I am less than a week away from embarking on a journey to India. I plan on being there anywhere from 6 months to a year (or more). I have bought my one-way ticket, lots of malaria pills, and begun to dream.
Blog Archives
falling witness // performing trauma
For the entire summer, and the beginning of fall, I worked at a place called UNC Horizons. It’s a substance abuse program for women who are either pregnant or have small children.
rubber band theory: a monologue
What happens when the one you love must leave? I’m not trying to be cliché or even beautiful… I just want to know. When you are left alone, how do you make sense of reality? I’m asking you, because I’m young, without thought, and my baby is gone, gone, gone. She is on the road for the next 15 hours and then stepping into a new life. One that is colorful, decadent, and warm. I want to know if we can make it, if I should even hold onto her image in my mind. On a walk with a good friend of mine, she inquired on how I was going to handle the forthcoming departure. I moaned a bit and sadly shrugged my shoulders; how articulate of me. She then proposed a theory to me, the rubber band theory. She believes that we hurt so much when people we love leave because we are still physically attached to them. There is a thick rubber band pulling on our bodies, connected to their center, heart, mind, and new situation. When they are in pain, you can feel it. When they are in love, happy, or missing you, you can feel it. [...]
aesthetic improv
Fashion? Fashion. Ok, I can deal with that. Well, maybe not. The thing is that I am an absolute dunce when it comes to anything fashion related. I can’t coordinate shoes, I rarely wear jewelry, and applying make-up is often the single most challenging thing I do in a day. So, what does fashion mean to performance? Besides the obvious superficial performative characteristics of fashion, I believe that it runs deeper. Fashion is personal aestethic, not just ornamentation. It lives deep within our bodies and minds. It’s how we craft a snapshot of ourselves in the world. In order to demonstrate this fully, I would like to invite you to do a little improvisational exercise. One of my favorite things to do in acting classes was mime. I know, I know: it’s so Jaques Lecoq of me. But while you’re getting ready for the coming fashion shows, why not try this out and see where your body leads you? 1. Get together with a group of people. They can be artists, or not, but preferably radical (just because it’s always better that way). 2. Split the group in half. 3. The first half, stands before the second (create the spectator [...]
pick a word, any damn word you like
Ecstasy. Power. Codified. Holisitc. Deliverance. History. Anger. Threshold. Hegemony. Energy. Paradox. WORDS, Words, words. When I think about codes in the performance of everyday life, words always seem to come to mind. Semantics, in almost every culture, signify who we are, what we are doing, and how we react to our world and relationships. Words carry a heavy weight, and our particular choice of language is deeply linked to the identity we forge for ourselves everyday. My fascination with the performative power of words began when I dated a linguist. He was/is very intelligent, but like many in his field, had no faith that humans could change their semantic destiny. In his eyes we were just lame ducks, and no matter what we did, a larger and more epic movement would have to alter the way we speak. Our everyday use of language was more or less incidental. He did not believe that choosing to say “you all” versus “you guys” to encourage gender neutral language was necessary, or even helpful. In his eyes (and in the eyes of many with certain levels of intellectual/gender privilege) how hegemony attacks us through language is not important, but to be expected as [...]
visual knowledge and performance
Would you mind indulging me for just a second? Take a breath, close your eyes and listen. Listen to the street, footsteps on the pavement, glasses clinking, your own inhalation, anything that is around you. Listen and be still. Now, feel your hands and drop into your body. Without your sight, what bubbles up for you? What is it like to have 360 degrees of stimulus? How is the energy behind you different from that in front of you? After a few minutes, open your eyes and see what is surprising and how quickly the mind reacts to vision. How quickly do you make stories out of the objects that you see? While the above exercise may seem overplayed, it is one I cherish and do routinely. Not only is it a great meditation but it makes one painfully aware of how ocularcentric our bodies and minds have become. It’s probably no surprise to you when I say that we live in a visual culture. We rely immensely on the objects we can see for reason, and clarity. Without them, the world could seem chaotic or overwhelming. Especially in western cultures, we ground ourselves in the eyes and perform accordingly. [...]
a polyamorous performance piece
We all have mornings when we wake up and the lover next to us seems like a stranger. Early hours when last nights actions hang heavy or fall flat in the room. Those kinds of mornings happen to me a lot, more than most people actually. It’s not because I don’t care deeply about my sexual partners, but because I have chosen a polyamorous lifestyle. On those days, I look over at the pillow next to me and feel awkward, a bit too wild, a bit too unhinged. When I finally excuse myself, something we all try and maneuver gracefully, I return home. Not to an empty house but to a primary partner, my primary partner. And although we have an open relationship, one founded in trust and respect, I am torn between my performance in the moment and the one I embodied so fully the night before. I feel both entitled and taken apart by my experience with another lover. These feelings and situations have been prevalent in my life since I began pondering/practicing/performing polyamory. While it’s becoming more common (they even have a polyamory awareness and acceptance ribbon campaign) it still remains an experimental and radical form of [...]
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