Thursday, October 13, 2011
Friday, October 07, 2011
Think again...
Against Nostalgia by Mike Daisey.
I Interview Playwrights Part 389: Taylor Mac. (Adam Szymkowicz)
Today, my son plans to construct a larger than scale memorial to Steve on our Minecraft server (there was talk of making it out of blue and black wool). Steve will stand alongside Cookie Monster (there's a portal to the aether in his head) and giant-size replicas of my son and his friends' avatars. Play resumes.
I Interview Playwrights Part 389: Taylor Mac. (Adam Szymkowicz)
Today, my son plans to construct a larger than scale memorial to Steve on our Minecraft server (there was talk of making it out of blue and black wool). Steve will stand alongside Cookie Monster (there's a portal to the aether in his head) and giant-size replicas of my son and his friends' avatars. Play resumes.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Saturday, October 01, 2011
TBA11: Mike Daisey & All the Hours In the Day
Mike Daisey.
Jesus Christ.
Fucking Mike Daisey. Fuck.
Oh.
Wait.
Before I go further I should make it plain: this is not a review.
This is a highly subjective accounting of my experience watching/listening to ATHITD via Daisey's Live Stream. I was not in the room. I did not smell the bacon. The fire alarm did not assault my ears in quite the same way as it did those who were in Washington High School. I will confess to watching the dark stage and listening to that fucking fire drill for five minutes while I imagined everyone out in the beer garden. Yeah. I'll admit to that. I also used my emotional memory (wah?) to conjure the look, the feel, the sound of Portland on a September afternoon (An experience that comes from being there the week before. So while Portland was sunny in my mind, it was raining on those who were actually standing outside the building.)
It's an imperfect system.
I'm just saying.
You maybe shouldn't trust this.
Mike Daisey did not control my entire environment for 24 hours. I had to make my own fun. But it was a weak defense. Mike came to occupy a large portion of my head space (at times the transference between me and Mike was so total that I did believe - I was convinced - that Mike was shaping my reality, the very landscape through which I passed). Yeah. It was Mike who made the sun shine on "the Stick" and the traffic flow on the 101 into San Francisco. Mike was the driver behind it all.
Mike Daisey.
Jesus Christ.
Fucking Mike Daisey. Fuck. Oh.
There is not enough time to tell you everything you need to know.
Mike set himself up as some kind of anti-beckettian narrator. Surly and maybe a bit unreliable. A wordmule.
I streamed ATHITD through my iphone while I was here. I listened to it driving home from San Francisco, and then on my laptop when I got home.
2am. I brought my laptop to bed with me, but just sat on my bed and watched until he broke for the hour. He's telling a story about Jean-Michele and driving and it confuses me. He's shifting time and it's cunning the way he's playing with time, the way he's toying with it just now. I never catch hold of this story. That's not a criticism of either of us.
2:45am. I put my jammies on, prop my laptop on my knees and wait for him to come back. I have no fucking idea what I'm in for.
3am. Stockholm syndrome sets in. Mike is in charge. He's downright gleeful about making two vegans cook bacon and toying with everyone's expectation that they're going to get some. Oh everything is such giddy fun. Mike talks about investment. How if we're giving him our time he feels a need to reciprocate. Before he launches into the crux of his narrative there's a double down moment - you're either with me or you're not. If you're not with me, then get the fuck out. I turn out the lights and hunker down under the doo-vay. Mike tells the story about his high school relationship that he couldn't break off and about the unwanted pregnancy that resulted. Every revelation peels back another layer and gets deeper under my skin. Mike talks about his recognition of how hard it was for his girlfriend to consider giving up their baby and the realization that he shouldn't have asked this of her, his subsequent depression, the wondering alone in the darkness naked, the need to be submerged. It's not everything I need to know, but it's almost enough.
Sunrise. Voodoo Donuts. Yoga.
Nikola Tesla. Wim Wenders. David Bowie. Whoa. Stop please. It's like Mike has hacked my search history for the past 72 hours. Synchronicity surrounds me, Concord.
Piss Christ. I don't even know what time Piss Christ came up. I think I was in the car on my way back to San Francisco for rehearsal. Piss Christ. I laugh insanely. Piss Christ. Ho ho. Piss Christ is the final invasion of my personal reality or what I think of as my personal, inviolable reality. Mike really is in my head, knows my thoughts and is communicating my feelings and personal, political, artistic views to the world. Piss Christ. It is here that the over-identification and the synchronicity of events become disorienting and surreal. The pressure of this experience begins to effect my behavior in not so subtle ways. My maniacal knowing laughter (not ironic, mind you) is the first sign.
10am. ATHITD starts to resemble Borges' map. Daisey has been unfolding this narrative for so long now that it seems to contain all the lives of everybody listening and watching. Daisey is channeling all of our psyches and blurting out our thoughts. Artfully. The recurring threads, so subtle and masterful. This is the kind of narrative control employed by Hunter S. Thompson. Oh wait. There Daisey goes. He's talking about the necessity of controlling one's environment. Now he's accessing Thompson directly. See? See how that works? Like from my head to Daisey's tongue or something like that.
10:03am-ish. Time and space are compressing. It occurs to me that Mike tapped the beer garden. Mike tapped the beer garden and recorded conversations and then wove them into his narrative. It's getting pathetic isn't it? I try to talk myself out of this notion. No luck. Mike would not do that. He would not --
Wait. Now he's talking about the expectation that a playwright will pull together the threads of his or her narrative. Only a few days before someone had asked me if playwrights were really supposed to do that - pick up all those threads. Yeah. That's the idea. And Mike claims he can't do it or doesn't want to. Did he say that? And is it actually true?
Mike is a weaver. And despite his claim, he's been weaving and picking up narrative threads throughout ATHITD. It's not quite the same literary application somehow. There's a mystery and an inconclusiveness to these threads; the repetitions don't necessarily add or make meaning. They don't knit themselves nicely into a tight or logically coherent narrative. Images recur much as they do in dreams. You're on your own to figure out why or where it's going. Or not.
Hope. A monologist is hopeful because you know that no matter what material is covered, it's not going to end badly (no one is going to die or anything). (I'm paraphrasing.)
I don't think he mentioned redemption. But along with hope, this thing is pushing redemption. The idea that you can make art out of the detritus of your life, that art is often made from the detritous of our lives (maybe not explicitly so). By watching this in action over time, there's an alchemical shift that occurs, an identification that leads or could lead to transformation. Mike seems to be holding out the possibility in this moment.
10:05am. I'm starting to feel self-conscious and embarrassed by how I'm making Daisey's whole performance in this hour entirely about me. We're only 5 - 10 minutes into the hour and my head is building worlds out here on the 101. It's wrong.
10:15 am. Everything has become permeable. I feel at risk emotionally and fearful that I'm going to reveal too much in rehearsal. Really? Oh joy. What a perfect way to enter into the work.
I don't want to be here.
Judgement is suspended.
I sit outside the studio and seriously consider finding a place where I can listen to Daisey for the next 6 - 7 hours.
12:09pm. There are times during these last hours when I close my eyes and strain to hear him speaking, his voice drowned out by the din of voices in the Turkish deli where I'm eating lunch and by the noise in my head. Other times, I can imagine the voices and sounds of every living thing in each particular moment and it almost seems possible that I could capture the enormity of that in words. That I might make some kind of impossible performance myself.
1:15pm. I decide to put down the phone and be in the room. I agree to be in the room. This is where I am. Kunst-Off Arts Studio, One Grove Street, San Francisco. I decide to be with the people I'd chosen to spend the next 3 hours. To collaborate and be present to make this art project.
4:15pm. I plug back in. Drive across the Bay Bridge. I can't hold on to the narrative anymore. It's just this voice. I recall the essence of the moment. Mike's voice sans meaning or matter. Words. Tone. Picking up a loose strand from last night and weaving it in. But the details are lost for me. It just matters that he's there and the audience is on the other side.
4:50pm. Oakland Hills. I'm lost. Disneyland. I switch between ATHITD and my map app. I'm following myself on the map trying to intersect with my destination. There I go winding around and around through the hills. Parking. I have to go back to my car three times because I can't remember if I locked it. Livestream is sporadic on this hill.
5:00pm. I'm talking about Machiaveli's The Prince with my reading group. I can not concentrate. Words are coming out my mouth about the Reformation and torture and consolidation of power in Italian city-states. How do I know any of this?
5:50 - 6:00pm.
There is not enough time to tell you everything you need to know.
Jesus Christ.
Fucking Mike Daisey. Fuck.
Oh.
Wait.
Before I go further I should make it plain: this is not a review.
This is a highly subjective accounting of my experience watching/listening to ATHITD via Daisey's Live Stream. I was not in the room. I did not smell the bacon. The fire alarm did not assault my ears in quite the same way as it did those who were in Washington High School. I will confess to watching the dark stage and listening to that fucking fire drill for five minutes while I imagined everyone out in the beer garden. Yeah. I'll admit to that. I also used my emotional memory (wah?) to conjure the look, the feel, the sound of Portland on a September afternoon (An experience that comes from being there the week before. So while Portland was sunny in my mind, it was raining on those who were actually standing outside the building.)
It's an imperfect system.
I'm just saying.
You maybe shouldn't trust this.
Mike Daisey did not control my entire environment for 24 hours. I had to make my own fun. But it was a weak defense. Mike came to occupy a large portion of my head space (at times the transference between me and Mike was so total that I did believe - I was convinced - that Mike was shaping my reality, the very landscape through which I passed). Yeah. It was Mike who made the sun shine on "the Stick" and the traffic flow on the 101 into San Francisco. Mike was the driver behind it all.
Mike Daisey.
Jesus Christ.
Fucking Mike Daisey. Fuck. Oh.
There is not enough time to tell you everything you need to know.
Mike set himself up as some kind of anti-beckettian narrator. Surly and maybe a bit unreliable. A wordmule.
I streamed ATHITD through my iphone while I was here. I listened to it driving home from San Francisco, and then on my laptop when I got home.
2am. I brought my laptop to bed with me, but just sat on my bed and watched until he broke for the hour. He's telling a story about Jean-Michele and driving and it confuses me. He's shifting time and it's cunning the way he's playing with time, the way he's toying with it just now. I never catch hold of this story. That's not a criticism of either of us.
2:45am. I put my jammies on, prop my laptop on my knees and wait for him to come back. I have no fucking idea what I'm in for.
3am. Stockholm syndrome sets in. Mike is in charge. He's downright gleeful about making two vegans cook bacon and toying with everyone's expectation that they're going to get some. Oh everything is such giddy fun. Mike talks about investment. How if we're giving him our time he feels a need to reciprocate. Before he launches into the crux of his narrative there's a double down moment - you're either with me or you're not. If you're not with me, then get the fuck out. I turn out the lights and hunker down under the doo-vay. Mike tells the story about his high school relationship that he couldn't break off and about the unwanted pregnancy that resulted. Every revelation peels back another layer and gets deeper under my skin. Mike talks about his recognition of how hard it was for his girlfriend to consider giving up their baby and the realization that he shouldn't have asked this of her, his subsequent depression, the wondering alone in the darkness naked, the need to be submerged. It's not everything I need to know, but it's almost enough.
[I sleep for 3 or 4 hours.]
Sunrise. Voodoo Donuts. Yoga.
Nikola Tesla. Wim Wenders. David Bowie. Whoa. Stop please. It's like Mike has hacked my search history for the past 72 hours. Synchronicity surrounds me, Concord.
Piss Christ. I don't even know what time Piss Christ came up. I think I was in the car on my way back to San Francisco for rehearsal. Piss Christ. I laugh insanely. Piss Christ. Ho ho. Piss Christ is the final invasion of my personal reality or what I think of as my personal, inviolable reality. Mike really is in my head, knows my thoughts and is communicating my feelings and personal, political, artistic views to the world. Piss Christ. It is here that the over-identification and the synchronicity of events become disorienting and surreal. The pressure of this experience begins to effect my behavior in not so subtle ways. My maniacal knowing laughter (not ironic, mind you) is the first sign.
10am. ATHITD starts to resemble Borges' map. Daisey has been unfolding this narrative for so long now that it seems to contain all the lives of everybody listening and watching. Daisey is channeling all of our psyches and blurting out our thoughts. Artfully. The recurring threads, so subtle and masterful. This is the kind of narrative control employed by Hunter S. Thompson. Oh wait. There Daisey goes. He's talking about the necessity of controlling one's environment. Now he's accessing Thompson directly. See? See how that works? Like from my head to Daisey's tongue or something like that.
10:03am-ish. Time and space are compressing. It occurs to me that Mike tapped the beer garden. Mike tapped the beer garden and recorded conversations and then wove them into his narrative. It's getting pathetic isn't it? I try to talk myself out of this notion. No luck. Mike would not do that. He would not --
Wait. Now he's talking about the expectation that a playwright will pull together the threads of his or her narrative. Only a few days before someone had asked me if playwrights were really supposed to do that - pick up all those threads. Yeah. That's the idea. And Mike claims he can't do it or doesn't want to. Did he say that? And is it actually true?
Mike is a weaver. And despite his claim, he's been weaving and picking up narrative threads throughout ATHITD. It's not quite the same literary application somehow. There's a mystery and an inconclusiveness to these threads; the repetitions don't necessarily add or make meaning. They don't knit themselves nicely into a tight or logically coherent narrative. Images recur much as they do in dreams. You're on your own to figure out why or where it's going. Or not.
Hope. A monologist is hopeful because you know that no matter what material is covered, it's not going to end badly (no one is going to die or anything). (I'm paraphrasing.)
I don't think he mentioned redemption. But along with hope, this thing is pushing redemption. The idea that you can make art out of the detritus of your life, that art is often made from the detritous of our lives (maybe not explicitly so). By watching this in action over time, there's an alchemical shift that occurs, an identification that leads or could lead to transformation. Mike seems to be holding out the possibility in this moment.
10:05am. I'm starting to feel self-conscious and embarrassed by how I'm making Daisey's whole performance in this hour entirely about me. We're only 5 - 10 minutes into the hour and my head is building worlds out here on the 101. It's wrong.
10:15 am. Everything has become permeable. I feel at risk emotionally and fearful that I'm going to reveal too much in rehearsal. Really? Oh joy. What a perfect way to enter into the work.
I don't want to be here.
Judgement is suspended.
I sit outside the studio and seriously consider finding a place where I can listen to Daisey for the next 6 - 7 hours.
12:09pm. There are times during these last hours when I close my eyes and strain to hear him speaking, his voice drowned out by the din of voices in the Turkish deli where I'm eating lunch and by the noise in my head. Other times, I can imagine the voices and sounds of every living thing in each particular moment and it almost seems possible that I could capture the enormity of that in words. That I might make some kind of impossible performance myself.
1:15pm. I decide to put down the phone and be in the room. I agree to be in the room. This is where I am. Kunst-Off Arts Studio, One Grove Street, San Francisco. I decide to be with the people I'd chosen to spend the next 3 hours. To collaborate and be present to make this art project.
4:15pm. I plug back in. Drive across the Bay Bridge. I can't hold on to the narrative anymore. It's just this voice. I recall the essence of the moment. Mike's voice sans meaning or matter. Words. Tone. Picking up a loose strand from last night and weaving it in. But the details are lost for me. It just matters that he's there and the audience is on the other side.
4:50pm. Oakland Hills. I'm lost. Disneyland. I switch between ATHITD and my map app. I'm following myself on the map trying to intersect with my destination. There I go winding around and around through the hills. Parking. I have to go back to my car three times because I can't remember if I locked it. Livestream is sporadic on this hill.
5:00pm. I'm talking about Machiaveli's The Prince with my reading group. I can not concentrate. Words are coming out my mouth about the Reformation and torture and consolidation of power in Italian city-states. How do I know any of this?
5:50 - 6:00pm.
There is not enough time to tell you everything you need to know.
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