i suppose this was something about art-making, and i don't know why i didn't publish it until now (addendum 2009)

"the art of confession and concealment within the group...to avoid what is unspoken and yet that Every Body knows"

From its inception and up to this point, I have been asking myself what "it" is.  What is unspoken?  What is the cause of so much torture?  What is the motivation for our Gentle Cruelties?

Although it may seem deductively obvious, it is interesting to me that it was not obvious to me until now, that the Unspoken can as much be the rage against indifference, neglect, withholding, and absence, as it can be the Unspoken of "I love you."  As JK deciphers for me at the bar last night, "Shut the fuck up" is code for "I know, me too."

This "gentle" realization (paraphrase: there are no epiphanies for those who are paying attention) comes in the nick of time to push this work forward.  It has been uncomfortable in some ways to be working on a remake of a piece that was created in such an emotional environment of dependency, longing, and regret (yes, yes: post-break-up).  Watching and working off the video of our one-night-only performance in May, I feel very disembodied from the rawness of myself and my creation.  The hermitage period that was my summer in Europe (unplanned as such, and not without a fight) had positioned me far away from those previous desires for explosion.

Or so I thought. Creation is explosion. Explosion (expulsion) is creative. Big bangs. Aloud is allowed. 'Allowed aloud' is the driving force of moving and sounding the way I do, in life as well as in the condensation machine of the rehearsal studio. I ought to recognize, trust, and run with those scissors. There is still that taste of bitter mixed into my bowl of brussels sprouts, but there is no good reason (with two weeks to show) to deny the natural state of a once living thing.

Flowers fall from the sky

While I was crying about the moon, pre-post-prandial-menstrual dysphoric disorder, love, my fear of intimacy, my painful need for isolation which sabotages my absolute necessity for company, and missing missing missing my twin (complement/mate/match/bear/dog/fox/mouse) -- while this was happening and I was also lamenting the superfluous use of my time with pixelated screen-people constructed by actual writers (not mediocre try-hard-retrograde-teens like myself, at 25) -- I receive a halleluia "beep" from my phone inbox (almost full to capacity with old messages that record significant times that have long evaporated. Why do I keep them? I don't know. I don't find that much authenticity or pleasure in them now. But they are documents. They mark time.) A picture message! Who could this be? What could it be? Who is my redeemer at this critical moment of self-discovery, self-actualization through pain and longing?

CINGULAR: You recived a picture message your phone can't display. See it at the URL below-expires soon. Use code 5q342fn9 http://www.cingular.com/inbox.

It's so mysterious. It's so magical. It's from a (405) number. WHO? WHY?

It's a picture of a $20 bill. Andrew Jackson. What is this secret code? Why the note? What is this message? Realize: I am still hoping for some fortuitous message, some sign that I am loved, or that I matter, or that all my efforts are not just robotic attempts at validation and that really I can hawk off all my belongings and move to London as soon as my work here is done. Forget theory. Ditch grad school. That's for ambitious workaholics with no access to soul. I want soul. I'm gonna get me some soul with my $20 enigma.

I call the number.

Who the fuck is "Chip"?

it's all a pathology

"I am nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I am nostalgic for right now."

I can't stand it.
The feeling that tomorrow, You will disappear.
You will all disappear.

I can't stand it.
The feeling that all that has disappeared once was.

I can't stand it.
The feeling that these feelings that I could not once stand, are now understandable. 

I float, knowing that the deeper longing exists, that simplicity was actually the answer, and that letting go was the solution, not the defeat.

I can't stand it -- that there are spaces for can't-standing and there are other spaces for standing, and that I know where I am in those places, but that I can't stand not knowing where I am until it's left.  Maybe I chase and hurry along so that I can recognize .... something.  I want it all to be over so that I can remember.  Maybe Oliver Sacks has a phenomenon to name after me.

It's so odd, to feel the shadow like an impending doom and then to see the monster walk away.  When does failure really start?  Weren't you failing all along?  Always making the wrong choices?  These are not angst-filled regrets -- they are just a nod to the memory of dreams that were thankfully shattered, because the dreams were from Some Body else. Can I coin it "oppression by hope" without seeming a cynic?

Was it cheap? Was it the easy way out? Who is the overseer? Who is the standard of comparison?  These are all just nothing questions. 

Letter to Sminz

Just some thoughts as they come to me standing on my balcony blowing smoke in salute to your graceful and oafish presence missed --
Who are the "others" that I presume will judge me for feeling so perfectly comfortable and appropriate wearing eclectic colors, a bright blue hoodie, and boots made for the Appalachia, searching for your hand? Perhaps they are chefs and hostesses at fancy vegan restaurants -- perhaps, more likely, they are my fears.
The manic life I lead--I need--I bleed for--this seems like an ass laughing in the face of my happiness with you ("ridi" + "culo", English to Italian transliteration = "ass laughs"). I loved dressing up and dressing down with you by my side. I am waiting still for one day in coat and tails and silk dresses (oh, but which one of us shall wear the high heels?)
I am waiting already for Lego-man and Lego-woman body suits (perhaps both sitting in lifesize, cardboard port-a-potty toilets). There are many costumes I wish so much to share with you still.
I am missing you like a deck of cards misses its box; like a chopstick misses its twin; like a pot of boiling water misses its lid. No boil. Slow steam -- evaporate. Sense -- maybe no. Free - thanks to you.

Tonight I returned to the free performance at the Judson Church and it was great. Full of performers I know and like and strong, sensory, idea-fueled pieces. The last was a happening, really -- 20 or more people piling up cardboard boxes in the space, along the sides of the space, blocking the entrance/exit. My friend Tin from Singapore was there and we went out after for a Nutella crepe and love stories.

I smoked two cigarettes (=kissing you). I ate a bagel, plantain chips, a salad, a slice of pizza, ginger ale, an apple, half a mocha chocolate chip vegan cookie.

I found 2 "new" pins on my shelf.
I wore my black hat with 2 pins on it, not 1.

HELLO MY NAME IS...

...under the watchful eyes
...enigma of the amygdala (AMGINE)
...SPUTNIK: The Invisible Face of Infinite Invitation: Magnificent Dream!
...Halibut Endofdays, vigorous upstream swimmer
...SPUTNIKERS: Flies both ways (also known as Man on Mars)
...PROFANE (it hurts your between the ears and armpits that I am true)
...EPIPHANY (the childish hide and seek with perfection which secludes itself in berry bushes)
...IMAGENA: Tetrapak Generation

****
P.S. the memo is that I've been drawing

Rhythm of the head

No. No no no, no no, no no no no no no no.  No no  no No No no no no, no!  No, no no no ... no no no no no no no no no.  No--no no, no no no no, no no No No no no no, no no no.

Yes, yes yes yes.  Yes yes yes, yes yes yes!  Yes!  Yes Yes, yes yes yes yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, yes yes: "Yes, yes yes yes, yes yes yes.  Yes, yes, yes, yes--yes yes yes yes, y.e.s.  Yes yes yes yes: yes."

From Project Fantasy to Project Happpiness: Welcome back to Brooklyn

Back in my space in New York again, I feel innocent with experience, light with an understanding of heavy memories. I choose my thought patterning, or at least, I choose to acknowledge them for what they are, desiring not so much to tear them out or rip them apart, but to source their roots, contents, and consequences.

"Observe your thoughts, they become your words.
Observe your words, they become your actions.
Observe your actions, they become your habits.
Observe your habits, they become your character.
Observe your character, they become your destiny."

The self-reflexive eye of inadequacy and fear is like projectile webbing from spiderman's wrist--only you are spiderman, holding your power at an arm's length, having it glare at you and you stare and spit and holler back. DIRECTION and INTENTIONALITY. PERCEPTION of SPACE and RELATIONSHIP to SPACE. It's all a dancing. Step outside of yourself for a change.

FEELINGS 101
A curriculum for school of soft knocks and emotional warriors

How amazing, the subconscious! How amazing, memory! How revolutionary, the warping of time with memory! How wondrous, dreaming! How scandalous, the sabotage of unbelief! Luckily I have been advised: kick your evil twin's ass. Do it tenderly and compassionately...but don't stop kicking until you convince your evil twin to take greater responsibility for his or her personal share of the world's darkness.

What is believing?

Wind from the window makes my door open of its "own" accord. Tailwinds fight with an impassioned heart on flight 983 to cause a purposeful delay, a forced fortuitousness (code = I wanted to miss that connecting flight. Did I make it happen?). Wind on a sunny Paddington streetside pub bench makes fuscia teardrop flowers fall "from the sky" onto the crease of my sweater at the front of my sternum while I talk about love, risk, playing it safe, playing the game--future. Tit for tat. Why not tat for tit?

Believe a little!
Belittling, leave!
Bereave the riddle--resolve to breathe!

I regret the times when I am not awake to begin with, but perhaps instead of crying over spilled opportunity-milk, I can learn from my hesitations (caused by ignoring and disbelief) that these are the habits I recourse to (how windy does it have to be before you close the window? did I even stick my head outside to check?). Working backwards, I see myself in my snail's hut of fragile spiraling shell, again conducting the habit-forming action of yelling into silences that yesterday's room was louder. I see the molecular thoughts of fear-of-losing-so-defense-is-never-to-want-and-always-to-resist coalesce and sediment into a hard crystal nugget (which I would like to see whittled into a flat stone by breaking waves, which I would then like to skim across still water to make rectangular ripples. Tada!).

Melinda is a magician! An Italian magician! No, not quite, but MELINDA, FIRST LADY OF MAGIC is a regular showing at the Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas, ranked as one of the top three magicians in the world alongside David Copperfield and Siegfried & Roy.(1) MELINDA GOLDEN DELICIOUS is also an Italian brand of organic apples, coming not from a love affair in an orchard, or a dimpled girl with a bonnet (as on Melinda's XXX Super Hot Habenero Sauce label), but MELA + LINDA. Mela linda. Clean apple.(2) Can life be so sweet? Will you accept the premise of mission:project:happiness? Will you accept magic and clean apples?

There should be a more conclusive end to this self-reflection but my mind dived off a high board and is busy snorting water out its nose and dislodging its swimming suit from between its two round cheeks (hemispherical-mind-wedgie). This is a better situation than my mind chewing on yesterday's leftovers still stuck at the back of my brain-teeth, but luckily, however, when this happens, my head is already covered with...floss!

Footnotes:

(1) Las Vegas Entertainment Today reports:
Melinda, First Lady of Magic is the No. 1 female magician in history. USA Today ranks her as one of the top three magicians in the world along with David Copperfield and Siegfried & Roy. Melinda is the first and only woman to ever star in her own prime time magic television special, "Disney's Melinda, First Lady of Magic," which aired on CBS. The International Society of Magicians named Melinda "Magician of the Year." One of her signatures acts is to make a sports car disappear at the speed of 100 miles an hour.

(2) Italy produces about 2 billion tonnes of apples per annum, about 4.5% of world production. There is a MONDOMELINDA Visitors Centre in Taio in Val di Non, and MELINDA GOLDEN DELICIOUS are known for their signature "rosy face", a red blush said to be caused "by the rays of the early morning sun in late summer and early autumn: the apples, damp from the night dew brought about by the intense night excursion which is typical in the mountains at this time of the year, are “kissed” by the sun in the morning. Usually the rosiest apples grow on the outer branches, are more exposed to the sun and are sweeter and crunchier."

in researching for graduate school, i feel once again like i am being asked to choose a topic for my undergraduate thesis when i never really got to learn what i wanted there so i settled.

i don't even know how many hours were spent absorbing meaningful yet purposeless information that never had a career in mind; no one asked me about career, or what i wanted, or how i was feeling about it. was amanda bayer still my academic advisor at the time? i don't remember, although i do remember that she considered hiring me to teach her daughter tap during the summer.

i feel like an idiot. the only place my life makes sense is in new york and even then, partly, maybe because it's full of people who only partly make sense, and in this way it is a community that is interdependent. it is not a brave or noble statement to make with your life that you survived and had beautiful experiences, but then there is that taste of aristocracy in the desire to be brave or noble or Kim Basinger playing white savior/survivor Kuki Gallmann on a ranch in Kenya. this is what i mean by fantasies i have of myself in "serving the greater good".  I'll never be more civic-minded than a cop, for instance, yet I'll try to earn triple her salary by proving that i'm clever.

but i have a lot of knowledge.  what can i tell you? what do you want to know? 

i am the proudest idiot you'll find on this earth.

Letter to Elaina

My dear Elaina!

your beautiful email comes at such a poignant time. i keep much to myself in my room on this 5th floor berlin walk-up, battling demons and memories and phantoms of regret. I've felt on the edge and yet strangely at peace .... perhaps it's a process of dying to yourself .... in that way that is full of light, not darkness.

There are still many thoughts going through my head, fantasies of myself, realizations about chapters in my life and the wonderful people who have shared them that make them a chapter with a beginning ... and a necessary end. Being here I want to be in New York, finally, at a time when I am being questioned again where/how to stay there -- more specifically, in the service of what long-term vision? And who to serve? What is recreational and what is professional? What is it I want to do, and what is it I want to know?

I spoke with Sue earlier this morning and realized that with the opportunities we've been given at a school like Swarthmore, what you know becomes what you do. I suppose that's very clear to you, as a teacher?

I find myself free and then I find myself stuck again ... I have a venue on another mixed bill at the end of the year, I am finding comfort and joy -- finally! -- in my dance practice, and can't wait to go back to it in NYC. I am reconciling old blockages in myself to do with my family, my relationships with men ... I feel myself having a passion and wanting to share it and apply it for a greater good. Hmm! So I suppose things are not so bad! I think the only confusion remaining, then, is really what are the next steps and what is the real world applicability. I suppose, the confusion remains that my main love does not make a living. My love doesn't have ambitions. It's just love. But I have ambitions. So is it an unsustainable love? And in terms of knowledge, is it simply preservationism that wants to make authoritative my knowledges gained from this pursuit for so many years -- as a matter of justification?!? (sorry, concretely, getting an MFA for example rather than pursuing a separate line of academia which I find equally but very separately interesting and vital).

Doing a lot of research on graduate programs, this is the fuel for the wood burning in my brain. Otherwise, I'll be back in New York next week Thursday, with just more work to do on all fronts. I'd rather I didn't have to move to change so quickly. Naa Aku says that maybe there are no demons, but there is indeed inertia.

Lots of love -- liebe liebe

MEL

Letter to Daddy

Dear Dad,

It's been a strange and pondering time this last week. Since I came back from the Documenta Arts festival in Kassel--in a sleepy but amazed and art-filled daze--I spent a week and more almost entirely indoors ... the cold had me dropping the 'e' in this city in prefernce to "brrrrrrlin".

But today is sunny, in many ways. I just got an email from the curators at DNA (yes, same place where I was studying) with all the details of the performance this December -- I share the bill with 4 other choreographers. There is a little stipend, but otherwise its work, work, work -- and that's great news! I realize that I am looking at a lot of alternatives for my life right now in a bit of a panicky way, trying to prove to others that really I can "do it", but do what exactly? This show in December is just one more labor of love evidently already in the direction of my imagination and desire. It is true however that there are few foreseeable concrete rewards except for itself .... "dance as its own reward". I believe in that. I believe in the people that dedicate to that. It's work.

So I wanted to share that good news with you. Where ever I may end up after, later, in the future, there is this work to be done, and it is my job to make it sophisticated, thought-provoking, resonant, real. It is doubly my job to make sure I do this job, not to kill the baby of my creativity. Naa Aku wrote me today that maybe there are no demons, or if there are, the only solution is to pick something and work on it, to be satisfied with your accomplishments and let time judge the rest.

Another friend who is a visual artist was relating to me his affirmation of the artist path from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. Have you read that? I started it in the bookstore years ago and didn't finish--I suppose it wasn't that ground-breaking for me at the time. But Rilke's work is often an inspiration to artists, because he puts it so clearly and gracefully that you do it because you can't live without it.

There's another popular book, The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. Here's a publisher's description: "With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity."

I think I'll join the "over 2 million copies sold!" at risk of jumping on a bandwagon. I'm sure that clearing my mind this way will allow for greater creative efficiency which will translate to any field.

So the concrete update for 2008 is that Sazali who brought me in to guest teach at NAFA is helping me link up with human resources at NAFA and Lasalle, so I will see if there are any opportunities there. When I think about home I get excited about the developments regionally that I was seeing from the Cambodian arts scene--neo-traditional performances (albeit somewhat trying, for a modern-dance viewer like me) Auntie Halcyon brought me to, and the producers of which I met at a function hosted by Keng Seng (they were off-season when I was in Phnom Penh, unfortunately). Of course, this is also tied into the work Pichet Klunchun has been undertaking to recontextualize traditional form, which you saw last year. So I imagine myself representing and/or advocating for artists, too, at some point--because I love artists. Maybe they will be artists attached to my art--a company?--or maybe my vision--students?--or maybe just my connections--a production house? Or maybe all, at different times?

Hope you are well, I'm sure busy. Mum mentioned you were travelling. She also mentioned that she's been having realistic dreams that confuse her--like emailing me that it was Oma's birthday (I thought it was yesterday, when it was the 6th!) but realizing that she'd only dreamed she did. Oh Mum!

Love you.

MEL

Letter to Angela

Aside: In New York it is high of 75, low of 60 degrees. In Brrlin, it is high of 65 degrees and low of 50. Mudder. Fudder.

Ang-hela, mi poomp-kin!

Thanks for you update and the long-ago email -- soo lovely to hear from you and that things are moving forward (ya big basketball!)! Every time I see a Madonna and child in NameYourEra Museum -- believe it or not, I think of you! Oh, also about pillage and how ugly the 16th century painters make life out to be (but it probably was, chickens, goats, blood, fat) and history and technique and how amazing that we've had hundreds of years of these techniques and development and West and East and audiences and everything else.

I miss New York. So far I have spent 6 weeks in festivals, 1 week+ in holiday, 2 weeks in depression in exile, and we'll see about my last 2 weeks. I come back on the 27th!!!!

I'm procrastinating from writing about the DANCE that I've been seeing, doing, I'm sort of (the usual) depressed / reluctant about this form. What keeps us so tethered to it? Vanity? Narcissism? Love? Spirit? Necessity? Dreaming? Are there unworthy dreams, that have the semblance of dreaming, but are not really, because they don't reach high enough? But now, writing this long-ago email reply to you, I am inspired - Ang-hela, poompkin, my muse, I will work today on DANCE DANCE DANCe.... oh have been trying to get clips of our work on YouTube but there is a 10 minute limit and god help me editing takes time, especially with kind of shitty footage. Sorry. I swore in front of your baby.

Miss you. AH I still have your lemurs video, I know how important that is for the pre-natal preparations (to tune into your already growing animal instincts). The minute I'm back I will steal a VCR and watch it and approach your new home on all fours.

Miss you. Give my love to Nate and the bellykins. Pre- or post-baby, we simply must work on a script dahling.

Love
MEL

Dürer's Melencolia I

Albrecht Dürer 
Melencolia I 
1514
engraving 
9 3/8" x 7 3/8"

"Yet in Melencolia I, the woman is unable to freely practice any art; the union of theory and practice required to do so evades her. She sits staring in a penetrating and thoughtful gaze, lacking the will or reason to actively make use of the surrounding items. Therefore, Dürer’s engraving is a representation of the "artist’s melancholy". Based on the writings of Agrippa of Nettesheim, which state that melancholy can affect genius in the three levels of "imagination", "reason", and "mind", the reason for Melencolia’s inactivity becomes apparent. She is the artist who can excel in the first level of "imagination", denoted by the "I" on the bat’s wing, but who, because of the limits of time and space, cannot attain the higher levels of thinking. Basically, she rejects what she can do, because she cannot do what she desires."

http://www.wfu.edu/art/pc/images/pc-durer-melencolia.jpg

The Many That Take Part in Me (Quote)

"I listened, I looked and I spoke from my mind. The ancient Greeks called parrhesia: telling everything, a sort of truth telling, a fearless speech, a speech in which one will say it all. It does not matter anymore where to starts, when it is about saying everything. Everything--that does not really start somewhere and it doesn't end elsewhere. ...

"That sounds like a confession. Let's try to follow this thin line between fearless speech and pathetic confession. Actually it is not the pathos of confession that I dislike, it is the duty of confession, the institution pulling the confession out of me. What is the place for secrets in a fearless speech? So, I repeat myself, until it curves, until I get out of it. It is about how we constitute each other. It is about property and invasion, or intrusion. We depend on each other. How to learn to live together?

"I have been told I might be fooling myself. Who is this 'I' that is fooling myself? I did what I thought would be true to myself. During two years I had the intention to follow those two rules whereever they would lead me: to not spend two nights in the same place anymore and to not use any money. Of course it is about not having to work. It is about living, it is about everything that I am trying to say. But then again, how true is it to live like that for a month and to then come back to graduate? I don't know. I am repeatedly addressing to you my doubts and the limits of my understanding, of my knowledge, only because they are a function of my beliefs and my actions, the oscillation of my awareness through the gap in between the two. I feel now too big a difference between holding a speech and writing a text addressed to an absent 'you'. I wish to meet you. Again or for the first time, to discuss everything again."

PAUL GANGLOFF, Department of Haunting,
Faculty of Invisibility Papers
June 15, 2007

Brrlin Ethnographies, Installment I

I lived for two weeks on Schesisches Strasse, a hot drag at the tip of Kreuzberg where it only took one week into the stay to come face to face with riot police silencing edgy youth attempting an illgal hip hop (?or punk?) concert in the Schesisches Tor U-bahn station. An Oberbaumer-bridge away from the East Side gallery and other graff-murals on remaining Wall, the busy road leading north towards Friedrichshain also overlooks high-rise riverfront condominiums and the hyped floating swimming pool that gets covered and becomes a sauna in the winter months.

If you accept the recent coinage of the area at the border of Kreuzberg and Neukoelln as "Neubeca" (by almost as recently decommissioned Wired writer, Momus), then this area is SchlesiSoHo. Symbols of well-aware gentrification of what is otherwise an immigrant Turkish neighbourhood, the converted storage facility I lived in is shared by the following 6 enterprising young adults:

ENA, 26?, has lived off government unemployment for at least 3 years while working on her art-lesbian-activist installation pieces, DJs, and co-organizes the Porn Film Festival (night life) coming soon to a theatre near you. Ena built the kitchen.

EMMA, recently 30, born of French and German parentage and raised in Spain (or did I get that mixed up?) is fully quadrilingual, speaking English with an American accent and holds trophy as general master at the telling of stories and classic German (bar-side) bear, fox, and rabbit jokes. A professional gaffer of some years, she's now headed to a renowned film school in Berlin that I hope launches her into imminent stardom. Emma took me all the way to Mehringdamm to introduce me to currywurst the right way, at Curry 36, rather than at our seedy but nearby Curry 7.

JOHEN, 30?, has a haircut, face, build, and belly laugh worthy of celebrity adoration. A Renaissance man to the 10th degree, Johen was raised in Portugal and Frankfurt, studied a melange of interests until settling on Geography, worked in Angola for a year, and now earns a living staring at a screen for an internet company in Berlin. Johen has travelled almost more of SE Asia than I have courtesy of visiting his parents there, and rightly thinks that Singapore is overpriced.

MARIAN, also 30?, is a glorious mad professor in the making, writing a masters and potentially PhD thesis on Propaganda Theories of the Third Reich. By the time he's done I doubt anyone would know much more of Goebbels than him; he also speaks more bahasa indo than I do (not difficult), since he's also a travel hound and has a heart for the little islands. Marian's grandmother's furniture peppers through most of the apartment.

BABA (Barbara), 23, is trained as a carpenter and currently interns with a school program that brings building (creative design technologies?) to elementary school kids. She lives half on unemployment also; has a girlfriend that is the only chick I've seen here can bust on the dance floor; has bright blue eyes and a faux-hawk haircut that somehow makes many people mistake her and Johen for siblings.

AXEL, ??, was out of town for most of my stay, visiting his girlfriend in DC.

Upstairs on a non-particular Friday night, Johen, Emma and myself brave the pounding noise with the invitation to free keg beer. Middle-aged band, black-clad with coal-miner-wrinkles exacerbated by wide-mouthed wailing. They actually perform the hold-the-mic one-legged heel drop, my favorite rock band move: dum dum dum dum dum. It is early in the evening, still. A blond baby-face bears a Che Guevara tattoo on his left shoulder as big as the entire deltoid; the man dancing next to him is dressed with a sailor hat and somewhat over-eager face.

The band plays original tunes that cannot be described in any other way than, "so bad it's good." Should someone write a new edition of volume 12 of the "How to Write a Good Rock Song" Fakebook, these boys deserve their own chapter: "How Breaking Every Rule In This Book Will Make For A Decent Song Too." At least, to the Che Guevara angel and Sailor.

At some point nearing the end of their set the band leader starts talking about how it's Friday, and how they came off work, and donch y'all just love work, lalaa. A voice that could belong to any of the multitude of bald-headed pale men in this large living room cries, "SCHEISS AUF ARBEIT!", yeah, "FUCK WORK!". I am in Berlin, and du ist ein Berliner, genau, genau ...

Breaks between bands results in a number not surpassing 3 of decent oldies but goodies: Hendrix, some chunky funk, something else. I start finding my dancing shoes. Then 2 shorter members of the band formerly known as Kiss walk in, or so it seems: BEATS looks like someone rubbed ash into his face, and MIC has a solid black crescent moon decal plastered to the right side of his face. The crowd builds on the dance floor, and the best of the worst of German arhythmic eurhthmy starts as Crescent Mic starts emoting ACDC 1984. Apparently these songs are all covers, but I can't tell: all we got in Hong Kong when I was growing up was Rick Astley.

I am fascinated. I am perturbed by the projecting flasher energy from the tall man with the trenchcoat who stalks me and others. I am beginning to slip on the wet floor. I am starting to draw attention from the teenage boys who have flocked to the smell of free beer from nearby clubs and who would all like to either b-boy or electro-glow stick expertly, only they are torn between generations of cool. Also, they probably don't know how to talk to girls yet. But I am grateful for the buffer company between myself and sleaze ball sore thumb not succeeding at being discreet with his pelvic directions.

It's getting hot and rowdy. Crescent Mic Kiss is taking off his shirt. His Crescent is taking off him. His floor is taking him off his standing. He is writhing on the floor, singing "GRRRLLLLS AND BOOOYYYSSSS .... BBBOOOOYYYSSS AND GGGRRRRRLLLLSSS"....this is amazing. I hope no one quite caught the expression of my face when an elegantly dressed brunette goes right up to Mic Kiss and his Mic and starts the airplane conductor double forearm thrust around his performer aura--my face, somewhere along the spectrum of pure wonderment. People do this!

Mic Kiss (no more Crescent, Crescent having been sweated off) now changes the space from proscenium to catwalk, almost soiling Johen's signature maroon leather jacket (and Johen within it) in the process. I almost reach out to touch Mic's slithery skin like some guru at a yoga festival. I'm not enraptured; I am just ceaselessly curious. KissMic recedes, and gradually these ABCD or ACDC or ADBC lyrics--whatever they are--concede to the amazingly awful and grating DJ beats of Ash Wednesday at console.

Enough of the ethnographic expedition (I believe in the academy they call this "participant observation"). I drink and dance and send off HISS-HISS-KAZAA anti-sleaze vibes to the probably very not-ill-intentioned trenchcoat. The only thing left remaining of scientific interest is the aftermath--I descended to our apartment around 5am, just missing the breaking of the masses and the breaking of windows. The smell and stain of the hallway the next day makes me think that Berlin is just some big campus and this, this became the commons.


NEXT INSTALLMENT: Examining the Robbery of Civilizations at Brrlin's Pergamonmuseum, Ethnography Museum, and others ... the inception of MEL invention #35(v.8, patent pending): The Museums Museum.

there is a lot of work to be done.

"I would now like to sing national anthem of Artisfartistan to the tune of national anthem of Dadalamaumfufuhlalaland"

I believe in art as therapy
(what's wrong with that)
I believe in art as empowerment
(what's wrong with that)
I believe in art as man-magic*
(what's wrong with that)
I believe in art as lifestyle
(what's wrong with that)
I believe in art as education
(what's wrong with that)
I believe in art as information
(what's wrong with that)

jiggajiggaWHA
WIKka WIKka WIKka
dum dum doom
zoom zum boom

*use of word "man", for rhythmic purposes not expanded to gender-neutralized word of "human", will still be used to indicate gender-neutralized concept of "human", although whether this is to be pronounced in footnotation as "hoo-MAhn" or a "hew-MAhn", or "HOO-muhn" or a "HEW-muhn" is open to negotiation.

jiggawiggaJAwehAHmenmanHOOman

I AM A BOURGEOIS

if loving the museum is a symptom of this sickness

boogie "boo-zhee" bourgeois (or "boo-zhay"?) bully elbulli is the restaurant in Spain that is the 7th venue of Documenta arts festival in Kassel, Germany.

Pretentious? Ironic? Clever? Joke? Just another graphic on the Documenta map? 

Ich liebe es. I'm lovin' it.  Art - detail - fabric - texture - coffee - spaces - old people - social reflections - questions - more questions - a tiger cub playing with a toy snake (video) - an octopus (sculpture) - 3 dogs (sculpture) - 1 giraffe (stuffed skin) - wood - paint - 9 Scripts From A Nation At War (video installation) - 2007 - 1964 - 1989 - a Name - Another Name - Big Names - Smaller Names - Geopolitical Names - Black Ink - print - naked bodies - assemblage - montage - collage - bondage (say, "bond-ahge"?) - did you know that in Spain alone the sex economy (including but not limited to prostitution, hustling, escort services, videos, toys) generates approximately 600,000 euro a day?

DOCUMENTA

A contemporary arts festival for every 5 years. Posits the idea of "contemporary" in its right, nebulous place.  14th century Islamic scripts next to 20th century multi-screen dance video from Rio next to 19th century Indian sketches (stolen? fair trade? purchasing power parity?) from the Victoria and Albert Museum.  There is nothing new, and this is the cause of massive celebration.  Every era has been almost just as prolific and promiscuous as this one is right now, or five minutes ago, or five minutes from now.  Maybe except for the 16th century Dutch masters.  Those scenes were exceptionally grotesque.

I am going to get food and a top-up for my phone and then write more about this fabulous event.

The gestapo of ambition ... "Hitler was a vegetarian" and everyone is a fascist

Alternate title: Who do you tie your shoelaces for?

The gestapo of ambition comes knocking at the door in the middle of the night, flashlights taking 2 seconds too long to find your eyes and fasten you to your bed--too long, because it allows your consciousness to emerge beyond your animal submission--"WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR THE WORLD? HOW WILL YOU RESPOND TO THE HIGHER CALLING? WHAT IS THE BASIS OF YOUR INTEGRITY? HOW IS THE SUSTAINABILITY OF YOUR LIVING? WHERE IS THE COMPASSION OF YOUR INSISTENCE? WHERE IS THE INSISTENCE OF YOUR COMPASSION? (what is the color of your damn parachute?) DO YOU BELIEVE, DO YOU TRULY BELIEVE, THAT YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND WORTHWHILE AND CAPABLE?"

I have hand-prints designed for black-and-white. All four crescent lines in the palms are scars of equal depth; i hold them up towards my face and squeeze to wrinkle: they are two bickering grandmas, Weegee's two fat ladies in hats with flowers and too-thick stockings, saying crassly, "What about class?!? What about it?!?!"

Maybe I am going to die soon. But there is a break in my lifeline at its tail that I don't believe I have encountered yet. Unless it happened already and I am at the moment at the wrist? Um.

Why is it a "negative" trait, to be "double-minded"?
What is the face of a "single-minded ambition"?
Is that fascist? Is that a fascist face? Is there anything that cute or clever about rhyming "facetious" with "fascist"?

Last night the moon reflected in a pane of window glass made the entire building from inside its courtyard look like a facade, and the window glass and moon inside that center frame a sky and satellite on the other side ... or a tunnel-like portal to another dimension with a whole other sky and moon (and a whole other people looking up towards a whole other window in a whole other block of flats). Now every building appears suspiciously 2-dimensional, like standing paper cut-outs shielding the edge of the world just beyond it. Berlin is a movie set.

Zen meditation: "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself."

The man with grey eyes looks like a naked fox without a den when you mention the word, "ambition". Ambition is a spaceship that sends people far, far away; "spaceship", in Italian, has the comically futurist label, "navicella spaziale". Everything in Italian seems to have an upward lift, regardless of its true disposition towards the subject at hand. The Italian is a reluctant optimist, which makes for a desirous melancholic, which is to say, an excellent mid-19th century artist but living and making in the 21st. We are all at battle with our own natures. Many of my heroes growing up were extraordinary isolationists. Did I "ambit" to become this way? What is the difference between "ambition" and "desire of the heart"? Who do you tie your shoelaces for?

AMBITION
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin ambition-, ambitio, literally, act of soliciting for votes, from ambire
1 a : an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power
b : desire to achieve a particular end
2 : the object of ambition
3 : a desire for activity or exertion

Synonyms:
ASPIRATION, PRETENSION mean strong desire for advancement.
AMBITION applies to the desire for personal advancement or preferment and may suggest equally a praiseworthy or an inordinate desire .
ASPIRATION implies a striving after something higher than oneself and usually implies that the striver is thereby ennobled .
PRETENSION suggests ardent desire for recognition of accomplishment often without actual possession of the necessary ability and therefore may imply presumption .

DESIRE
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French desirer, from Latin desiderare, from de- + sider-, sidus heavenly body
transitive verb
1 : to long or hope for : exhibit or feel desire for
2 a : to express a wish for : REQUEST b archaic : to express a wish to : ASK
3 obsolete : INVITE
4 archaic : to feel the loss of
Intransitive verb : to have or feel desire

Synonyms:
DESIRE, WISH, WANT, CRAVE, COVET mean to have a longing for.
DESIRE stresses the strength of feeling and often implies strong intention or aim .
WISH sometimes implies a general or transient longing especially for the unattainable .
WANT specifically suggests a felt need or lack .
CRAVE stresses the force of physical appetite or emotional need .
COVET implies strong envious desire .

The gracious monkey on my shoulder (wagging his ball and chain) reminds me: one desires peace, one does not have ambitions towards it.

The Dutch woman who lives in this flat is learning Arabic, translates for a living, visits deportees in prison, organizes for prisoner and immigrant rights/reform. Change is small and difficult.

thank you for courage. i can't help it, we started so many things we never finished. i hate you for that. it was never promised, that's true. inspiration has no responsibilities -- my faulty thinking has always been to conversely put exuberance into the stranglehold of guilt, penance, then inhibition. afraid of affecting too much. "afraid of succees". Ok. So I accept. because I can't keep living that way. And really, I don't hate. I don't miss. I don't want back. I want want. I want wanting. I am wanting. I am working on wanting. but I thank you for courage. I can't help but see myself as nothingness before we triumphed, before a we existed however briefly and however much I scoff at it and its infantility. scourge on vonnegut and his "nation of two" coinage that glitters as it flips in my head. again, this pout. i feel right now that it comes from the sense of injustice that I am stateless. pragmatically, no. historically, and by application, yes. god, does this chick ever make sense?!? one gravitates towards art making because it is a house for the soul, it is a nation with its own governance, it is a place to put your stuff down and make something (dinner). it is a shelter, but it is only ever a shelter or place for a visit (a park ranger's cabin in the middle of a gorge). put your shell back on your back and be on your way. there is no home, and that is what still yokes our minds together, literally, the wooden bar across our shoulder blades ... who is it that masters us and bears that grateful whip?

i am thinking about you.
BBC Radio 1 is playing 80s music, and I am thinking about you.

"Don't you... forget about me. 
As you walk on by
will you call my name ...
Don't you ... forget about me ...
Or will you walk away"
(Simple Minds)

You and your caged teeth and your caged heart and our caged embrace, these things still make my vision swim and my throat constrict and my lower lip pucker and pressure itself against my upper lip to contort my baby cheeks into an old hag's.  

This is interesting to me, what you fulfilled of my 80s dreams.  Hidden 80s and early 90s dreams I never ever understood.

Oh, our ethnographic love.  Our end of the era eroticism.  Our fashion fetishism.  My daddy santa claus preacher man Validation-Salvation complex.  Your ... well, for once I will refrain from speaking on your behalf.  From thinking for you.  From beating you to the punch.  One day, you tell me.  Your what, exactly? 

It was Ours.  That's what makes me hurt.  That's the pus in my lungs.  I stared at that lostness at sea in your eyes so long I dropped my map to find my way out.

I find myself wondering what would happen to my constitution if I could be prescribed a testosterone patch, for the sickness of "missing a man in my life" ...?

I can't believe I put these thoughts on a public forum.

the freestyling needs discipline but bear with the chatter-natter (persistence makes the minor character a Lead)

I wake up this morning drowning from last night's storm in old memories, surprising only for their clarity: the touch of crispy grid-cotton white uniform on taut, brown skin; the smell of longing in early morning misty hours, a secreted phone conversation immediately post-parting saying, "I love the sound of your voice"; anesthetic aesthetic of brown-mahogany deli tables, a conversation years later discussing that evaporated possibility ... men. I'm hungry.

That wafty post-colonial post-Romantic boarding-school-import-education-infused, forest-longing, escapist-songing, melomamadrama of Arundhati Roy has given me rose-colored cornea for the last couple days. For all her repetition and paperback two-word sentence punch-tuation, apparently, it has opened up my own past to the realm of senses I was too devastatingly lonely to notice, then.

"Then" is a word that can say a lot. There is a lot of space between the recognition of "now" and "then". What words have we for those spaces? "Just before", "around that time", "in the period of"... no no no. Between "now" and "then" there is a heavy confounding of breath molecules and invocation of postures, gestures, unfulfillments, exciting heights. A bubbly brew in the cortices. A trip. A travel guide, for which you wait and hope for a title. But when? Where are we going?

Did you know? According to journalist and spiritualist writer, Guy Murchie, with each breath you take into your body 10 sextillion atoms, and--owing to the wind's ceaseless circulation--over a year's time you have intimate relations with oxygen molecules exhaled by every person alive, as well as by everyone who ever lived. So says Rob. Go on. Click the weblink. Your Socratic brain says it's all hobbledy gobbledy fake-is-feel-good Gaia-one-earth predatory-soul-lending. But you want it. You want your future told like that forbidden fourth scoop of ice cream. You want it like the itch you can't scratch, the pimple you can't squeeze, the happy couple...at the other end of the bus. You look to your reflection between the gaps of the stick-on advertising on the windows of this double-decker. You try to make it look to an imaginary other people that you are staring romantically at the wonders of the old city when what you are really doing is making sure you are still there and that it is still the image of you that sits on this seat.

Interesting use of hyper-hyphenetics produces amalgams both adjectival and noun, depending on the reading. Spoken aloud, a previous sentence should rather end with "predata-metada-soul-lust-mortgage-lending" in order to complete the steps (of the word dance). Like this: "YOUR SoCRAtic BRAIN says IT'S all HObbledy GObbledy FAKE-is-FEEL-good GAIa-ONE-earth PREdata-MEtada-SOUL-lust-MORTgage-LENding." Can you tell I've spent hours researching Theodor Seuss Geisel and systems of scansion? But go on--click on some freewill star-logic. Believe a little. Lick that cone. Smear "nuss" flavor on your lips like lipstick. Then tread gleefully past the borders of your pink with this naughty wet like a greedy kiss on a wintry autumn night.

The news today, in sum:

adjustable rate mortages ninjas no income no jobs no assets multiple properties fraud involved buyers sellers brokers and appraisers devastated Cleveland people take loans they can't afford predatory lending been the subject of a lot of consumer side perspective inappropriate loans often through aggresive suits the borrower that they can't afford when it resets marketed consumer understands not all sub-prime lending. Give me examples of when you came across really shouldn't have taken them.

Accounting:

2 hours since I came back from breakfast and word count minus news transcription equalled 341. Damn. But I finished researching the Dada catholics and current Indo-feminist writers Marian and I talked about yesterday. And everything from Brahman-Atman to Spinoza to the Gnostics that I owed myself and evolution to know. Knowing is my drug (upper). Better than sex? I am giggly with joy that there is a literature festival here in September. In this exile, in the vastness of unwanted choice and budget travel survivalism, I feel worlds of desire colliding like tectonic plates in my skull. America, Europe, Singapore, haha what a size differential, high school, college, systems of thought, systems of status, dreams, hopes, fears, old, new, Old World, New World, culture, citation, dreams, always something to talk about, always something to do, freedom of being, freedom of belonging, heaviness of being, heaviness of belonging, laziness, comfort, appropriate, ugly duckling, paunch, wanting to be, never enough, thinking too much. Recreation and profession. Leisure, life, application, "usefulness". When he was around 45 (he retired when he was 49), my father took a wood-turning course in England where he learned to turn goblets and bowls and spoons.

Etymologies + the future begins now

The first line of my first book will probably be: I never like the first line of books. I am probably not alone in this thought or this unique idea. I am probably not the only contradiction. I am never quite as alone as I hate or would like to be.

Parenthetical [:] implicit in this stream of thought is the self-commentary that judges "being the only one" as signature of penultimate originality = genius + success, relegating to the trend of the creative industries ["The Industry"] the irony of the fact that success is not predicated on being The Only One, but rather to be consistently new, and the search to be consistently the Newest New is a continuous scavange for the unnamed oxymoron, or oxyoxymoron, or oxymoron-triple-squared. A string of impossibles and impossible connections. A pearl necklace fills the intestines. A hand talking to a hand talking to the table talking to the bedpost talking to the side of the right ribs. The bee-watcher and bee-watcher-watcher. Always looking for the source and criticizing simply by naming. Underscore through a stare. Highlight in the air an imaginary neon juice. Staple together a dollar bill to a kelpy medallion from the deep. "Stationery technique".

The first lines of books irritate me because of "the bump." It's like "the bump". The Bump is when a performer is "off-stage" (are you ever?), in the wings, probably, waiting for an entrance. He or she is an empty vessel. Thinking about drippy make-up and how the air-conditioning is too cold in the theatre. Taught not to disrupt the curtains with unnecessary movement standing next to it, said performer may shake some hands and feet, but otherwise stands pretty until: THE CUE. Ensuing THE CUE is THE BUMP. It looks, in caricature, a little like a still body standing on a travellator when it just starts at highest speed, but instead of being propelled down the body is flown upwards, all smiles, big jump or just fancy cut-slice-choreography.

So I want a little more "in". I read every line of the publication details page as if doing so will darken the house lights, shush the gossipers, blip the cell phone ringtones to silent, and open the curtains. Momentary blackness. Aaaaahh. Anonymity precedes image and imagination.

How to pace a reader's eyes in a novel except with an onslaught of words? Perhaps my first book will be a picture book, square, and large format; to turn every page takes the physical effort and detail of spoon to mouth.

Did you know that the plural of oxymoron is not oxymorons but oxymora?
Did you know it comes from late Greek oxymoron, from the neuter of oxymoros (pointedly foolish), from the Greek Oxys (sharp, keen) and moros (foolish)?

(Incase you're wondering, this latest series of musings comes from a fiction-novel-binge post-audition. I become 13 again when feeling unaccepted leads me to stuff stories into my eyes like grain to a mill at harvest. Escape!)

First lesson in the New University For Casual Science

THE SCIENCE OF APPRECIATION
(Roy may call it the god of small things)

Scribblings from over a grosse coffee on schlesisches strasse, berlin:
I feel like a really old person--my handwriting is as small as my voice is as small as my conservatism is as small and directly proportional to my interaction with people. Little.

Every new place I go is my newest favorite place, which is directly proportional to the number of cents I save on my always favorite items.

Is this ego? The pursuit of feeling good. Safety in quiet, warm things.

A new sort of travel writer--she doesn't go far from the door but has means in a few steps to assess the diachronics of out of body experience. Home is my body. Out of home equals out of body, just eyes. Coffee bean eyes.

Today, in world news, somebody apologized to somebody else for their ancestor eating the other's ancestor and the second somebody's ancestor massacring in revenge. I am still unclear about who apologized to whom -- he whose papa's pre-papa cannibalized an invader or he whose mission-filled pre-papa post-slaughtered.

This makes world news perhaps because not much else of relevance occurs in Fiji, or because we are fascinated with the taboo of cannibalism, or more likely because it is still important. My day excursion to the Museum for Ethnology highlights to me the somehow uncomfortable amassing of sacred, religious, daily, costume, and functional items belonging to far, far away peoples by Western men. And suddenly all of modernism falls into place--I see not New Ireland's Malagan effigies of the dead, but Albert Giacometti's Woman with her Throat Cut and Hands Holding The Void. An invisible synapse crossing a gap between areas of my brain snaps, slapping my forehead from the inside out: of course! The roots of German expressionism, surrealism, ja ja ja ...

You know, when you become preoccupied with documenting and collecting something for posterity you can entirely forget the content or significance of the material at hand. Have you noticed that? Just today, like when I decide to make a habit of copying the text from one of my favorite on-line periodicals, I have to read every article twice because I retained nothing. And even now, my day has not been magnified or changed by the information as usual, but I have a different sense of gratification because I "have" it, a salty gratification, salty because it always wants a little more ... it's a greedy and guilty amassing for the sake of a greater cause (FUTURE) ... rip of the butterfly wings off your harmonious experience and put it in a glass box. It's worth it. It's worth it to others too. But walking through such a museum is so much like conducting a speechless interview with the dead , I am glad I limited myself to the time limit of "free thursdays 4 hours before close" lest I petrify in the lostness of my own non-culture (exhibition hall: LOBBY, archiving of the instant present, those whose blood and genes come from the non-documented).

The human being as object -- can this mean that the person is not objectified?

PUBLIC ACTION --- PUBLICATION --- PUBLIC ACTION --- PRESERVATION

In non-scientific, casual observational study, I notice my thoughts questioning the nature of culture and slaughter in relation to practices of nourishment and strength. Video ethnographies at the museum display a sacrificing feast of pigs during the festival of the dead. All the village's men gather together holding strings and are presided over by wild priest dressed in fronds. He dances and sings around the men and around the mounds of black-skinned boar before the people can come together to hack at the sitting flesh. Butchery as a non-specialized practice.

In a non-scientific, casual observational study, I notice my thoughts questioning the nature of culture and slaughter in relation to practices of social order and public transportation. U-bahn excursions in Berlin are encased in boxy cars with row benches; in the Schnelle-bahn the seats even flip up flush to the windows, so everyone could be standing if necessary. Blame me and my pop cultured imagination. But the linear nature of transport design here does lend itself to shaping the human mass that gets transported within it as inhuman, as object, or cargo. Human disposability in correlation to the shaping of the public mass.

Just thoughts, but uncoincedental, or accidental.

Berlin Finds Me

THE EXPERT POSITION

My last days in Vienna were housed in the apartment of another dancer in my ProSeries, Nici (Nicole) Rutrecht. Nici is the one who, when working together on an improvisation assuming "The Expert Position" (that is, on anything, tying shoelaces, baking cakes, nuclear physics -- the point is just to assume the confidence of the position of expertise and apply it somewhere, relevant or not), gave an authentic lecture-demonstration of the expertise of getting lost. No, wait, pause a second--yes, that's funny. And sometimes tragic. But funny.

Not so much in her honor as for that expertise and propensity which we inherently share, I busied myself by (some would say, "lost myself in") burning the full "Twin Peaks" Season I from her collection (which also included full seasons of "Married With Children" and "The Golden Girls", proudly shown to me through squinted eyes at odd hours pre-bedtime !??!), working, cooking fishball dumpling noodle soup for my new Austrian friends, and getting myself lost in the Vienna woods.

BIS BALD IM WEINERWALD: See you soon in the Vienna Woods ...

At some point scaling a steep, non-marked patch of hill so dry it was like digging my toes and desperate hands into an endless vat of fine sand, I found myself thinking, "This is how random tourists end up on the front-page of the local paper, as they slide to their death on a random patch of non-marked hillside." I also thought that this is why they ALWAYS tell you NOT to go off the beaten path, and told myself as such non-too-infrequently as I made vertical sprints between trees and fallen trees that served as holds for my climb (yes, I bet they made a sound, and it probably went something like AAHHHHHH as they fell). End of story is that no bear ate me, I did not slip, and I only scared one Australian tourist at the church viewing platform atop the hill as I emerged from the bracken like a lost baby goat in a yellow t-shirt. Ja. Inventory for the lost includes many treasures, including a glorious Danube panorama from within privately owned vineyards, evidence of a yet unfinished house emblazoned with the title (JU)STill MARRIED (JU crossed out), hours of fun with weeds I still consider flowers (dandelions, those purple ones, those white ones, the little ones, you know), a brush with poison ivy or similar rash-plant, and many, many, many, many trees all by my lonesome. Dirt and rock beneath my feet, I couldn't have been more content.

(pictures pending)

WIEN-BERLIN LINIEN: 20:30-06:30 (with a drop-off in Dresden, 03:30)

Having agreed over the phone to sublet an empty room from a law student here by arriving at her doorstep off my 6:30 am overnight bus from Vienna, she sweetly and very, very apologetically tells me at a bleary-eyed 7:30am that a friend needed the extra room. Rather than being fully out of luck, however, I'm full of it-- she found me another room, this time in a 5-person converted warehouse loft wohnung (shared apartment). Although not completely finished (concrete floors in the shared space), it's totally cool (refurbished bathroom and a full-on bar countertop) and in a young, artsy area. And with a flexible exit date. My plans being so haphazard, that amount of flexibility is important ... I'd actually like to stay in the city longer, seeing as how impressed I am by it, and hopefully pick up a decent amount of German. As McDonald's would unfortunately say: "I'm lovin' it".

So I am here, trying to make some money-recoop working for Jeff (still, the health magazine) and getting recovered from the pure hedonism of the end-of-festival partying in Vienna in time for an audition starting Saturday. 6 hours a day for 8 days, I am really hoping to survive to the end, if not for work (but really, yes, please, for work) then for a decent workshop experience. The choreographer is young and upcoming but blazing on the scene -- American, educated in Amsterdam, and up till now based in New York, he's looking for 4-5 performers for a new piece contracted (for creation, I don't know about performances) here in Berlin from November to April 2008. I imagine he's now starting to get a lot of funding and commissions from European sources, hence the shift of base. Would I move? I hear your motherly worry (some of you). I don't know -- the audition is a two-way process.

But Berlin is nice. Very, very nice. A fresh mozzarella and tomato sandwich on a sunflower seed roll with a Segafredo cappuccino for 3.30 EU. Very high syllable-per-description to money ratio, which is, in terms of Quality Of Justification rather than Quality-Absolute (is there? is it not all perception?), a respectable ranking. These are the economics of budget travel.

The room I am in is lined with intelligent books, by authors the likes of which I have kept at the distance of at least a 7-foot pole since college days to protect me from my own hunger for obtuseness. Going to order an Englisch guidebook from the bookstore across from "Trendy Army Store" (I cannot help but wonder, and think I am right in wondering, if this crassly-named store is run by Chinese importers), I discover that B-Books is actually a relaxed and inviting storehouse for public and hobby intellectuals alike, with titles on every -tic and -ology and debate you can imagine. I'm in heaven!

The man I'm renting from is a German who looks and speaks like a Brit, has many leather-cased notebooks and 1950s paraphenalia to make him appear as such, and walked in on me by accident with no clothes on and broke the door handle doing so (the door handle often breaks, sometimes of its own accord, but not of its own will, rather like in response to world events or to the fluttering of a schmetterling's wings in Kyoto, for example. Schmetterling was one my first German words. It means "butterfly".) His name is Marian Kaiser; Kaiser's is the name of the local grocery store; I have never before thought to question the cultural origin of the 'Kaiser roll' before now; I am staying in his room; Marian Kaiser told me how to get to B-Books and also mentioned the 1 Euro Bookstore I found on my own where I found one thing worth buying, from which I will now quote in sign-off:

"If I am not mistaken, and if all the signs which are piling up are indications of a fresh upheaval in my life, well then, I am frightened. It isn't that my life is rich or weighty or precious, but I'm afraid of what is going to be born and take hold of me and carry me off -- I wonder where? Shall I have to go away again, leaving everything behind -- my research, my book? Shall I awake in a few months, a few years, exhausted, disappointed, in the midst of fresh ruins? I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late. ... if I had an iota of self-knowledge, now is the time when I ought to use it."
Sartre, Nausea, entry dated Monday, 29 January 1932

I am scared.  I'm scared that I will end up loving people who make me feel good or better about myself and not because I actually love a person significantly, with deep love, with anything deeper than what I feel for almost all people when I give them the time of day.  I am almost constantly in love with all people -- it's probably why I avoid too many of them at one time.  Because I can't love a mass of individuals I cannot distinguish one from the other.

A great practice to communicate with a distant someone your lived experience and environment is simply to draw it for them -- let your eyes become hands, let your mouthings become drawings, and paint.  Touch everything you see as a thing, as a thing reflecting light; as a space, as a thing weighting space; as a thing in relation to ... other things.  This is a gift.  This is a shower of word blessings.  This is loving.

Can I forget?  How can I forget?  How could I forget?  Touch.  It's heat.  It's difference.  It's extra-ordinary.  It's extra-daily.  It's not 2-for-1 discount, but it's a deal.  It's definitely a bonus.
You lucky bastard.

Why feel this deep, why not feel, why I not feel, why I not feel?  Why not feel?  Why I not feel? why not?  Why not feel?  Why not?

I don't miss you, but I have you in the clutch of your imagination and in the gleam of my sweet teeth. Stay sweet.  It's daily.  But it's a plus.  You may stay, but don't touch.

I have a wide range but very little cognizance or control over modulation.  Something to add into the practice of daily art-love-making.  Yeah. 

John and Mel Storm Vienna

In the spirit of the Extended Lee Family Fun-Filled Jam-Packed Holiday Itineraries, John and Mel continue the legacy of aggressive tourist ambition. THIS one entry is definitely for the family (rated G). With just 42 hours from meet-up to send-off, here is our play-by-play:

Noon, July 18th 2007, Sudbanhof South train station, VIENNA: It’s been a year since we last saw each other! Hello!

First on the agenda is to introduce John to what on earth Mel is doing here. We walk through the Schweizer garten park towards a vast complex of red brick barracks built post-1848 called Arsenal. Housed inside of military warehouses converted into dance studios for the Impulstanz contemporary dance festival and workshops Mel is here to participate in, classes were in spaces large enough to accommodate observers, and John got a good earful of Mel’s comments and criticisms while watching what was going on. Since it adds to our checklist, it will be worthwhile to mention that we at least walked past the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Museum of Military History), and were tickled pink by the objects of warcraft and destruction (such as fighter jets, helicopters, and dud spuds) that surrounded us during our grassy lunch picnic on Arsenal grounds.

Below: An interview with artists being held inside one of the Arsenal converted dance studios.


We had every intention to visit the Belvedere Royal Palaces and gardens, considered some of the finest secular Baroque buildings in all of the Europe, also housing the largest collection of Klimt paintings. We fail. We sit beneath shady trees eating a chocolate croissant and topfen country-cheese pastry instead. Hoorah!

It’s hitting 38 degrees and we’re probably already sunstroked. Heading home to the apartment Mel is subletting in the quiet fourth district, we manage a quick shower and snack before setting off again, this time with flatmate Neal Jagtap (an Indian-American law student interning for the UN) to introduce both gentlemen to the tanz-theater arts scene.

We see most of Vienna’s majestic Ringstrasse buildings—such as the Parliament, Opera House, Rathaus (Town Hall) and boulevard thoroughfares—through the windows (and against a foreground of sticky armpits of fellow passengers) on the tram up towards Schauspielhaus theatre, where we meet up with Mel’s choreographer friend from Slovakia/New York, Palo.

John orders both a Pepsi and a local wheat beer, with just 20 minutes to curtain. It’s hot.

The theater’s red foyer embraces us and the flood of eager viewers (it’s platz frei) with floor-to-ceiling light boxes displaying images of shag carpet. Art. We secure somewhat central seats and are vigorously assaulted by what is perhaps the most difficult introduction to Europe’s tanz theatre scene I could have imagined for both Neal and John—French choreographer Alain Platel’s duet for acclaimed performers Benjamin Verdonck and Fumiya Ikeda interpreting a children’s book narrating the lives of Congolese child soldiers: “Nine Finger”. Awed by relentless virtuosity and raw emotion, we detox post-show with a petition signing, animated discussion, and another round of drinks.

Below: John, Palo, and Neal on the tram


Tram-hiking ourselves towards the city center, we stop for street food as only the late-night starving and reckless do. Neal receives a 3 Euro hot dog embedded in a hollowed bun, and reveals that this is the infamous Käsekrainer, or, cheese-filled sausage. Seeing as how the guidebook comments that this snack is “fondly referred to as an Eitriger, or pus-stick”, who could resist? Its excessively mouth-coating oil and cheesiness dressed with ketchup and mustard, we continue the heart attack with sandwiches from the doner kebab stand—-very salty, and in buns instead of pitas. Walking home, we pause by a public art exhibit outside the Kunsthalle Project Space where letters and words made from water droplets fall from a 20ft high truss, downlit by hanging lights to make them visible against the night sky. Art.

Day 2 (Hour since arrival: 21) begins with fruit, cereal, yogurt, and an iPhoto show-and-tell of this-is-my-life and here-are-my-friends and here’s-Sue-and-Duleesha’s and oh-my-it-has-been-a-year-since-the-wedding-how-time-flies. Phone call with Pat and Soo-Jin--it’s their 32nd anniversary! John tries out some of Mel’s stretches and thinks they’re quite painful. We get out of the house and walk towards the center of the city (Innere Stadt), about 15 minutes away. We marvel at Viennese architecture and eat ice cream along the way.

Below: Vienna street





Below: St. Stephen's Cathedral

St Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephansdom), according to a friend who has been a regular summer visitor to Vienna, has been covered by scaffolding for the last five years. Unsheathed this year, we beheld it’s yellow-green-black tiled roof in awe, both from the ground and from up the 343 steps of the cathedral’s 450ft-high south tower (completed in 1433 after 74 years of work). It has undergone numerous phases of building and repair due to the ravages of the Turks, the Napoleonic French and the Allies. We descend, dizzy and counting, to the happy embrace of Ottokringer beers served by a not-so-happy waiter dressed in too-high pants and alotta hair grease.






Tea-time. Dinner-time. When?!?! Now!!! Hungry. Hot. We manage to trudge 200m to taste the indistinguishable eggy-topped rye bread canapés at “must-visit” Trzeniewski, fueling the onward mission to subterranean Zwölf Apostelkeller, said to be “the sort of place your distant Viennese Uncle Fritz would take you…the labyrinth of vaulted Gothic and early baroque cellars have a Harry Potter-esque charm.” Both John and Mel have neither read nor watched nor desired Harry Potter, which perhaps is what inspired us to make the epic journey to what turns out to be a strange, empty, and unfriendly baroque dining hall.




We order piles of “local” food, no thanks to the eager translation of our green-vested and mean waiter, “Herr. Leopold.” (Mel is convinced that all these old waiters, as hoary as the gothic facades themselves, must switch nametags every other day to the point where they no longer know their given names.) Over the course of a couple hours of tremendously rude service, we manage to make Uncle Leopold smile and his gargoyle gang snicker in the corner by asking him to take a photo with us ... not OF us ... WITH us. Here we are, a happy family. Then John and Mel take all the cutlery with the extra rolls of bread we didn't ask for but that costed us a Euro each.

Below: John being a Gothic beast. And Uncle Fritz, uh, Leopold. And us.




A gelato cone at the wildly popular Zanoni & Zanoni finished us off and gave spring to our steps heading back home for a little rest before this evening’s performance.

Near home on Fleischmanngasse, we sit outside with cold homemade ices teas, laughing at the seating in a nearby public space being divided into individual seats instead of benches until we realize that this may be to prevent homeless people from sleeping there.

Hoofing it to meet friends for the performance at Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz, we pass by the masterpiece of baroque architecture, Karlskirche (Karl’s Church), with hints of Roman and Byzantine on the exterior pillars depicting the life of Emperor Karl VI in spiraling carved stone relief, for about 5 seconds. Of equal curiosity are the young people lazing on orange beach chairs at the reggae bar facing. This is the post-modern. This is progress!

We proceed to watch the acclaimed Christian Rizzo's new piece for a solo dancer, "Comme crane, comme culte", which translates roughly to "Like cranium, like worship", which translates in the viewing of it, roughly to "Like a load of poop on my 12 Euro ticket". Again with the lovely Palo and a more neurotic American dancer friend, Mike, we try to hob-nob but very ungraciously drink out of other people's abandoned bottles of water until we ourselves hobble out to find better, cheaper refreshment. The day ends back at Stephensplatz with a milkshake AND ANOTHER serving of ice cream. It's. Still. Hot.


...John leaves to the airport at 6am the next morning. We clocked 42 hours, 2 dance-theatre performances, 2 weiners, 12 scoops of ice cream, 1 major tourist attraction, and 4 new friends (including Uncle Karl. Uh, Leopold). Lots of love to the rest of the family -- wish you were here! (but then we wouldn't have gotten away with just 1 major tourist attraction!)

The Home Beacon

...is beaming. I just watched a melodramatic YouTube video promo for Singaporean theatre company Wild Rice's latest production: "not just a gay play, a great play". Why are all these gay men so attractive. Why was I not born a gay man so I could fit in. That's partially a joke (the hashed and rehashed: "I think I am a homosexual man trapped inside a heterosexual woman's body"). But any Singaporean will tell you the truth about economies of scale. And I am tired of being Foreign Fetish Beauty Oddity. How strongly my feelings towards repatriation bind me to do it is sadly proportional to how I perceive my prospects of mating.

Ni Hao, Ni Hao

Walking along city streets in New York City, a young woman alone will be accosted by appreciative if not prying eyes and the occasional grunt of approval. When the man dares speak, you will hear any range of salutations, such as:
"Sexy!" (in the declarative, rather than the nominative)
"You go the gym a lot?"
"Can I talk to you for a second?"
"Hey Mama"
"Hello Asia"
"Hello Korea, Japan"
Most often you will hear these towards the direction of south-by-south-west (your blind spot), since man in question is stationary (sitting on a stoop, loitering outside the bodega, riding in slow circles on his bike in front of a group of boys on the stoop or a group of boys outside the bodega) and you are moving (being productive, trying to achieve, having a place to go, people to assist, and a future to secure). If said man has been in the approach himself moving at a constant velocity, he would have decelerated in order to appreciate you in totality (front-view and back) before making his declarative assessment. So, usually, you hear these things in passing.

With relative frequency you will hear a more musky, inviting voice tell you "God bless you", either from the old and/or pious, usually accompanied by a gentle shaking or rocking of the head in as much wonderment and awe as I imagine myself reserving for the Grand Canyon.

And, depending on your neighbourhood, you may actually be approached with a run and a wave, almost as if you were a taxi cab, much as if the urgency of the appeal will make you stop and give him the time of day. Unfortunately this is often the case, since it is an appeal to your basic humanity (does he need help? did I drop something? no shit, is this guy going to get himself run over?).

"Hey, where are you from?"
(I am looking for coconut milk, this guy followed me into the store)
"You from, what, Thailand?"
(I have not made eye contact) "No."
"Vietnam?"
"No."
"Korea?"
"No." (why do they have preserved olives and capers and yet no coconut milk?)
"Japan?"
"No."
"China?"
(I accrue good karma for the sake of finding my coconut milk, which is actually so I can complete the dessert I have already half made for my date later that night with Barry--I look him in the eye, and smile. I've been through this shelf already!)
"C'mon, where you from?"
(My Asian Mystery is sending ninja daggers through his flat-flapped cap and into his frontal cortex: I AM NOT INTERESTED)
"Singapore."
"Oh, wow, Singapore, huh ... "

Etc. He will ask me my name. I will sigh. I will tell him. He will lean his torso backward, tilted, while his arm lightly pokes my shoulder when he propositions me with an invitation to "can I see you again". I will smile. I will say no. He will ask why. He will ask me if I'm married. I will continue my hunt for dessert ingredients. I am not even paying half a mind.

This is not an isolated incident, for me or any woman of any race. Some have it worse. Some have it dirtier. Some have it with gleaming, rose-tinted reverence for the Zen Buddha Jasmine Yangtze aura they share with the stock-photoed women in the back of the Village Voice.

And frankly, I like it. Sometimes. It's affirming. It's challenging. It's a game. It's non-invasive. It's Brooklyn. It's Manhattan. It's b-boys of the 70s going flip and ape-shit over Bruce Lee movies when Canal Street was still as mixed as Lower East Side is now and Chinatown's gangs were Latin and Black too. This much I know from the weird white guy who likes to narrate this part of history in the Chinese bakery on the corner of Canal and Center Streets and which sells a scallion roll for only 60 cents.

I raise all this in order to raise how it feels different to be a young Asian woman alone here in Budapest and Vienna so far. I'm sorry, but they're Germanic. This area is the one that is fueling the sex trade and mail-order-bride industries. And if we had children, they wouldn't even have crimped hair or caramel skin. And there is always always the question of pure form, which should emphasize graceful and efficient execution (is she into men? is she into me? will she give me a smile? will she give me a number? can i at least watch her walk away and break even in effort-reward?), rather than knee-jerk mental ball-scratching (if I yell at her in what I know of her native tongue maybe she will uh Hey! Ni hao! Ni hao! Shay shay! Hallo!).

Because they don't say much, it's actually harder to tell whether or not to be on your guard. Because one assumes a general Viennese prejudice, it's unclear if the isolated and very, very odd salutation you do get directly are candidly respectful or shielding some deeper contempt. Because the men here who holler are old and wrinkled and have dirt beneath their fingernails and you know would have tickets to Phuket in a heartbeat if only they got enough on their unemployment. And this is all within the central districts of town. Mike lives up in the 22nd and talks about how the prostitutes on his walk home make fun of his gait and cackle and holler.

One thousand and twenty-four. That took a little over an hour, including research.

This one's for the family

So I meant it, earlier, so, about my parents. My parents have been married for 32 years and 2 days. That is an approximation of 11,682 days of effort, struggle, partnership, shared experience. I have been involved in approximately 76% of this union. Um ... since birth, that is. I calculated.

It may seem odd to many who have known me over the years as being somewhat older than my age or "world weary" (citing a report card circa 1996) that I continue to obsess and confess about parents, family, relationship, searching, personal hygiene, hope, love, and other vulgarities, with such adolescent naivete, relish, and sense of righteous subjectivity. But as I meet the next generation of promising upstarts from Swarthmore, for example, and am asked by this bright buggy-eyed youngling with a Corona in his hand "Woah-what does it feel like to be 25?!?" I happily answer: "right. fitting. Now please remove me from your active short-term memory because I no longer need to abide by the rules of the diverse social laboratory that was our shared environment, as much as I treasure the memory, as much as it has enabled me and allowed me to grow. Please, no--really, you still have acne, a weak palate, and are embarrassing me with your sense of entitlement." I've been wanting to be 25 since I was 18. I think I am finally in my own skin. I think I finally fit. I think I have finally relinquished being "set apart". I am so lonely "set apart". I can finally cling to a status quo of pop cultural references and haphazard knowledges that I like. As I've been perhaps not so much proudly as cognizantly telling as many people as I can obtain a first impression with: "It's taken me 25 years of hard soul work to become as superficial as I am right now."

So my parents, yes, my parents have made a name for themselves, as a unit, as world travellers. They have made a fantastic team in this way, good representatives of our national and familial culture to others, and faithful, if not aggressively devoted opportunists of other cultures and histories. No stone unturned, I believe the phrase goes. No passport stamp uncoveted. Now, don't laugh -- you, too, shed an inner tear with the consolidation of the European states. You, too, are a collector of sites and I-was-heres. And surely I've written about this, too, that is, the ontological premise for the tourist photograph. Maybe this blog. Maybe my harddrive. Vintage: 2006. This is turning out to be a season of theme-making. I am in my skin. I am beginning to make sense.

So my parents, my parents, yes, so dedicated are their walking boots that when calling to wish them a happy anniversary in the company of visiting cousin John, I was greeted sooner with a "what are you doing in the house, why aren't you showing John the city?" than I could deliver a hung-over "but yesterday..." itinerary check-in. There is potentiality in everything. There is not a second to waste. They taught me that. They taught me to live like that. I mean it. I celebrate it!

My parents have a love of the itinerary. OK, to be fair, my mother has a love of the new (experiences, sites, nature, currencies, bank notes of these currencies, all of which require a solid itinerary to discover and execute/amass), while my father has a love of organization, and receives a performative joy from displaying organizational prowess, i.e. the tabulated, shaded, bold-typed, underlined, and italicized Microsoft Word itinerary. Somersaults, high kicks, and the triple-axel. My parents have a love of the itinerary. In honor of which, I am producing one, in retrospective (since all days are by nature full, it being very difficult or very impoverished to have NOTHING to do and to do nothing--and I say this with no small recognition of human beings who do, by injustice or unfortunate circumstance, live this way), of my 42 hours with dear cousin John Davys in Vienna. But for the sake of extended family who may have an interest in this dedicatedly EVENT-driven and NARRATIVE-based account and who yet may be unsympathetic to the otherwise circumloquacious Musings of my Um -- we start a new page.

Addendum: Owned by Google

So there is a slight disadvantage to this dashboard widget, which is that it has no scroll sidebar, so the more I write the more I push the window down past the edges of my screen, thereby losing my capability to press "Publish".  It is also impossible for me to move the window higher into the vertical nether reaches past my weather report and yet-unsullied Stickie.  It appears that I will be forced to become much more journalistic (succinct and/or episodic -- given my continuing verbosity, as well as gradiose ambition to hit 1000 words a day, I have a premonition that it will be the latter. Incidentally, if I could program/edit programs, I would make a filter that would play a sound effect of choice at the word count threshold of one's choosing, which may or may not be attached to another sound resembling a typewriter "ding" everytime you hit "enter". This, alongside my beloved vision of creating the web server ".dot", and the subsequent mother host site of "dot.dot", is among many in my archive of Unreasonable and Wayward Dreams.  I read on the plane to Budapest about somebody who dropped their career in ___XXX___ financial promise ___ in order to become "an inventor".  I lie. It wasn't on the airplane. It was in something almost as non-descript as an airplane magazine. And it's going to irritate me for a long time--longer even, than my eyeballs are going to irritate me right now since I forgot to take them out before jumping into bed with my thoughts and keyboard--that I can't remember.What I can remember is that I thought to myself, "God, what about her parents. Hard enough saying 'I'm going to take the higher path (if you flip the world upside down) and be an artist."  Imagine if I came home and said, 'Hey Ma, I'm gonna be an inventor." Although this would add to my list of -TORs I could become (reference: What's In A Name? This blog, 2005 somewhere). I am still in parenthesis.  Who was it that coined "parenthetical thinking?" Was it the same schmuck that talked about "rhizomatic thinking"? "Schmuck, in German, means jewellery.  Speaking of parents ... 

Owned by Google

I have finally discovered how to put Blogger on my dashboard. No more logging in; no more firefox fatigue.  It will probably also make my musings a LOT more stream of consciousness than they have ever been, except then I suppose I don't feel as motivated by the sense of "common purpose" or "generalized, anonymous audience" as I do when doing this live.  Sort of like how you work out with less intensity with weights at home than if you go to the gym. Lifestyle, it seems, is all about whether or not you achieve the feeling of purpose and production than the end point or product itself.  Collectivity, it seems, is largely about Every Body doing their own tasks but in constant presence of others doing the same.  "I want participatory privacy, in public," I confess to my friend Mike on 7/17, "which I suppose is like ten people taking shits in ten individual port-a-potties made of one-way glass."

Mike is also here for the festival, and has been here 4 or 5 times. He is a delightful handful of pining gay adolescence and soulful cerebrality.He thinks he has Asperger's Syndrome, a nervous system disorder related to autism and yes, which would explain a number of his behaviours. He proposed tonight to stage a solo for Every Life Lost In The Iraq War / Every Measure Of Land Lost From The Melting Of The Ice Caps / Every Bureaucrat Profited From THe Wastages Of Modern Living / etc.  I am adlibbing a little. But in the bathroom later, I am thinking this is a great idea. Can we make it a global relay of very mild ambition.  Can we do it humbly and authentically. Because I wouldn't want to aim to make of it another hype-generating do-gooder Live Aid. But it is something "to do" in the face of individual helplessness.  

Vertigo + The Fake of The Real

I am standing on the diving board. I feel the spring beneath my heels. I feel my thighs kissing. I feel spandex, pinching. Ok. So take it off. I am naked. I am feeling a draft. I am not looking down. I am feeling the expanse. The expanse is inviting while frightening; the horizon is far away yet so encroaching I can almost grab it like cotton balls and stuff it into my mouth. I am a dummy. I am a cotton-stuffed dummy, held together by PVC-pipe hollow bone and layers of nylon pantyhose. My blood is inert and my nervous system is knotted together every 10 inches. I can barely stand.

If you climbed the ladder and you are going to fall off the board anyway, wouldn't you prefer to jump?

******

AUDITION DETOX, _______ ___ Company, New York

What is this bad taste in my mouth?

I make all rounds to the end of the day, not even sure of what they're looking for, not even sure if this process is reflective of how they work. How they work is what I really came here to figure out--that I can give them something is for me not a question. But that is precisely the problem. I know I can give, and those who can give me work know I can give. They just don't see me giving. And I won't budge until I know they are worth my effort. And I go home alone.

They want me to come in for their workshop and for their rehearsal process. I am actually not resistant to the idea, I just don't have the time until after my show on the 18th. Maybe the bad taste in my mouth is just an unpetted ego that would have preferred an unambiguous "YES". Good art feels like that: YES. What you can say, YES to. Your eyes widen and you shake your head in shock. Or your cheeks lift and you nod your head and smile on one side of your face. YES. YES. IT FITS. IT'S RIGHT. IT FEELS GOOD. I am patiently waiting for a time when the YES is clear and the REST outside of the YES just rests aside.

Am I worried? Also yes, the other yes, the tremulous "do you need to go potty?" yes. As a side note, that's actually not true -- we falsely assign to children the role of shyness, when I've recently observed a live specimen display the greatest enthusiasm for pulling her pants down and tinkling in a bowl big enough to be her bathtub. Only hers is an unabashed "YESH." She has a constant stuffed nose. Going on. I am worried because I am worried that I am not actually authentic. I have another internal haunting dogma that states that if I am not truly authentic in this line of work for which I sacrifice all sorts of unspecified material glory which my above-average IQ could command, I might as well be fully false and wear high heels to work. But I know (I squint my eyes and raise an eyebrow: "I know", what a problematic phrase)...I know the underlying presumption of my potential for commercial greatness is only the smoke blowing from a business-aristocrat's pipe. That's work and sacrifice too. And besides, I'd get fat. At the end of the day, oh my vanity becomes my salvation.

So underlying this worry of inauthenticity is the rudeness of being presumed disingenuous. "What is she hiding?", I hear them ask through secondhand gossip from my friend who dances with the company. I'm not hiding anything. "Those who get to know Pisces-Aries cusp people better learn not to look for deeper reasons or ulterior motives behind their actions. Those born on this primal cusp resent being analyzed, feeling either rightly or wrongly that what they so openly present to the world is exactly what they really are--no more, no less," says my magic Birthday Bible. Tell me what I'm actually saying to you, I hear myself think, please stop telling me what you think I'm *not* saying because I say things differently from you.

Underlying this confrontation with perception and reality is my confusion about trust. Why should I trust the environment of this room--which is by nature of being an audition, competitive and judgmental (professionally, not personally)--to be "the real me"? I AM being the real me. The real me in reaction to this circumstance. There IS no other me than this in this particular moment. You want the real me then see me in the contexts of my choosing. You want the real me to look like what you have discovered is the real you, then hire me and pattern me into embodying yourselves. I am hiding nothing save my disenchantment with this process.

The daughter of a Taurus bull-queen shouldn't be surprised at her own stubbornness. "Make me trust you, show me I can trust you, and I will melt for you like the bubbling brook. Until then, it is winter in wonderland and I am sheeths of ice protecting the river beneath." Is it me? Am I the problem?

Why I am allowing myself this ridiculous obsession and sense of affrontery is because it makes me question what is it I actually have to offer the stage (to direct the progression of my own choreography, which is coming into being and not quite in its own skin yet) as well as to question my lifestyle and love choices, which are still problematic, because there is much at odds with itself, my sex in particular (both noun and verb).

I walked away yesterday with pleasurable advice: she (one of the pair of choreographers) pulls me away for a private counsulation in between rounds: "Listen. Relax. Just relax, Ok? Go with your groove. You have a groove, right? Dance from your pussy, and your groove. Ok?" I smile. The thought makes me happy. I am happiest when I am dancing from my pussy (pelvis). I like concrete advice. I was very pleased with this advice. I think I open my (upper) mouth so much it drowns out my lateral lips, below. But I am tired. I don't like being told what to do. I am tired of being told how to be. And I quickly shift from awkward to frustrated to pissed to disenchanted as we repeat and refine this phrase that is confining, not freeing, that is dramatic by nature but asked to be nonchalant (the aesthetics of cool or the cooled). As if nonchalant is truly feeling. I am not so much into this version of sexy. My sexy does not read this way. My sexy is hot and rompy, not parched and longing. My sexy I feel should be me at my heights, and my questions and my discoveries, not at my being untouchable.

But yes (the confessional yes, the yes-with-a-sigh, the exhaled yes (if there was an even lower case than lower case, I would have used it to write this "yes"), it is true that I am not getting my groove on. I am not getting turned on. Is it me?

I am melodramatic. Yes, melodrama is a mechanism. It is perhaps a release (it feels good, it feels recognizable), it is perhaps a wall (blocking the emergence of the unrecognizable, which is most exciting of all. The monster, unleashed). Perhaps it is cheap. Or is that just another word for accessible? [Child's face, perplexed more than tormented, slapped repeatedly across the face, back and forth, back and forth] Accessibility is a big question I am facing in the direction of my own work. What level of inaccessibility will I accept of myself?

Ultimately, I suppose, the presumption has to be: to be accepted on your own terms. In your own choice of representation. And it will *always be* representation. I am concluding as I write this (fighting to understand this bad after-taste of their process with this desire for the underpinnings of their aesthetic, regardless of results): Performance that is an act of intense private intimacy in public is peep show, violation, or church. Peep show, because the choreography is masturbatory. Violation, because the only way to really share would be to make love to the audience (which presumes consent at purchase of ticket, not at penetration; yet how do they say no?). Church, because it demands complicity. I told myself as much when I realized that this was what was happening at my residency at Nassau -- "if you want a parish, then get a church." I was becoming such a zealot for my cause of lostness in the ambiguity of the making that I lost sight of the theatrical form as presentation, possibly entertainment, possibly treatise, possibly invitation.

I have seen this company's work at many stages, for the sake of my friend that dances for them and who I have seen both grow and be stunted through their work (she will never admit to the latter because she will never realize it - she too is seduced by the ferociousness and exclusivity of their message that it is blinding. The Fake of the demand of the Real -- be authentic, be authentic MY way). They want the authenticity so badly I think that the choreography suffers. The movement is not movement, it is shape to shape, image to image, but there is no punctuation. They want "thick", so they do not want it to stop. So then mustn't that be movement? Their desire for speed does not allow much punctuation, or, at least, they have not learned how to ask for what sort of phrasing they want besides to copy the man delivering the phrase.

In terms of audition functionality, it is a lot to ask of bodies and minds that are trained to create contiguity of disparate elements (to seek efficiency, connection, fluidity, and rhythm = harmony) to abandon it for function which is not really function. For example, they did not score "throw"; instead, inside of this choppy phrase, they choreographed a move of "throwing" that suits ___'s body but that is still decorative since the energy generated is not used towards any end (falling, catching, bouncing, reverbing). The move does nothing but show off the skills that ____ has. That is the conceit of dance. But then they keep asking for us to "just throw". Lie.

It is a lot to ask anyone you barely know to just "be themselves" when being oneself is often in relation to task and environment and the environment here is chaotic (impulse=paralysis). It is difficult to want people to want, it is perhaps harder to want people to be people and then to want them to be your ideal version of people; or the version of people you have fought to become (but not every-people has your fight, nor have you theirs). It is, if you ask me, a little disingenuous to be asking for something specific (a phrase) and then asking people not to be stressed. Of course they are stressed. They are learning. Learning new things is stressful, it is survivalist. If you want it to be pleasurable, stop asking for such specific things.

I am wary of Emotional Evangelicals and Glory-by-Guilt-mongers in general. I hid my true identity from them until I could escape them in their holy houses. I hid my voice from them while mouthing their songs. I fell down and raised hands, hoping the gesture would give me their meaning, because Theirs was The Only Meaning. The more I am detoxing from this experience (and my many experiences in the studio with various makers) the more I am realizing that the only way to fight this bad taste is to work to represent myself the way I see fit. I do not fit. One size does not fit all. "Sorry Ma'am, we don't carry large". I have to create for me and for those who will shape me to becoming that which I aspire to be.

Dive!