Category: Play

tour of the interior

wear galoshes

Enter anywhere you like. Doors line trick walls, retracting roofs, fallaway floors. Aerial pads, underground tunnels—each in some state of readiness for guests.

The place is under perpetual construction, crowded and damp. Leaks drip from every seam, so bring galoshes, not dress shoes. No formal affairs here. And though it’s wet, you’ll still need extra water for the heat.

Why come at all? Many arrive tired, unsure they can continue out there. Stay as long as you like. Art and music are scattered everywhere: prayer cards, crayon drawings, kitsch beside relics.

Characters roam—escaped saints with haunted eyes and wild humor if you get them talking. Leave them alone, and they seem freshly returned from some dark night of the soul.

You’ll find huddled masses here, but also divas—ancient figures with jeweled hair and hand-stitched clothes—who survey the chaos and sigh. Couldn’t we sweep, add lights, host a proper feast now and then?

The real joy comes from otters, birds, and babies: downy hatchlings, tiny hands slapping water, the gleam of a pup riding its mother’s belly. Cats, too, offer wry humor and disdain for our grievances.

One wing belongs to Klee’s angels. Walter Benjamin mutters through his notes while others drift in and out—some long dead, some not yet born. Lists of names dissolve as fast as they’re written.

In a far corner, unnoticed creatures nap: a dingy unicorn, withered lion, small dragon, chimera. A harpy perches nearby, cracking bawdy jokes around an unlit cigar.

The gift shop is closed. The food court changes with mood and season. No ID, no admission fees, no security.

Resentments fester like gangrene, fur and hair matted in corners. I mean to clean, but it’s tiring—feeding all these guests who never leave.

Swells

Hello chaos, my old friend.

Say a tide is rising, and fast. At the shore this is a matter of life and death. But from a great distance there it is again, the same sea.

This morning, something tentative creeps in, a primal anxiety no doubt connected to next week’s return to school, and a sense of how quickly the pace and volume of everything will soon feel out of hand.

One learns early on to keep such observations to oneself in mixed company because if overheard by someone older or a man, this someone may feel compelled to remind you that you control the pace and if it feels out of hand you must simply set a new one. Often this admonishment is happening during a passing period bell, active shooter drill, or rush to use the bathroom between alarms.

At the onslaught of these regular doses of another’s “teachable moment” it is polite to nod as if this is the first time encountering such sage advice and sometimes when nodding while maintaining a facial expression of earnest seriousness, it is not uncommon to hear the voice of a student objecting, “They tryna gaslight you!” and feel awash in a mischievous joy that is not easy to describe.

When the inevitable updates come about who died, is dying, or has disappeared, one’s grief or concern must never publicly extend beyond the prescribed moment of silence. This understanding is critical to the choreography of this theatre. “Compartmentalize!” a principal urged us last year, in the wake of the most recent tragedy. He was one of the good ones so we returned with wan smiles of solidarity. He is gone now. March on, march on.

The Sea, the Sea: The title of the Iris Murdoch novel I am finishing in these final days, set in a landscape entirely different from this one––rocky coastline, weedy paths, long hours of solitude, and the drinking of imported claret at midday. And yet, with people arriving and leaving, whose unpredictable weathers nevertheless follow recognizable patterns.

Here are people who miss the quiet when it shatters, who want to remind others that they may take some of it with them, anytime. Who want to feel as though some measure of presumed authority has been earned. Who know better than to go around unsuspecting. Who are aware that part of what is happening in moments when one feels the rug tugging from beneath the feet involves some sleight of hand.

Who are nevertheless bewildered by it all, even as they walk back out there, pretending to have seen it all before.

Milk Witch

Between blooms.

Words on one side, none on another;
between them, secret smiles, a tolerance
for pain and the nights of long dreams
fire chasing what is caught in the high wind
of the binding gut-level blindness
of spent battery. Scent of lion’s teeth,
the soft, yellow heads, weeding their refusal
to be declared the natural collateral
of another hungry idea seeded by the flying man
in dreams of immortality. What grows here
always flies to its fall and what is fallen
will be consumed beyond its given name
turning the defiant shine of resting face
from the hungry tongues, declaring
at last a body beyond words, back
to an original mouth.

A Day’s Lesson

Enough already.

What is today our objective isn’t one and the materials needed are no more than what we already hold, and much less, and the words for the hour are only favorites including those we’ve never said, and the challenge is to find it in us to do one small thing or better yet, no single thing, not one, so that when they come to ask us to account for ourselves any one of us might respond, We are––, and leave it there?

Company in Paradise

Interview with the artists in the aftermath of a first attempt.

How do I describe the place where we were? Birds of paradise guard the fortresses, holding still. A hushed place except for the machines. Between each fortress, you must not make a loud sound or have too much of laughter in one place if the place is below the window of a fortress because the people inside tend toward nervous conclusions, such as attack. Now we know, but we weren’t trying to scare anyone––not personally, anyway.

We were together, our company, because of the times, and the way we wanted to do something with our fear. It was going to be an opera. The working title was For the Scorched Earth. It accompanied an installation piece as well as a huge dance floor. This part was important, and nothing that any of us could fit in any place we lived, so we jumped at the chance to stage the event in a place with a large yard. Or really, any yard.

The lead character is an ancient god of the lunar eclipse who has lost his way. The idea was to dance him back home. We were going to invite the whole community! The point was also healing. But now we know that some ideas are too big for a given space. They shut us down.

But there’s no doubt we’ll try again. Reason being, we already have costumes and once people see themselves in those, no one can resist a grand entrance. We even had them for all the neighbors, too! These gorgeous birds of paradise pieces, all satin and taffeta. They were going to be stunning in the light. The mistake was not handing them out sooner.

In retrospect, that was a miscalculation. We were having fun with the element of surprise. It seemed so apropos, given our theme! But not everything translates across cultures. So now we know.  The next space will be much bigger.

The Experience

Reflections at play.

We mean to be sophisticated in our tastes. But this is absurd. Really. This whole idea of art we step into. The way you demand we become it. The size and height of these rooms, the excess of mirrors, balloons. You invite us in––for pictures, of course. For the experience. Mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror––on the wall, ceiling, floor. Which is which? Wall, wall, wall, wall. And everywhere we look––even out, there we are. You call it the reflection room. We are delighted. 

***

Inspired by an experience in one of the Infinity Rooms created by artist Yayoi Kusama.

This is Your Poem Talking

Here we go again. . .

Look, I’m not here to lecture you. If I was, you’d know. Then you’d think, not your wheelhouse, is it? And you’d be right. In lieu of a lecture, I have a proposition. What shall we eat, play, flay today? Sashay, maybe––or love, gut, burrow, swim?

I vote dance. Are you coming? Pray? Oh, I see. You are not going to do any of these, are you? Your face says it all: you’re going to stay right there, aren’t you? Until you figure out the poem.

Sigh. Not that you’re listening, but really? Of all the ways to be, you choose that one. And now you want to know what I mean.

The Time it Takes

To see.

A glossary of charcoal footprints on paper: here a slash, there a fat wave of liquid line, here the smear of a hot and urgent press. Who made these? People asked, of the aging artist’s early work. I was alive and singularly free, she told them. Having neither fame nor proximity to greatness, she had no reason to attempt real art. Not yet. These were only experiments, rehearsals for a greatness to come later. They may be her best work.

***

In preparation for visiting a local Georgia O’Keefe exhibit, I came across this article suggesting the technical superiority of the artist’s early work in charcoal and watercolor on paper. The title of a spring exhibit featuring this early work (at MOMA) is To See Takes Time.

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