Some Animals Cry

Not being able to spend time with my own family on Thanksgiving, I went to watch other families in Meg Stuart's piece "Do Animals Cry?"

I had seen the piece at the open rehearsal back in May, but was excited to see the final piece & in the newly renovated Volksbühne to boot.

 

I loved Doris Dziersk's stage.

The stick tunnel has to be one of my favorite stage designs ever.  & when Frank Willens was running through it, it was magical.

 

(sic)

I loved the taxidermic dog.  I loved plants being balanced on teenage stoner boys' heads & absurd representations of family life.  I loved the moments when I thought about my own family & not about 'family.'  I felt a bit unsure about a number of the other elements but this might have to do with my memory of the piece at the rehearsal, which I fell in love with.  All the parts I liked best at the rehearsal were now either cut or seriously reduced.  Most of the absurdity & lightness was suggested but not as deeply explored as the elements of grief, pain & feeling stuck.  The piece became more monochrome.

But this isn't really a critique of the piece, which I think had to be as long & desperate as it was, but only that I wished there would have been more moments of beauty & true laughter.  I wished there was more taxidermy, 'good news' & plants being balanced on their head with outer space dialogue.  & more poetry.  I wished, but I always wish this in dance pieces, there was less sex, less 'investigations' of (sexual) (usually heterosexual) relationships.  Is this all we are?  If not, what then?

In the real world, real things happened.  RIP Matty Hanawalt.  I'll miss you.

Groundhog Day

Howe's Dickinson

Last night Susan Howe gave a lecture / reading at the American Academy in Berlin.  The reading consisted of some new work by Howe & the lecture focused on Emily Dickinson's 'fragments.' But what do fragments mean in the work of an author who never published in their lifetime?  Is there a clear division between finished & unfinished?  Need there be one?  Who makes such judgments?

Howe challenges the view that we should categorize these writings on scraps of paper & envelopes as merely unfinished pieces.  Instead, Howe propagates the idea thatthese writings on scraps of paper might actually be art objects, & that Dickinson might have been aware of the relationship between the word & the page.

& while this might be an anachronistic interpretation of Dickinson's work (& more clearly, the appropriation of another artist for a contemporary artist's own program

), I must say that Howe opened up Dickinson in a very exciting way.  She demonstrated that the Dickinsonian formula (dashes, capitals, strict rhyming scheme) was in some cases an invention of her editors (& Howe was keen to point out that both editors were single white men).

While Dickinson clearly used these means of production, she also underlined pieces of text as well as wrote out alternate versions & possible vocabulary substitutions or variants.  Howe believes, & I believe with her, that this enriches the pieces, that it makes them  breathe with possibility.  Thus, she suggests that the Dickinson I have trouble relating to might not always be the Dickinson that was on the page.

& that fascinates me.  It means that Dickinson was not as programmatic & calculating  & cold as she has been presented.  Dickinson is not a Zombie.

Gadabout

"To begin with Tlön was thought to be nothing more than a chaos, a free & irresponsible work of the imagination; now it was clear that it is a complete cosmos, and that strict laws which govern it had been carefully formulated, albeit provisionally"

The New York Times has a fascinating article about contemporary amateur geographers.

What fascinates me is that each person here is trying to get closer to reality & distortions are a big no-no.  I believe this would be due to political premises, this being science & something about media distorting our reality.

Yet, I can't help but wonder about the possibilities of these accuracies.  This would be equivalent to artistic interventions, of the sort my pal Anja studies / participates in.  There, the goal is to slightly distort reality, such that we, the unassuming populace, have to reassess how we move about in the world.  Thus, while I can't help but admire these efforts of amateur / experimental geographers, I can't help but wonder about the consequences.

New From Now

 

Berlin

 

es gibt sie auch im Thüringischen, wo sonst,
fragst du, liegen die ausgedichteten Städte so
dicht einander verschlungen, verbunden als
wanderte der besondere Eine alle Tage hin
mit gleitenden Schnüren, umwickelte er
Stämme, das ganze Gehölz, knöchelaufwärts
jede Biegung entlang, auf dass wir uns wortreich
oder arm ewig daran aufhangelten mit nichts
als diesen kleinmütigen Zitaten auf den Lippen,
Wegzehrung und Trost, Zeichen unserer Herkunft,
dass uns nichts mehr gelänge, sagst du,
in diesen ausgeschriebenen wolflosen Wäldern,
drehst Stein um Stein endlich ein Geäder oder
säuselndes Tier zu finden, von einem schlaflosen
Ort träumst du, einer reizenden Gegend,
ich sage aber, sage hier, in diesen ausgedichteten
Städten fängt alles noch einmal an, gestern nacht
kamen mir die Wölfe zurück, roch ich im Zimmer
das nässende Fell.

Nancy Hünger 

 I might very well translate that there poem, should the author allow me.  I went to her reading last night at the Lettrétage & was overwhelmed by her newer prose poems.

The poems were all too real, wanting to move somewhere but stuck in the world.  Yet, the poems are all about traveling & where the world seen as a foreigner ends up being the world we're from.

I appreciated her modesty & her reading style.  Embellished, but not all ribbons.

Goodie Goodie

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. 

Like Describing Bands By Means of Arithmetic

Why does so much I write take on Sci-Fi dimensions?  That is, it's what I believe Sci-Fi people call Sci-Fi of the everyday?  I'm guessing it was all those years reading these

then studying this

& loving these

Maybe that's too simplistic.  Maybe my taste is too narrow.  Maybe I'll post some of the new work here soon.

I've been thinking about Blake Butler's Scorched Atlas & if I should read it.  Should I?