Group on the road.
Warm a face, toast a fool, repeat.
One more time.
Everyone.
Here is water. Drink. No, I mean it. We have plenty.
Check the score. Later, stress how little it matters.
Say, who cares about the score? Say, that isn’t what
this is about. Say we are getting close and here we go.
What time is it? How much. How long this is.
Here you go. Make it better. Do you need.
Do you need? Can I bring you. You should
come with. I can bring you. We have.
We have. We have. Take it, someone.
Through the fourth wall.
In the beginning, it was all about the spectacle of the created world. The chopping off of parts, the restoration, like Tah-dah! Over time, it became more interesting to work on making the stage disappear, to discuss how the engineering works and who it’s for. With a great show, the performance is always for a specific member of the audience.
What’s worth examining now is not the tah-dah, but the questions–– how is that working? and what’s next? There can be more revelation in how the problems and confusion play out. When someone struggles in a real way, they are less self-conscious. Something peeks through.
***
The title of this post comes from a play created by an interesting collaboration between playwright Lucas Hnath and magician Steve Cuiffo and the voice is adapted from comments made by both artists in various interviews on their developing work.
Every tangle of thread.
Where mystery fell marching to
our exile, we lifted its mass
from the ditch to hold
it behind our coats, our lips,
to wrap our bodies
around its form,
for warmth.
Faces may deceive, but the back
cannot lie.
Between us, a single question
loops a mute refrain.
See? See.
***
Inspired by the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz. The title of this post comes from some of the figures that she created.
Instead of a poem, this thing.
What are you doing right now? we asked each other and then had to admit it was nothing in particular. With a caveat, of course, that something highly particular would come later––most likely, eventually. Which would have a feel of greatness, or something adjacent.
And so, a suggestion. Let’s go to the roof. That sounded good. We went as we were, thinking Air. Thinking Bird’s Eye View, and its attendant image-phrases: Sky and being Above It All.
There’s a poem here somewhere, and maybe someday I will find it. Eventually. It doesn’t have to do with the sky, though, or the skyline I imagined, or some transcendent epiphany.
It’s about the way that there were rooftops in every direction, all of them with people on them, standing in haphazard arrangements, in their ordinary clothes and various states of unkempt undress. How we were all there, missing something or someone––somehow, but we couldn’t say, so we made a vague music instead of stale clichés, commenting on the watercolor sky, how awesome, and wow, and how lame we felt repeating these expressions. And how we were unable to help ourselves, somehow. And how wonderful it was just doing that. Just wonderful.
***
My encounter with the phrase I borrow for the title (which, apparently, is used in various contexts with some frequency although it’s delightfully new to me as of this morning) comes from a Todd Bienvenu exhibit.
Window, lens, hand, soul.
You appeared on a certain corner every evening with your camera, to enact a ministry of light. Recalling childhood, you arrived in the circle’s fullness each time. Former strangers worked with you. You created each image together. This is how you said, I know you.
Every moment was a breath of spirit. In this world of surface illusion, you reached your illuminating hand, your goal always, touch me, touching you.
By devotion to the details of flesh and fracture, shadow and shade, the drape of traffic lights over wet pavement, each frame became a reminder: look at us here, in the same image.
Those birds are one creature. Those ants are one creature. Gathered on the corner in the glow of wet streetlights, one creature. And you took it all in, and said, we are here to work out our fear of being.
***
Inspired by the work and spirit of Khalik Allah, as generously shared in an interview with J. P. Sniadecki in BOMB.
How much in shadow.
To resist the floodlight’s patrolling glare, its demands and agendas, its attendant megaphone, in favor of a posture of listening, a touch whispered enough to elicit shivers of recognition. This earned denial of easy access. The elegant strength, to hold a posture possessed of substance so rich that it will be perennially misunderstood in this landscape, resisting the impulse to break the pose of perfect opacity––to correct, as the saying goes, by shedding some light.
How else could you photograph sound?
Here is the wise light of the dark surface, opening,
in praise of the unknown, unnamed
here is a deft grammar of mystery.
How much to be,
how much to be imagined
in these shadows.
Look, do not look,
but see.
***
Inspired by the work of Roy DeCarava.
At the harbor.
Over loose chords at sunrise, we watch him still watching the sea. We whisper Go and morning comes, full and fast with its heat. When morning comes, full and fast with its heat, he stays and seals bark over car horns. Planes tear the sky with him still below it.
Horns in his head, below the tearing sky, he always wanted. Understand? To dream himself a god to fall from the wounded sky like a childhood mango––
to fall again
he wanted
from the sky––
But there is no going back how you came in from a drop like that so he will not go back the way he came. But what womb will accept a return? None, but there is room in the belly of the whale.
Here in the belly of the whale shudder boardwalk carts at noon while we whisper, Go as his shadow curls and planes again. His voice still mute, we goad the creatures to pull him back. Birdsong swells toward night––and some relief.
Relieved of his clenched fist, his own song swells near memory while not far away a table is set. But with the beard at his throat, he will not call. With the years in his throat, he will not come. Plane arrows fell daylight as the evening sirens shriek. With evening sirens shrieking enough arrows to end his days, by night we whisper, Go, and we watch him still watching the sea.
Go, pilgrim.
We try again. Then, Come, we call, from the sea. Who will wash you now?
***
Considering Time as a bearded man on a bench by the harbor, I imagined him being watched by his daughters, the Fates, at a distance. Known as the Moirai in Greek mythology, these sisters personify destiny.
These dazzling portraits.
When the artist came to visit, we were moved by the shining colors in attendance.
We had questions. One was, how would you describe the world you are building?
There are all these characters, see? Part divine and part human, all in a state of transformation. During each metamorphosis, a being glows these wild colors. It’s magical.
Are these self-portraits?
A lot of them are, partly. Also, part fiction, part archetype.
Can you talk about your materials?
They are loaded. They appear to be surface-level decorations. And yet, the objects themselves emerge from grief. So many people were dying. I was thinking of memorials, how decorative they are. And then I had all these sequins, and was like, I know what to do with those!
Because people are so much, you know? All these glittering layers, and then when they are gone, you have all this extra sometimes, this overflowing sense of all you see, all you wanted to say, all that they were beyond the simple obit.
It wasn’t long after I started down this path that I was like, I am going to need a lot more sequins.
***
Inspired by the work of Devan Shimoyama. The title of this post comes from one of Shimoyama’s paintings.
For Santu Mofokeng.
In quiet devotion from within the crowd, you witness the sway of a collective in song, knowing this moment in transit a destination of its own, and call it Train Church. You seek out parallel moments, always from within. The stream crossing, the waiting line, the dancers, the cave. Outsiders wanted spectacle and you pushed back with ordinary life. The long looks of tired eyes over the horizon from the middle of a field, breaking from the labor of the day. The hanging clothes of late parents on a bare pole against a concrete wall. Shaded interior of a kitchen, ethereal light through pleated rayon curtains. The mist pushing against easy meaning, smoke against certainty, dust against the definition of forms. No, the magic won’t be captured, you insisted. Chasing shadows to witness, atmosphere to witness, sediments to witness––faces, in long attention, patient. Insisting, here is only the beginning of sight. Look again.
***
Inspired by the art and practice of Santu Mofokeng (1956-2020).
In the days of wind.
Who among us could assume security? The answer sat before us like a lump of cold flesh to be paid when the collectors came. Naturally, we learned to speak around it. We shared our alarm about the weather instead. By its whims we could admit something. It had to do with extremity. ––Of certain conditions and of a common need. But what for? Maybe some chance at grace.
Over time, something loosened the ties we had to some familiar arrangements of words while cementing others. Come here, we said to one another. In the makeshift camp where we had surrendered what little we could carry to some common fate, still to be determined. Tarp walls blew in the winds and we listened.
Sometimes we heard one another step outside to address something else. We all did this. One at a time, without ceremony, and alone. We were not ready to discuss these things. Not yet. But when the winds left, I could hear the others say to something just beyond the camp, Come here.
