9.21.24:
such good medicine, to do this thing with these people, on this last night of summer
2.27.24:
Steve Paxton.
12.5.23:
little baby moduce FLEETUS full-on moduce
ehu
11.29.23:
I think of the unfinished, abandoned alien grandeur of Arcosanti in the Arizona desert. I think of the tracking bug Agent Smith inserts into Neo in the first Matrix movie, all articulated joints and madly seeking antennae, a not-right mix of the organic and the robotic. I think of the floating worlds sketched by Mark Kistler on The Secret City show I watched after school on PBS. “Draw draw draw!” he would exhort us. I don’t think of Dalí, but I gather Young does, and when I look up the Spanish artist’s Assumption with Rhinoceros Horns I see those same oxbow curves, lines morphing into shapes. Everything itself, everything in a state of becoming.
I was delighted to write about Willie Wayne Young for my favorite Bay Area art space, Cushion Works.
10.9.23:
Julie Moon.
3.9.23:
Cushion Works is pleased to celebrate the release of Drive By, Claudia La Rocco’s new novella and Smooth Friend’s debut publication. Drive By is a homecoming story told in tumbling fragments of science fiction, art criticism, and strange encounters, anchored by La Rocco’s irreverent, humane cast of characters and resonant sense of place.
Claudia La Rocco: Drive By
A book release, reading, and celebration with Claudia La Rocco, Maxe Crandall, and Anne Walsh
Tuesday, April 11, 6:30pm
Presented with Smooth Friend
2.22.23:
amalgam presents
1st set
sarah clausen – saxophone
ishmael ali – cello
2nd set
animals & giraffes
claudia la rocco – voice, improvised text
phillip greenlief – tenor saxophone, Bb clarinet
kim nucci – electronics
3rd set
dave rempis – alto saxophone
bill harris – percussion
2.21.23:
12.1.22:
Drive By, starring Clarice. My first novella; the first printed publication from Smooth Friend.
Order online / also available at Et al. books in San Francisco
10.8.22:
“The Back Room takes its name in part from SPT’s 1974 beginnings in the back of a bookstore — the Castro’s Paperback Traffic, owned by Donn Tatum and Steve Lowell, a home for queer culture and a space for music and art in addition to readings. But our moniker is also a nod to these spaces (actual and psychic) you inevitably become familiar with if you kick around the arts for long enough. I’m thinking of the awkward almost-places where poets are asked to read: the not-quiet-enough corner in the bar with the poorly positioned lighting, or the cramped passageway in the bookstore that could be said to resemble a room if you squint at the right angle. And I’m also thinking of the back and side-quarters where everyone goes after the event, often in my experience a restaurant that satisfies four requirements: close enough, cheap enough, open late enough, and, alas, mediocre enough so that at least a few tables will be dependably empty.
And of course there are always rooms within rooms.”
–from “Make Yourself Comfortable,” my introduction to The Back Room, a new publishing project at Small Press Traffic.
9.23.22:
Norma T, Oslo
9.17.21:
such an honor and a pleasure to be in company with these fine individuals, within the gorgeous ongoingness that is SPT’s High Dawn:
4.15.21:
11.18.20:
Ellington’s Indigos, tempranillo, trashy fantasy novel: a mood.
11.17.20:
high noon, on the radio:
11.6.20:
it’s almost like it doesn’t make sense to generalize about people
11.1.20:
“Andrea is Andrea Nitsche-Krupp, Silas is Silas Riener, Heman is Heman Chong, the woman with the guitar is Cat Power, the man in the box in Iceland is Magnús Logi Kristinsson, Sofía is Sofía Córdova, Cedar is Cedar Sigo, my brother is Benjamin La Rocco, my partner is Phillip Greenlief, Bici is Bici Forbes, David is David Kelley, Sam is Sam Lefebvre.”
Wrote about “Remembering the Present” for NGV Triennial.
10.27.20:
10.25.20:
little baby moduce, baby cat among baby cats
10:17.20:
In Common Writers Series: John Yau and Claudia La Rocco
For the last program in The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series for 2020, we are delighted to host renowned poet and art critic John Yau, appearing from New York City. Saturday October 17, Yau joins with Claudia La Rocco, poet/performer and editor of Open Space at SFMOMA, reading and in conversation. Saturday’s event—which follows Yau reading his poetry and talking, Thursday October 15, with Andrew Joron also reading, emcee Carlos Quinteros III—will focus on John Yau’s work as art critic and curator. With emcee, Brandon Brown. Please note early start time!
This remote-access event starts promptly at 6:00 pm Pacific Time, and is free and open to the public. Real-Time Captioning provided here. For other reasonable accommodations please contact poetry@sfsu.edu.
The In Common Writers Series is supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. Co-sponsored by The Poetry Center, Open Space, and Pro Arts Gallery & Commons, Oakland. Please consider making a donation to Pro Arts Gallery & Commons, “a shared space for the expanded field of art, debate, experimentation, and collaboration…. As an alternative art space, we have always operated on the margins of the official art world. In early 2019, we opened up our space radically and became the first art & culture commons in Oakland, CA.” This event was formerly slated to be in that space in downtown Oakland, and we’d like to help generate support for their crucial cultural work.
10.11.20:
sausal creek downy woodpecker steller’s jay aerosol clicking ankles deep blue cloudless masks on masks off
10.10.20:
-Teju Cole
10.9.20:
happy birthday to me
8.17.20:
East Coast summer.
7.13.20:
Anna Halprin.
5.25.20:
Science fiction was in this respect like poetry, a field in which I was then also occasionally getting published: a living literature ignored by most Americans, but read passionately by those who read it. Both were small worlds, resounding with theories, arguments, friendships, rivalries, flights of praise and volleys of insults, and dominated by figures worshipped by their followers. -Ursula K. Le Guin
5.10.20:
Dogpark Collective’s new, as-of-yet untitled, audio magazine project, hosted by Kate Robinson, Caleb Beckwith, and Fran-the-dog.
Featuring:
Alana Siegel, “Twitter” 2:10
Turner Canty, “Martial Arts” 2:42
Suzanne Stein, “Lighted Moving Message,” fragment from a text commissioned by SFMOMA’s Open Space 5:53
Lindsey Boldt, “Skullface Malone,” featuring Steve Orth 9:30
Alli Warren, “Everybody sleeps in royal blue satin sheets like cucumbers in a box of snow,” from Bernadette Mayer’s Utopia 10:42
Jacob Kahn “Telos is a Feature” 14:10
Claudia La Rocco “Remnants from an improvisation” with Dylan van Der Schyff as part of The Retrospective Room at the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, Australia, March 2020 15:55
Next Expanse/Nich Malone “Like an Extra” 18:32
Ellis Martin “Ave Maria” with Jascha Ephraim & Candace Lazarou 21:21
Jamie Townsend “Occasional Poem” 25:22
Paul Ebenkamp “Song” 30:02
Brandon Brown “A Love Faraway” 34:19
Steve Orth “My Dog” 9:30
Jeanne Vaccaro, “Carpet Care Los Angeles 4” 38:56
J.J. Mull, “March 25th, 2020” 43:31
Laura Moriarty, 3 poems from Non Death Diary 46:07
Ivy Johnson, “First Song” 47:40
An announcement 49:50
2.12.20:
PG LRG last night at The Uptown. One of six scores created by Phillip Greenlief and performed by a ridiculously talented 27-person ensemble of improvisers (I sat between Danishta Rivero and Aurora Josephson, to give you a sense of the amazingness):
Some of what I wrote/said on stage:
The late day golden light was fading. It was a history it was a landmark
What we now think of as Santa Monica was not Santa Monica
What we now think of as South Central was not South Central
What we now think of as Los Angeles was and always will be the landscape underneath
LA PLAYS ITSELF
They are about to demolish your house
Figueroa Flower Hope Grand Olive Spring
The Jurassic Age sits in its museum
The zipper merge is the only merge that works
I have been stuck in traffic longer than this mammoth has been stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits
*
This is a Los Angeles Notebook
This is a Wanda Coleman
This is a John Cage
This is a valley
This is a police discrimination
This is a once upon a time in Hollywood
This is a pedestrian in LA
This is a Suzanne Stein
This is a Phillip Greenlief
This is a history of. This is a fire season. This is a giant burger that we are supposed to believe is a landmark.
9.25.19:
“The book falters precisely because it refuses to do so.”
Yes yes yes. Butler’s specific critique of Weiss’ clumsy argument-making is so good. And also: the above quote should be tattooed on the inside of every writer’s eyelids.
9.21.19:
no. bad art is not good activism.
8.2.19:
coyotes yipping wildly up in the rocky cliffs. the water violet, the boat rocking. music traveling over the waves.
7.31.19:
5.5.19:
https://www.thelab.org/projects/2019/06/01/claudia-la-rocco-and-whats-more
December 15, 2018 – June 22, 2019
Claudia La Rocco’s And What’s More is a literary, performance, art, and sound project that plays with traditional audience/maker/doer relationships. The third installment of her experimental Olivia Trilogy, And What’s More developed from years of La Rocco’s collaborations with artists in different fields, exploring how form and content mutate but also cohere across disciplines, and how an artist can remain true to herself while also working in service of others. For this project, rather than asking artists to explicitly interpret her creation, she brings talented individuals into her imaginings (through the book form of And What’s More) in order to create a loose conversation between and among forms, both on and off the page: “A lot of what sparks my enthusiasm here is curiosity. What would happen if…? Specific to all of the individuals is a bristly intelligence — for some this is structural, for some physical, for some linguistic, philosophical, and so on… And there isn’t anything I like more than intelligence. Even (especially?) when intelligence fails, it’s interesting.” With characteristic humor and poetry, La Rocco invites her collaborating artists to use The Lab’s space as a “page or a performance, or something else entirely.”
Events:
Saturday, December 15, 2018
Amanda Nadelberg: Life Forms
A private workshop for the staff of The Lab
Tuesday, March 20, 2019
Suzanne Stein: New Sutras
6:30 p.m. doors/ 7 p.m. reading
What is it to construct the time-based artistic creation that is a book-length work, while dealing with the minute-by-minute concerns and distractions of a day job? Suzanne Stein’s book-length poem New Sutras was written during the eight years that mark her tenure as founding editor-in-chief of SFMOMA’s Open Space; the same day job I have had while writing And What’s More. You could say the two books have nothing in common, and on one level that’s true. But that isn’t the level that interests me at all. —clr
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Teresa Baker: And What’s More
A limited edition of twenty works to be mailed to you; free, RSVP to thelabsf@thelab.org required
I will be making small, individual editions inspired by the landscapes, colors, and senses in Olivia’s world. —tb
Sunday, June 9, 2019
Alexandra Pappas: And What’s More
6:30 p.m. doors/7 p.m. event; free
I’m always asking Alex for research assistance, in order to make my forays into mythology a little less dilettantish. This time, I decided to cut out the middle-man (my art), or rather to let it be fodder for wherever she might like to go. At the time of this writing, here’s what I know about that wherever: It will likely involve “something about myth and myth-making, something Greco-Roman, something early Buddhist, and something(s) in gritty images.” —clr
Saturday, June 15, 2019
Anne Walsh with Leena Joshi: And What’s More
7:30 p.m. doors/8 p.m. performance; free
Anne just spent a bunch of years making a book into an exploded studio into a performance back into a book. For this performance, if that’s what it will be, she’s teamed up with writer, artist, and performer Leena Joshi. —clr
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Phillip Greenlief: The Known Universe for Olivia
7:30 p.m. doors/8 p.m. performance; $10-15 sliding scale
A map score for live electronics, voices and movement, The Known Universe for Olivia is organized to represent characters, places, and events found in the final installment of claudia la rocco’s Olivia Trilogy. performers are allowed to enter and move freely in the open work with additional conduction cues from composer phillip greenlief.
the ensemble:
phillip greenlief – composer, conductor, saxophone
aurora josephson – voice
danishta rivero-castro – voice, electronics
sandy sleeper – voice, electronics
kyle bruckmann – electronics
thomas dimuzio – electronics
madalyn merkey – electronics
wobbly – electronics
alex escalante – movement
jesse hewit – movement
eleanor hullihan – movement
Claudia La Rocco is the author of The Best Most Useless Dress (Badlands Unlimited, 2014) and the chapbook I am trying to do the assignment ([2nd Floor Projects], 2018). The first two installments of The Olivia Trilogy, petit cadeau and Interstitial, were published in print, performance, and digital editions by The Chocolate Factory in 2015 and Michelle Ellsworth’s Man Pant Publishing imprint in 2016. With musician/composer Phillip Greenlief she is animals & giraffes, an ongoing experiment in improvisation; a&g performs regularly with artists from different disciplines and has released the albums July (with various musicians; Edgetone Records, 2017) and Landlocked Beach (with Wobbly; Creative Sources, 2018). La Rocco’s poetry and prose have been widely anthologized and she has bylines in such publications as Artforum, BOMB, and The New York Times, where she was an arts critic and reporter from 2005-2015. She has received grants and residencies from such organizations as the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, and Headlands Center for the Arts, and her work has been presented by The Walker Art Center, The Kitchen, The Whitney Museum of American Art, et al. She is editor in chief of SFMOMA’s interdisciplinary commissioning platform Open Space.
Collaborating Artists:
Teresa Baker is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in Western North Dakota. She has exhibited widely throughout the U.S., was a Tournesol Award Artist-in-Residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts, as well as an artist-in-residence at The MacDowell Colony. In 2018, her visual essay, Sego Lily, was published by Open Space (SFMOMA).
Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970s, Evander Music founder and saxophonist Phillip Greenlief has achieved international critical acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed and recorded with Wadada Leo Smith, Meredith Monk, Rashaun Mitchell, and They Might Be Giants; albums include LANTSKAP LOGIC with Fred Frith and Evelyn Davis (clean feed) and THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre. His critical writing has been published in Artforum, Open Space (SFMOMA) and Signal to Noise.
Amanda Nadelberg is a poet and lives in Oakland. She is the author of three books: Isa the Truck Named Isadore, Bright Brave Phenomena, and Songs from a Mountain.
Alexandra Pappas is Raoul Bertrand Chair in Classics and Director of the Center for Greek Studies at San Francisco State University. She is also a member of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle. Her teaching and research centers on ancient Greek words and images and how they make meaning together. She also makes sure to sit quietly every day.
Suzanne Stein’s poetry publications and performance documents include The Kim Game, TOUT VA BIEN, and Passenger Ship; her book-length poem New Sutras is forthcoming this spring. With the poet Steve Benson, she is the author of DO YOUR OWN DAMN LAUNDRY, which collects the 36 improvisational dialogues they performed together between 2011 and 2012. Writing has appeared recently in The Best American Experimental Writing, Elderly, and Open Space; performance recordings are archived at PennSound. Suzanne was the founding editor, and for eight years editor-in-chief, of Open Space, SFMOMA’S hybrid art and language platform and publication.
Anne Walsh is a maker of performance, video, sound, and text works, many of which re-mediate the works and lives of other artists and her own family. Walsh’s book Hello Leonora, Soy Anne Walsh (2019, no place press/MIT Press) epitomizes the aggressively indexical, personal, and analytical nature of her practice: it is a visual and written ‘adaptation’ of Leonora Carrington’s 1950 fantastical feminist novella The Hearing Trumpet. Other recent adaptations include Walsh’s live performances with poet Jocelyn Saidenberg of Camille Roy’s play Sometimes Dead is Better, and her video installation Anthem, in which she performed, with a troupe of Oakland elders, the Oscar winning song “Let It Go,” from the 2014 Disney film Frozen.
1.27.19:
Why isn’t Strictly Bolshoi more of a thing
1.25.19:
Claudia La Rocco
petit cadeau
Friday, January 25, 2019
Doors 6:30pm, Performance 7:00pm
3320 18th Street
San Francisco, CA
petit cadeau, an android coming-of-age story and invisible love letter to dance, is Claudia La Rocco’s first novel. It was originally published in 2015 by The Chocolate Factory in New York as a print edition of one and a four-day live edition. The book is presented here as an official West Coast release, reading, and performance featuring La Rocco, musician/composer Phillip Greenlief, and dancer/choreographer Alex Escalante.
Claudia La Rocco is a writer whose work frequently revolves around interdisciplinary projects and collaborations. She is the author of the selected writings The Best Most Useless Dress (Badlands Unlimited) and the chapbook I am trying to do the assignment ([2nd Floor Projects]). Her duo with musician/composer Phillip Greenlief, animals & giraffes, has released the albums July (with various musicians; Edgetone Records) and Landlocked Beach (with Wobbly; Creative Sources). Interstitial, the sequel to petit cadeau, was published by Michelle Ellsworth’s Man Pant Publishing imprint in 2016; The Lab has commissioned the trilogy’s conclusion.
Alex Escalante has recently returned to California after a 22-year spell in NYC. While there, he had the pleasure of performing, creating and being a thread in the fabric of the vibrant and powerful downtown dance community. He also documented over a decade of performances and events as a freelance photographer. Escalante’s multi-disciplinary works delve into current socio-political issues, creating a performance space in which viewers are invited to examine and reflect upon their own beliefs.
phillip greenlief is a saxophonist involved in over 30 projects with an international crew of free improvisers and new music innovators. playing solo is his most personal work, and in this context his concerns are obliterating the tonal system in favor of establishing a sound language that is accessible to musicians from all cultures and abilities.
1.20.19:
rain, fritos, artforum
1.19.19:
1.13.19:
disabled twitter account. immediately wanted to tweet that i have disabled twitter account. does this count?
7.1.18:
quotes written down while watching Dead Sometimes at Project Artaud’s SPACE 124 yesterday. The astonishing performance is “the product of a collaboration between Kathryn Crim, Howard Fisher, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Anne Walsh, and the work of Camille Roy.”
5.3.18:
something the inimitable Zee Hartmann (aka one of my favoritest people in the world) is doing
4.28.18:
*
A few weeks before the premiere, a group of Atlanta Ballet dancers headed to Smith’s Olde Bar, where Ms. Monáe was headlining. They clustered together in the raucous, intimate space, cheering wildly as she performed tracks from “Metropolis,” a genre-defying album which casts her as a humanistic, renegade cyborg.
Suddenly, Ms. Monáe halted her hectic movements across the stage. She centered herself and, incredibly, performed a passable pirouette. The dancers went wild.
It fit in seamlessly to her act, and something that the ever-confident Mr. Patton had predicted earlier about the impact of “big” on the ballet world came to mind:
“They might say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have the New York Ballet with Mary J. Blige, or we’re going to have Ludacris perform with Miami,” he said. “This might start a trend. You never know.”
4.7.18:
**
An entire planet of salt evaporation ponds. Calligraphic spits of rocky earth unfurling between rippling vats of acid green, rust red, mustard yellow. Everything encircled by chalky lines of mineral residue. Railroad tracks cutting through on the levees bisecting the marshes, how she had to remind herself not to say “man-made,” that she had no idea who or what made these things. Little shacks of gray weathered wood collapsing in on themselves, corroded dredges, a world of abandonment punctuated by the flocks of the small silvery birds that made their home in the brine. The slick, soothing hum of their transporter’s life support systems. The casino rising up from
**
3.3.18:
something that happened almost two years ago today. something i am considering reworking for current book, i.e., the something i am always working on for every book (maybe or maybe that just sounds good)
Claudia La Rocco: Later in the House of God
March 4, 2016
Claudia La Rocco
Later in the House of God, 2016
text fragments, w/assists from a&k
*
This work was commissioned by Danspace Project,
where it was rendered on February 23
as a four-hour audio loop
during a one-night installation with Paul Chan’s sculptures
& Eiko Otake’s performance & video
in response to PLATFORM 2016: A Body in Places.
It’s dedicated, with love, gratitude & respect,
to Eiko, Paul & Judy Hussie-Taylor:
what a pleasure to spend time & space with you three
It’s also for Alex & Kristen,
who I adore,
& who might once have been the same person
*
{NB: A few lines are cannibalized
by previous recent works of mine, others are my responses
to video footage provided by Eiko;
“the artist” line represents a quote (or maybe misquote)
of one of Paul’s lines; the Sheehy line comes from a NYT article
from 1/29/16; & found language comes from Alex & Kristen.
The mistakes & bad lines are all mine.}
*
Thank you.
clr.
2/24/16
Brooklyn
*
Prelude.
There’s always trash
There’s always a one-night stand
My gravestone was broken into many small parts.
There was caution tape in the trees. My requiem for you could only ever be a token of my grief for the world. I had a slice of pizza, and tried to write a letter to someone.
I guess I was feeling pretty abject
I thrust my hand out against the broken metal post, the rusted razor wire
Nothing here to protect
Begin.
The bride read a long time ago that the ancient Greeks believed hysteria was caused by a woman’s womb going unused for too long, thereby causing it to roam around in her body, wreaking havoc. Also that emotions were something outside that same body, imposed upon her by the gods.
In expressing ambivalence about Hillary Clinton, Gail Sheehy described Gennifer Flowers as a lounge singer with slot-machine eyes.
Quit staggering around, old girl
The woman on the dunes gives you alien eyes
She is looking for her womb
Ophelia didn’t drown, in the end. She had a slice of pizza, and tried to write H. a letter. She expressed a big desire to take to the open seas. There was time and no time.
Later, she went out on the veranda and had a smoke. Stared at the world.
Begin.
Begin Again.
The people were all around the dying sea creature, looking nervously
Maybe it wasn’t dying after all
Were those tubes venomous?
It took them awhile to realize the creature was a bride
The tourist buses
The movement fast to the gatekeeper keymaster
You can read this any way you want.
The bride has seal eyes
She runs away
Dog with a bone
The city loses itself in a haze and the red flag whips beyond the yellow afternoon moon
Now the crowd had Ophelia cornered and she knew it
Her entrails spilled out
We lost interest
Now she no longer would move slowly
And the lights of the city came on
The monster heaved itself onto the boardwalk
And the bride stood with upraised arms.
Begin.
Last night at the ballet, the retiring star climbed the impossibly tall, thin ladder
She stood on the tiny platform far above the crowd, her legs offering their usual splendidly dependable geometries
Aphrodite Kallipugos couldn’t look away. She knew the ballerina would jump
You write things, you take away their power
An investigation is pending
She fell like it was nothing at all, her death
Everything is ruined
A body can be anywhere
It can fall
The memory of this dream remained with Aphrodite Kallipugos like an impossible thing
The shivering secret excitement of knowing before the others
She was at the top of her powers, in the tower with room only for one
*
The vines came down
They strangled what had been native, what had been there first
A woman who is also not human, who is also not free.
It was early morning. Ophelia hated her servant’s hangdog face, how abject she was. Her faith in the goodness of her actions.
(Appendix 1. Chart 45: At night the ship hums effortlessly. The territory hurtles forward, held in time.)
Somehow, the prospect of an avatar seemed necessary.
How in novels when they say her face darkened.
Because they didn’t feel … they Because they didn’t feel … they
Everything lies still now.
Dear Betty, the avatar whispers, The thing they don’t understand is, we had to go back. That’s where our spaceship was. One’s senses are attenuated anew, the artist told me. But I am not Odysseus.
The spaceship by year three began to develop its own intelligences, these running quietly and undetected by the skeleton support crew.
Now Ophelia can see she is moving further away. She practices jettisoning her favorite belongings through the escape pod hatch. She tries to draw the curtains, but they won’t close. Things outside move restlessly. Her meager allotment of courage goes on a pilgrimage & never comes back. She makes smaller & smaller movements with her hands.
I could go back on television, it’s true, Ophelia thinks to herself. But now I am just waiting.
(Appendix 4, Chart 72: Now I am waiting for her to tell me which way to go next.
Begin.
“My eyes won’t make focus,” the ghost explained. In the dream there were fleshy, flower-like growths erupting slowly from her palms. She bit them off at the base, the action both painful and satisfying.
St. Paul sits with the sword of the spirit, which is also the word of god. The ghost shakes her head and keeps walking. Everything becomes radioactive, she mutters. Water stains, water damage. Her long sleeves dragging in the mud and dust.
In her memoir, Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854-1911, Malvina Shanklin Harlan gives an account of a slave girl whose clothes caught fire after she fell asleep while working near a candle. Harlan writes: “Unconscious, at first, of the heat that would have quickly awakened one of another race, she lay twisting and turning in her sleep.” Harlan is important to history because she was a wife. Her husband was the Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, who gave the lone dissenting opinion in Plessy v Ferguson, the case endorsing separate but equal segregation.
Begin Again.
Lock her in for the night. She mutters. For eternity. The kumquats are over ripe.
The plants were so lush, you couldn’t tell the world was dying.
The ghost was troubled by this, and did a weird little dance to indicate her discontent.
The piano lay on its side in the rubble. The insects buzzed and hummed incessantly. The whistler. The knave. The girl at the bottom of the sea.
The monster when she opened her wings was the palest, most beautiful of reds. What you might say was saffron. She was sexually insatiable. She was immortal. She was cursed.
The ghost could only keep walking. “I’m not sure I entirely understand parentheticals,” she whispered.
Penetrated by the thing that is you also. A deep, impossibly sensuous problem.
In her novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, thought to date from the 1850s, Hannah Crafts writes, “Slaves generally are far preferable to wives in husbands’ eyes.” Crafts is important to history because she was a fugitive slave, recently escaped from North Carolina. She was discovered in 2001 by a man, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; in 2013, her identity was verified by another man, Gregg Hecimovich. Her name became Hannah Bond.
The fiberglass hull was broken like a child’s thing. Finally, the ghost sat along the ruined edge and cried. The ground was soon covered with small white feathers.
Begin.
It’s late here. It’s hushed. The ship’s systems whirring on and off, indeterminately. Malvina is poolside in her one-piece, the water lapping incandescently under dark lights far overhead. She sips listlessly at her Moscow Mule.
The bride’s face is obscured by vines
She has lain for so long now in her bower
The prince is waiting far, far away, in Soho—or, not waiting, exactly, but alert
Now the trains do not come here anymore
Dry grasses obscure the tracks
The man I would be with has fallen away, the bride whispers,
Now I can never go home
The station is closed
The yellow center line runs on forever: I can no longer offer you a defense of art.
Begin Again.
Aphrodite Kallipugos was sitting in the empty lot behind her apartment building
Drinking beer out of bottles and smoking cigarettes
She set her iPod on shuffle, and looked toward the stars
Everyone was too far away
Ophelia was down in the dumps again
And so Aphrodite Kallipugos had been sending her asemic emojis
Everything was bad, Ophelia texted back
Aphrodite Kallipugos thought to say “make it worse” but she kept that to herself
Also that asemic emojis were code for love
Youth is wasted on the young, Aphrodite Kallipugos said to no one in particular,
Shaking her head and taking a swig from her present bottle of beer
This saying was a favorite of her father’s.
It had taken her a long time to really understand it.
More texts were coming in
Zipping back and forth from Oakland to Seattle.
Ophelia found Aphrodite Kallipugos’ full name cumbersome, and so often resorted to Aphro K, or even AKA.
Ophelia could be incredibly dense sometimes.
Begin.
“Ballerina dives to her death”
There it was, Aphrodite Kallipugos’ dream, an above-the-fold headline
Or was it the bride’s dream?
She had to take a break and stare out the window at the flowering plum tree
What could this mean.
The bride sipped her coffee from the bright red mug with white polka dots
Last night there had been a single seashell pink band of cloud shot through the baby blue sky.
Red sky at night, sailors’ delight … she whispered the words like a chant
Begin Again.
Aphrodite Kallipugos thought, and not for the first time, how strange it was to be the loveliest woman in the world, to actually be Aphrodite of the fine ass, and to be so lonely
There was something exquisite about it.
The problem with Ophelia, also, Aphrodite Kallipugos decided, was her addiction to luxury
She opened another bottle, and searched for Juana Molina on her device
Endless repeat was the thing
The stars made a few necessary updates, now that she wasn’t looking
Begin.
There was the relentless wind
The industrial windmills
The chickens scratching around beneath the eucalyptus bushes
The ghost’s husband was losing his mind
Each night, she got into her sleeping bag and waited for the tree frogs
Anything that was useless, she wanted it so badly
There was nothing on tv
The memory of pain and the taste of blood and nothing she could feel
A rough thumb moving softly against her cheek
St. Paul had advised she should think soberly
These men were all the same`
The signal was scrambled.
The high tribunal sat in front of their laptops.
The ghost decided to move into the present tense
That is, the ghost decides.
The kids run up and down the block, laughing and screaming Marco Polo
And the pop stars sing about inscrutable things
There is one feeling, a feeling of feeling everything that goes away as soon as she tries to get close to it
What’s to do
The ghost worries over her newly planted succulents
Brushing her hands over them, against them, through them until they shiver
as if in understanding
as if in keeping with the sentiment
End.
3.2.18:
This city is full of spies
You’re of no interest to them
*
God is not the author of this spectacle
God is not the author of this spectacle
The elephants learn to travel at night
It is a purely natural phenomenon
Give credit where credit is due
*
Everything runs through her hands
We who are rational we who are not brain washed
So please do not feel sorry for us
Rainbows are unweaved
The article is in Cyrillic
The man is too old
We ask our little mind to believe in what we want it to believe
Put the box out back
2.5.18:
The intrigues seem so important, but they aren’t
Let’s all jump in unison
When something is gone you shouldn’t want it any more
1.27.18:
The whole planet was in ruins I walked back into the bar the dream was always the same tawny hills dotted with oaks the little girl waiting her hair blowing every which way it was late afternoon it was dusk it was early morning I waited until I couldn’t wait anymore. The stars were all blown out. She was standing she was waiting her hair was blowing every which way my heart walked up and out I waited until I couldnt wait anymore the planet was in ruins I walked back into the bar it was time to
1.21.18:
The Eos Code.
1.20.18:
Last Friday:
This Friday:
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener; Brontez Purnell. Dance aftermaths.
12.27.17:
12.23.17: I saw that Wooster Group Shaker show. Perfection. I remember being on the street after, or was it before, just outside The Performing Garage in SoHo. I remember McDormand flying past a small knot of us; I think there was a brief interaction, why do I think that, did someone (me?) say something, attempt to halt her progress for a moment? Years later I will be (peripherally) at a dinner for Sophie Calle, and McDormand will be one of the guests. I remember years before that (the Shaker show) trying to interview the only living Shakers in the world, at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village (est. 1783) in New Gloucester, Maine, about a two-hour drive from where I grew up. I sent several emails, as I recall, or did I call? Anyway, they weren’t interested in my interest. I studied the Shakers in college, learned “all about” their ecstatic dances, which in a liberal arts college was inevitably translated to faith as substitute for sex. I would so love to see these dances performed, but also this seems a private thing, a thing for which there aren’t watchers, only doers. Not theater. The second time I visit A. in her studio, we discuss various lineage possibilities for the various ritualized dances in THT: Oskar Schlemmer, Laban, Eurythmy. Later I will think about the Shaker dances, or do I mean the Wooster Shaker dances, and these in my mind will become THT dances, despite all evidence to the contrary.
12.11.17:
The complex nature of perception
You are in the house with the windows
Something rushes through
You seek forewarning
Marks on the tarmac
A curtain blowing lines bisecting
When you wake up the cattle are all around you
Please come home, that’s all she writes
The game proceeds maniacally
The wave forever cresting
The boundary frustrated
I did this elaborate reading of what the fuck is going on
The teeth wound around and around the spiral
Not a virgin, but a sacrifice nonetheless
And do you know yourself?
And will you receive this?
You press your face this way and that;
Or, rather;
You perceive this happening to your face, this pressing
He threw fire at the shrubbery to prevent the war and now you place action in a vitrine
You do this elaborate reading of what the fuck is going on
Contemporary art is a bad game
All your daily perambulations, eye at the ready
And were the libations poured into the white plastic spoon at the perimeter?
Were the spicy Cheetos speared on the white plastic fork on Folsom Street?
Not a virgin, but a sacrifice nonetheless
The machines go round and round
Come home, she beseeches he does not
A wound like thick color on a mountain
A room at the center of the world surrounded by the noise of men
She puts on her shoes, her garment; she turns to foam
When you wake up the cattle are all around you, their eyes are not unkind
And do they also seek knowledge of their fate no of course not don’t be …
Press your cheek; pull at your scapula
The glossies bore you, the pretend art of the living
You ascend the mountain. After all, it is only paint.
You do a keyword search in the archive. You agree to the slight sleight of hand.
That we have all arrived somewhere. That there is more asking to do.
12.2.17:
Anyway. I’m off on a tangent
I said, are you sure He said, yes I’m sure I said ok He said, please mention I said, ok This is me saying that
It needed to go
The wind was in the trees and the cavalry was coming We’re gonna have round things and things that are not round. That’s going to be our theme.
She moves her hand over the surface He moves his fingers against the cupcake
Hey Cuddles. Look smart.
She puts her lipstick on. Now she’s ready
I kinda like to lean in My standards are lower than yours The lights are being flashed Is Steve gonna bring the poets? There’s a blackout down in SF State
There’s a bathroom. There is light inside the bathroom.
I just touched your microphone
Im going to stop talking
The alien is inside me. I can feel it growing all the time. The flowers are like constellations. I look for astrology in everything.
We rushed down and through the highways. They took his tooth out, that’s why he’s not here.
All that delicate gold ruffle. That thin red thread.
Put all the instruments out. Delicately. It’s time for dissection.
There’s nothing on the tvee tonight
I’m gonna punish you for being human They’re gonna be playing round things. Though I do see some rectangles, Tim, on the floor
The Parrots are lost Maybe it’s only one parrot
It’s never a good idea telling other people how to be free All the things you can do with round things
Have you seen him? Have you seen her
Oh that’s terrible
Wal Mart parking lot
At night she props up the mannequin in the passenger seat This android that eavesdrops
You did a violence to me The ocean comes into the boat it wont stop All that ice skating at night you’re cold you just want hot chocolate The androids deep down are scared
We’re going to Europe with an android that eavesdrops Tim thinks it won’t be that different than hanging out with me
He might be right
Corvettes pigs pears
Easter egg hunt astro turf
My sternum, my fingers The stoplight clicks on, clicks off
The rain slick roads at night
The gold disks and the red string
Her reflection is all over the ceiling
She refused him
I would turn Carla up a little bit … The light spills down the channel You cant even believe how hard I’m trying The bricks have eyes
She keeps talking
Hi Barb
We have one more piece
Let’s see if I can produce some sound I’m in a good mood No
You’re not just playing long tones?
What’s the matter with you
I thought about getting you a flat screen tvee for Christmas
The gang spoke
I need help with the bass, is what I’m saying
You know I have this gig, in Europe, I never understand what’s happening
We have a bottle of wine if you want to go upstairs and find an opener
I don’t drink but. I watch.
Everyone’s asleep in the Wal Mart parking lot
You sandbagged me.
Let’s see what happens I know how it happens I’m playing duo with a guy who’s not here
Finally. Left alone in a library.
Thank god we’re only on the second floor The room is only only locked if you want to be in there
I like that woman for both of us. They have a lot of hoopla I wanna watch crystal melting
You know the oysters Rockefeller weren’t that good They just weren’t
The ceilings are low do you think the ceilings are low I used to take classes there
It’s pretty boomy in here I’m gonna go to my quarters
I dodged Spalding Gray in Santa Barbara. That’s something MT said. That’s not something that happened to me. None of these things happened to me. Nothing ever happens to me.
(while listening to THAT BIG DRUM. THAT TINY PEDAL. [Suki O’Kane (big drum) and Tim Perkis (tiny pedal)], and improvising with kattt atchley at the luggage store gallery, november 30th.
11.29.17: “I just don’t want to take a picture of another thing. What interests me here is the light.” – Nathaniel Dorsky, at BAMPFA, talking about his films Elohim and Abaton, as part of Canyon Cinema 50.
undergrowth
shadow & act
green stalk // pink chalice
when you don’t want to look at anything
when you press your fingertips to sternum
anything but light
fairies & magic (shadow & act)
the sound of her swallowing
The velvetine rabbit waiting to be real
all the names for flowers
all what ophelia knew
flowers like constellations // blue sky like chartres
“It has to do with the body. These films are made for the heart & the body. The only thing I had to go on was the body. … Film editing has to do with progression of energy. And then you break the energy with a cut … you keep refreshing the energy with each cut. … It’s not the objects, it’s the spirits in the objects.” ND
11.26.17: I remember being on the Danube how hot it was that day in Bratislava, L’s ankle & calf (was it both legs or one?) swelling up so fat, soaking them in the water fountain. Yogurt and cinnamon ice cream (or was it cardamon? ice cream has never tasted better). Escape from Vienna. Getting a phone call from the UAI and deciding that day to change my number. The two scoops of ice cream on a plate, a rectangular dish, balanced on my two bare thighs. A lap of cream melting & the delicate ruffled hem of my faded black, thin cotton dress. Not much time and so much time in the old city. Standing on the boat, wind rushing. The call. The decision. Freedom as something chosen.
while listening to A Sound Map of the Danube at The Lab