A Number of Shorts About Freedom

Facets

Perhaps I’ve never fully misunderstood.  Perhaps it’s that any situation of real value has many facets, and can’t be understood in just one way.

For Antonin Artaud

If you scroll back a ways, you’ll find my rememberance of a performance/happening I attended back in 1991.  Looking around youtube, I found this video document of the same I night I describe.

If you watch these recordings, you’ll see the painted lady I describe, the flaming hubcap, and I think I even offer a cameo appearance myself.

I always thought this ensemble, Crash Worship, was the perfect enactment of Artaud’s theories found in The Theatre and Its Double, specifically the essay “The Theatre of Cruelty.”

Walter Spies – Announcements

I know this is short notice, but starting tonight and finishing on Saturday, I’ll be performing Javanese gamelan in New York.  The first performance is tonight at Cornell University.  The second is at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  Here is a link to information about this show.

To commemorate these shows, I’m not putting together the smallest sample of work by the Dutch artist, Walter Spies.  Spies was a Modernist who brought Indonesian folk art to the European imagination.

Spies spent time in both Bali and Java.  In Bali, he commissioned the composition of kecak, staring a unique gamelan tradition in Indonesia.

The above depicts a Balinese cock fight.  In some circles, this is considered a religious offering.  Recognizing that blood and gambling are inherent desires of men, these were once sanctioned for ritual events.  Today these are illegal, though police will often turn a blind-eye.

Spies also wrote the very influential text Dance and Drama in Bali.  This was a study of Balinese ritual theatre, dance and dramatic arts.  It was compiled village by village, so it was often used as a travel guide as well.

Special thanks to Chris Miller and Marty Hatch at Cornell University.

Electricity

The whole world is charged with electricity.  Sometimes we can feel its currents.

In Balinese Hinduism, both good and evil are considered to be benevolent and maelvolent forces.  Both need to be treated with reverence, respect, and care.  Everything carries a charge.

The Space Between Us

The truth is that you can never really know.

The space between us, we can never know.  We like to think we can develop our sensitivity, that we can belong to groups and in relationships, but we can never know anyone outside of ourselves.

It was late April, a lovely spring afternoon in Boston.  Neither of us had any more work left to do for school, so we went for a walk to Arnold Arboretum.  We didn’t walk for long, but decided to settle in.  We placed a blanket under a willow tree.  I sat with my back against the tree, and she lay down with her head in my lap.  We sat in silence for a while.  I brought a book of poetry to read, she slept for a short time.  When she woke, I read her something from the book I was reading, a section from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower by William Carlos Williams:

Of Asphodel, that greeny flower,

like a buttercup

upon its branching stem-

save that it’s green and wooden-

I come, my sweet,

to sing to you.

We lived long together

a life filled,

if you wil,

with flowers.  So that

I was cheered

when I first came to know

that there were flowers also

in hell.

We can never know.  We can never know how others preceive us.  Sometimes it feels we can, that we can feel connections, electricity, a shared life between us.  Wanting to know – wanting to understand and to be understood – is where the real meaning lies.  Sometimes it feels like there are currents between us.

Before Sunset

Sometimes you make me feel more real.

Before Sunrise

Sometimes it is enough to simply bask in your beauty, to feel your life and energy and know that somehow I am apart of it.

Sometimes it is enough just to remind you of your own beauty.

Blondes, Reds, and Brunettes

Sometimes her beauty alone can break my heart.

Does love know boundaries?

Joy, Arson, and Saturday Night

Her name was Joy, and I thought I could love her.

Joy was beautiful, fierce, independent, smart, and tragic.  In part her beauty was the result of tragedy; there was a profound sadness to her that made her so much more desirable.  One was drawn to both her body and by empathy.  She had been living alone since she was 15 or 16, both her parents died in a car accident while traveling in Africa.  She was independently wealthy.

One Saturday night in April, a rainy night, I went to Josh and Johns, and ice cream store in downtown Colorado Springs, to meet Joy and a group of our friends for a simple night out.  There were about 6-7 of us total, mutual friends all.  I was struck down that night, Joy was with another boy.

I didn’t stay long.  Feeling rejected,  I walked home alone.  The rain had stopped, but the streets were still wet.  It was about a mile back to my apartment.  Half way home, I cop car pulled up next to me.

Two policemen got out.  They walked towards me aggressively.  They opened the back door and pushed me in.  What’s going I asked. With anger, unapologetically, one of them said, A fire was started tonight, and you fit the description of the young man we are looking for. The police cruiser pulled away, heading south down Cache La Poudre Avenue.

After about 10 minutes, the two cops in the car exchanged a conversation on the radio I couldn’t understand.  The cruiser pulled over.  Get out, they said.  What?, I responded.  Get Out!.  I did.  The car pulled away.  They took me about 20-30 minutes out of my way.  I walked home, feeling more angry, rejected, and misunderstood.