I’m sitting here, it’s 3:26 on a Thursday. I woke up around 11. If it weren’t for the peanut butter I’m eating right now with a plastic spoon I wouldn’t have had anything to eat in over 24 hours. Yesterday around this time I was eating the extra sushi my friends had ordered, and before that my friend molly ordered me an egg and cheese croissant. That was yesterday’s breakfast.
A remix for hang with me, that robyn song just came on. I’m feeling very weak. I’m answering emails right now from perspective johns or hookups I might get food out of. Hold on. I have something to talk about, relevant to the song. By the way. I’m not deleting. And I’m not really rereading. The universe doesn’t make mistakes.
Ok, so a week ago I left my friend’s house. I’d never felt so lonely. I cried the entire walk home, those big kind of heaving drunk sobs. I woke up with huge bags under my eyes. Starving. With a monster hangover. Went to kelly’s because after I’d gotten home the night before, all sobbing and lonely, I’d facebook chatted him. Told him I missed him. He was my family.
So I went to kelly’s with my hangover and my puffy eyes because I said I would and I stayed for as long as I could then I came home and flowdreamed and I think that.. well I can’t recall what happened after that, but my last article We Need The Truth was somewhere in there. That was a week ago. In that time I did not see any of my friends. My phone was disconnected. Again. After the last fight I will ever have with a man who’s been in my life almost 9 months. Almost as long as my first boyfriend, Kelly. I let him buy me an iphone and put it on his plan and with that I let myself be controlled in a very meaningful way. My phone is my life source. Without it I soon discovered I could not contact the people that I needed to, literally in order to live. This is why I’ve been so hungry lately. Well that is the immediate cause, obvs it’s a chain.
So this person was abusive. Emotionally. I worry that I’m effected in ways I don’t yet realize or understand. Becoming dependent on a person I did not know well, who it turns out, was interested mostly in causing emotional pain, which I was stalwart and conscious of. Which I endured to keep my phone on. Because I wanted to keep the iphone and they wouldn’t let me switch to a new service plan without him. Well, I got him to agree to switch it, but he dropped the other shoe, only if I suck his dick and let him cum on my face, I ran out, he shut the phone off. That’s the end of that. Again. But this time finally.
I worry that I have no one to blame but myself.
It’s so hard, after a while, to tell what happens to you and what you do. It becomes all the same. All the responsibility and none.
I’ve changed a lot in the last 9 months. This is the first month I was unable to pay my rent. Coincidentally my mom asked me a couple weeks ago if maybe I’d like to come home, get a job there, put my stuff here in storage. I said no thanks, but I’ll come for a visit. Then yesterday, with rent two days late, I told my very scary landlady roommate that there were some family problems and my mom had asked me to come home and I decided that this would be the best month to do it so could I please apply the 300$ deposit I’d made when I moved in for these next two weeks while I move my stuff into storage.
I’m sorry I’m so hungry.
She said ok. And my fate was settled. I went to kelly’s late that night. Saw the installation for wolfpack. A huge gay event. There was even a man as a wolf in a den, he stayed there as wolf overnight and will emerge during the party tonight which I will also be going to. I helped Kelly set up by scraping stickers off the floor, sweeping, and buying beer which I drank and also spent four of my last five emergency dollars on. I might need to take the subway one way.
When I was scraping off stickers that read Cambodia I told him, well it spilled out at the first opportune moment, and quite casually that I had talked to my landlady and I would be moving back home. I think I told him when. He left the room for a long time and I finished all but two of the stickered geography installations. I think Australia and New Zealand might have been left. We went about the rest of our business as usual after that.
I played music. He told me what to do. Was stern. I did it. At one point I came into the space to ask, alberto the wolf if he wanted anything. I was as earnest and respectful as I could be, he didn’t speak, but was wearing a very subtle and expressive smile. I moved close to the den and we nuzzled, then we kissed, then we nuzzled and kissed some more. When I thought I heard someone coming I stepped away and pretended to be looking for something. No one came.
I walked into the backroom. Kelly shortly told me it was time to go. I left shortly. I said goodbye to alberto the wolf who was now laying on the floor. He did not see me. He did not respond.
On the way back home I did that crying thing I was talking about having done last week. Same exact thing. This morning there were the same exact bags.
I’m laying flat on my stomach on my bed. I haven’t left my room for more than a couple hours a day this week. I have been hungry since Friday I’ve had six to eight meals. Today is Wednesday. Last night I was super hungry, but just about an hour ago I exploited a dom/sub fetish relationship for some food. I picked up a burger, sandwich and beer from Lodge, which is a restaurant that is currently giving away free books.
I got one called Confronting Capitalism. Did you know, that this has been a major issue and concern for some time now? I opened up to an interview with Noam Chomsky because it was titled ‘art’ in the table of contents. He reminded me of the protest at the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle that I’m almost too young to remember, but not quite.
Here’s a bit of what I read..
at the start of the nineteenth century, the ration of real incomes per head between the world’s richest and poorest countries was three to one. By 1900, it was ten to one. By the year 2000 it had risen to sixty to one.
then Noam says
And that is extremely misleading. It vastly underestimates what’s going on. The real and striking difference is not the difference among countries but the difference within the global population, which is a different measure. That’s risen very sharply, which means that within countries the divisions have sharply risen..
So then I got super angry, and convicted and I went right to my tumblr account. What are we going to do about this you guys?
The richest 1% of adults owned 40% of the world’s total assets in the year 2000. The richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of total assets. The bottom half of the world adult population owned 1% of global wealth - World Institute for Development Economics Research, The World Distribution of Household Wealth, 2006
And it has only gotten worse.
Well I thought, this is all very convenient, the poor person picking up on economic inequality. And what of it? I’m only suffering income inequality in America; I tip the scales in the other direction when you consider global inequality.
Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day - World Bank Development Indicators 2008
So you know what just came on my iTunes. I swear to God, and we can have the conversation about whether Microsoft is evil later, it was my song Working. In it I sing about how I renounce working. I no longer wish to bear the burden of employment. I choose to make art.
What a spoiled shit.
How on earth can someone deny the opportunities of employment that the united states has to offer? How on earth? Where the poorest 40 percent account for 5 percent of global income and the richest 20 percent account for three-quarters of world income [World Bank Development Indicators 2008]
Well I’m lucky to be an American. Luck is relative. Last night I was flowdreaming about helping all the people of world, which is to say all the disempowered, but I don’t think that needs clarifying. I would like to add though that I just took a hit of my bong and watched a video I made for youtube titled THE RALLY TO RESTORE SANITY AND/OR FEAR (we made it!!!!!). Also, I just finished my third beer. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. The point is to be honest.
We need the truth. I can provide truth in many different ways. It’s the process of denial that is harmful. Of denying the truth in so many way. It’s got to be a problem. Now I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing so I’m just typing it as it comes out, like a stream of conscious but with distractions. Like life. The universe. Youtube.
I’m writing a screenplay with my good friend Dr. Kelly. He’s a stud. But he’s straight so back off. You might remember him from my videos Pretty Boy or My First Project. He also created the track Williamsburg Rooftops. He’s a talent. Watch out America. You’re gonna be blown over by this guys talent.
But enough about him. Our screenplay is about the universe. How this has all already happened before, and how drugs are actually not immoral, but a rational option for many people, and how these experiences can sometimes awaken parts of our consciousness, changing the course of our lives. Well it’s inevitable, whatever happens.
There’s a loud banging happening in the next room. I live with crazy people. Which reminds me, I wanted to talk about being crazy. It happens when your perceptions don’t match up with reality. But sometimes the truth and reality don’t match up. So there is now a difference between reality, truth, and sanity. This is not a flippant observation.
I feel, something like duty, although I believe in freedom above all things. I feel bound to champion the truth. Do you know what just came on my itunes, I swear to god, “I Know the Truth” from Aida. This is too much, don’t even get me started about coincidences.. well, I guess. Coincidences are the spice of life. They are not random, they are proof of a subconscious experience. Jung wrote a whole book about it. And others have as well. And though I can’t make a thorough argument right now, I firmly believe coincidences are the spice of life. The seasoning that is the detail that is the missing ingredient connecting us to the universe. Follow coincidences. They are magic.
The subconscious, or pre-conscious, is all powerful. Language and its ugly step child ego or “identity”. Oh! That reminds me! I also got Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: Sourcebook of Basic Documents for free when I picked up this food. So you’re still with me, thanks so much. I hope when I reread this it makes sense and that I’m not wasting your time.
Anyway, The Subconcious is the source of Truth. It exists pre morality, social convention, habit; it is ultimate freedom and can be accessed in degrees or sometimes subsume you, almost like when you dream. It is magic too, and coincidences are messages it receives from the external world. So are daydreams. You would know this if you ever flowdreamed. Try it.
Also, everyone should take an introductory acting lesson. Not for commercial purposes. We’re not all going to be reading copy. But in order that we may have the experience, just once, of completely demolishing and then rebuilding the foundation of your “identity”. We can do this other ways, but surely this way is effective and thorough. It goes to the very subconscious. I’ll tell you how my training went.
My teacher was a master. As in the old sense of the word, of which there are very few left. She was a guru. An absolutely individuated, experienced, and knowledgeable teacher. So I got in a lot of trouble the first semester cause I didn’t wanna do it, and I was scared, and I had invested so much already into my identity as an actor that I couldn’t bear to stand to find out that I couldn’t do it. You see, I was insecure that I wasn’t or wouldn’t be as good as I thought I was. I thought I was an artist. And I thought acting was my destiny.
We could substitute the word think for believe. Or even at some point know.
However, I haven’t become anything but less certain as I’ve grown older. After that rough period I brought something very personal into class, I convinced myself (for the sake of my training and ultimately art) that I had contracted HIV and I was going to die of it. I do not intend to claim that my experience in this imaginary circumstance can parallel that of actual HIV patients. There is a way to convince the brain of certain things that aren’t true in reality per se. The subsequent experience however, of this daydream, sustained at the teacher’s pleasure, seems very real. And so we learn.
You can have an experience, in all truth and reality, under imaginary circumstances. For if it is real in your mind, it is real in your body, and then it is really happening. You can convince yourself of something that is not true and believe it. This specific and intentional manipulation of consciousness results in character. By releasing the subconscious so freely, and surrounded by ‘the other’, by having a deeply private or primal emotional experience we can understand certain things about relationships, truth, performance, focus, reality, and the subconscious.
Truths that were imbedded in our dna before we could even speak begin to be revealed. The face to face is the initial differentiation. It is the point of ethics. All further differentiation, and choices arise from the face to face. Language, identity, belief.
So in this process, along with the physical work we did which was designed to completely re-introduce us to our bodies, where nothing was taken for granted, everything was a habit, and every day was a discovery of vast potential and unimagined opportunity, we learned to become actors because we learned how to release the subconscious. The experience, one day after another, of not only having a NEW experience, but of realizing it was a possibility that we had heretofore cut ourselves off from, was so bittersweet. We cried a lot, rolled around on the floor a lot, wailed a lot, played a lot.
We are socialized to inhabit our bodies the way we do. It is subtle and not entirely intentional. My teacher, Victoria Hart, summed up the goal for us with the phrase ‘sense of truth’. Language has overlap, ideas are inherited. Truth is in constant flux, the subconscious (like the universe) cannot be entirely apprehended. Time cannot be fully comprehended. It is a sense that we are after of what’s true. What exists preverbally, even pre consciously, before we assume any role, opinion, or even point of view. It is the ultimate resistance to authority, definition, form, linear logic, rationalism, and fraility. The truth is ultimate power.
There is a wealth of information, a lexus of options and freedoms, that many people live unaware of. We must bring this information forward. Freedom is the goal. This is a metaphor for the global catastrophe of inequality that is happening. Now more than ever. “The top 1% of the U.S. population is getting one-fourth of the national income and nearly half of the national wealth, twice as much as two decades ago” globalissues.org
It is not a coincidence that intuition, queerness, empathy have been suppressed in our industrialized culture. That the performer’s body has been absent in art until the 1960s. That women are victimized in the artistic canon, in employment, and in society. It is not a coincidence that black people don’t receive the same level of education as their counterparts, and are imprisoned more frequently. It is not a coincidence that policies have been enacted on a federal, local and global level that promote and support corporations not the individual. Preference is given to the rich. In terms of education, health care, access to information, time, resources, travel, freedom. There is a starting point inequality that belies any promise of full equality.
This is the result of a now disgustingly powerful minority that can intentionally control the discourse of culture and economy on a massive level. These outcomes are not the law of some natural force, noam says, “they are the results of very specific decisions, institutional arrangements, and plans which can be expected to have these effects. And they have these effects.”
We are seeing the results a mechanism of power, of an intellectually and ethically lazy conservatism that protects it’s own and disenfranchises ‘the other’.
The scales are tipped so dramatically in favor of the powerful that we will not see full equality before we die. It’s that battle. The one where you’ve already lost, it is determinedly futile, and all that counts is in the attempt. As with making art, what matters is that you try. There is beauty and truth in that. It seems the most important thing for me to do. Keep trying.
As an artist, who is that because there is nothing else I am happy doing, I must be able to make the work I want. From my audience, I seek to gain trust in my intention. Words cannot express the full thrust of this. I’ve moved from my bed to a table.. well it’s really a nightstand. It was my grandfather’s.
Now I’m making work that perhaps seems frivolous, or narcissistic. Considering all this. I do. I’m not interested in wasting anybody’s time, especially when the time I usually get is from people who already agree with me.
I read, in one of those free books I was talking about (it was called Libra), the quote: “Happiness is not based on oneself, it does not consist of a small home, of taking and getting. Happiness is taking part in the struggle, where there is no borderline between one’s own personal world, and the world in general.” Which is an excerpt from a letter sent by Lee Harvey Oswald (who was a Libra like me!) to his brother.
What I’m getting at so well is that: the personal is the political. Libra happens during the fall equinox. Astrology is a metaphor, or a mythology, for the evolution of the personality as correlates to the time of year. I was actually born on the very day of the year when the dark and light are equal. I believe in mythology. I believe it shapes character and explains character. The reason I segued from writing about psychology to mythology earlier was because the words we’ve created to represent sections of our brain, figments of our imagination, and relationships between us, our body, and the external universe, is exactly the same project the ancient Greeks were involved in but with different words. They called their ego narcissus and spelled it all out through allegory. Which is exactly what we’re doing, though perhaps more specifically. Mythology, psychology, the narrative, pattern, figment, form, construction, expectation or language we inhabit becomes who we are and in turn our destiny. We’ve heard that quote before right? Character equals destiny. The greeks figured it out in their epic tragedies. Just because now we have much more specific stories does not mean we’ve transcended the predicament. I struggle everyday to override my socialization and meet my destiny on the path to freedom.
Maybe the whole project of language is why we’re here in the first place. Differentiation is perhaps the problem period, more specific differentiation is not going to make the problem better. It might make it worse. I dream of returning to the origin of ethics and systems, the face to face, the original stepping out and facing a crowd and doing so for what reason? What is the point of the human project? How can we see it through? I’m no longer interested in these endless differentiations. Neurotic distractions. There’s too much work to ever finish. But I at least would like to honestly say that I tried.
I don’t believe in good or bad. I believe in progress and the truth. Even though you can’t ever get to it at all, sometimes you can get at the truth with 3 words just as easily as you can with 1000. So here it is, The top one percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 40 percent [Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World, p. 108]
Ultimately, measures to create equality must entail a net transfer of resources from the richest 5% of the population to the majority world – the 40% of the world who currently live on less than $2 a day. [Copyright 2006, Share The World's Resources]
(gesture: from the ground, through the body, out the mouth, through the sky during/while speaking until honking) (note* just once)
Closer to nature that baby can scream (*maybe a gesture for each sentence. The “scream” can be said/come out more like the honking to come soon?). Maybe as close in a dream. Or in the moments before you die.
(honking to “sing”) (*before you can think, change. Leave yourself alone. Use your body like that baby. Focus on releasing your sound.) (*music begins from group)
She was the tallest hooker on earth. In a long pink dress. What’s your name?
Some hookers just couldn’t get it right. They were too short. They used their real name.
Walking through a crowded street with her mister on her arm
He said, [“let me do the talking.”] He did.
She did the whipping and the flogging and submitting to her power was easy-[er than paying]. [Roughly slapping, spitting, sitting. If internet killed the video star, it brought them back as a porn star.]
How easy to do everything. Run out of things. Get Chlamydia.
If only regret would fit, she’d spell it all out. [Do what you can do and hope that some accident of brilliance occurs.]
When we can’t get what we want we usually sleep. [I wish it were easier to live]
[(I) didn’t come this far to clear your greasy beer bottles. (I’ll figure it out on my own)] [[*give the phrases in brackets away to people in the group?]]
People you hate. It’s even worse having to talk to them.
One week would bring the stress. She entered a glass room and all around the rain poured down
She could still see being so tall and all (mostly in her neck) and at the last minute always found what she needed and since it happened more than once she never looked for anything else
But lay in bed and lay and lay and lay
[One thing adds to another, a compromise here, temporary fix there, now you are a maze. When nature escapes through your mouth, it’s already gone through all the glitches of the human race. ]
Many drugs. Some legal. Some not. Some safe. Some not.
Do you know what people think of hookers? [You’re basically getting paid so that people can be mean to you. It’s not a metaphor, ok. What do you think it’s like to live in a country where no one stops lip servicing the ideal, but the truth (reality) has been exposed. Online. Over and over and over and... (I am) Julian assange. Bernake. Obama. Fuck you! (x2) Don’t think I don’t see through your every word. Even if I can’t do anything about it (yet). I renounce working! (x2) This stupid monopoly game that no one ever wins. I’M NOT PLAYING! (x2) Money has no value. Rich, power, a ditch we can’t get out of] [start over]
And in this city it’s a maze
The cats got your tongue but the cats in the bag
The prize is an illusion and the price isn’t right
You forfeit right away what you don’t lose eventually
You realize your plans exclude your dreams, chances are lost hopes, you can’t be loved and broke.
Until you start over. Which thankfully. We’ve already done.
Words have power. Perform the possibility. Perform the change. Reclaim your memories, identity. Assert your will. Perform the future. A huge part of what I value though is the rehearsal mindset, it’s the process that’s important, the attempt. Not succumbing to the self-consciousness of performing, or presenting a product. We stay determinedly in process, in rehearsal, and that’s the product. Your life, your stories, your perspective, you truths are valuable and deserve and are worthy and should be made into something. Art. Not art that exists in the patriarchal system, of good enough, well known enough, circulated enough, reviewed enough, sold enough. Simply art in the way that art was before the word art was even invented. Just the results of a creative process. Tell the best lie. (gaga) A lie so fabulous the people who hear it have no choice but to make it true. Repeat the lie. Prove the process. The lie of art. Follow coincidences, that’s universal subconsciousness speaking to you. Appreciate the paradox, milk the ambivalence, tip the scales, push the buttons that extend the distance between two poles and your positioning on them and in the matrix maneuvering like a grand abacas in the matrix of paradoxes which are infinite and actually not lines but more circular, which is the universe. The dual nature of everything. Everything exists because its opposite exists. For every thing there is no thing. Everything that exists begins as a metaphor. Begins as a lack. Begins as nothing. Our bodies are a metaphor for ourselves. So already by creating something physical we’re removing it from its purest nature, primordial ooze that all creativity arises out of. The what’s behind the curtain. What will emerge through you. Escape through the maze of you. Getting off yourself, out of yourself, out of your way, closer to the source of creativity, nature, like the baby. Leave yourself alone. Give the universe permission to emerge from you, then allow it to, don’t subvert it with judgment or forethought. The goal for me is always to channel the subconscious. So you don’t all have to start immediately or at the same time, but try to let yourself enter that ineffable mindset, that animal, child, play, imagine, mystical, sensational experience, and once you start (making “music/dance”) don’t stop. Don’t let your ego in, or doubt or anything that’s familiar, or habitual, or logical. Any thoughts, forms, leave them behind. Transcend them and speak in a language much more powerful. Of intuition. Of inevitability. Of coincidence. Of dream. No need to make sense, just trust that there’s no wrong, and live through as deeply as you can with your whole body whatever the experience is that we embark on. Really release your subconscious. Set it free. That’s where the real power for change is to me, and that’s where I hope for art to come from. But it’s also kind of impossible, at least to control, so I think the real beauty is in the attempt. In the quality, and courageousness, and devotion, dedication, commitment, specificity of the intent. To make something so abstract and transcendent a very concrete and specific goal and then really truly try. I’m going to change the energy in this room, and through that the world. I’m going to plant the seed which will blossom utopia. And all in three short minutes. When we focus like that, with faith, with intuition, and our bodies which are nature incarnate we can strongly channel the subconscious, perhaps even a universal subconscious. It’s messy, unrecognizable, unpredictable, scary, powerful, joyous, in any and all combinations and it can often elicit negative judgments from other, perhaps more linear thinkers, who appraise the activity foolish, indulgent, banal, etc. and the goal impossible. The more abstract the truth we’re trying to communicate, and the more abstract it will get as the linear minds excuses and defensive double and delay, the more we must appeal to the senses. It’s good practice, I think, for the coming utopia to hold two opposing thoughts in your head at the same time. The tension between these poles, of paradox, ambivalence, is the material we create anew.
Politically gender economics underlying all this in a way, kind of like the missing equation. Three forces: gravity, positive, negative energy but we’re still looking for the missing equation to tie them all together. That’s like: economics, gender (sex, sexuality), power. Three forces that make the world what it is today, but we’re missing the equation that ties them all together (would that be truth? an intelligent universe, that balances itself out, or tries? Correcting, countering, so that everything happens. Every mythology, destiny, desire, possibility, paradox is played out. (It all happened simultaneously but now (now that there’s a now and at the same time) we have to be here to see it. To bear witness.)) Infinite. As is the definition of the universe. Not good or bad. Just what is, and the point being that everything that could ever be happens. Just to see. “the purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost..” To find the perfect balance of the scales which is truth, justice, the existence of everything and its opposite. I’m just guessing, but I think, that’s the project of the universe or god. And also, by universe, perhaps I just mean us. Collectively. And if there is no “god” then that’s still sufficient for me to carry on). Let’s try to articulate this missing equation. It’s abstract so we’ll have to appeal to the senses. But be specific. When you lie, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it that’s just as much part of the lie. Pleasure. Fun. Follow your sense of truth. Truth to me is pre-moral. It has nothing to do with right or wrong or good or bad. So you can’t do any of those things: right wrong good bad. Sounds, visually, anything that subverts linear logical “left brained” thinking? Literal conscious understanding, this dependence on left brain functioning and linear logic is a device of power used to prevent us from accessing our diviner natures and constituting the utopia of equality embedded in our dna. So we’re going to use sounds, our bodies, sensations, images, gesture, tone, rhythm, touch, vibration, passion, taste, energy, memory, anything you can think of and anything that comes to you. Transporting other people by transporting yourself. If you’re having an experience I believe that people are naturally empathetic enough to understand and relate. It’s perhaps pre-verbal. The baby. An incarnation of nature, before society and self-consciousness. Fig leaves.
So esoteric
A lie so good: The lie is that I was a poor hooker, now I’m a performance artist using my past as material to enlighten, embolden, and empower our race.
Pop culture as performance art. This is performance art: the musical. Perf. Artists using the established conventions of musical theater, inserting music, dance and transporting, transcending. Done with a commitment to how we make music, how we’ve made music in rehearsal, not literally as in a showtune, experimentally as in what we’ve already done in those exercises that start with just walking around the room
If you can use inspiration just look around you. Ensemble work is so beautiful in that way that it lifts you out of yourself. It’s like having a kid. And everyone says I never knew it would give me so much perspective. All my needs have vanished. I serve a greater thing now. Especially such a great ensemble, that’s so brave, and taking such risk and offering so generously. Be there for them as they are there for you. It’s the least you can do. This is one good solution to the narcissism of the artist.
Expectations | No mistakes
That’s why I love stream of consciousness. You’re doing it right if you just keep writing.
Edie’s revolutionary costume for today (is? Mesh black shirt, eyeliner, glitter, the silver pants)
Try to use every feeling. Perform every sensation. Every repression. Denial, truth.
A huge sensory experience. A hugely sensory experience. I don’t want to say overload because I don’t think that’s possible, and if it is I’m not thinking of anything with negative connotations. But I definitely want it to be uncanny, to exceed/transcend normal experience, awareness, comfort, expectations, limits. I want the brain to be so overwhelmed it begins to function automatically. Naturally. Releasing the audiences subconscious as well, or more specifically, their subconscious observer which will follow subjective coincidences, which I believe are holy, and will gather the most personally relevant and meaningful information/experience for the listener. Beginning a process that hopefully..
Picking up on the energy of the group, what do you see around you, where is the energy moving, what are people doing, what is more than one person doing?
Really go for it. Try to get them to understand everything I’m saying/mean using everything I have, every impulse encourage and perform
There’s a circular theme. Baby/moments before you die. Using this piece I started the class with in a way, the thing I made just before I started this class, and ending with it. I think it’s informed my work so I’d like to bring it full circle, or at least form the beginning of an infinity symbol
You have to be really willing to get into it. Body open, chest outJ engaged. Receiving. Willing to plunge to depths of intensity, but not to manufacture it, deal with surprise, and follow your sense of truth and discovery, reveal your self all the way down, from the bottom up.
From the ground. Through the body. Out the mouth. Through the sky. All out, again and again, give what you can take the same. Don’t stop writing. I love writing. Chest out. Up. Through your body. Remember the changes you’ve already gone through. They’re not hard to maintain. You were given so many good good gifts, taught everything you need to know, and you’ve got off to a good start. Keep going. Cheer up. You’re on your way. We’re almost there. Talk about what you think. Trade ideas. Talk about your past and what you like and what you want. Appeal the senses. The more abstract the truth you’re trying to communicate. Be prolific. You can have a wonderfully huge collection of work. Holograms. Exhibits. Fish tanks. I love stream a of consciousness like a junkie loves his fix. Forgive yourself already you know what it means. Can’t stop! Talk about how you’re a prostitute. The liars in government. How I see the patriarchy today, the frustration of me, my groups. Voice universal truths, to power. Fuck power! Goddamnit. Voice. Voice. Bernake. Obama. Fuck you! And also gender, you know so much about gender and there’s so much more to learn and teach, and sex, and being. Presence. Connection. Moving through you. The Universe. You don’t believe in coincidences. God is everywhere, everything, i.e. the Universe and there are a universe of universes. Everything happens. What will you bring forth. What will emerge from you. Don’t you love seeing. The more the better! Kelly you know me. Don’t forget. Thank God for you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Forgiveness happens before it’s ever even needed otherwise it wouldn’t be needed, moving forward ever forward out the chest up from the ground through the body out the body mouth chest gut pelvic floor vibrations, energy, in and out and exchange and give and send it through the sky that’s where the changing starts. No one can hear your thoughts you know.
Once upon a time a little boy sang thank god I found you. His sister said shut up, you suck. And he kept singing. Then his mom said, Kirk you really sound awful. And he didn’t sing for many years after that. Finally one day he said fuck it and started singing everywhere, all the time, come hell or high water, to hell with everyone else. He took voice lessons. He was in choir, although he only ever lip synched because he tended to sing flat and didn’t trust his ability to hear. There were many reasons to give it a rest, but the desire never stopped. Why? Your singing voice is so embarrassingly intimate. This boy could not be embarrassed. He had no shame. And would not be shamed by others. Say what you like. One day he found an appropriate venue for his singing. It was called YouTube. This is where he tried to exorcise his demons, but he was stabbing at ghosts. There’s really nothing wrong with a person’s voice that isn’t psychological. If you can sing you can talk. Don’t strike that, but reverse it. Tone deafness is very rare. Taste. Tone. Tension. Faulty habits. Fears. Focus. Such hard work to do something that’s for fun and expression. Kind of like ballet. Or life. Well conceptually it’s like an autobiographical youtube musical. The intentions aren’t as simple as making something to please. Something you would like. Dissonance. Is. Real. If the aliens come and we’re all dead, the artifacts we leave behind won’t tell the whole story. I think making things for this reason, as opposed to commercial reasons; on your own, as opposed to in a market; for the sake of the process as opposed to the product, is a different project. But maybe it doesn’t matter if no one’s listening.
i was born this way. at an early age i can see i liked men. i was raised by my mother with my sister. i once got a boner on my uncles shoulder. but the closest man in my family was my grandfather. still, i never played the games the other boys did. i liked barbies. i liked talking and dancing and singing and laughing. i didn't like sports and i was uncomfortable with most boys because i was different than them. it was plainly obvious, but only threatening to a few, and mainly during middle school. the objects of my desire were men, a man had always been the goal in my dreams. i do love men. i love how they feel, and how i feel. i adopted, without design, the characteristics of the females around me and the females i saw on tv. rachel, ally, sarah these were my role models. they and my girlfriends were who i related to, who i admired, and aspired to be. and my relationships with men are perhaps uncanny, but in romantic relationships there is a dynamic i love. a balance - ebbing - tension and release - freedom and limitation. it is a state of creativity ::gender.relationships
The world is lost. There is not more meaning in one gesture than the gesture in and of itself. There is not much time. You see, there is no future, and we are not headed anywhere. All the people you’re fighting against are just wasting your time. And that’s how they’re winning. And you’re fighting and you’re fighting and you don’t understand they’ve already won. It was all a big lie. One big 90s music video. The pretty girl with blonde highlights sold it to us and it looked like she was having so much fun. You dig? People hold guns for cameras. Is a gun anything other than a tool to kill people? In and of itself. The gesture
Tears.
I live in an apartment with people I don’t know or enjoy. I’m surprised every month I make rent at the last minute, and then I have a month to do nothing. Powerless. Stripped of any significance. I don’t mean to victimize myself. But we must be realistic now. The gesture. The end of days. Am I just doing this to make my art better? Going through the motions of all the tortured souls before me? Capturing every thought along an anguished path, trying to find the magic cure. Write the brilliant fix. Quick money with no effort at all. Every capitalists dream
Or?
Get everything, up, get everything out there. It’s so much and you don’t have much time and what should happen if you fail? And what do you stand to achieve?
Thank God for acting
I will have given up
I will have lost
I will have nothing to show
I might make something that can support me, expose me, lead me somewhere, that somebody might value
Do I have any choice?
Nobody is to blame
My name is Kirkdify. I have existed for nine months which is exactly how long I was with, and how long I've been broken up with, my ex boyfriend. I make autobiographical performance art. I’ve made over 300 videos. YouTube is the hub for, or main depository of, my video work. My photography is installed mostly on facebook. I’ve also constructed accounts on vimeo, buzzfeed, ilikemystyle, blogspot, tumblr, hypem, twitter, and others. I invented the name and persona kirkdify after being denied my requested screename for a gmail account. Kirkdify is my name as a verb. It is the persona I’ve constructed for myself as an artist, for when I am in action, for when I am making things. Kirkdify reflects a public identity similar to my personal and social identity. My emergence into the public arena was marked by the taking of a name, a new construction, partly in the spirit of Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on creativity. That and Eve Ensler’s talk on Embracing Your Inner Girl, were the two most temporally tangential video influences on Kirkdify.
My work is also informed by the four years I’ve spent in New York City attending NYU for theater. I studied theater as well as practiced. The continual coupling of theory and practice was one of the most rewarding parts of my education. I was able to extensively study the histories of theater and performance as well as continually do the thing. As my studies came to a close I experienced tremendous anxiety about my future. Also, I had just concluded my first romantic relationship – a dream highly valued by me as a gay man from rural Idaho.
My first youtube recording was born in a moment of desperation. Despairing with my roommate, friend, and associate Molly Vila, about our future, our lives and our selves I casually mentioned I had set up a Youtube account. She was immediately excited and from there we followed our impulses, or the impulses of the universe, and a current of energy carried us into costumes, to a piano, through a webpage tutorial, and within an hour we had pressed record on our first Youtube video. It was posted directly. That day we made as many videos as we could, with whatever clothing we had in our apartment, with whatever material we could think to present. Molly had written several songs already; I had written several as well. They were all performed. Other actions were fully improvised. This went on for several weeks: escaping, no using, our anxiety and our existence for hours at a time, coming up with ideas, playing together, off, on, and for the camera. Our initial collaborations are a joy for me to watch and ignited a project that continues to this day.
I intend to document my life on youtube as I see fit. I employ a combination of direct to camera addresses, live performances of original music and covers, music videos, art videos, readings, conversations, and performance art/theater pieces. My work is autobiographical. I use my body, personality, history, dreams, and point of view to generate visual and aural products.
My reasons for this continued production are varied. I enjoy it. I believe what I’m doing is important. I value the documentation of a subject by the subject himself as an historical as well as culturally relevant artifact. I wish to encourage people to follow similar desires. Make things. I think a society of subjects, perhaps a culture of artists, is a necessary requirement for a new economic system. A dream I hope to see manifest in reality.
I believe our economic system is the single largest killing force in human history. I would like to push the reset button and start over. That is a likely impossible. It is possible to push for progress through the quagmire of corruption, alongside everyone else who is doing the same, with everything you can think of.
Capitalism is a failed system. Participation in capitalism is coercive and mandatory for many. Often, there is a failure to see and identify the machinations of this system. How it consolidates and reconsolidates power in its own self-interest. How it controls the dissemination of information, art, power, freedom and ultimately consciousness. Direct and subversive resistance, not acceptance, complacence, compliance, rationalization, or subservience is the only option for me. This is true not just on a macro scale, but in the most intimate micro scale as well. My direct interpersonal relationships to power are informed by the same being that reacts against this patriarchal power establishment. The political is personal. I make personal art that is directly, intentionally, and overtly political.
For political and personal reasons I choose to not participate, or attempt to participate, in the American work force. I choose to follow my own professional goals regardless of monetary benefit. However, in order to pay rent and eat I solicit my body for sex. This is the least participatory way I can survive in our economic system. Obviously how I spend my money is very important to me. Though I wish it were not so. How I make my money occurs in the most excruciatingly perfect metaphor for the economic system of capitalism.
The most important consideration for me in assessing my own work, as well as the work of others, is the intention behind the work. Then we may consider the success the artist finds in meeting his intentions as well as any secondary results that have arisen from his labor. I value work where individuals can interpret their own meaning. I value work that is conceptual, while still requiring other skills, talents or labor. I trust in the universe and in the creative spirit that arises from within and shapes from without, or vice versa. I value work that is brave, personal, and inspirational. I consider the term art to be deployed deceptively by agents of the status quo and I’m suspicious of its canonization.
Kirkdify is intended to be both for myself and for an audience. It is catharsis. It is invention. Creation. Imagination. Reclamation of agency, of the future, of collective consciousness, of possibility. It plays off, and is informed/inspired by, traditions of Andy Warhol, Duchamp, Lady Gaga, Glee, Hegel, Levinas, Arendt, Chesterton, Wojnarowicz, Duse, Emerson, Tim Miller, Cindy Sherman, Lynda Benglis, Barbara Kruger, Laurie Anderson, Leigh Bowery, the futurists, positivism, constructivism, astrology, myth, the subconscious, Jung, diy, Reality TV, pop culture, queer culture, internet and Youtube culture, musical theater, performance art, activism, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, nyu and the wandering traveler fresh off the boat in New York City. It is - as am I - a pastiche of influences and inspirations, some filtered some not, some conscious some not.
Through my subjective channeling of these influences coupled with my own dreams, fantasies, visions, thoughts and intuition the work becomes and is original. I am acutely aware of and interested in my historical moment, especially in terms of gender, technology, power, politics, and identity. Kirkdify is intended to be an amalgamation of the most convenient subconscious portals, or reference points, in order to act and exist as a reflection of the current state of mind of a person of my age and background and historical moment.
This concept relates to something I recently read of Hegel’s about a new aesthetic culture in which all formal divisions are ignored and the artist is free to cull whatever movements, histories, techniques or references she/he is interested in. It is often the most recent things on my mind that make it into my work. Psychic tension is next alleviated. And hopefully a connection to a universal subconscious is made and transmitted through the work. I trust the universe to tell me when to create, which invariably leads to what I create. I think it is the responsibility of the artist to set the bar for what he/she considers art. We have a responsibility as citizens not to clutter the dialogue, but to enhance it.
My work isn’t intended to be good or bad. It is not intended to be a commodity. It is intended to be seen as a whole work, a body as singular thing, as well as compartmentalized and separate. The body is a metaphor as well as the thing in and of itself. Experiencer and experienced; mediator of internal and external. My work is intended to be a call for help and a claiming of my own agency. It is intended to be viewed in different contexts, to be displayed in exhibits, to be interactive, to combine genres. The content is intended to be extensive. That’s part of it. It is intended to be a representation of a time and a place. It is intended to be stream of consciousness. Either/both or neither/nor. It is intended to be new, to grant permission to myself and to the audience, as well as instructional, a learning experience, a new comparison, establishment, side of a coin, end of a pole. To explore subjective coincidences, to implant coincidences for the viewers to follow. It is intended to be given up to the universe and born from the universe.
The work is informed by my spiritual point of view. That we exist in a universe of paradox. It is the acceptance, not attempted resolution, of two opposing poles that is the goal for me. Everything is because nothing is. Everything exists because its opposite exists. The poles actually meet at their infinite ends becoming a loop. Moving, locating, identifying yourself and your positions in a universe of polarities is freedom. The clearer and easier I can be about who I am, where I am, and what I’m doing from moment to moment the freer I can be. Awareness is the first step. I believe that we are both agents and victims, subjects and objects. We have utter free will and our every move is pre-determined. Fate and destiny are luck and chance. Specificity breeds universality. There is an after and this is all. The universe doesn’t make mistakes. It makes everything. It transcends the good/bad and/or any other binary/label in existence becoming everything and nothing. Always becoming. I interact with it by following my sense of truth. It is intentionally accidentally unfathomable. We must surpass logic, the mind, senses, bodies and existence to even imagine transcending to a point of understanding. We are a part of it just as everything else. I live in service to the universe, and I live to change the universe.
