home | bio | portfolio | walkabout | links | email
- VERMILION's TEXT -
[Communique: 04.29.02]
Apropos of my thought-debate with Margalit, below:
Last night I went to a gathering of the tribe known as the Fruity Jews. (They don't call themselves that.) There were about twenty people there, in a nice apartment on the 24th floor of a hi-rise on Central Park West. The room was full of something called "love." I was greeted very warmly by strangers, hugged and given deep eye stares. Everyone had gathered in a circle to take turns talking about themselves. There was much use of the words "special" and "connection." The woman who had brought me there pointed out various people to me across the room. She called them "real minds" and told me of their many amazing exploits in film and activism. I believe her. I'm sure there were some great people there. I'm sure everyone there does good work. But there was also something in the air that I didn't trust.
As if love were so easy! As if it were so easy to connect to everything! Some of it felt genuine, but there was also a definite shallow side to the "love" being tossed about. I think it's great to proclaim that you love everyone, as long as you also understand the vast and impenetrable impossibility of such an ideal. But to make this claim without irony seems to me very self-centered and perhaps even dangerous, because it washes out all our differences. It's nice to feel solidarity with strangers having rough lives, but you have to also remember how little you know of them. That's why I had to reject some of the "love" I was offered, thinking: "How dare you claim to love me when you don't even know me?"
Deep here is the question of *unconditional* love. On the one hand, unconditional love is the most miraculous and beautiful gift that can be given. On the other hand, unconditional love has nothing finally to do with the person who receives it. Real love is conditional upon who you are. That makes us fear its loss if we should change, but it also gives it meaning. Thus the conditionality of love is a kind of mortality.
I believe in that place where love is everywhere and free and unconditional. I believe in it very strongly. But I also believe in a separation between that place and the place of everyday life. To reach that place requires travel of some kind. I do not believe that the goal is to bring wild liminal ecstasy into every moment of our lives. Yes, the subway can be a holy vessel, and one can have transformative experiences there. But if the subway and the streets and the buildings of New York are *always* "holy vessels" and *every moment* is a "transformative experience," then I am no longer interested. I would call this a sense of modesty. Modesty not as some old Victorian repression, but as a true wolf of our world today. There is something gross to me about spreading liminal ecstasy and love so thin. Ecstasy and love -- these are cruel miracles; they are not to be trifled with.
[Communique: 04.28.02]
"This play is built on rules and ideas."
- Yelena, on "I'm So Sorry For Everything."
I love Yelena. I want to work with her for a while and learn from her. I want to work with her after that and challenge each other. I want to be her colleague forever.
Yet already I begin to see our differences. In the end, I find this work is too intellectual. The performers and their characters, the whole world of it in fact, is fully alienated from their bodies and from their emotions. This is the path begun by the Wooster Group and continued by people like Richard Maxwell. Yelena takes it to new, even deeper places. And this is important work, because it is about the state of our society: these days we are indeed fully alienated from our bodies and from our emotions. But this is not where I want to go with theater.
Tomorrow: The Fruity Jews, Episode I.
[Communique: 04.26.02]
Reading:
"Views in Review" by Avishai Margalit (1998).
This book (about politics and culture in Israel) is effecting me quite deeply. Israel is a place where mythical and political histories entwine fiercely, but it is only forgetfulness that makes us blind to the same effects in the United States.
Today on the bus I had strong visions into the hearts of strangers. Each one seemed to be wearing their deepest soul upon their sleeve. The smiling toothless woman, the inspired chiseled woman, the tan-skinned deep blue-eyed Scandenavian, the two little Jewish boys who remind me of me & another me, their tired latina babysitter, and the little girl whose punk side will soon be stolen...
And now for some moral and aesthetic philosophy:
Sentimentality in certain situations is more than just vulgar silliness; it can also be evil... One group of emotions, among which are nostalgia, self-righteousness, melodrama, and of course sentimentality, has in common a peculiar kind of distortion of reality that facilitates uninhibited indulgence in a strong feeling... Nostalgia distorts the past through idealization, in order to indulge in tenderness. Self-righteousness distorts the moral character of others in order to indulge in "holy wrath" against them... Sentimentality distorts reality by turning the object (or event) represented into an object of complete innocence, in order to indulge in feelings of sympathy...
- Avishai Margalit
I understand and agree with his demand for complex truthfulness, but I also cannot accept anti-emotional hyper-ironic reductionism. For all its terrifying danger, sentimentality is also the source of inspiration, of everything that transcends the mundane, and of what I love most in the world. Like technology and like myth, I can only agree to be careful with my leanings toward sentimentality. I cannot reject it entirely, no matter how cruel and capricious I know it can be. It is true that unchecked sentimentality leads to the most terrifying ahistoricism, the kind that can easily be placed in the service of the most evil impulse, that of genocide. On other hand, what is a community with no myths, no nostalgia, and no utopian visions -- in short, with no romantic side of any kind?
The best myths are not false, but true. They are true in a different way than the way in which facts are true. They are the kind of truth that one approaches when one tries to understand the impossible. They are an approach to the indescribably numinous. The past was beautiful -- that is a fact. The past is gone and cannot be recovered -- that is also a fact. The past therefore held within it a certain gem, a certain unique glory, that will never be present again. To feel the loss of yesterday to its depth, despite the parallel truth that today is also beautiful and will also be lost -- that is nostalgia.
There is much more to be worked out here. I do believe that the most beautiful and most complete truth is to be found through a kind of conscious not-forgetting. One may not beautify the past by ignoring the future, any more than one may delude oneself about the present by disregarding the past. Yet it is not enough to aim for an infinitely large perspective in which all experience is levelled. Nostalgia, for me, is a very noble emotion, for it brings with it implications of ultimate transience, mortality, and -- most essentially -- love.
Joanne says that myth only hinders us from genuine love, which embraces the true complexity of the other. I say that all love is myth, but the myth is true.
Rilke writes that love is consent to the existence of an authentic otherness. If the consent is to be meaningful, then we must come to really know that person. But if the otherness is authentic, then that person can never be completely known to us. Their complex inner life must be understood as it really is, not as we imagine it to be. On the other hand, their deepest heart will always remain hidden, and so must be imagined. The imaginary heart of our lover is always a myth -- but when we say that love can be genuine, we mean that this myth can be a true one.
[Communique: 04.25.02]
"Like many great dramatists, Ibsen helped to form his own tongue."
- Roland Huntford
Is it still possible to do that? Certainly artists and theorists coin new words all the time, but this is something greater. To condense and solidify whole vocabularies and grammars, so that not just a few words but a whole era or dialect of a given language can be seen on display in one person's body of work. I can imagine such a thing, even these days. America could use a real vernacular, one that is not so directly associated with a subculture as black "slang" or postmodern "jargon." A broad, cosmopolitan, American language. And if this language truly represented Americans rather than the "American culture" we find on TV, then would its viral spread not be deeply radical? The idea reminds me of Walt Whitman somehow. Could his "Song of Myself" in any way be said to accomplish any of this?
[Communique: 04.23.02]
We began to argue. Should we dig a hole in the backyard and bury the old man in it, pack our few things and leave the house under false names for secret destinations ... or should we throw ourselves upon the law? ... While we were discussing these things, we heard a low rumble in the distance. We thought it was thunder but when [we] turned on the radio to find out what time it was, only martial music was playing and the newsflash informed us that the coup had taken place; the army was in power, as if this was not home but a banana republic. They were encountering some resistance in the north but were rapidly crushing it. All the time we had been plotting, the generals had been plotting and we had known nothing. Nothing!
The thunder grew louder; it was gun and mortar fire. The sky soon filled with helicopters. The Civil War began. History began.
Angela Carter, "Elegy for a Freelance"
In a time before history, four lovers dream of the revolution. Soon they betray one another as only close family can. Together they commit a crime for which none will accept responsibility. They fear that this idiotic action has locked them forever out of the revolution. Then they realize that they could never have been part of the revolution. Finally they understand what the revolution is, and their pathetic tragedy crumbles to insignificance under its weight. Perhaps what we want, above all else, is nothing more than to be part of the great acts of history.
[Communique: 04.21.02]
It's time for a general update, blog-style...
Reading:
Listening:
Watching:
Pondering:
Wishing:
Hoping:
Remembering:
Dreaming:
[Communique: 04.19.02]
Today there was a monsoon, and New York City turned tropical.
Thank you india - Alanis Morissette
India as a magic zone, an imaginary kingom, like Narnia. India isn't magic or imaginary to those who live there, but neither is America, to which they look either for opportunity or corruption. America is imaginary too. It must be possible to do good with these fantasies, and not only evil. After all, the idea of knowing the Other perfectly, so that they cease to be imagined -- that is also fantasy. To *use* another country or culture as a symbol for enlightenment is always dangerous. But where can inspiration be found, if not in the specifics of a foreign place or people?
I remember a birthday party I went to in high school. Somehow I remember it tropical, with palm trees bordering the basketball court where we danced. The stairs leading up to the apartment were narrow, wooden, the white paint chipping off, and the doors were glass, so that from the hallway you could see into the lives of strangers. None of the doors were locked, and every apartment had a porch that looked out over Naples and a fire escape that led down into the streets of Buenos Aires. Inside the apartment there were chopped vegetables laid out in the tiled kitchen, and vines crawling across lamps and plaster ceilings. The last girl to arrive was the one we'd all been waiting for. She had cut her hair that day with a scissors, and we didn't question that it had come out perfect, because we were all in love with her. All except for the hostess, who was in love with me, in love with everyone, in love with herself just a little bit too much to be modest and enough to embarrass her friends.
That was the only party I ever went to at her house. Perhaps it was the only one she had. It was a grand success but it could not have been followed. The memory was too pungent; to try again would have been obscene. I left early, afraid of the dancing, growing self-conscious and taking the first ride offered. Did the rest of them dance and play basketball for the rest of that tropical night? And what was the morning like?
[Communique: 04.12.02]
From "The Heart of the Appaloosa" by Fred Small:
The chief spoke to his people
To change one's name. To make such a proclamation. To take on such power and with such high stakes. To have a people one can speak to. To take on the heavy mantle of leadership. What is this? This is not something that one wants. This is a calling that finds one, unwilling, suddenly no longer the youngest, no longer a child. Suddenly chief of many. The ache of responsibility. The desperate love of family.
Thunder Rolling in the Mountains said:
To make such a proclamation. To look for guidance in the old chiefs, and to find that they are dead. To know that you will be the last chief who remembers the old ways.
Having led one's people into war, to announce to them, finally, that the war cannot be won. To know that empire will prevail, that justice is blind, that your history will be lost. Visions of drunkenness and lives wasted. To know that everything you value, everything it was your duty to uphold, will die -- not in the distant future, but in your own generation. Under your care.
And the man once called Joseph
To demand salvation from gods that have been murdered. To demand reparation from an empire that does not care. At long last, to admit utter failure. Without knowing how it could have been different, without any hope that it could have been different, to ackowledge that *you were the chief* while your people died. What if you had not fought... What if you had fought more ferociously... What if you had led them better, been stronger, had more faith... What if the old chiefs had still been alive...
Brings me to tears.
[Communique: 04.11.02]
The new EMERGENCY Gazette is out! Issue #39.
Plus three new Walkabouts.
[Communique: 04.10.02]
Do you know what I've been lately? Defensive.
I guess that sounds like it's in contradiction with the last entry, but it's not. For some time now I have been taking everything that anyone says to me as a demand that I change. Sometimes I feel open to this, and sometimes I try to justify myself.
JUSTIFY.
Justify the way I talk. The way I love. Justify how I treat friends and lovers, why I don't have a job, why I'm living with my grandparents, why I do theater, why I don't do activism, why I'm morally okay, how I spend money, how I eat, how I move, how I live. I am constantly questioning everything. I am constantly aware of the things I am not-doing. This whole webpage is an attempt to justify my life to the universe, now that I have no teachers / parents to grade me. It's like I'm trying to get extra points by revealing what goes on inside. Like on a math test: "Show your work."
Who said high school is when life turns upside down? In high school there is a default path and dropping out takes energy. Here there is no path and no "in" to drop out of. The writing on the wall says "Do what you will." But as it turns out, that's no help at all.
[Communique: 04.09.02]
"Ben, do you know why you're America's sweetheart? It's because you're always so vulnerable."
- Yelena
After some consideration, I have decided that this is one of the best compliments I have ever received. It's certainly what I aspire to. True, it is only an image, and I project it partly *in order* to charm, but I think and hope that it rests upon some genuine open-ness.
P.S. Does anyone out there reading this want to be Light Board Operator for the Circus of Vices and Virtues (going up in June at the Lyceum in Brooklyn)? There is no pay, but it will be a good show and a good experience. I am Lighting Designer and Tech Director. If anyone knows anyone who might be interested, please have them contact me.
[Communique: 04.08.02]
William H. Burroughs is fucking me in the head.
I know that he has fucked many other people in the head before me, and that I will not be the last person he fucks in the head. But I don't even particularly *like* Cities of the Red Night. It's not about *liking* the book. It's about my own visions, and how he did them all before, twenty years ago.
A few days ago I was surprised by the image of the all-male hypersexual circus appearing in the book. But today I was absolutely shocked to read this:
The Cities of the Red Night were six in number... Tamaghis: This is the open city of contending partisans... Ba'dan: This city is given over to competitive games and commerce... Yass-Waddah: This city is the female stronghold... Waghdas: This is the university city, the center of learning... Naufana and Ghadis are the cities of illusion...
WHAT?!?! Those who have known me for a while may recognize this image from conversatinos with me. In many different contexts -- in novels ('96), in group projects ('97), in artistic analysis ('98), and finally in a large coherent mythological history ('99) -- I have myself developed a set of five cities.
Alexandria: The city of gold. (There is also Clario, the university city, but that one is Benny's.)
These cities have characters, histories, developments, architectures, and, of course, mytho-archetypal relationships. I am dumbstruck to find so many of my ideas and images appearing in Burroughs, whom I have never read and never even particularly wanted to read. I read Kerouac once, and I figured he would be like that. He's not.
[Communique: 04.07.02]
Things have been getting more and more beautiful... - Ani Difranco
[Communique: 04.06.02 - 12:30 AM]
Oh god, how I love Ani Difranco. I bought a shirt, and then returned it, realizing that worshipping her art, for me, is about precisely the same life politics that made me realize, after I bought the shirt, that I didn't need the shirt. Spend the money on music, or better yet, don't spend the money at all. The cheaper I live, the longer I can go without a job, the more time I can dedicate to the work. That's what I want to give back to her. Not the commerce. The work.
we barely have time to react in this world I will not be a rockstar. I have a rockstar fantasy. I even have some solo work that I could perform. But it's been years since I felt confident enough to speak
*in my own voice* to a crowd. I have the ego to think that my work can change the world, but I don't have the ego to think that people should listen to me speak. I used to be a good public speaker, and I can still *play* a good public speaker, but I can no longer speak strongly in my own voice in that context.
Why? Because I have become paralyzed by moral doubts. But not in a bad way. The parts of me that have been paralyzed are the spoiled, privileged, straight-white-American-male parts, and they *ought* to be paralyzed. Maybe it's *right* that I should feel shy in front of crowds. Maybe I shouldn't be the next Leader of the Movement. What am I thinking when I start to mumble and "umm" instead of talking as smoothly and as powerfully as I can onstage? I'm thinking that I'd rather have a woman speak, or a person of color, or a real gender variant, or someone really poor. And that's *right*. There is a reason why my work will be as a director, behind the scenes, or as a performer in someone else's work, but *not* as a performer of my own work. And there is a reason why my best path lies away from the path of fame. I want to empower others. My work will be the *creation* of theatrical tools of empowerment and cultural revolution. My dream is to gift this to the world. So that there will be more artists like Ani.
[Communique: 04.06.02 - 10:00 AM]
What is it with the image of the ALL-MALE HYPERSEXUAL CIRCUS? I've been writing a novella called "The Desert," and one of its key images is an all-male circus that gets its magic from sexual energy. When I came up with this image last summer, the only precedent I knew of was Angela Carter's absurdly, literally phallo-centric rapist acrobats in _The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman._ Since then I've read Hakim Bey's _TAZ_ and now I'm reading _Cities of the Red Night_ by William Burroughs, and it has become clear to me that the image of an all-male hypersexual circus is deeply entwined with anarchism and the post-60s revolutionary imagination.
One of the things I love about anarchists is that they are very much aware that culture is crucial to any movement, culture, or community. So they don't pooh-pooh the arts the way Marxists do. But I find it interesting that the circus is so central to the anarchist conception of performing arts. The circus is not chaos, but it represents chaos, and it also has a history of existing as a *family* rather than as a *business* -- and therefore perhaps functioning as an anarchist unit. One of the things I'm going to write about in my circus article is the relationship of a circus to a TAZ. Because a circus is not a TAZ, but it represents the TAZ in our imagination. Hence the connection between the circus and pirates, and the beautiful but not-quite-true idea that acrobats and dancers are automatically skilled at self-defense. This is a connection I originally made in my fleshing out of the the bard archetype a long time ago. If only it were true. Sadly, I don't think that dancers are automatically good at martial arts, although they may be predisposed towards them. Just as artists are not necessarily revolutionary, but they do have a lot of potential.
Tonight I am going to see a magician of the first order, a rockstar, a genuine sorceress like Hirondelle de Mer, a genius, a shaman, a riot grrl folk singer, and my personal hero -- Ani fuckin' Difranco. The original Righteous Babe. Live and solo at Carnegie Hall! I haven't seen her since sophomore year of high school.
[Communique: 04.05.02]
The circus was a minstrel show. The aftershow was the real show.
Yesterday there was a breath of Autumn on the air. It came through my window and became a memory. In high school, after I had been depressed for almost six months, after I had talked to C. for two hours on a park bench and been cured, the night I made a copy of "Kiss from a Rose" and ran to Harvard Square looking for C. to give it to her, but she wasn't there. We never spoke again.
The age of 17 must be the Dreamtime. On my first love:
I remember the colour of her coat. It was tan, and the inside was deep red. I remember her purple bag with the black handle, and I remember her grey sweat suit. I remember her eyes, but I don't remember the colour of her eyes. But I do remember the way we would kiss, and me flying home and knowing that I could only go that fast and that far because of her. I remember saying to myself that if I could fly all the way home at some certain speed, then our relationship would work out, and I guess that turned out to be a good predictor, because as soon as the crying began (mine, not hers; that didn't come till later) I stopped flying home and started running. And we all know I can't run that far that fast. I remember the times she did cry, though, much better than I remember the times I cried. I remember backstage, holding her, wanting more, not getting it. I remember feeling inadequate. I remember and always will remember that A. called that abusive, and how mad I got at her, and how right she was. I will never tell her.
How can we love our own desire and love other people too? What if (a) desire is inherently evil? What if the choice is only between repression and cruelty? Of course, there is a twisting, tangling, tumbling love that is both giving and receiving. Some people bring that out in me. Others don't. Just last night I was open wide, I was listening to "Everybody Hurts" and I could see the most beautiful strength through suffering in every single face on N/R train to Astor Place. But that was not desire. That was fragmentation. Desire is a vector. Desire makes revolution, and revolution is a kind of war.
What is abuse? How can you tell an abusive relationship from one that is mutually fucked-up? Who is in power when both feel powerless? Who is in power when both are slotting into their social roles? Is it abusive to remember a relationship beautiful when the other person remembers it ugly? What if the best we can do is more good than harm? My best answer is that moral stories only work in the context of potential action. If your friend is being abused, get her (or him) out of there. If your friend is being abusive, get him (or her) out of there. Strengthen the weak and weaken the strong. You cannot construct a complete moral framework. You can only take hold of a position and care.
"A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power to enslave. It sniffs -- it sucks -- it strokes its eyes over the whole uncountable range. Suddenly one strikes. Why? Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles. Why? I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull time apart again. But why at the start they were ever magnetized at all -- just those particular moments of experience and no others -- I don't know. And nor does anyone else."
- from Equus, by Peter Shaffer
I have been reading about possession and exhorcism for Yelena. Aren't I schizophrenic? Aren't I just good at hiding the splits? Each person-machine is legion. Each voice is the result of an infinite fractal crystal. Not one ghost but a thousand in the machine. Who speaks? Who listens? Who gets what they want? Who wants?
[Communique: 04.01.02]
Archived the March stuff.
Reading: Slander, as always. "Cities of the Red Night" by Burroughs. The "Indypendent" from NYC IndyMedia. The "Slug & Lettuce" punk paper. And TAZ again. I absolutely can't think of anything more inspirational than Communique #8.
Listening: Well, I guess I'm just slow, but I only discovered the real joy of peer-to-peer mp3 transfers just last week. I am now listening to a completely absurd mix of fabulous eclectic material. Buffalo Springfield, bootleg Ani, Christina Aguileria, "Welcome to the Dollhouse," Huggy Bear, Eminem, Laurie Anderson, "Hateration," Flashdance, Radiohead, Stan Rogers, Bob & Ray, Cyndi Lauper, "Ashokan Farewell" from the Civil War documentary, and the theme song from the soundtrack to The Rock.
Doing: Getting ready to leave for the Ringling Brothers / Barnum & Bailey Circus. This is something that I would never do unless they were paying for it. Ah, the power of the press. Leah Abel is coming with, to keep me on my skeptical toes. Not that I think witnessing the degradation of elelphants would be likely to intoxicate me. I'm interested in the structure, the *power* of the circus. It's like playing video games or reading the New York Times. Obviously, these things are out there and they work for a lot of people and they make a lot of money. To turn the tables, one must study the enemy.
And in case anyone was wondering, I finally found Bex.
Oh, and tomorrow I'm flying to the Vatican to speak at a conference on the power of orgiastic ritual. I will be traveling as part of contingent of radical warriors including Julia Kristeva, bell hooks, Peter Schumann, Michael Stipe, and Tigra from the Thundercats (recently out as FTM trans).
April fool!
Hits since 03/22/02:
Mike Davis - "City of Quartz"
Avishai Margalit - "Views in Review"
Ricky Martin - "La Vida Loca"
Philip Glass - "Einstein on the Beach"
Baz Luhrmann - "Strictly Ballroom"
Rehearsals for "The Doll House"
Should I personalize my powerbook with stickers?
That I could do flips.
That we get the Slovakia grant.
The six cones of gelato purchased by Emily Schreiner, Meg Schiff and myself in Ravenna after checking out the tiles.
The College of Letters meets Twin Peaks.
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence
in his anger and his pain:
"I am no more Chief Joseph -
Rolling Thunder is my name.
They condemn us to a wasteland
Of barren soil and stone.
We shall fight them if we must,
But we will find another home."
"My heart is sick and sad,
Our children now are freezing,
The old chiefs are dead,
The hunger takes our spirit,
Our wounds are deep and sore.
From where the sun now stands
I will fight no more."
At death was heard to say:
"We have given up our horses.
They have gone away."
Qualifectiori: The city of silver.
Tritariatriat: The city of emerald.
Vethico Tyne: The city of fire.
And Parate Thalian: The city of merchants.
Have you noticed that?
Maybe it's just me...
But have you noticed?
The deeper your sadness, the deeper the beauty.
let alone rehearse
and i don't think that i'm better than you
but i don't think that i'm worse
women learn to be women
men learn to be men
and i don't blame it all on you
but i don't want to be your friend...
vermilion's text = journal of a rootless cosmopolitan
all text by bspatz
return to anagnorisis