MDLSX at La Mama

MDLSX

One solitary killer performer; one play not labeled or titled via acronyms. This is a journey that doesn't stop tonight, not for the person showing us their life, and not for us. Mini tripod and iPhone in-hand, tandem home videos also translate an education lesson that I will use in my life if ever confronted with its subject. You don't wish anyone a tougher life, you learn, you listen, and you love. The timing is always right. The title? Let's start with the title.   Perhaps a strategic choice reminiscent of our culture lessening important things. Do I think that was strategic?  Brilliance is always fun, in the minds of the brilliant.  Vowels? Why does a word always need one? Formulas are plastic and we need to be able to shape things in a way that we can understand them even though it's not what you're used to. Maybe it's a metaphor for our generation's attention span, or how we speak, or spell, like kindergarteners sounding out words and then attempting their spelling. Why can art be subjective, but spelling can't? Spell how you would like kids, if it translates across generations, great, if it doesn't, who cares, life is short and those whom you love will get it.
Tonight this performer revealed their discovery of their life and exposed the transformation to us. If your life could have a soundtrack, what songs would you pick? Years go by and each song is indicative of the moment - The Cramps, David Bowie, screaming as each kid on the playground asks if you're a boy or a girl. A celebration when a pubic hair surfaces, and an orchestra follows. Same goes for breasts and the ache that may follow growth, and a melodramatic build and confusion play when a penis protrudes; one person. This is their life. You're allowed in. She pulls her hair back to reveal an uncanny look mirroring her brother, and then she sticks the camera inches from her vagina. If you were picturing some play-doh creature you blindly make during a Cranium challenge, you're wrong. You've been up in there and you're not confused. In the end though, she is and she wants to be the person inside. Not what parents have steered or expected; what the person inside is saying.

Alejandro Jodorowsky makes a vocal cameo in an interview with someone equally important considering their opinion on the topic was stellar and well informed. There shouldn't be a label for a man or a woman since there aren't just two, ever. If that's true, than a man or woman are not the only two options so therefore acknowledge. In the end we did. Although this human beings life led to a hitchhiking journey, shaved heads and drugged mermaids in tanks w sheer shiny flippers, a kaleidoscope of colors, songs, beats and philosophies, never could you put yourself in their shoes, and so you stand and clap. I haven't stood and clapped in a long time. I literally jumped out of my beach chair, and threw my jacket down to clap. Not because you're sad, not because it was difficult for the performer to deliver such a show, but because you know you're not that strong. Because you know you just witnessed something above and beyond someone coming out to the public.  Because you know you're a better person for her having been alive, and selfishly walking away with more than what you ever paid.

Goldberg - Marina Abramovic

Goldberg Variations

Surrender your belongings to a locker, take nothing but the key and follow instructions.
You're seated like a Dubai sand resort, or a ufo farm diorama, or the latest burning man tent seashell. You sit gently. Crimping your hamstrings against a wooden beach chair, headphones in-hand. Your neighbors are unaware and lay neatly in place, staring up at a hangar ceiling that could fit a blimp. A gong sounds, and arms raise to silence the world around you. I smile and for some reason shed a single tear. Yup, cliche I know. Maybe I hadn't blinked in a while. I thought about the impossibility of shutting out everything and quieting the noise in ones life, but not being alone in your room, staring at the window, preparing for the next day, or a terrible night's sleep - which many did, sleep, but not out of boredom.  They'd chosen to spend this time in their life in this space, with the silence, the music and nothing else.

The tick of your temple, the rhythm of your heart, every breath guides you through the next twenty minutes. You're a fetus. You're life is muffled. There's light at the end of the tunnel and doors with which you choose to enter this life. A stick is clicking in the background but my attention is focused on the ceiling, on my life, on the mistakes and where I'm at. I'm keenly aware that my experience will be solely mine and different because my life is not the same as anyone else's.  Similar, maybe, but no ones thinking about suicide, or should I say, self-assisted  suicide in my old age and How to Die in Oregon.

Igor Levit is creeping by me at a slow pace. He's wiping his face, he buries his head in his arm and takes a nap on the piano before his work begins. He's nodding his head as if to say "I can't believe I'm doing this again". His piano is slowly pulled into the center of our chaise stadium, our headphones still on, dead silent. 4 illuminated doors have been our roof compass. None of which dictate a direction, however a possible moment of birth when they suddenly power down at the sound of a second gong.  The headphones come off, our heads breach, the lit doors slam, one stream of consciousness surrounds us and dims throughout our lives.  The piano slowly rises to the noise of ones life that never ceases from inception. You're born, and so goes the rise and fall of ones trajectory and Igor chooses how to crescendo a lifetime - it's got angst, hyperactivity, love, confusion, awe, fantasy and death.  It might not be your death. Just another chapter, on repeat.  There's no doubt that many a movie scene will subconsciously draw us to the death of elders sitting in wheelchairs at some broken down senior facility. This piano plays like a drug you want to take over and over even though you will die together.  You think of the saying "the soundtrack of ones life" and nothing rings more clear especially when you're cell phone isn't around. As time passes though, you settle deeper into your chair because your arms have fallen asleep at the angles you'd set them at shoulder length. Your legs are pinched and your back starts to yearn for a stretch. As you sit, you start asking yourself what time is it, let me check my watch. Is anyone going out after this, where's my phone. I crossed my leg and was worried something would fall out of my pockets into the bars of the Steinway and ruin mastery worse than the coughs from phlegm squandering hackers.  As the light faded and what we knew was an unblemished attempt at painting ones life, it led me straight to my death and the thought of yearning for a song that could walk me out into the next state of silence. I'll now know it when I hear it, because it's mine.

Lazarus

Lazarus

Without having any idea about the Man Who Fell to Earth, I'll break apart the already fractured yet duct taped Lazarus. With cart Blanche access to David Bowie's catalog, the show is like the Northern State Parkway. It winds its way around the richest areas of the island but never lets you peek inside. You get glimpses of greatness at multiple landscapes and then you're pulled over by the strobe of police before you can even tell them how much you enjoyed your view.  The actors are mad for each other and drive your interest through the two straight hours, however there's never enough dialogue to secure ones fallibility.  Just as your invested, poof magic trick, smoke, stab, drag off stage and strobe into the next digital remedy. I try to keep my criticism to be less than just a scene outline, and therefore where in my life did I find myself? I found myself searching for each character's wants and needs without focusing on the David Bowie songs that were way too popular to not be a biopic musical on his life (also the vinyl records in sleeve laying against the wall was kitschy). How do we create a scene that matches this song, and hey, we can sing it slower or pitchy...I loved it and I wished it was me, but I also wanted to fall in love.  I wanted to lay in the afterbirth cytoplasm that is my life and bleed opaque purity as if to have offered more than I was given. I watched that intercellular fluid travel toward me on stage as they lay. The battle between life and death is indicative of the angel and devil on ones shoulders, or a grim reaper like meet Joe black, taking a life in order to meet you in the flesh and depict a message that you might not have believed if not tactile; there he's striding past in your nude box, black as night, the part of your heart that's long since died, and he continues to poison your spirit because you know you're not the same. They'll try to save you. You made up your mind long ago, but you're a good person and try to save them the pain that time has worn on you. Certain characters got me there, even with the snot, the tears, the milk and the electric hair, but I went limp when they started singing about the man who sold the world, or being a hero just for one day.

What would you do if you absolutely couldn't get home but you knew that home existed?  What about not being able to die? I think in the end the only way to survive such pain is your eventual efforts to destroy oneself. Hope is a fallacy and makes for temporary glimpses of a future that's never to come. That's not really a future, that's a dream and therein lies the premise. In order to escape our lives, we picture  ourselves in another place, dreaming about what we'll have and how great it will be, while each day that passes, we grow closer to our deaths. Did we love enough? I hope so. But then again, we know what hope does. It keeps us alive, for how long, and for who, well that's up to you. What memories will keep you ticking. You'll never figure it out. It's not for us, it's more important that you do it for them.

9/11 w Philip Glass, Harriet and Rittenhouse 100

I start in Berlyn.  Standing up against the wall, blocking the kitchen and the two skinny bathroom doors - they couldve been phone booths a century ago - hot pretzels fly by.  We're waiting for Philip Glass.  NYT mag in-hand.  I'm catching up on West Point chicks and the things they'll do for their country, or their future, or my future.  Sipping Rittenhouse Rye 100 - it burns and then it coats.  I squint and my nostrils flare exhaust pipes wincing, dripping, "don't do that to me again" in trachea-speak.  I press down on the gas, or open throttle, or sesame.  My new favorite Rye.  I like what hurts.  What hurts never fails to deliver in life, or libation, or love.  I think of this letter that arrived at my door May 2013.  A Dear John letter, to my father regarding his friend that passed away. 

"I know you were both good friends" she says "and I suspect you remained that way. Undoubtedly this letter is coming as a complete surprise to you, but Robbie was my first true love, although I'm sure he wasn't aware of that fact, I was very saddened to learn of his passing. I often thought of him through the years and in my heart, I hoped our paths might cross again and we could share the story of our lives together and smile."  "Are you in line for the bathroom?"  I snap out of it.  "Nope, left one is occupied."

Time check, 12 minutes and countdown to the man who's brought us Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha; scores of pleasure brooding with monotony and the test of wills to conquer ones mind versus the body's willingness to oblige.  Can you hold that 10 pound weight straight out in front of you and not shake? Oh you can?  But for how long....because you'll shake, eventually.  Ticket for one lonely soul somehow snagged me front row.  I open my emails.  I'm feeling the love.  I've got 4 minutes.  1) To my CSS: Thank you so much for the closing the lights in the model, you are an unbelievable team mate and where would I be without you.  2) To resident Ms. Kaputnick: I'll make sure we come check your light fixture cover first thing in the morning; thank you for being such a kind and patient resident.  3) To my Director: Heyo, do you need me to setup anything for the Halloween Party - what's everyone being?? If you need anything, I'm always looking for a project!  

Man and new date sit down next to me. They were so lovie dovie that they must be new, or in transition, or just the luckiest people ever.  "I'm gonna keep this on all night" I say to the guy, hinting at my glowing phone screen.  "Oh great!" he says, warmly.  We snuggle into our seats and the lights go down.  

Act 1.  Two men walk across the stage, white shirts, black pants and they begin to clap. Crouching and pounding their hands together, they contain a beat and they do not let it fail.  As they are clapping wildly in rhythm I could not help but feel like this was the origin of entertainment. If there were no radio, no Son House, and the chain gang finally gets a moment to break it down. This was the numbing of ones hands, and ones life, repeatedly executing at a level required of you or else realize your demise as human, flaw-full, and stamped with an expiration date.  I can accomplish this, while you accomplish that, and we together support each other's end.  For there is no tomorrow but for this.

Act 2. A new translucent screen alights to an empty stage, and a hologram man with drumsticks pops onto the screen and begins to hit three vertical spots on his electronic drum pads. 1,2,3,3,2,1,1,2,3,3,2,1,1,2,3,3,2,1......  He starts low, works his way up and comes back down.  A real man walks out and sits behind the hologram-like screen and grabs his drumsticks.  He begins to try and mimic the computer graphic.  He finds his timing and joins and then falters, poking a stick through the space in between the vertical pads.  He drops a stick.  He picks a new one up.  He misses and doubles back on one pad.  He catches back up. He's sticking it out, literally.  And he fucks up again, poking that space he just can't seem to navigate.  All the while Mr. Hologram, 1233211233211233211....without fail...paradiddlemethis......for ten minutes this goes on and the beat rarely switches.  It's the mind that needs control because the body wants to find the quicker, easier way rather than stay in line.  We find the beauty in the mistakes.  You cannot beat a computer, nor should you, for mimicry can be attempted but is only acceptable when errors dictate humanity.  That's what makes the performance shine, notsomuch the humanizing of the man, but yes, in a way, this highlights evidence of difficulty. No one would show up to watch a computer do the same thing over and over.  Stabbing the open air is only upsetting if you don't attempt recovery. And in the recovery, the glory will reside and praise will be wrought for the effort rather than the impeccability.  We stand and numb our hands as he exits stage left.

Act 3. How do instruments speak about horror? What sound would you make if your voice was a violin? Can you put a score to a live, true horrible event?  The answer is yes, and by belief for its success is in the duration of the attack.  Live recorded voices come over the loud speaker as instrumentalists sit and cover the words to near zero distinction, but you know they're Sept. 11th callers and interviews.  The timber and bass strummed low and then shrieked through the walls. Viola and flute served deserved respect to the mania without dumbing down those so frantic in delivery. This show was on September 11th 2014, and there was no cheapening or dilution of the events nor the people speaking, but personification of wind from voices that may not ever catch more breath.

Reciting above the first half and those acts with a flare for the contemporary, I will let you see Philip Glass' operatic works instead of putting words to songs immaculately executed in the second.  I find myself back in Berlyn.  The bar is empty aside from a gay couple who recited a great joke to me about trying it out.  I sipped my Elijah Craig and ordered the Sea Bass before jotting notes in my phone. Nosing back through the mag, I read about charter schools and DiBlasio's distaste for the structure.  I thought about school.  I thought about my life.  I felt alive in the moment; honest and clear.  I felt like conveying my truest love, to share life in these moments and the next, to make sure I'm not Harriet, writing Dear John letters, thinking her and Robbie, they'd live forever.  I'll speak now, I'll speak tonight - I'd rather that, in words, than in memoriam, as a Stradivarius. 

Walking at Night

I often choose paths, less lit by afar, 
for there is little risk, in what's inevitably bright.

There are times, many times, where I'd rather not live, 

hence traveling dark paths especially during night.

Walking, passing, doubling back, caught staring.  

Through yellowed windows, a man sits at 80.

  

His chair, his posture, the TV, me at 80. 

Yellow walls, clear glass, flickering future, leather lazy.

Coasting by, I beg not, for old age comes to all.

Why rush what's inevitable, some do choose to fall. 

Why bother walking, when you can just sit and rot?

Because rotting is just sitting, when walking is not.

I feel pity, in my gut, for my life, for my choices.

Should I have changed? Never moved? Entertained other's voices?

What's real, what's fake, what's right, what's wrong.

Close your eyes, embrace the night, kiss and hum, cicada's song.

I know when I ask out loud just to die, 

all pain's remedied looking up at the sky.

Pacing the stars, late at night, grass soft, at my feet. 

Your chest bare, to my ear,  beat beat, a stammer beat....

If you walk, think of death; do choose a less lit path.

For we're all seeking answers, this here, aftermath.

I'm Always Missing Out

I'm driving West, to work, the Jitney is heading East. I've just never had a place to stay out there....that's why I don't go, otherwise I'd be there with bells on.  What does a Hamptonite look like? Is her pussy tanned, wet, blond and waxed? I'm always missing out....

Tahrir Square is packed with Egyptians fighting for their government to change, again....democracy? I wanna feel like a part of something. I wanna be there waving a flag, pretending I know who or what will help me, not take more of my rights away.  I'm always missing out....

Bill Cunningham is stalking 5th ave, snapping photos, catching black as the in color block of a rainy summer...why didn't I think of that. I have a camera.  Dude's 80+.  I'm always missing out....

Indian is the new Persian like Persian was the new Italian. Dosa's, Debashish Battacharya, The Billionaire's Apprentice, Neon Indian, Calcutta on a hot Wednesday night. I love Indians, I have Indian friends, well, a friend.  I should meet more.  Learn more about India, differences between North and South, Punjabi and Bengali. Apply to IIT.  Wish I studied abroad.  I'm always missing out....

My friend is a geological scientist...she got a job offer in Hawaii!  Sooo in demand now.  Gasland II is about to release..not that she deals with fracking.  Documentaries are my love.  I could think of something to film.  Can't I?  I wish I had studied something cooler.  Just pulled up to the Leasing Office where I work.  There's a leak coming through the ceiling.  Wish I was en engineer or an architect.  Would have built this place better. I'm always missing out....

Edward Snowden just wanted to inform us.  Wish I could give something to our whole nation like he did.  Whistleblower smishtleblower.  Hope Ecuador picks him up.  I know an Ecuadorean girl. Maybe she has family there in government? I should reach out to her.  She'd probably think I was a creep since I haven't talked with her since I was young.  But isnt that what Facebook is for?  She just had a baby.  "Congratulations!  Do you know anyone in Ecuadorean parliament?"  Dumbass, you're too late.  I'm always missing out....

The Venice Biennale looks like a kids art project in the cafeteria of Connetquot Elementary School.  I could have submitted something better.  Maybe I will next year.  A dollar sign puzzle made of lottery tickets with everyone's wishes written down on the tickets...with a bible verse cut in the middle of it, and prayer hands painted over the tickets?  That'll be ironic...wanting to win money, but praying to God to win money..life of poverty?  That's what these art critics look for, isn't it?  Six steps deep..Bobby Fisher type of shit.  I wish I was a better chess player, and visited St. petersburg, or Leningrad.  I like Leningrad better than the new name St. petersburg.  Lenin, Stalin, Putin...boys boys boys, Schlagen.  I miss college...it went by too fast. My 10-year reunion is this summer.  Sleep in bunk beds and pound batty blues and wings at the IB.  Not gonna go though,  I couldnt' wait for it to end while there so I'll probably be miserable.  Hopefully my friends will post pics.  Thank God for Facebook, since....I'm always missing out....

James Turrell is at the Guggenheim.  Dude bought a crater in the middle of nowhere and has underground rooms like cave scenes from some Kubrick apocalyptic never produced. Should I take the train in?  See light formations for like 10 bucks on the upper east side. Kinda busy though, with work and all.  My buddy's done recess lighting in his bedroom, maybe we can get together and fuck around with mirrors.  Fucking hours this week are brutal though...whatevs, they're just lights.  I'm always missing out....

Grucci firework family was just at Eisenhower Park the other night during the Philharmonic's performance.  Totally should have went to that.  DVR had nothing good saved anyway.  Wait, that's on the big lawn where the goose shit all day, and there'll probably be mad mexicans over there taking up all the park benches, and there'll be nowhere to park, or sit...and that damned Leisure Pass, I never bought that thing.  It'll cost me ten bucks to get in the place..and it's fucking 45 minutes away at least.  Forget it, I've seen fireworks before..and the Philharmonic's on PBS every other night...I won't even bother.  I'm alway missing out....

Sitting here watching Thump.  Shit's getting me tres jealouso. Wanna eat pussy and molly and whatever's on the table.  I wanna try everything...well, not everything. Not Sisa, or H...but anything else. Buy those gloves with the glowy finger tips, start moving em around in the dark while rolling a poker chip back and forth between my fingers.  Trippin.  Haven't danced since dancing wasn't fucking.  I keep hearing about clubs down in meatpacking, near the Standard, a shit kicking beer garden over there and KAzino.  I have to get over there, dress nice, have someone with me...who would I bring though...and wait, isn't that the bridge and tunnel crowd? That is probably a sweaty guido mess over there, especially in the summer.  Thats right, all the cool people leave the city in the summer on weekends.  Where do the cool kids go?  Oh yea...that Jitney, that God dammed Ambassador, who's on those things...what's their pussy look like.  Is it tanned, is it wet? Is it blond, is it brunette?  I'm always missing out...

NAtasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812

David puts down glass.  Rye to lips. A horn blows. Red pleather couch. Sitting upright. Black man in lipstick has me stare into his eyes. "You better behave" he says. "Look at me, I said look at me....you better behave. I'll have my eye on this one" he says to neighbor.  Reading pamphlet.  Family Tree diagram. Who's fucking who, who's best friends, who's important, someone poisons them self. Off we go. Contemporary Moscow. Rye to lips.

Natasha's engaged! Andrey's off to war - no more fun.  Yearning.  Writing. Waiting. Visit soon-to-be family?! Father-in-law wretch.  Sister-in-law frump.  SOnya's on board, thank God for company.  Ladies due for entertainment. Velour capes. Strobe, tempo, ass slap, cocaine on my table.  Anatole? Gorgeous. Cock. Temptation. Heart flutter. "He touched my arm as he passed." Desire. COnfusion. WHo she thought she loved changed in an instant. Familiar. Rye to lips. A duel. Shot. Missed. Opera, synth, red, echo, bow, tear. Napkin. "We write things down. When we love and think, we write things down," it's Moscow in 1812. Decision. New route. New man. Helene & Dolokhov's Midnight plan. Marya's Catch. Same life. Mistake. Disowned. Depression. Wasted life if not sharing with absolute one.  Rye to lips. Arsenic. Natasha. Survival. Natasha. Maestro and corner's perched Jazz & Country. Enlightenment. Balaga shakers. Tap tap tapping on my table.  Inevitability. Andrey returns. Disgust. Acceptance. Internal. Comet in the shape of Lincoln Center chandelier.  Soothing Pierre. NAtasha percolates. Natasha's no comet. To glow, that's easy.  Built in. Trajectory, choosing a Path? She might as well not choose. She gets there anyway. David takes away empty glass.