Insane Reading
Bobbie Louise Hawkins says that writers should learn to think on the page. That's probably where I do my best thinking already - it's hard for me to formulate exactly what happened tonight. Well no, I know. It was a nice, intense reading with some political statements, but all in the context of seeking beauty in the written word, passionate performance, and, you know, a poetry reading. Miguel Alvarin read some poems he translated from Pablo Neruda, and then his own, and they were all wonderful. Then Kristin Prevalet read this oulipo thing where she took President Bush's address to the United Nations concerning rebuilding Iraq and first replaced every seventh word with "oil," read it again, then replaced every sixth word, read it, then every fifth word, etc. More of an ideological statement than anything else, it was nevertheless kinda interesting and powerful. When she was done, she put down her bag. Two people unfurled an American flag and laid it on the stage with a plastic can used to hold gas or oil. She stripped to a red and white tank top and blue spotted shorts, respectfully took off her shoes, stepped on the flag, then stood in, you know, a strong, posturing stance, holding the can high, and poured the black liquid from the spigot into her mouth. She just stood there, pouring the liquid into her mouth while everyone in the audience was gasping and murmuring, and she was doing this thing where it looked like she was gagging or else just breathing, while liquid started to dribble out of her mouth and down her body, dripping onto the flag. I don't know how long she did this for, but it was a two or three gallon can, and she was up there for a long time. Finally she was done, and put the can down, staring angrily at the audience, at the world. She left the stage, people cheered, and two people folded up the American flag in crisp, clean military style, saluted each other, and brought it outside. Then it was time for a break.
I went outside and the folded up flag was lying on the table in the PAC lobby. Of course, me being me, the first thing I did was smell it - soy sauce.
This exists in the world, I told myself to calm myself down. People who get so angry and express such rage exist in the world, alongside me. It's a shame that Naropa's the only place where people are open enough to be seriously affected by her performance. A friend of mine, or more a multiple-class-acquaintance-who-I-consider-friendly, left the auditorium crying. It was painful for people who are open to pain, and Naropa teaches students to open up to pain, considers an emotional education just as important as a mental one. Counter, I might add, to most academic institutions, which arm students with psychological armor stronger than Kevlar, stronger than steel. The more radical and crazy the act, the easier it is to ignore, easier it is to shove Kristin into the books of "crazy people" and to get on with one's life as if nothing ever happened. Ignorance out of spite, you know. I learned how to do it in high school, and I'm thinking about it, even though I really do believe in things like this as a challenge to me, to figure out where I stand in relation to it. Not sure where that is yet, though.
I do know that I'm a warrior though, rising to challenges, and that not everybody needs to or wants to be one. Side-note, Kristin said she was anti-war, which was pretty ironic because she makes the perfect warrior. Warfare, aggression, is in human blood, in some more than others, and I guess that's why she does what she does. Warlike art.
Anyway, as artistic statements, I suppose radically intense things like this are just more along the lines of, "this is who I am! Expression!" Art is what it is. But as active attempts to create social change, to make people stop being greedy for oil, to make the President spend more money on education and the arts than on international warfare, they're useless, because of this psychological armor thing I was talking about. It's really strong, impenetrable unless it's taken into account. If I'm going to be a "political being" in my artwork, I refuse to fail. I will be as sneaky and subversive and subtle as I need to be in order to engage the people's minds who need changing, with the assumption that I probably don't understand anything about where they're coming from. People just want to be heard, to feel that you respect their ideas enough to put them on an equal plane with yours. After you sincerely do that they'll do whatever you want, as long as you're polite and unwavering. Most people aren't as strong-willed as America teaches them how to seem (via that armor thing), and are full of doubts that they, ironically, keep themselves walled off from seeing. It's a consequence of being so desensitized to emotional appeals. That just leaves the difficult matter of being able to take conflicting ideas seriously while still believing one's own enough to keep putting it forth. I don't know, it's seems like a better or at least more radical method than shouting protests and making people cry.
So then the next person, Karen Finley...well first she read from her juvenile, kind of ridiculous book about George W. Bush and Martha Stewart having an affair, complete with crude sexual drawings and oh-so-witty dialogue. I didn't like it. Then she read this poem which was incredibly powerful, about a woman who was obsessed with war, and tracing the narrative of this woman's life, wanting to drink beer with Vietnam War vets and listen to their stories, and it went into an examination of why she was so obsessed, "because men in every culture are born ready to die." She repeated this statement, this men have no meaning except to die, over and over, it was really strong. I got mad listening.
Can will die for their mothers! Can will die for their wives! Can will die for their country! Can will die for their children! Can will die for their families! Can will die for their economy! Can will die because they're invincible! Can will die Can will die Can will die!! Etc. etc. Of course this is all painful because it's true, at least in some sense it is. She was making the point that since men are so willing to die why are they the ones in charge of everything, which I mean...I think a matriarchal society would be MUCH saner, personally. That's not the issue I have.
It's almost 1 AM, this fucking Naropa reading, this fucking world, I'm trying to come to grips with the fact that can will die is something I feel at least partially and I have to do all this homework for Thursday, write out all this stuff for my final manuscript, not to mention put together a set of poems to read tomorrow at the student reading and they're going to be crap, I just know it because I have no time that's not insane time, that's not "Marlon tries to process the emotional crap these god damn artists load him up with because they had difficult childhoods or difficult lives or are emotional sponges and sensitive and need to release it all Right On His Doorstep time." And I would spend all of tomorrow pouring myself into something, but no, oh no, I have to be at school till 3, and then the reading is at 8:30, which is no time to unwind, write, revise, feel confident, etc. etc. blah.
Man, I sure am complaining about the SWP a lot these days. A lot this month actually, haha, but you know it's getting bad when I rant in my livejournal for days straight. It's really amazing though, I think. I'm so glad I'm doing it. Secretly. Maybe I'll do it again next summer, I don't know - if I do, I can finish school in two more semesters, which'd be nice. I'm sick of school. I'm just having a hell of a time with the difficult parts, staying afloat.
I've got a death wish inside me. I think it's partly stupid, but I also don't even know what I mean by these abstractions. Going to try finishing this poem I'm writing. end