some way. I could twist Herman around my
little finger but it wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
[Pulls a petal from the rose.] I wonder if
Will Tremorne would have sent it. He’s the most handsome man in our group and is captain of
the football team. All the hours I’ve spent practicing the cheer-leader’s routines for him and his
team. No, it wouldn’t be him. He wouldn’t have to send a rose to get a girl-friend. Just a wry
smile in their direction and they come running. Why I did so myself. [Pulls a petal from the
rose.] Or could it have been Jack? I was really attracted to him. But I tried to destroy his relationship with my best friend, and now they both hate me. [Pulls a petal from the rose.] I wonder if it was Angelique. She makes such a nuisance of herself chasing after other women. You
would have thought she would have learned by now whether they were liable to be amenable to
her charms. No, it can’t be her, she knows how I feel about that sort of thing.
[Pulls a
petal from the rose.] Would it have been Johnny Priest? No, he likes fat women. [Pulls a petal
from the rose.] Or Sparky Williams. No. He’s inside with his computer all day. He wouldn’t know
what a woman was.
[Pulls a petal from the rose.]
[Arriving with milk shake] Has Signorina discovered who sent her the rose.
No. But I don’t particularly want to know.
FRANCISCO: Why is that.
PENELOPE:
What sort of person would send a girl a rose as tatty as this?
Furtive Love
Cast:
ROGER:
A young man dressed in a gorilla suit. He has taken the head off and
placed it on the table.
NEMO:
SETTING:
Captain Nemo. An older man dressed as a super hero.
It is a restaurant. Roger is sitting at a table reading ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Captain Nemo en-
ters.
NEMO:
May I join you?
ROGER:
That is a matter which requires some deliberation.
NEMO:
[Sits at table] Take your time.
ROGER:
She’s jumped down the rabbit hole.
NEMO:
Who?
ROGER:
Alice.
NEMO:
Yes, I thought she would.
ROGER:
Why don’t you join me?
NEMO:
Yes, I’d like that very much.
ROGER:
Fred’s the name.
NEMO:
Captain Nemo [They shake]
ROGER:
Captain of the Nautilus?
NEMO:
That was a past life. Now I fly through the air and save damsels in distress as they fall out of
tall buildings.
ROGER:
I wish I could do that. I can only swing from branch to branch.
NEMO:
Did you say your name was Roger?
ROGER:
No, Chester.
NEMO:
It’s got Roger in the programme.
ROGER:
That’s just the author’s idea. Don’t take any notice of him.
NEMO:
OK. Chester then.
ROGER:
No. Bartholemew.
NEMO:
I’d like to order.
ROGER:
You can’t.
NEMO:
Why not?
ROGER:
There’s no waiter in this play. The author decided to give him a rest.
NEMO:
To hell with the author, I’m hungry.
ROGER:
They don’t serve Kryptonite in this restaurant anyway.
NEMO:
I don’t want Kryptonite, I want sea food.
ROGER:
What about mushrooms?
NEMO:
In a pinch.
46 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
ROGER:
Here, read this, it’s got a mushroom in it. [Passes over book.]
NEMO:
[Opening book] This is a hallucinogenic mushroom.
ROGER:
Entirely in keeping with the play.
NEMO:
That’s true Julian.
ROGER:
The problem is neither of us have characters, we don’t have a past, I don’t even know my own
name. It can’t be a realistic play.
NEMO:
It doesn’t have to be. My name won’t change though Percival.
ROGER:
Why not?
NEMO:
‘Nemo’ means ‘no name’.
ROGER:
He gave you that name so he wouldn’t have to think of new names all the time.
NEMO:
Who did?
ROGER:
The author.
NEMO:
True. How many people went to your 21st birthday?
ROGER:
I wasn’t alive when I had my 21st birthday.
NEMO:
I find that remarkable.
ROGER:
How many people went to your party then.
NEMO:
My mind is a blank. I don’t remember a thing before today.
ROGER:
That’s why you’re called Nemo. You’re not a real person at all.
NEMO:
Neither are you then.
ROGER:
We can still be in a play though. You don’t have to have real people for it to be a play. [PAUSE]
Do we know each other well?
NEMO:
We’ve only just met.
ROGER:
I’d like to make love to you.
NEMO:
That’s hardly appropriate.
ROGER:
Why not?
NEMO:
I’m a super hero and you’re a monkey.
ROGER:
Give me my book back.
NEMO:
No.
ROGER:
Why not?
NEMO:
I want a cup of tea.
ROGER:
Is there a cup of tea in it?
NEMO:
There’s a whole tea party.
ROGER:
Take your time.
[Nemo glances at a page the hands the book back..]
NEMO:
You could change your sex.
ROGER:
Why?
NEMO:
So we could make love.
ROGER:
You’ll have to pay for the operation.
NEMO:
That could be arranged.
ROGER:
Not today though.
NEMO:
No. I have a great aunt called Penelope, she’s one hundred years old tomorrow.
ROGER:
Did she have a 21st birthday?
NEMO:
She has one every year.
ROGER:
How many people attended?
NEMO:
One.
ROGER:
Why did you mention Penelope?
NEMO:
All the plays have a Penelope in them. It’s a signature.
ROGER:
All the plays have a hundred year old great aunt?
NEMO:
No, just someone called Penelope.
ROGER:
I find that remarkable.
NEMO:
It’s time we finished this isn’t it?
ROGER:
It seems to be about that time.
NEMO:
There needs to be a twist to round off the plot.
ROGER:
There isn’t any plot.
NEMO:
True.
ROGER:
How can we have a twist then?
NEMO:
[Takes a pink satin handkerchief from his pocket and twists it.] How’s that?
ROGER:
Perfect.
Bridezilla
Cast:
BRIDEY:
A young bride to be.
HAZEL:
Her mother
FRANCISCO:
SETTING
A restaurant. The two women sitting at a table. Francisco brings tea and pikelets.
HAZEL:
Thank you Francisco, that will be all.
BRIDEY:
Will you bring jam for the pikelets?
FRANCISCO:
Certainly Miss Bridey. [Goes]
BRIDEY:
You’d think they’d supply jam without having to be asked.
HAZEL:
Not everyone has jam.
BRIDEY:
Well I do.
HAZEL:
Yes I know that.
BRIDEY:
Then you could have asked.
HAZEL:
Well I didn’t. If you wanted jam you should have asked yourself.
BRIDEY:
I would have expected a mother to have some consideration for her daughter. Especially when
she’s getting married.
HAZEL:
You are so exasperating at times Bridey. All I can say is the sooner the ceremony is over the
better.
BRIDEY:
How can you say that Mother? It will be the happiest day of my life and all you can do is com
plain. You don’t even want me to have a happy day.
HAZEL:
Of course I do dear. It’s just…
BRIDEY:
It’d just what?
HAZEL:
I think you need to develop a sense of… a sense of proportion.
48 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
BRIDEY:
I have a sense of proportion.
HAZEL:
Yes dear. [Pause] You know I will support you in every way.
BRIDEY:
Another present arrived this morning. Did you open it?
HAZEL:
Yes. Aunt Gladdys sent an electric blanket.
BRIDEY:
That’s two electric blankets. Oh well they might come in handy.
HAZEL:
I can’t imagine what use you would have for electric blankets
BRIDEY:
To keep warm in bed of course. [Pause] Penelope Smithers has got engaged also did you know.
To that horrible Bartholemew boy from down by the railroad tracks. You should see her ring. I
think it came out of a box of cereal. It wouldn’t surprise me if they planned to have their honeymoon in Taihape. [Or some other unlikely place known to the audience.]
HAZEL:
Where is your ring dear? You’re not wearing it.
BRIDEY:
It’s in the bank vault. I leave it there for safety when I haven’t got anyone to show it to.
HAZEL:
But I like to see you wearing your ring.
BRIDEY:
You’ve seen it Mother. [Pause] I want the bridesmaids to be dressed in pink satin I’ve decided.
There’s a pattern in Harrops. They also have a special in material. We can get it this afternoon.
And I want the bridesmaids to carry white roses. You know how I love roses.
HAZEL:
Your father has been growing them specially for the occasion.
BRIDEY:
Mother! You don’t expect me to have roses from the garden. They might have insects crawling all
over them. What if I should sneeze in the middle of the service? They will have to come from the
florist. Surely you’re not trying to save money on flowers.
HAZEL:
Your father thought it would be nice to contribute something grown with his own hands.
BRIDEY:
Well he can walk beside me down the aisle. That’s all that I need.
HAZEL:
[Sighs] Yes dear.
[Francisco arrives with a pot of jam and a red rose.]
FRANCISCO: The jam Miss Bridey. Also this rose has just arrived by special delivery.
HAZEL:
Thank you Francisco. [He goes]
BRIDEY:
Who would send me a rose? And who would know I was here?
HAZEL:
There is a card.
BRIDEY:
[Reading card] It’s from Hank Snowden. Who on earth is Hank Snowden?
HAZEL:
He’s your fiancée dear.
A Cup of Tea
Cast:
HANK:
Hank Snowden. A young man.
FRANCISCO: A waiter
SETTING: A restaurant. Hank sitting at table. There is an exhibition of two full length mirrors covered by curtains, however the mirrors are just mirror frames. Francisco comes.
HANK:
Do you serve tea?
FRANCISCO:
Certainly sir.
HANK:
What type of tea do you have.
FRANCISCO:
You may select from: Orange Pekoe, China Black, Prince of Wales, English Breakfast, China
Green, Lapsang Sousing, Assam, Ceylon, Indian, Earl Grey, Russian Caravan, Chamomile,
Rhubarb, Dandelion, Mint and Rosemary, Lemon Zinger, Gumboot, Irish Breakfast, Darjeeling, Jasmine, Mother Grady's Herbal Infusion, Afternoon Tea and Morning Tea.
HANK:
Don’t you have Model T?
FRANCISCO:
Indeed no sir. Most of our customers cannot afford vintage cars.
HANK:
I’ll try the Afternoon.
FRANCISCO:
That is a good time to try.
HANK:
I mean the Afternoon Tea.
FRANCISCO:
That is what I believe you said sir.
HANK:
Crazy. [Francisco is about to go.] Tell me, I’ve heard about the exhibition you have here. Two
full length mirrors covered by curtains I believe.
FRANCISCO:
Two illusions in fact.
HANK:
So when I look in a mirror I see an illusion?
FRANCISCO:
I do not know what you see. Certain philosophers will say that what we call reality is merely
an illusion. Perhaps you should inspect the exhibits and make your own decision.
HANK:
Look at myself in a mirror? Why not?
[Hank goes to one of the exhibits and draws back the curtain.]
Hey, there’s no mirror in this at all.
FRANCISCO:
You see sir, you are an illusion so there is no reflection. Is it not true that ghosts do not reflect in a mirror?
HANK:
Are you calling me a ghost?
FRANCISCO:
I am merely making an observation. Who is to know about the reality of ghosts? [Goes to
exhibit.] Then perhaps an attendant may have removed the mirror for maintenance. [Closes
curtain.] May I get your tea sir?
HANK:
In a minute. Tell me, who is the crazy loon that thought up this… this work of art?
FRANCISCO:
It is I sir.
HANK:
You? A waiter?
FRANCISCO:
Ah, you see, there is the illusion. I am merely an artist in the guise of a waiter.
HANK:
What’s your name then?
FRANCISCO:
Francisco of course.
HANK:
Yes I know. The waiters in this place are always called Francisco. What’s your real name?
FRANCISCO:
Nemo.
HANK:
That’s not a real name.
FRANCISCO:
But names are a mask of reality. I am also known as Marvello when I perform acts of magical
illusion in the fairground.
HANK:
You are having me on. I don’t really understand what you are.
FRANCISCO:
I am the author of the play, the creator of the picture. When the cast arrive on the stage I
lead them to the mirrors and show them how to find their way through the maze of their delusion.
HANK:
You show them pictures in the mirrors?
FRANCISCO:
Everyone sees something different. Everyone sees what they need to know. That is the purpose of our art is it not? To show the viewers new things and lead them to enlightenment?
50 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
HANK:
Your philosophy beats me. You say that people come here to learn from what they see in the
mirrors?
FRANCISCO:
Of course. I create images to show them the way.
HANK:
Why didn’t I see anything then?
FRANCISCO:
Perhaps I have nothing to teach you sir.
HANK:
You’re a character Francisco. Go and get my tea.
Get on with the play
Cast:
X:
An actor
Y:
Another actor
FRANCISCO: A
waiter
SETTING: A restaurant. The actors seated at a table, Francisco in attendance.
X:
I’d like a Scotch.
Y:
A G and T for me.
X:
And a plate of Turkish Delight.
FRANCISCO:
Certainly Madame and Monsieur.
X:
[By a magical device a tray appears with the items on it. Francisco places them on the table.]
[Sipping drink.] I say, this is flat ginger ale.
FRANCISCO:
That is of no concern. The audience will never notice.
Y:
[Sipping] This might have a slice of lemon but the drink is only water.
FRANCISCO:
But the audience cannot taste it.
X:
And this plate is empty.
FRANCISCO:
But actors only pretend to eat food when it is placed before them. [Goes]
Y:
What do we do then?
X:
Get on with the play.
Brandy Snaps
Cast:
JASON:
A lawyer, Father of Penny
PENNY:
Penelope. (Not the Penelope of the other plays)
FRANCISCO: A waiter
NOTE:
Brandy snaps are a sweet, cylinder shaped condiment filled with cream. If not part of the culture where the play is presented they can be substituted (title and dialogue also.)
SETTING:
A restaurant. Jason is sitting at table with menu. Penny enters. Jason rises, gives her a fatherly
kiss. They sit.
JASON:
Ah Penny at last, I thought you weren’t coming for a moment.
PENNY:
I got busy. How could I miss a treat?
JASON:
What will you have? There’s a chocolate gateau.
PENNY:
I feel like a brandy snap.
JASON:
You always used to like gateau. I remember when you were a toddler. You mother and I took
you to a picnic and you smothered yourself in chocolate and cake.
PENNY:
I’m not a toddler any more Dad.
JASON:
All right. A brandy snap then. (PAUSE) Cappuccino?
PENNY:
I’ll have black coffee today.
JASON:
Oh?
PENNY:
So I can see my reflection in the surface.
JASON:
You always did have a… I might have a brandy snap myself.
(JASON SIGNALS FOR A WAITER. FRANCISCO ARRIVES.)
You have brandy snaps?
FRANCISCO: Indeed, we have anything you might desire.
JASON:
You might find me a million dollars then.
FRANCISCO: I shall write you a cheque. (‘Check’ in America.)
JASON:
Which will bounce no doubt.
FRANCISCO: Only if you present it to the bank. Does signor wish to order?
JASON:
Coffee black for each of us and two bandy snaps.
(FRANCISCO GOES.)
Cheeky fellow. Why did he call me ‘signor’?
PENNY:
All the waiters here pretend to be Italian.
JASON:
I should have known.
PENNY:
What?
JASON:
You’d select a café where everyone was mad.
PENNY:
But everyone is mad. It’s a condition of normalcy.
JASON:
Personally I would have preferred somewhere a little more up-market.
PENNY:
Meaning I would have had to wear designer clothes.
JASON:
Don’t be foolish. A reasonable standard is all that’s required. If you need money to dress well
it’s always available.
PENNY:
I prefer my jumper and jeans.
(FRANCISCO RETURNS WITH COFFEE AND BRANDY SNAPS.)
JASON:
That was quick.
FRANCISCO: I am a magician also signor.
JASON:
Tell me, why do you call me signor? You are not an Italian are you?
FRANCISCO: Indeed not. The management ask me to pretend to be, signor.
JASON:
Is that so?
FRANCISCO: And, of course, we are what we pretend to be.
PENNY:
(SERVES AND GOES.)
(STIRRING TWO SPOONS OF SUGAR INTO HER COFFEE) He got you there.
52 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
JASON:
Talking in riddles. Can you see your reflection?
PENNY:
(LOOKING DOWN ON HER COFFEE) I see a brown girl.
JASON:
You are not a brown girl.
PENNY:
The medium transforms the image. I saw a sunset.
JASON:
They frequently occur.
(THEY ARE BEGINNING TO THINK THEIR OWN THOUGHTS, NOT TALKING TO EACH OTHER.)
PENNY:
It was over the sea. A misty dusk. Rain clouds had come up from the south behind the island.
Kapiti. A roiled lion sitting on the horizon. The sun was like a Chinese lantern. Misty. A suffusion of orange light glowing in the mist.
JASON:
Those views are worth a million dollars. One street back from the beach and you can halve the
value of a similar house.
PENNY:
It was nothing. A vision. A transformation of the world. We see a vision and we do not react.
We just carry on doing the same old things.
JASON:
Real estate is always a sound investment. It can usually be relied upon to generate a tax free
return. The main problem with real estate for the ordinary man is that it is not possible to invest in small amounts.
PENNY:
I thought I saw a vision of eternity in the sun and the sea. But the glorious picture was a veil.
We can’t penetrate the fabric of the world of illusion. I would like to dismantle the stars in the
blue dome of heaven, the sun and the sea and the earth. When they are gone what remains?
The essence?
JASON:
The market’s volatile. Yes. Volatile I would say. Blue chips are preferable. Stay away from high
risk investments.
PENNY:
I think of a rose. Incarnadine beauty. Drenched with the blood of Christ. It flowed from the
wounds made by the thorns. Imagine that Christ on the cross was crowned with a wreath of
roses.
JASON:
From the beginning I had ambition. Wanted to get ahead. Became a king in the world of commerce. My life is affluent. I have everything you might desire. And yet there is something missing… Look at her, smiling quietly to herself, content to abandon possessions, live an uncluttered life. Does she know anything that I don’t?
PENNY:
He has to cling to that world-stuff as though it is of some importance. I left that behind. I hate
his principles… but I’m his daughter, I love him.
(THEY COME OUT OF THEIR BROWN STUDY.)
JASON:
A Penny for your thoughts.
PENNY:
Don’t make terrible puns Dad,
JASON:
But you must have been thinking of something.
PENNY:
I was thinking I might like another brandy snap.
FIREFLY CIRCLE
Marc Jensen and Heath Mathews
Each performer is given a raucous, handheld musical instrument prior to the
performance.
There are eight stations spread throughout the space in a roughly circular
spacing. At the beginning of the piece, each station contains two lights. Over the
course of the piece, players will gradually pick up the lights.
At the beginning of the piece, players are distributed randomly around the
periphery of the space. At the signal to begin, each player walks to the nearest
station. From the container at the station, draw a card and roll the die. The card will
either say “Play” or “Light.” Always keep your card, rather than putting it back in the
container.
• If the card says “Play,” you will play your instrument in any fashion while
proceeding to the next station. Whatever number comes up on the die, walk
past that many stations before stopping at another station.
• If the card says “Light,” pick up one of the lights and walk with it, carrying it
with you for the rest of the piece. Once you pick up a light, you are no longer
allowed to play your instrument. Players with lights will no longer pick up
cards when they stop at stations, but will only roll the die and walk to another
station.
After picking up a light, you may choose to quietly sing long tones for
the remainder of the piece as you walk, but do not talk or make any other
intentional sound.
When both of the lights have been removed from a station, it is no longer in
play, which means that you may not stop at it. When there is only one station left,
everyone who already has a light should mill around that final station, with only the
people playing instruments actually walking away from it. When all of the lights have
been removed from all stations, all players should congregate together, and on a
given signal, run out in all directions from the performance space, ending the piece.
Stand Up For Something
Ric Royer
Stand up for something you feel strongly about. Continue standing in the same place for 18 to 24
straight hours. An accumulation of fluid may develop in the tissue of the legs. This edema is produced
by the extravasation of fluid from the blood vessels. If this does occur, expect your ankles and feet to
swell to twice their normal size. This swelling may rise all the way up to the thighs. Large blisters
might also develop which break and exude watery serum. Because of the swelling, circulation is impaired and urination ceases. If fainting occurs, which is very possible, you will have to start over if you
hit the ground. Once you have completed the continuous standing, you may ride a person as if they
were a horse. Ride strong and proud, ride as long as you wish.
54 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
The Universe Gives me the Creeps
Danielle D. Billington
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 sacrificers.
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 “metalanguage” 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
56 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
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:
serve you.
She says:
She says:
don. Now that
They do not sacrifice, they don’t dePure beauty.
Emotions running wild, with wild abanis seduction.
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.
She asks: Are you in love?
I dreamed of turtle stories
“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
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.
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.
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:
58 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009
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 nonsensical 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
Guidelines * samples * back issues * previews *
blog * featured writers * merchandise * Guidelines
* samples * back issues * previews * blog * featuredhttp://www.karawane.homestead.com
writers * merchandise * Guidelines * samples
* back issues * previews * blog * featured writers
http://www.myspace.com/karawane
* merchandise
* Guidelines * samples * back issues * previews * blog * featured writers * merchandise * Guidelines * samples * back issues *
Visitusontheweb:
Visitusontheweb:
upgrade
we came awake in adolescence. what our fathers pursued was good enough for us. mothers, opposite gender/
Oedipus, like blood. a jigsaw puzzle/in two symmetrical colors. did we put an innocent, distracted, grown-up
face on it? woke up to wet dreams turned dry-humping/"seven minutes of heaven"/turn off the lights. dress up
simple biology; the new chemistry burns, climbs on the Kinsey Scale and mounts it. the quota has been met.
this is the path our parents walked. (they would prefer to have grandchildren). the girls waiting for the boys
long enough and the boys waited for some glam reputation to make this all go down smoother. did we fantasize about blowjobs before we opened a shrink-wrapped magazine? we sure shone an amazed and impetuous
averageness - glowed a historical sameness. sorry we asked for this/never asked for it. fall back into
'masturbation,' tampon-sized hard-ons and affected control. were we proud then? too soon to tell. confused? surveying the locker room with self-conscious wonder. not homosexuality. try harder. in camp, at a cousin's;
on an island.. a desperate runaway train/all downhill. carry the torch for impatient hormones, but really; an
attempt to reinvent the entire experience as an enviably hip print ad. we always felt like we were getting away
with something. if only we could make it different/not too different. less difficult. look to read-into role models:
did they do it confidently and with style? -go steady throughout middle school? -fuck everything in sight or
claim they did. some creepy shame wells up when parents pry into our lives - but secretly approve. we didn't
do it to appease you. was it different for the old man? was it different for the cave man? the age-old system
rolls on with xenophobic awareness. the majority has been maintained. the world nods in unison, glumly.
shackles on us, but the opposite is worse. it rings a faint, tiny bell - a dormant reminder. finally, we have a
society in agreement. we better go prep ourselves for the daily chase/we look like fifth graders ..
- David Chrisopher LaTerre
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
60 • Karawane, Issue 10, 2008-2009

Issue10 - Karawane

Transcription

Similar documents

Printable PDF version, books only

roger dubuis

Butterflies are Free Monologue

by COMP-1 Demeter Compulator User`s Guide

finding nemo - Heartland Film

Leap of Faith Leads to New Careers

RMCTC Spring 2012 newsletter - Reading Muhlenberg Career

Westfield San Francisco Centre

here

Exchange Report