june 13 (may 28)
people making sounds while on their computer devices
june 12
the pornstar with the rainbow jacket
Maybe I shouldn't have said that, he said
but the homey bushwhick loft did not turn silent after his confession of doing porn professionally.
He was wearing a rainbow jacket, afterall. And it was both and area and era of brooklyn that, if living in, you knew not to be surprised by any which thing. And had been striking disco poses throughout the night, and asking people's opinion on how they were. It was his first night in brooklyn and he was from sweden.
He was white. Like all the way. His hair and face and eyebrows and everything about him was very white indeed.
We walked through the wild industrial landscpae, and he told us that in sweeden the go to the forests for hous and just meditate. It sounded fantastic.
june 11
childhood diet:
an important thing you need to know about me is the food I was raised on
I grew up on a diet of hammocks and black eyed peas and corn bread borsht and whole milk and white bead and chicken cassarole and apple jacks cereal and malt-o-meal and creme cheese breakfast danishes and cinnamon toast.
You would need to know this about me.
That I was raised on a lot of butter and sugar and salt and fats and flavor and spices.
This is literally
maybe
why
I am how I am.
june 10
the day we wasted on facebook, the time we wasted on facebook and an interview with the audience about how their day went, on facebook.
(the idea of having people vote on plays that should stay in, and that being the revolving mechanism) Having people say I can do better than that-and then having me be the judge.
june 9
and he said he was best as an idiot savant
and it was one of the strangest things i had ever heard
june 8
and then the pandora commercial started to play as he was eating me out
june 7
carrying on for all the dead people
(nico & I...how this happens...the idea of the neighbor's book idea)
june 6
the key is being ecclectic
mass volume
phone conversation
texts
body postures
set: confessional
play: what happened today (That day)
june 5
and you can watch porn that looks like me
june 4
rachelle and i's beginning adventures in the city
june 3
the other model in my living room
june 2
note from newtown
june 1
well shit the river thing went here.
4/29/2010 [4/26/2012]
a piece AS a book
how do people receive information::
obstructing communication
touch
sound
4/28/2010 [4/26/2012]
Bowing. Just constant bowing.
4/27/2010 [4/26/2012]
We eat your piece of cake
4/23/2010-4/26/2010 [4/26/2010]
Max's Pieces
4/22/2010 [4/24/2010]
mourning women replacing men
replacing men mourning women
mourning women
mourning men
..
4/21/2010 [4/24/2012]
me appearing as the wikipedia katie king
4/20/2010 [4/12/2012]
here I get stoned for the first time
4/19/2010 [4/12/2012]
You could say that I let you go [song]
4/18/2010 [4/12/2012]
I'm scared I may never get over you (song)
4/17/2010 [4/13/2012]
What does he call you?
4/16/2010 [4/12/2012]
A Prayer for someone I hate [6PM HOUR]
4/15/2010 [4/12/2012] [24 hour zone] 6PM HOUR
Actually throw a party. Throw a party right there and it is just a party and you are just there and it lasts till the audience goes home.
4/14/2010 [4/12/2012]
Let's start with your legs.
Your legs are huge. And wonderful. They are, german legs. And even though they are pretty much hairless, I still literally lust after them. I love your legs-and others do not match up.
Then I would go to your hands. Your hands were made in the wild west. And it shows. They know things about my body the wind doesn't even know.
4/13/2010 [4/12/2012]
Texts from Laura with God knows what going on in the background.
4/12/2010 [4/10/2012]
The role of responsibility I had in making my own happiness.
4/11/2012 [3/29/2012]
a play about men:
"the good old times have come and gone"
and they clinked their glasses together
the weird thing man was when johnny just sort of fell halfway down the side of the earth.
yeah well
it was wierd man
yeah
but,
but it's johnny!
yeah, yeah it's johnny
man.
4/10/2012 [3/29/2012]
wicked and wise
Performance art piece using two words
4/9/2012 [3/27/2012]
what makes me feel powerful
is the water in your soul
what makes me feel
you feel powerful
is the water right behind your eyes
I always thought I had a problem with jealousy
but that is not the issue here you see
i see it now for whatever
it wasn't
the fall off the earth
is what makes this slippery
your love for her doesn't phase me
because I know my place in this
and I know that you will never leave me
which is the weird thing.
4/8/2012 [3/22/2012]
4/3/2011 [3/22/2012]
dialogue play series
(use text messages if you feel like it)
3/29/2011 [3/22/2012]
silent play series [5plays]
3/28/2011 [3/22/2012]
What Anton said about how God answers prayers. And how it may not be the first call you get.
3/27/2011 [3/12/2012]
song: more than you will ever know
the moon is now just unclaimed plots
get buried on the moon
3/26/2011 [3/12/2012]
i just wanna make love to you dance video
3/25/2011 [3/12/2012]
...and I finally understood it. Everyone was backing me. and everyone was behind me. Everyone was pushing me. In the exact same directions. Everyone who had ever loved me wanted the exact same thing for me. For me to be famo. For me to make it. Even those that had dropped off the cliff that is my life wanted the same thing silently, it would make them happy if I made it big. Certainly.
this is another play about a bell :
There is a sky light. In my room. That, if it were to open, would open to a brooklyn rooftop with colorful grafetti and memories of when parties used to be thrown there. And parties of when memories used to be thrown there. Off. there. And you can smoke weed or get a suntan. Smoke AND burn. Look out over the horizon to the city you forgot you lived in. It starts with New York and ends in City, just to remind you. The city that forgot you were there, too. Just to remind it. That you need here to pray. And that even if you think you came here for theater, you came here to pray. And even when you think you came here to do anything, you really came here to pray.
bang! pots to burn and smoke and smoke and burn!
bang! prayers to burn, prayer flags to smoke and light and put light on
bang!
a prayer for a meaty head!
bang!
a prayer for a prayer!
bang
bang
bang
----feel so many things for so many people
---this is how the world works
---retort to sarah kay
----
This play is ALSO about a bell that rings
(toothbrush)
=====
sky light
prayers
banging pots
OMG THERE was more here shit.
3/19/2011 [2-16-2012]
i'd like me a good old fashioned
please
one to calm the wild nights
matter of time,
all that matters
is that at one point you were mine.
mister of suits, and late night party Manhattans,
but more than that, a best friend whose ears and years of care and care free fun has become something more real than not, and far more hot than i'd thought.
now perhaps we see in part why I was so involved yet unlucky in love starting at such a young age and were so unlucky for so long.
-----
reality:
i don't know how I feel about rn. Well, ok so I know exactly how I feel about rn. And I don't understand why I am letting fear, his background, or anything else get in the way.
3/18/2011 [2-9-2012]
letters to my husband-by katie king
---
hey,
we should have both shut up, stopped being such babies, and had more fun.
-Rina
love,
your wife.
you're my favorite person to be around and have fun with anyways
i can almost stomach it with other guys, it almost works--until it comes to their hands. the hands get me every time. and the cock. nothing is like your hands or your cock. they all fall short. the rest i can deal with. i miss the wind out of you.
317/2011 [2-8-2012]
being divorced gave you a bit of street cred when you were under twenty four. there was an element of respect that people gave to you when you mentioned that tiny fact. For example, a lot of apartements are looking for people in their late 20's. I'm 23. But when I tell people that I'm divorced, it's ok. I may as well be 40. It adds some pounds.
3/16/2011 [2-8-2012]
more on the story of new york / bushwick brunette
Laura Kazden was sitting in the living room, talking about our our generation didn't have a cause, and had nothing to fight for. OW was going on full force before they got shut down and I hadn't visited yet, still haven't.
3/15/2011 [2-7-2012]
wtf IS that sorry excuse for heart flesh that wraps itself around your membrane of a beating weappit post divorce? what are those second hand misused pieces of wilty trash that come to form a group around the area where once a human heart and living love laid. that loving again is only a more painful tear on blood filled membranes.
It hurts MORE this time. It gets worse. Love after loss is not healing not pleasure not even real pain just a demolished malnourished attempt at anything past the point of utter despair.
It does not get easier.
reaching out with crippled burnt hands should not be an option in fact I can't believe that it is.
if we could just take all the things I want to have in front of me and have them be the things i want in front of me.
does God place the things we have in front of us because he wants us to pursue them?
3/14/2011 [2-6/2012]
I considered making a list of truly unforunate events that have happened to me over the last four years. This list would include way too many words beginning with the letter d. And beginning to write it just left me with another d feeling. So instead of making that list, I'm going to list here some d words that usually have a positive connotation but can quite often turn into disasters themselves. Poor D, Poor February, Poor Valentine's day, we give them such a bad rap.
-Dance parties
-Date
-Dates
=====================================
This issue has got me thinking about what the difference between an unfortuante and fortunate event is. At first it seems pretty cut and dry. Note photos. Burning myself with hot water: unfortunate. Having to get my dog xrayed at the vet because she was sick: unfortunate.
Still, how do we really know? Divorce, unfortunate of course-but in some cases...fortunate. Death, unfortunate. But in some religions, fortunate. Am I right?
========================================
3/13/2011 [2-6/2012]
nine months after leaving guam and unoffically splitting from steve, I ask a man on date for the first time in my life. details to follow.
superbowl sunday. 2012. sick puppy at home. gislane in my living room. cold out on the patio. converstaion 14m 59s 23 years of age: asking a man on a date for the first time. man's age: 36. attempt: felt right at the time, maybe possibly lame looking back. exact wording/conversation: Me: "I tried to ask you on a date on Monday but you didn't call me back, so I guess I'm trying to do that again but I don't really know how" Ivan: "I think you just did". Me: "oh ok great" Ivan "Let me check my schedule".
...
Its incredible how much these things mean to you after having your whole heart broken, you think they would mean less but you are so fragile that in many ways they mean more.
I had so many misconceptions about finally having the balls to leave, like that leaving would be the hardest part and that it would get easier from there. misconception. leaving took courage and a large dose of insanity. But it was after I left that was massively hard. Starting to loose pulse on all things, I was depressed without a reason to get out of bed. I feel like you should never really love anybody that much at all so that when they leave or die you can still fucking function.
Gym:
6-7: daytotter/mystuff/meditation/christian
7-8: npr
8-9: musicology
9-10: 8 tracks
10-11:
11-12: Pandora
3/12/2011 [2-2.2012]
Lately I have been dreaming. Dreaming and crying. Dreaming and crying and orgasming. Dreaming and crying and orgasming and breathing.
Flood
Drain
Starve
CLARITY:::
Katie, my chipper las,
when you wake up next to someone and the first thing they tell you is to go to hell,
that means it is time to leave
LEAVE. with INCREDIBLE HASTE
before they even finish the sentence. To somewhere far away, then send a handwritten note that says
"hey, when I woke up this morning....so I'm giving us some space. Contact me when you are ready to treat me like a human being. I'm all yours"
Then wait. maybe an infinity.
That is what you do. That is how you handle it.
You do NOT wait until you find out he has been cheating on you, beats you, and is in touch with all of his ex fucking girlfriends daily to get the fuck out. You tune into early warning signs and you take them seriously.
A HOW TO
3/11/2011 [2-2.2012]
It was a warm winter in brooklyn and it was quite literally raining men. A type of april men bring shit showers sort of show. And I knew it would be here in this town of hurry up and get laid and then forget about it. (I was sandstuck in what used to be mid-way through a divorce and now was just something we both didn't talk about and got marginally paid for. It was a serious volcano of hurt that no one cared to pay any mind to) which is why I took a 3 month respite at my parents house at the beginning (or end) of this total crapshoot. Which wasn't really a respite at all since they had just reunited after a divorce and and and an affair which did not make for the most peaceful environment to say the least. But anyways it was raining men for real and I missed having the more than welcome chains of marriage to the man I found most attractive in this world) to keep me from doing anything stupid. But like they said that had to come from within or something like that. I had been here for 4 months and had slept with 3 men and made out with 5. And it wasn't the sheer number that mortified the chaste Christian morals inside of me, or the illegality of the whole thing, or how much I missed my husband, or how bad they were in bed, or how I feared that no one besides my husband would ever be able to make me orgasm for the rest of my life, but the complete and utter loser job I was doing at choosing the men that came, well, inside me. And every single one of them fell hot off the slippery side of the world. This was really an issue. I mean the least I could do after finally separating myself from an abusive marriage with an alcoholic hippie-turned military fool (combined with the shitty parts of who I was in that marriage, both the greedy and the self depreciating parts) was to find a real winner who would make steven look like the dusty washed up cowboy that he was, but in a bad way. It took me 9 whole months to feel lonely, seriously. Even for an instant. I was too happy to be safe from that situation to feel any sort of physical loss. I knew I should probably meet with this lonliness one on one for the next 9 months minimum before I considered involving myself with another human being. I had, in fact, been in and out of engagements since I was 15 which was basically the last decade of my life. Spending the first decade of my life in childhood and the second half of my life engaged or married didn't make any sort of sense at all. It was time for a decade of coping by myself and working on my art. I could, after all, finally do it. And I was still young and incredibly beautiful. And I had moved to new york. Instead, I was in between riding my hangups and being way too hard on myself for trying to survive, be a dog mom, and do my art all at the same time on top of getting through this bitch divorce. Every day was a good day if you forgot at least part time that the love of your life whom you thought was the sexiest man alive whom you married quite in love at the age of 20 wanted nothing to do with you in the slightest. This, NYC or rather, bushy brookyn was the place I needed to be for my career, yet I felt like I should probably take myself out of new york city for the sake of my own sexual health, or prowess. But I had just gotten here. And even though I had pledged that I would sleep with 10 or less people my entire life, and I was at naughty number 9, all I really wanted to be doing in general was having fun
3/10/2011 [1/31/2012]
It interested me that they mattered that much, at all. The photographs. That they meant a damn to me at all, and I knew it was only a matter of time before we were pictured somewhere on the unrefined decadence of mass interwebs that my generation was raised under. And who cared no one but there was a bit of finality attached to it which seemed to put a stamp on it and I both never wanted it to happen and wanted it to happen very fast all at the same time. Part of the goal was to destroy as much as possible, burn as many bridges, and fuck up as many relationships as possible until my husband saw that yes I did indeed truly belong with him and ask for me back. It was all about getting myself to rock bottom at warp speed so that I could fall on my face and say to everyone, 'see, I'm not ok. I do need him!! And still, after moving on to say that he was still the love of my life and that other men didn't change that in the sligthest and that maybe one person would believe me or one person would understand.
buy maybe I didn't even believe me, because it could be argued that if I truly felt that way, I would be placing myself amongst the most wonderful characters and situations just to prove that even health. even health could not survive this storm. I think really my biggest fear in all of this-the biggest loss for me in my mind could be that I could walk away and loose it, and soon have it mean nothing at all. My biggest fear would be being wrong all along about the last seven years.
I was afraid of loosing him in a very real sense. And that fear made me realize that letting go maybe was closer than I had imagined. And maybe just to test it I should surround my self with some choice choices and see if it even mattered.
Which I know it would.
Holy shit do I miss my husband.
I think my nervous system felt him getting closer to the united states. He would be in portland in less than one month.
book ideas: chapters of entering new york
i-diederik & scott
ii-laura
iii-amitav & ivan
iv-rob
vi-donald & ryan
vii-
3/19/2011 [1/27/2012]
If I had to choose a worst part of this, to pin a tail on this donkey it would be the hookless sense of it. Not knowing where a cloud in the sky is or if you are standing on one in the first place. At this spot that I am at I don't know who to believe and I don't know which way fate is smiling. I don't know who to believe. Should I have hope that God will heal my marriage and hold out for that? Should I have faith that I will one day let him go and let him go? I honestly do not know how faith hope OR love works in this situation.
3/18/2012 [1/26/2012]
Better-Song with Frank
3/17/2012 [1/24/2012]
things were not good in biloxi. and living here in this cozy albeit cluttered space alone in the studio apartment with the two dogs was too much of a flashback for me to truly appreciate my most recent of moves. I had left my husband 8 months prior on a plane across the world with no notice. When I sat on that plane he complained about being hungry so I ordered him a hamburger delivered to the door. He said thanks and the plane flew. I wish it was that simple. That I could say that I left a marriage which was both the happiest and not happiest time of my life. But really, I had been being screamed at to leave for years and it was neither courage or strength that gave me the balls to leave but sheer and utter fear that if I did not do so one of us would die instead.
This week my grandmother and mother are talking about putting my father in a mental institution. I gave them the go ahead. Close friends send their sympathy for the bad news, but really it is good that this is getting out in the open, in general. You can't run away from that many things and loose that many jobs and have people be ok with it and claim you have any sort of a family, at all. I'm worried about him of course but more so scared at my own future with the genetics I have been blessed with. Backhistories of alcoholism, murder, depression, affairs, etc leave me wondering if living past the age of 30 is really worth it at all.
My mother's side of the family was half ukranian and half scottish. My grandfather was a bugle boy and my grandmother a writer, intellect, and full of love. My grandfather was a painter and my grandmother made floral collages with pressed flowers. I remember that flower press and the typewriter in the same room that my mother kept her jewelry and the window that had the stories about the tree that would bloom in the spring. I have visited that house recently with my cousin Nico who looks identical to my Uncle Bruce besides his stature and we sat in the patio that my grandfather made and looked through the windows of a house we used to once know well, and we saw the dog in the living room and even some of Grandpa's old paintings but we didn't see the ashes blowing around, or the frog collection, maybe a frog here and there, and not the garden, and not the lighting bugs. Definitely not them.
The last time I have seen a lighting bug was when Steven caught on for me in Norfolk, Virginia on our way home from the Naro. We loved the Naro, and libraries. Anything where a wealth of information could keep us away from the young chaotic troubles we had as newlyweds and our vast inability to handle them. That, and Ansel-our rescued dog who became the heartbeat of our entire life together.
There was an affair going on in that foggy kitchen, that was for sure. Both of my bosses and me on the other side washing dishes. I had been in this situation before, but that was a long time ago. Things were good in Bushwick for the most part. I was proud of myself for finally creating for myself the life and the roots and the community I so longed for. And I had come a long ways for all of it. A very long way.
3/16/2012 [1/23/2012]
waitress from the west
I will creme your coffee
and disarm you with my western hospitality and
unarming customer service.
Frank's song...so maybe now I miss the sea
3/14/2011 [1/23/2012]
Just Darling
it's just darling
the way you
it's just,
darling
i don't feel the same today
3/13/2011 [1/23/2012]
swear words
3/12/2011 [1/16/2012]
refreshing
it is because you are implaceable
3/11/2011 [1/16/2012]
events with men in cabs / an atypical cab ride home week. end with splitting cab fare with a member of the audience
3/10/2011 [1/16/2012]
Katie and Laura stand with their backs to the audience. Spotlights that are really flashlights are being shine don them from behind.]
Katie "Let's do this like we're getting paid for it"
Laura "Response"
They Pose. They Dance.
Katie "Laura when I met you you had red hair and a firey temper, which made sense.
Laura: Response
Katie: Let me tell you about my latest vow .
Laura (into the mircrophone)-right. Let's get this straight. This girl ,Katie, is obsessed with vows.Vows to not sleeep with someone vovows to sleep with somone , vows to look after one person for the rest of your life. And vows to let them go. You see, Katie is trying to be a woman of her word. But other people keep getting in the way. She can't make vows for other people, and she understands that-but it would really just be easier that way. for her sake.
2. Both into the microphone at differnet decibils:
It was a tight squeeze and the ball was hovering ,Transfixed like a pregnant pause on a shish kabob . And we were there, waiting for it.
Katie : People said things
Laura: they sounded like
Katie Quote
Laura Quote
Katie: Quote
Laura: Quote
[projeted is the actual notebook paper]
Laura & Katie embrace in a weird way...
Katie (into the microphone) like I said it was a tight squueze and what I hadn't told her is that I am claustrophic to a definate degree. I felt the rising panic, the unquenched run and I thought to myself.
both (into the microphone) damn i wish I had some guy drama to get my mind off this
]
[insert whatever actual guy drama you would be talking about right here currently anyways]
katie & laura un-embrace....
Laura: uh, so yeah. you probably did some things this last year, maybe some very bad ones. maybe some good ones. If you'd like a shot of whiskey, we'd like to invite you up onto the stage to say (and don't say which) either the best or worst thing you have done all year.
*cheers*
Katie: Last year was a lot about things falling apart, and Laura if I could I'd like to make 2012 a lot more labout coming together. And not only things coming together and people and places coming together but
Laura: vows
Katie: vows
Larua: words that we say that make things happen
Katie: things that actually get done when we say they will.
Laura: (current opinon on vows)
Katie: So let's make one
*Vow making*
Katie: So wasn't that awesome?
Laura: response
Katie: So what would you rather make
Laura: spells, I'm into spells
Katie: Ok
Laura: Like a love spell
INSERT LAURA'S PIECE HERE
Laura's piece transitions into telling her BOAT STORY. Projected in the back are pictures from fox, new york times...weird footage, close ups of the scars, medical reports, etc. Gislane is playing drums. Things are getting very dramatic, yet factual. Katie is responding with sounds and movement which we will play with. It gets to a
CLIMAX
will laura live or die?
she lives.
There is a pause.
Katie: Yeah, so really, I mean like do you think I should wait a few days to text him or not? Like, honestly do you think wednesday is good or do you think that sends the wrong message?
Laura: response.
Katie: by the way, I like that sweater. nice choice.
Larua: compliments something of Katie's.
Katie: I'd like to have it actually, can I?'
Laura sure. I'd like to have your shoes. can I?
Katie: of course, here you go. Sweet.
Laura & Katie into the microphone:
Actually, I'd like to have your whole life. I'd like to be you. I'd like to have my thoughts be your mind and my heart be your tounge. Skull. I'd rather sink in your ship than the one I'm sinking in. Love. Love is happening here.
Katie: Go for it.
Laura *Produces Spell*
Katie & Laura to mic:
"and I suddently felt a collosal connection with the lead singer in the band. He had hair which reminded me of January. And 2009. And the hogon. But it wasn't a whim hormone. It was serious. I could see it in his eyes and his eyes had souls inside of them that smelled like soup. Like a hot soup on a cool day. I hadn't slept for 7 days but I suddently never wanted to be asleep unless it was in his arms and I knew after the performance he would come up to me and I would say something about lung capacity. or stars. Or I could just start swearing the worst swear words, the ones you hated as a kid. And I would swear and he would swear it would just be a giant swearing....event."
Laura: So did he introduce himself?
Katie: no, no I think I misread that sign entirely.
Laura: what abou this sign? Can you read this?
*projected image of invite to next performance art piece trans-continent*
END
3/9/2011 [1/16/2012]
these are the type of things we will
think about when we are dead
that freedom wasn't free enough and we never
meant all the things that we said or that we never said the things we meant, two heels digging too hell bent, two heals digging in the
sea sea
too heels digging in the sea
3/8/1011
[1/12/2010]
3 tiny facts from your tiny friend katie king
1. i have a giant crush on my dog trainer. he probably knows this. or not. but now he does.
2. i have taken a chastity vow. this involves me getting my brain back together and not being an idiot. since idiotic things happened while I was still healing.
3. when that vow is up, i'd like to bang you.
a. but that's the thing
b. more than that too,
c. i want to be there for you even when you don't need me to be
4. I'm not sure what hang ups you have. I have a shitton, but they are old ones-so I will have new ones soon or later. Not sure which or where but they will happen of course. It's not that I don't want to be honest with you, more like I'm in the state of unknown on this one here. I have some lines I won't cross though. For example,
i. i don't involve porn in my relationship. at all not even once I am not ok with it. it will break all deals with me.
ii. my dogs come first in my life right now. yes.
iii.
3/7/2011
hello my heart, song
3/6/2011 [1/12/2012]
woods in new york city
3/5/2011 [1/12/2012]
they took it down
3/4/2011 [12/26/2011]
we're a mess
we're all burned. it's sad
everyone is so fragile. we're all singed & sensitive.
not everyone's family is like this
show me a family
it's nice to all be alive like this
the forgotten toast
3/3/2011 [12/23/2011]
you, like a holiday hormone
3/2/2011 [12/22/2011]
Last night I slept on a garbage bag.
Laura peed on the couch last night. It was the one couch I had. That's not true, there was one other but my husband was probably masturbating to some semi professional porn pussy on it. Laura had peed on my couch and done cocaine the night before, I had never really had my couch peed on before. It was a new thing. It could have been later that exact day, even when I heard one-of-the-most-depressing-things since the storm. It was when I was talking to Omar at work. He was also divorced and well traveled. He told me that the heartbreak from the divorce hurt more now than it did two years ago. I didn't really register or think much of that for awhile, until I recounted the story of my day to Laura. In which I touched on that conversation.
3/1/2011 [12/19/2011]
Last night I slept on a couch with someone's coat on me, I knew where the couch came from but not the coat. Or who's it was. It could be said that someone had wanted me to be warm that evening. My mattress has blood stains on it. Those could be from the bedbugs, or from who knows. I am not sure where the mattress is from or the blood that is on it. It is not brunch drunk laura's blood, although I do sleep with her on it from time to time. The other night it was Gislane passed out on the giant queen sized air mattress that has mysterious blood stains on it. I slept next to her after going out to get pretzels and at 4AM she woke up asking 'where am i' with a surprisingly clear morning voice. You're in my bed with me, Gislane, I said. It's ok. The next morning was interesting. I used to have trouble pooping as a child, it used to be something I would pray over. I would sit there on the toilet and pray that I would not be in intense pain. Anyways, I think whiskey has the possibility of bringing back those sort of things. I am dishwashing these days, when I dishwash I think about how dishwashers probably sit around and think about things when they dishwash and wonder what sort of things they think about. In another life I was married and lived on an island in guam, but that was a different storm and a story that I've minded too many times. I will get evicted out of my place soon, If I can't find someone to split my room with. We also have bedbugs, so I will be evicted from a place that has bedbugs. Which I believe is ironic. But people don't like it these days when you use that word. Last night I went to the show of a guy I used to fuck in basement of brooklyn. I phrase it like that because that is exactly what it was. I did not sleep with him as he insisted on sleeping in a separate room. Once, twice I may have actually slept with him. And the fucking because I fucked him while he did not do a whole lot. at all. not even a little. But I still really enjoyed his brown eyes and the way he phrased things. The fact that he had connections in vermont, the funny sounds he would make when he was making music, and his generally pleasant vibe which made me feel just plain grateful to be around him. And that's the way I feel about scott aiken. Besides the other things, like how I think he is partial coward and how he gets me wrong and assumes a lot of things without having any background to go off of, etc. He was a bit cold to me last night and frankly I thought it was cold enough outside for that. It didn't seem like the thing to do to complain about being cold in new york city, you just experienced it, and then kept your mouth shut about it. This seemed to be some sort of branding going on. I had taken a vow of celibacy the week before which is supposed to last until march. we'll see. there wasn't actually a vow made. it was spoken to anyone or anything; I had had sort of my share of vows. And I only had two left on my notch board. One for now and one for later. [] someone told me once that pain stuck and someone told me once that joy stuck. all I know is that the most powerful thing I can say today is I don't know.
2/28/2011 [12/19/2011]
brunch drunk laura
2/27/2011 [12/15/2011]
she said that would happen
that the cord would loosen
and the necklace would fall
to tie it at a point of less pressure
to not put so much weight on it
and that at the end of it all rock
would drop on rock and you would
think that it was broken but really
that was just the shape it had been in
the whole time anyways
she said that would happen
that you would find out who your real friends are
or who your friends really are, i forget which
in the foggy fog fog of the shitty shit storm
but really they all just evaporate and you are standing on the side of a mirage, wondering why she just didn't say
something laura said
that I really don't remember
something that I wanted to tweet
something that she must say all the time.
something that stuck
2/26/2011 [8/42011]
the face of the other girl,
looking at her in the mirror
above the clay face melding gh
also the man in the sheet,
the murderer
and the "i pinched it trimming my hibiscus"
re: finger quote.
The movie:
Beginning with the two dogs walking past a mural
archytype: eye twitch close up
Closing: Frog leap & send the flood & aloe plant.
Concept:
Combing mind party with other things I have written.
Also combine:
writings from the orange notebook;
the mask incident
covered in cum and blood and rain and dirt incident
the sex addict story
wyoming
pushing God
God laughing
God crying
Where are you
&s
{a performance a day for a year}
- by katie king if not otherwise noted
home: a moving target
by Katie King
my suitcase hitting every crack on the sidewalk while walking down andersonville at midnight
that damn wonderful mississippi night owl, wooing us from outside our bedroom window on morrison ave,
the 26 pounds of brown & white fur curled up by my ribcage in the mornings
the sweaty walk to school in heredia post papaya
homesickness: twice. both in 2011.
i- Chicago, a city I had a large crush on. I arrived on Sep 4th, the same day Oprah did but not the same year and slept in my car on the streets for two nights with rhodisain ridgeback in my lap, and a sense of happiness that seemed like it could mean something.
ii- Guam, becuase it housed the place where I could find his arms and the seven years spent in and out of them. Not to mention the pumpkin in the backyard, the wedding album in the living room, the series of postcards lining the wall, the fruit juicer in the kitchen and the strange idyllic happiness inspite of a sliiping hell.
electric blankets
hearing the doorbell ring in the heat of a denver august
the internet, the invisible world
5262527
I 70 & I 80
asking my husband if he thought I would be able to walk around at night after six the first night I slept alone while living in new york city in the upper... west... side, I was twenty-one.
150 + plane flights
shyla's couch
heather's lawn chair
pasta, the dog not the dish
swiss cowbells
the creaking of the evergreen tree too late at night and too heavy for the morning
tall trees. tall buildings. tall men.
my first movers, signing the papers, a 3BD with a view and watching Steve shower in the the gutter run off on a particularly rainy day
movement & the rush rush parade
lost items: purses, cell phones, the dirt that piles up in the bottom of your purse that you feel with your fingernails when you are trying to get to your favorite chapstick. I identify home with lost objects such as these
that piano bench I spent 9 years on
the blood stain where my first dog was run over
pike's peak
the mint my brother & I planted in the front yard
chris & sara
childhood home; the concept that a warm english breakfast tea and three tablespoons of sugar can get you through the woods, or at least to them.
waking up to snow
hostels. hostels in the bernese oberland, in ireland, flagstaff, lautrubrunnen valley, london, costa rica, new york city, hostels with guitars in them, with rock gym food oder in them, hostels that charge you 1.00 for a 5 minute shower, check in check out, hostels with communal meals in them, hostels with kids and families in them...
mail.
those 6 weeks in navy hotels, and the 9 months sleeping on floors afterwards.
the stomping grounds of unfamiliar head spaces
being a newlywed at 8 1/2 Glorietta Lane
that 7 hour china bus ride and the songs I wrote during a 3 hour maintenence delay
a blank piece of paper and a pen
phonecalls to tiffany
takeoff
I'm a colorado springs-austin-flagstaff-seattle-girdwood-lugano-heredia-london-olympia-gimmelwald-tuscon-san diego-virginia beach-new york city-biloxi-guam-san francisco-new york city transplant.
after 23 years and 23 moves, [the above I just narrowed down to places I actually received mail at] I finally dwell in brooklyn. Here are some images of what that idea ' home' so important to some,-and so untrappable for others like myself have meant to me till now. These are receipts of where I have found it, what it has looked like, where it has come from, and who's nametag it was wearing
I write from my current sense of place, a wooden desk in buckdown next to a makeshift clothes rack and in front of a window facing a house with white siding. The neighbors, Brenna & what was his name again? Have a dog named Nugget, who scares my Gretel half to death. There is a half empty jug of Arizona brand Arnold Palmer [lite? oh no, must not have read the label] to my right and a half empty bag of buttermilk bread for PB & Jelly infront of my laptop, right next to my shoe freshener. There are other things on the desk, this week's Reader, my very own first cell phone plan which I bought at a thrift store in Sacramento for 10.00, and the contents of my purse which I dumped out on the desk days ago and have not gotten to organizing, several expired registration tickets for the city of Chicago, receipts for subletting rent, etc. Gretel sleeps on the sleeping bag on the airmattress to my left and Ansel sleeps on a dog pillow underneath the desk. I'm feeling a bit groggy, and it would be nice at this point to don some socks.
2/25/2011 [9/9/2011]
ulgh. don't worry new york you will always have my heart.
time and time again
new york is closing all its doors
but chicago says come over here
you scratch my aching shoulders
i'll scratch yours,
time and time again
the canker sore becomes a boring bit of conversation in the morning after too much rum and the cessation of love that leads to building blocks like stopping time with paper clocks instead of the complete and utter loss of things that you worked for things that you screwed for things that you sacrificed for and it all was lost and no one recorded it no one stood up for it and no one stood under it and there is a low and a why and a hum and salt on salty wounds on saltier woods. Instead of being nothing it would be something at least even if that something is the smaller than the shortest part of your index finger touching the tip of your nose.
you smell like cabbage and you are not worth your salt
time and time again
you want to feel hurt so feel hurt
but I won't play a part in that you wear those shoes I will not wear that hat
2/24/2011 [9/9/2011]
I'm counting on you, Chicago. To make me counto n myself. When the canker sore heals, when the hair grows out, I may move on. I want to be city in the girl with two dogs.
Living in Chicago is like living in a constructon zone. It's not as romantic as new york city or as charming as new orleans, it's not as funky as san francisco, or as beautiful as the northwest-not as wild as LA or as pleasant as San Diego, but someone will hand you a hammer when you need it.
2/23/2011 [9/9/2011]
I don't know how you move; (poem)
I don't know how you move but you move slowly.
2/22/2011 [8/21/2011]
Why today rocked:
I went on a hike near the rockies with my dogs and let them run loose. it was so wonderful and happy and I felt pretty much at peace and so excited to be with them and that they weren't running away from me, etc and it was cloudy and mountainy and brilliant. then I decided to turn back because I didn't want to put our family in danger as it rained and became dark. So i got a lttle lost, even ran a little. Found a CHRISTMAS TREE in the middle of the FOREST and then lost my lens cap and then these other people with two dogs came and they helped me find the lens camp and his son had laid the very trails we walked on in boys scout and he had spent time in guam and san fran (pleasant hill specifically) as well and we found the lens cap right before it started to rain and we saw a MOOSE I was about 6 feet from it and the dogs saw it too and I took a picture and he helped hold the dogs so they didn't get killed by a moose which was a Godsent and I take pictures as I drive and then I was a still lizard at the hotsprings and was practicing being very still which was peaceful and good and hot and wonderful and I met a couple that met in flagstaff 23 years ago and they were from Germany and Italy and their little girl was 11 like I was when I went to my first hotspring in pagosa and then on my way out I met a couple traveling from canada with their two (two!) malamutes that had just gotten married in the tetons and had an element with an ecamper installed on the top of it and their month roadtrip south was their honeymoon and we met in that parking lot and the last time i had seen springs was during my honeymoon and they were uber uber nice and from the northwest-so we exchanged information. The night was cool and the day was windy, the forest was home and the kindness and connection from others was felt.
2/21/2011 [8/21/2011]
not this way
when you stand with your face to the sea
& your ass to the land behind the sea
I could say that I stand with my heart to
the sea
the same sea
& that the moon had something to do with it
a pulling or a throbbing or a whistle-blowing
moon
& it happened once
but I don't feel you
I wish I could say
when I move you move
That is what I hear lovers whisper
That is the sound of the separation
of hearts with cymbals clanging
in sexy syncopation a head falling asleep on a pillow a hand petting a dog a yearning
a yearning
a nod
a nod
but not this way
I never knew less could be had
less could be lost
& that noses could stay so cold
but not this way
pulsing wound
of of course life goes on but you'll never hide from that scar so what does it matter that life goes on if the scar sticks-the scar doesn't cower but you're still hiding
you are healed
you look healed
when it is said is it happening
not this way
[but i don't feel you]
and my best friends say to me you look healed,
they hand me pencils and a new housewarming plant. I feel my heart is heavy and glad at the same time but then realize it's just me adjusting to the temperature. It's just a chest cold worsening. Throbbing. Tell me I'm healed, tell me that is what this feels like. Tell me it is tomorrow.
2/20/2011 [8/21/2011]
if reality demands to be heard...song
2/19/2011 [8/21/2011]
last night with the thunder over the canyons from parshall to granby, but you couldn't hear the thunder you could just know that there was thunder to be had & saw the sky blaze above the rocky rocks and pulsing wound.
2/18/2011 [8/10/2011]
t-30 days
Sounds like the only way to move to new york. How so I said. With two dogs, no job, no plan, no where to stay, no GPS and all of a sudden. He made a good point. My marriage was on the fritz, and that was reaching. 3 months beforehand I had left a tiny island in the middle of the philipeans 3 days after my husband had his penis circumiszed at the age of 24. He had 24 stiches. One for every year that he was born. A week earlier I had learned that he had cheated on me, and almost a year from now I was handed divorce papers that I simply ripped up and threw away. I had heard a story about how my grandfather did that once and I figured that was the correct way to handle things. We stuck it out sort of, I don't know I can't really talk about it now. Tonight. Anyways then I spent about 3 months half dead living at my parent's house-barely eating, barely awake. Then I got sick of it. It wasn't working for me and I was tired of returning back to being a kid. So I left on a road trip to new york city, where I was going to move to. My first stop was lake tahoe, where I am now. There was no room at the inn so I peed in front of a cabin at 11PM, that was my first glimpse of the lake, then I took ansel and gretel to pee. Then I hopped in the back with my sleeping back and soon I'm going to sleep. In the morning I"ll take the dogs for a walk around Tahoe, grab a couple photos at north shore, and head off on my way. East. I could go for a little less crazy.
2/17/2011 [7/30/2011]
te
2/16/2011 [7/30/2011]
still with you,still without you
2/15/2011 [7/30/2011]
sister with the same voice
2/14/2011 [7/30/2011]
Letter to Caydence
2/13/2011 [7/29/2011]
Ode to Sunday Prayer
2/12/2011 [7/29/2011]
Spray bottle correction. Correct another person on stage for saying the wrong thing.
2/11/2011 [7/29/2011]
Missed connection ad for dogs. Puppet show, etc?
2/10/2011 [7/29/2011]
When Katie realized her issues of obsessive love were deep deeply embedded and stemmed back to childhood
me reading aloud those emails I sent Evelyn as a kid.
2/9/2011 [7/22/2011]
And I had caught it. Like a bug. Like the first big bug that I did catch all by myself which was tonight. I want every famous man in my bed. I want to be the road wife the road muse the vat of red ink they dip into and someday someone will interview me and say what did you find after all these men. And I will say either something really intelligent or something insane like butter goes best on rye.
2/8/2011 [7.22.2011]
Goodnight. I love you.
Kiss. And Katie kisses every person in the front row either on the forehead or cheek and each time another person says
Goodnight. I love you.
Before the kiss.
And after the row is done she stands and says
"for all the times you didnt"
2/7/2011 [7.21.2011]
It's not the _____ of it all that bothers me. It's the greyness of it all. It's how much choice we do have, its the fact that I could have done better. That certain things may not have happened, there there were so many good things about him. And us. Certainly us. And I don't want to forget that. That we had a shitload of fun. That there may not be a right or a wrong to this; that there may not have been a choice that was better or worse in all of this-that anything could have been that God could have worked anything out any which way that there were one thousand paths and that there was a chance in hell that this marriage could have worked out. That chance-that it could have worked out. I can't stand it. That it will work out. Hope. The fact that no choice is better than another and that it could have worked. That everything could have been fine with it working. The in-betweens and the corners of the full story and what I don't know about him and small changes here and there and the maybes and I don't knows and maybe there is no one correct path. But loosing the one. The one correct person. I cannot live with it. My only hope is that I was wrong all along; or that he will choose me.
2/6/2011 [7.20.2011]
Maybe we should just do the Katie Song. Yeah...that may work. I could just dance to it or I could say how he said he wrote this song for me in a parking lot outside the starry plough and maybe someone in the audience could have a pear cidar or a pear with a straw in it or something and someone could tell them this story and I'd be dancing but maybe with a member of the audience and they'd be talking at the table or something like that. A secret for an individual. How he was the first man I kissed after being married but how none of that even mattered.
2/5/2011 [""]
Met up with a 36 year old rocket scientist. He said I needed to give something up.
2/4/2011 [""]
Play with the four: joel, tasha, paleo, me. Let's explain things quickly and consisely. This is the musciain.
full play
2/3/2011 [""]
Reading letter from paleo with paleo playing in the background.
2/2/2011 [""]
Walking into the room. Old posters of old men. Etc .Artists when they are old. bob dylan...etc. Presentation.
2/1/2011 [7.19.2011]
Is this a journal entry? Maybe.
So after moving to San Francisco and staying with my parents I did what any self-respecting almost divorcee at the age of twenty three would do, I became a band groupie. Or almost. I almost became a band groupie. Which happens to be a major dream of mine. And so does recording my own music, traveling with a band, etc. All of these things he promised me. as well as being in my bed for more than one night. So yeah, last week I hooked up with my favorite musician. I honestly really never say that coming. The next day he told me to not follow them on tour, the next day he told me goodbye. I don't know. Was there something there? Absolutely. Have I ever had a man enjoy me more in bed? I am not totally certain. And the two weeks before this night were fun. Really fun. One of those "everything in my life makes sense and totally alligns because of this one happenstance" things. One of those. Would I have probably fallen really hard for him? Probably. But I also had the feeling with this guy that I may be able to keep my head above water. That I probably would be able to. I have to write-I have to write about what i am going through right now or I could totally forget myself or any sort of progress or non progress. This was all really dissapointing, basically-I felt very much ready to get in my car and travel cross country and move somewhere else and using this band as the caviet was perfect. It really was, I figured it was an answered prayer. Every conversation I've been having points to paying attention and I'm left asking myself what did i miss. I prayed during this thing, I prayed that whatever happened-good or bad that my focus would not be shifted from God. Because that is what happened before and I really really really do not want that to happen again. That fucked everything up. I don't regret the physical aspect too much. I had decided before i moved here that I was spiritually set free from any bonds like that since my husband cheated on me and lied to me about it for a year. That's biblically over. But it was really truly amazing to feel desired by someone like that. Not only was it the first man I have kissed in three years besides my husband, but it was someone who actually wanted to hold my hand back. I barely or didn't even remember what that felt like. And to have that occur, with not just any guy but a guy that I have respected for years and years-to be touched by that guy, desired by him; on the same page even if it was just for 6 hours or a few weeks; was wonderful for me. The physical aspect faded away and it became enjoyable because of who he was, not what he felt like. It was hard. Because of the idolization I have of my husband's body. And how anyone in comparison of that is only a silly shadow. Would I have chosen my husband over David? Instantly and without any sort of doubt. Clearly. Was that realistic-well my husband doesn't ever speak to me so you tell me. The thing that really sucks about all this is that (besides the fact that I was really banking on the music deal)--was that I was actually forming real feeling for him. And that I was actually, crazily, INSANELY somewhat ready for that. More ready than he was coming out of something that wasn't even a marriage and that really rocked my world. Who knows. But yeah, actual like-this-could-work-in-a-relationship feelings. And out of it I feel like I have hit this huge milestone in a way, like that was a big deal for me too, Paleo. Like to know that that was possible-broke a lot of bad things for me. It really meant something to me-the fact that I could be adored by someone I really respected. Before that, I was interested in feeling that way with maybe anyone-and now I'm not interested in feeling that way with just anyone at all. Only the best, really. And I don't want to hook up-or have casual encounters. I want a real relationship where you can be out in public and embracing each other and no one feels weird about it and one doesn't feel too much more about it than the other. I also feel like I don't need a relationship at all. Like, I feel totally happy. Totally perfectly happy. It was healing for me and I can't say exactly why-except that I actually feel like it did break patterns. A pattern of reaching out and being physically rejected-by having my body be turned down. That does someting to you-and even just wanting to be touched. LIke how he touched my vagina. And it was ok. I didn't feel dirty or guilty or like he was doing me a massive favor or whatever-he wanted to so he did. And it was great. To be honest, it looked like he was falling in love with me the entire night. The way he looked at me, he gave me "I'm in love with you" eyes. He really did. Which was INSANE. And I think that's what happened-I think he started to fall in love with me and then got scared. Rightly so with what he was coming out of but really i just wish he would have gone ahead and admitted that, like hey I really feel something for you and it's scaring the shit out of me so I've got to back it up. That makes sense, before the first time he talked to me about it he said that thost phyiscal aspects made him access other important feelings that he wasn't ready to access. did I think that maybe I could be his girilfriend? yeah-totally. The only concept that I didn't communcate to him was that I felt like I could be careful with him and his emotions-that i want to be more careful with people and that I'm confident that I could be careful with him. I won't forget the way he bit his lip, how he touched me back even on my back-paleo's lips were around my nipples! How he said. Yeah! Right before he came, and fuck. It's hilarious how, with all the poetry and art and literature and intellectual minds out there in the world, cuss words like fuck are all that come out right before we cum. I don't know, for me I think it's oh my God or oh my gosh or something like that. Anyways, yeah it was great and I think something could come from it I really do. And maybe letting something come from it is giving him this total nothing to do with me space like with my husband. Or maybe nothing, zero will come of it but this weird milestone that broke certain chains. I really feel beautiful. Like I really feel really very beautiful and confident. I feel amazingly beautiful and competent. This has not been the case in a very real amount of time. I mean, I am honestly gorgeous. Every man whom I've ever wanted anything to do with has fallen in love with me. Past that there is work to be done, but I think I can accept being a 10 An 8-10 but at times at 10/10. For real. And this is the time. And I'm grateful. Dissapointed but grateful. The thing that sucks is that I feel like anything is possible, but I want anyhting to be possible with him. With only the best. There are only a few. I'm looking forward to this maybe being an exciting possibility. If not-what a turn, right?! I'm going to look into trusting god, to paying attention, to paying more attention.
It's upsetting to loose these last two weeks of fun and also the prospect of touring with them; doing my dream [right now]-etc. But I'm just happy this craziness even happened because I could not have even hoped for it.
It does, on a bad string, make me feel like I lost my marriage all over again though. Calling steve, etc.
Just thought I should mention that. But no, largely, I feel relieved, refeshed, and more than OK. How hilarious.
It SUCKS. but it's also POSSIBLE. Way more possible than before. :)
The thing is, It would have made a divorce so much easier to get over-is that using someone?
And bottom line maybe, this will tide me over for at least 2 years in terms of seeking any sort of afection like that. Just knowing i could can, and did-fulfills that want. It really does. And allows me to not pinpoint that as any hole and to focus on other things.
pss: he painted my face. It was lovely.
1/31/2010 [7.19.2011]
All the things that dropped in my marriage. New year's eve. The kiss and the champange glass.
1/30/2010 [7102011]
I would like to be a good person. Who does good things. This entails having friends, good ones-and doing good things with my time. Like working to help people. Or being there for people in general. With a positive attitude that is genuine. And that my focus would be on God.
To not get lost in addictions or hang ups, etc. This in essence is freedom.
And would be great
[update: there is a prayers somewhere like this]
1/29/2010 [712011]
Gargoling with strawberry milk; is this already in there? National anthem
1/28/2010 [7.1.2011]
Play about how so many literal things in my marriage broke
1/17/2010-1/27/2010 [7.1.2011]
Dances uploads
12/17/2010-1/17/2010 [7.1.2011]
MMM posts
12/16/2010 [7.1.2011]
You make loosing me look good [song]
12/15/2010 [7.1.2011]
American standard [song]
12/14/2010 [7.1.2011]
mistake I don't regret [song]
12/13/2010 [7.1.2011]
steven [song]
12/12/2010 [6.25.2011]
I walked with him to the Bart and he told me something I couldn't stop telling other people about for days. He said
Its a rough time to be 19.
Which I wasn't aware of, really. I wanted to know. Why. Was was it rough-what made it rough? I was about to say how 19 was wonderful for me, but then I remembered what happened when I was 19 and then I responded by saying
"I think 19 is a rough time for everyone"
Thinking that maybe actually that was a bit too broad of a statement, that I should have brought it down a few notches and said "for me, too"
All the while thinking about this tegan & Sara song-the one that came out when I was 19.
You can see clearly here in the lyrics what we are talking about. I was 19. Poor me.
Tegan & Sara were never much for lyrcists
But it got me to thinking about what the sweet kid had said, and I started analyzing it and if you see here you can see that I have made a sort of a chart. And it goes by steps. If you break it down it looks like this:
It's a rough time to be 19.
It's a rough time to be.
It's a rough time to
It's a rough time
It's a rough
Its a
Its.
12/11/2010 [6.15.2011]
We need more mourning places.
We need more mourning places. I mean it. This is how I see it working. We'd walk to the nearest mourning place. Or if it was an especially terrible terrible thing like someone dying we would walk or fly or swim to the FURTHEST away mourning place.
So that we could get a stamp in our mourning passport book. The stamp would be shaped like a tear, of course. And the tear would be black. Because there is already so much blue in mourning, and we wouldn't be aiming for anything ironic like that.
You would pay a quarter to enter. No more than a quarter, even if prices rise between now and then. Because no one should have to pay more than a quarter for something that they already have to mourn. Just doesn't seem right.
And you'd walk in and it would sort of be a bit like a film studio at universal studios. There would be several options you could choose from, but you could choose all of them.
The walls would be padded so you could throw yourselves up against them. And one concrete wall just to remind you that suicide is an option. It is. And there would be an ocean. So you can scream at it. And hit it. And, it's a real ocean so it may hit you back. And there would be rooms full of things just fit for the breaking. And you could break all of it. Or just one really well placed vase or cell phone or statue. And you can scream. You can scream SO SO LOUD and there is a lot of paint. Multiple paint cans used for throwing at things. Just throw the whole can.
It's whatever goes in there. The only stipulation is that you are alone. And there are objects. And there is a recording booth where you can talk about your memories, or not talk about your memories.
The other stipulation is that the only thing you can do in the mourning place is mourn. There are lots of markers. Lots of things to kick. Lots of kleenez there is a kleenez city.
And one or two safe places. That don't have anything that remind of what you are going through just in case you start to get a panic attack.
And you wait till you are bruised or just exhausted, and then you walk out.
And they ask you at the mourning toll booth. They ask you how many more times you will think you need to visit before you have properly mourned an event. And "i don't know" is an option and so is "till forever"
But if it is something that could be properly mourned like say, I don't know. The loss of a job you really loved then when you are done you can get a black tear on your passport book and a little certificate which says "I properly mourned the event of _____'
and you can fill in the blank there.
But the big thing-well one of them is that if you are going to participate in these mourning places you agree to have whatever you have mourned or are morning broadcasted from your very person like a little message board being projected from your head like a character in a comic having something to say and you would go along your daily life, but you would have this bubble-message thing that said
"I am currently mourning the loss of my marriage"
or
"I am currently mourning the loss of hope I once had as a young girl"
or
"I have recently properly mourned the loss of my favorite job"
You know? Just so we know. Just so we can all, be aware. Just in case, we felt that was necessary.
Because where else is this all supposed to happen?
because things will get very dangerous if they don't
12/10/2010 [6.14.2011]
When I was younger I used to make lists of the things I was really really sick of at any given season, because I knew that life was a mixture of things you miss and things you are sick of and the things you are sick of usually end up to be the things you miss -for the most part at least. Or the some part. It was kind of like keeping track of what I would miss for the future. It was a way of getting through what I was struggling with by knowing it was a future list for something else. This made it all seem useful.
But right now I feel like I am in this place where I really just miss. A lot of things.
Like my husband
And a job
And a place to live of my own
And school
Or a community
And my brother
I don't know. I feel like they are some really big things right now. Like maybe usually people have some of those things. Anyways, it feels like right now there are a lot of empty places to be in. And to not be in.
What would you do if all those lost items that fell into the void throughout your entire life just showed up on your bed one day? Your cat, those shorts, that teddy bear, that ficken pair of glasses that were so cute,
And what if, in side of them were some of the redeemable qualities that you may have lost along the way. In that wallet. That bag of doggie treats. Those pink sunglasses.
Your virginity. Your love of hard work. Your hope that there would always be time to make things better.
But that at the same time, those questions that you had then, that you've kind of-found a place for now, would have to swell in you once again. Right along with the redeemable qualities. Like
Is there meaning
What is my worth made up of
Why wasn't I enough?
Etc.
And I think. No way. To have to work myself through those questions again.
I think I definitely don't miss that.
12/9/2010 [6.14.2011]
These are my 15. And these are my tennis shoes.
These are my 15. And these are my souls.
That stupid "fiveteen" song came out when I was, in fact. 15. And I used to think that was so cool. That I could say that. That I could say that to someone somewhere if they asked me, or if the conversation ever came up.
So thanks for obliging.
But now I hate it. That stupid damn song. I feel like it's tracking my LIFE. I feel like it's just following me and I'll be in the grocery store and then there it is.
And now I'm (whatever you are now)
And I'm just reminded. Death keeps moving one house closer to me. And I only have 100 years to live.
I keep feeling like I am running behind. I feel like I have only learned two things in the last 6 weeks. The last 6 weeks between marriage and divorce. Between very lonely and sometimes lonely. Between two dogs in a bed. Between health and commitment. Between hope and scared. Yeah, between hope and scared.
These two things have been
1. Life is important. I don't know why. But it is. This means something. Possibly even for the future. Probably even for the future.
2. You need to do things you feel crazy about. If even only for that reason. In other words, don't do things you don't feel crazy about and if you did something stupid, at least be able to say that you felt crazy about it.
And a rocking horse just for fun.
12/8/2010 [6.14.2011]
The two songs I think Paleo wrote just for me and dancing to them.
12/7/2010 [6.8.2011]
Go ahead. [song]
12/6/2010 (6/8/2011)
It was a bad day to go to the book store. It was a day when you were looking for something funny to read. But you weren't feeling very funny. Not at all.
It was during a time when your psychologist actually instructed you to read something frivolous. And to do frivolous things. Because you are the type of person that needs to be reminded to do things like that.
Compared to other people, who need to be reminded *not* to do frivolous things. Shit. There we go-another comparison. But that's another story for a different play
So you think about being frivolous and the first thing that comes to mind is wearing feathers. Yellow feathers. Especially in a hat. Maybe even a golden hat because that certainly seems very frivolous.
And every book you looked at either had a stupid title that reminded you of something stupid or it was written by an author's name that reminded you of something even stupider. There was this one book called Suicide. You almost read it. But then remembered, it wasn't frivolous enough. Almost. It was a new best seller.
You scan the room. There are shelves everywhere. And above the shelves titles for the shelves and within the shelves titles for the books and you feel like asking the closest cashier where they keep the mascarpone but then realize it is in the deli section, after all. Oh, wait.
And the psychology section pulls you. It draws you in and you turn your back on it. Ha! You're not there anymore-psycho analyze that! And you turn around and it's how to eat and how to live and how to love and how to pray and how to be an atheist and how to be and how to be an athiest and a buddhist and a bumble bee all at the same time for 50% off and so you go to the comic section
but they remind you
and the postcard section
and they bore you
and the travel section
and it overwhelms you
and the non fiction section
and a few seem interesting. Most of those are just too expensive. And the other ones you open up and
FUCKING HATE
because they have TEXT on the pages.
Fucking text. ULGLLHAHHH!!!
And sometimes the text is just too dense. Too shoved together. And sometimes it's just the wrong font, boring layout. Ulgh. Ulgh. Ulgh.
And you had been searching for the perfect book for weeks now. You were instructed to find it you had to find the book the
and the drama section
which you visit in an obligatory way like an old cousin who you never knew but was in the hospital
and grey spaulding is taking up the second to bottom shelf and you open it
and it's about mountains. Yes! He understands! He's been on a mountain. He realizes the difference between a mountain and a MOUNTAIN. He gets it. He gets mountains. And he gets me. And I love mountains.
And you keep reading it. And you're thinking
Horray! I love this book, and it's small-so I will finish it within the year, hopefully. And I even like the cover-so I can read it in public without feeling stupid and everything is right in the world until you think you may just flip towards the back of the book just to make sure it's still favorable, still within reach
and ULGHSH
he's fucking married. But there's some other girl. And whatever. And it's like.
I mean, really? Couldn't we have just stuck with the mountains Spaulding? I don't want to read about how you think its cool to have a girl on the side. Would you have a mountain on the side? WOULD YOU? NO. Because for each and every person there is always only ONE mountain. One river. One bench, and once piece of fruit.
Like this other book I almost bought. Which was a study of all the famous trees throughout history which had inspired great artists and writers over time. And where they can be found, and what they look like now. and ONE TREE people. Just ONE-every artist just had ONE tree. I think, I mean-I didn't read it-it was one of the too expensive ones but the title implied the singularity.
And I knew I was getting in a bad mood and I know when I feel like that it is time to stop and do something...what's the word...what is it that-oh yeah. Frivolous. Like maybe a gay bar. Or something.
Something with wings. And you remember all the books people have recommended to you but you didn't have a pen to write them down with and how twitter is TOTALLY FAILING you right now because no one is tweeting you back with any book recommendations.
But it would have to be someone you really know. Because you literally read about one book per year so that book, the one you choose it COUNTS. It is only one of SOME versus one of MANY.
And you know you should leave the bookstore. So you do. And you feel empty. So you turn back. And you go back in the door. And you're probably twitching in some way. And you think about asking the cashier for a recommendation. A solution. A quirky book with cool text and a nice cover. That doesn't discuss the following issues or have any of the subsequent names as characters. And you remember one book and ask them "do you have women who love too much" but you whisper it because it seems like if they hear you they will know. It will be obvious. That I am one of them. That I'm going through this. That, like she said, the epitome of eras and eras of women's oppression is standing in her kitchen and it is me!
And they say "what?"
So I said it. Clearly. And they tell me
"we don't have a database. You have to look for it yourself" And I ride the elevator. And look for the book. It isn't there.
And I exit the store thinking about being empty and failing. And twitter. Or maybe something longer then a tweet like a story. Well at least I will have this damn story. At least that is something. And when I write it it will be called
It was a bad day to go to the bookstore.
12/4/2010 (6/2/2011)
Making ritz and jelly sandwiches for everyone in the audience.
12/3/2010 (6/1/2011)
white sail
12/2/2010 (6/1/2011)
Holy smokes I'm about six whole months behind...
It was wonderful and horrifying, sexual and spiritual and stupid and sexy and idyllic and idiotic and i've never had so much fun getting lost with someone like that before.
One of those mistakes you don't regret.
12/1/2010 (5/30/2011)
I am fighting with my dad for the first time in my life and I am over 20. Which is odd. Mostly because we just never get too mad with each other that is one of the unwritten rules of our relationship. I also know that my dad accidentally walked into my room and saw me in my bra for the 2nd time in my life yesterday, which maybe has to do with all of this. Not sure. And the other day in the car he told me that I was "too needy". Which is quite true. I'm very needy, perhaps the most high maintenance person that I know of. But the thing is, that I'm going through a divorce right now. I think. And I think, that when a person is going through that-they are allowed to be needy. Especially around your parents. And the fact that he doesn't see that. Is an example of the type of absent father he has always been my entire life. And I asked him what I had done that was so needy that day, and I asked him if it had something to do with asking for breakfast. And he said yes, when I cook pancakes don't ask for something else. And I said but I can't eat pancakes they make me sick. They give me ulcers-I have a sensitive stomach and part of that is being lactose intolerant.
11/30/2010 (5/24/2011)
Robots walking to the song "I love him I love him I love him and where he goes I follow I follow I follow" possibly with viewpoints work streaming in and out of a circle.
11/29/2010 (5/18/2011)
Being in san francisco didn't have as much residue as getting rejected from every theater school I auditioned for as I had thought. It also didn't remind me too much of Joel, except for the fact that about half the reason I was there was because he was in the same area. I had somehow followed him from washington to arizona to new york city to san francisco and i'm not sure how often friendships like that come along. And I felt like my heart was hungry and open and sick and craving and less than half full or maybe it was my stomach talking because I wasn't eating and my pants were certainly starting to fall off. As well as my marriage. I was almost 23.
11/28/2010 (5/18/2011)
Man comes to the stage in a jock strap and begins cutting fruit. First a watermelon. Then a potato. Then he starts shaving a carrot till the end of the play.
This is only some of the story; this story could be told in several ways or Watermelon, Potato Chips & A Jock Strap
..........................................................................
We split a watermelon in two halves and ate it with spoons side by side on our new couch which we had just gotten for 67.00 at the tent sale down the road. We were watching A Dog Year with our two dogs on our laps and making jokes.
You had asked me a few hours earlier if I was going to get the papers. It was maybe the 40th time you had asked me that same question and the 41st time I had blown you off. Or literally blown you off, just to get our mind off it. There was a lot of off and on.
I had learned on Easter morning that you had cheated on me by a little perverted device named porn. Which I hate. In every way. And do not accept in my life. It stung. It (still sometimes) does. Then I went and worshiped in the early morning sunrise service and then sung in the choir at the next service at a different church. The sermon was about how God is in the business of restoring relationships. I learned two days later that you told me you were addicted.
Cigarettes, cocaine, me, porn, whisky, abuse. And you looked so good doing it, which I maybe hated more than anything. No, I think what I hated more than anything was you telling your ex cocaine addicted girlfriend that her hair looked nice. On facebook. A false account that said you were single and looking that you tried to hide from me. And so I dyed mine brown, and later on got hair extensions which tore my hair out so I could meet your qualifications for being beautiful.
Because I really wanted to be.
And no, that wasn't the movie at all. I think it was that one submarine movie-which was an especially strange choice because that was the movie I had watched six years earlier before a completely different important event.
But it was that same damn movie and I had told you that I didn't really want to watch it. Not that night. Too weird, even if God does work in circles-which is what they say. Especially since it had nudity in it. Which hurt me to watch. Considering everything. And the next morning I kissed you and you sort of let me in an "i hate this way" way which was way better than usual when you would make a horribly grimacing face or wipe the kiss off or shove me away or lift your head up so high that I couldn't reach because you were a foot taller than me. and you tasted like potato chips, which I can't stand. and then I went upstairs to wash out your jock strap and wring it up on the towel hanger because you had just gotten circumcised three days earlier even though you were 24, and I knew that you were medically ordered
MEDICALLY ORDERED
to not have sex for six weeks, or even get a hard on if you could help it and that hell, if there was any time that I could leave without bashing my head into a glass counter every time I thought about what you were doing than it would be now.
And I told you I was going to work. You asked when I was going to be back. I said a few hours. And I drove to the airport.
And flew to Japan. And then san francisco.
Leaving you a note in the calvin and hobbes book next to the toilet. the last thing I said was "Calvin and hobbes has all the answers" and you said "it sure does" and I said "I love you" and you said nothing, as usual. I think. It's hard to remember. Maybe you said I love you.
Because sometimes, when you tell someone to disappear every day of your life-they finally do.
And during the 12 hour flight I thought about how I thought that I would rather have a whole lot of hurt than half a marriage.
And I hope that there never comes a day when you have to make that same choice.
11/27/2010 (5/18/2011)
I still can't wrap my mind around this thing I heard on twitter one day
Katie comes to the stages sits in a chair and says this to the audience and waits.
If you wait long enough, very very unlikely things will happen.
11/26/2010 (5/18/2011)
Today I tried to connect with you online. Like what was I thinking. That's kind of how it happens you vow to spend the rest of your life with someone and the next thing you know three years later you're trying to see what music they're listening to on blip.com
11/25/2010 (5/18/2011)
Performers are holding up a white sheet in which two people are lying in. Before the speaker starts speaking the man reaches his arms around the woman and cuddles with her. He is a good cuddler.
This moment is you cuddling with me in the middle of the night and you not knowing it but loving it anyways and me loving it too.
Even though you say that you don't love me anymore. Or never did.
11/24/2010 (4/4/2011)
I like you so much because you say things like "you know what I'm saying", even when I don't. Especially when I don't and most assuredly, when you don't. Do you know that? I like you so much because you will say something that I'm not even listening to, something that makes just about zero to zero and a half sense to me that breezed through my mind on an autumn daydream and you will look at me as true as stone and say "but you know, you know what I am saying" and it gives me chills, the kind I got at Halloween party when the boy who was my best friend at the time decided to grab my face with both of his hands which was actually the first and only time, to date that anyone has ever done that to me and I walked around the entire evening feeling like there were jingle bells at the bottom of my belly button. Those kind of chills. Unkind. Because, you-of all people, think in either mundane or desperate-measured times that I have the deepest darkest inkling of what you may be saying by your words which have open holes for meaning and for swimming and for past interpretations and for the duty of your future be discovered. hidden. unpleasant. found.
And it is at this point that I realize that you don't want to spend the late afternoon discussing what you could have or do mean but just have me, this one girl who lives for a tiny span of geological time know what you mean. And it is at this moment that I can concoct any sort of meaning, any influxuation of your voice of gesture in your nature to mix and drum what I know or feel or want or fear you to really mean. And then it is mine. Or ours. That we know that I really know what you could mean.
And I feel like we really need this-this knowledge that someone out there could possibly probably know what we are trying so desperately to describe and rid ourselves from or whatever, but no not yet don't tell me what your're thinking just nod and hum and touch and be there with me, or upon me knowing that I trust that you know what I could or possibly ever mean but what I just said there. With under steeped tea and over-sized sunglasses still on your head after coming home from work a little early last spring and the way you were breathing I knew that it wasn't the first time you had thought about doing this and then forgot about it entirely because things were going so well at that exact moment that you, for the first time, could have let it go.
If, well, if you know what I mean.
11/23/2010 (3/19/2011)
I was riding in the car which we had finally named billie. For possibility. I had named it, I had remembered the name and I was the one that believed in possibility. I had a triple decker angus beef mac donalds sandwhich in my left hand and was trying to drive, text, and not get my dog training outfit dirty all at the same time, all while thinking about writing this and not thinking about the terrible things that had happened over the last couple of weeks. Not only terrible in a global sense, but in a personal sense. In the sense that one day you decide what most of your biggest fears are and then most of those biggest fears happen within two weeks. When one of the boundaries you told yourself you would always keep fades to quiet like every other thing. And this triple decker was seriously too much to handle and it tasted too much like red onion and my mom used to get hamburgers with only mustard and onions on them and we used to go to mac donalds every morning before school and I remember them as being some of the nicest memories I have of being five. Even though writing that makes me feel poor. Which we weren't. My mom just liked mac donalds. And sometimes so do I. And I was thinking about how embarrassing that was and how wrong it seemed and then I started thinking about how I would never, for sure, tell anyone that I had, in fact, been eating a mac donalds hamburger, especially at that size.
And then I started thinking about the things that we are embarrassed of, as a society. Or specifically, as a middle class married white female. And how I literally spent more than 3 seconds being embarrassed about a hamburger and about 0 seconds being embarrassed about something much bigger than a triple decker. far more embarrassing.
And I started thinking about how we as a society should teach our children the actual things that you need to be embarrassed about instead of the stupid things you think you need to be embarrassed about and how for the first time in years. maybe two. maybe four. I realized what a disservice I was doing myself by allowing this in my life. I don't know what took me so long but that comparison made it all seem clear. I fucking apologize to myself, I have become so bitter to the idea of good. of good people. of promises. of trust. I have become closed off.
But no, not angry anymore. I didn't want to be angry anymore. Really? At this point it would be a step in the right direction to get a little angry, even just a bit angry, even just a pinch of angry about what has happened and what I have allowed. So no, I'm not in a good place, and it has been 3 months since I have written because I am scared of writing crap which I know I shouldn't be scared of. Like the burger, I should be scared of something much, much, larger.
And I am doing well too, in other crevices of my life. Coping by having to take care of myself because realizing I am there to do it and no one else is. Besides God. Why is God so clever? It's annoying. It's incredibly hurtful and annoying.
So sorry, you may get a ton of triple deckers coming at you but I'm going to write. About all of it. Or at least most of it. I wish all by my fricken parents read this things these days can you believe it. And I won't write unless it's online for the rare chance that someone is actually following this. In which case, I don't want to know.
There it is again.
Truth.
Don't find me here.
But find me.
11/22/2010 (1/22/2010)
Katie stands center stage or at least where she figures center stage should be at this point in the play. She looks down to a large gleaming bowl of plastic fruit. She remembers the other neo futurist plays she has seen about plastic fruit and says "(whatever she wants to say)" to them now. Her thighs are glowing as well she has glow-y thighs and fruity thoughts. She remembers the plastic grapes on her mothers table and the fake plants and the fake boobs and the other fake boobs and the fake blonde and she knows that this used to bother her, especially the grapes. She can look at herself in a full length mirror and know that she is, today (however percent) natural. Physically.
There is a houseplant on here left and a river on her right. It is important for you to know this it is important which one is on the left, which one faces east, and which one is your favorite.
She remembers a few dates. Feb 11 2009 June 1 1997 October 17th & 19th of this year. These dates do or may not mean anything to you. They do not mean anything to her either. That's the point. That's why we brought up the fruit.
Katie will now (present action) as many times as she has moved in her lifetime. She will think about how this...number represents everything and nothing that she is. She will sigh about how confusing it is that identity and worth and life don't all mean the same thing.
*sigh*
She begins to tear off the grapes.
She will ask you to think about one thing. And then more. And then back to just the one. One where you choose something that altered your life but you didn't really know it at the time. One where you thought "I'd like to do this" Or "I'll have time for this later" Or maybe "I'd rather eat at this restaurant" and years later you look back on this...thing and realized that it became a major factor for every...thing.
And Katie thinks about the lost dream and she thinks about the new dreams and she thinks about the things that turned into dreams and worstly, the things that she never let be dreams.
But mostly, she thinks about the fake grapes on her mothers table and how she didn't understand the idea between fake fruit.
Not a bit.
And still does not.
11/21/2010 )1/5/2010
Life should be found as wild, strange & curious as possible, whether or not you see it as such in the moment.
11/20/2010 (1/3/2010)
We haven't had sex in a long time and we haven't made love in even longer.
So long that I think the idea of even doing it again would make me cry. And we're not even 30 and we have no kids and we didn't almost have a kid and we can't' have kids and it's ok because you-we don't want kids
but it has been a motherfucking long time. There are other things that are long like the tails of whales and tricycles and marriages that last and
*sigh* long sighs and *pause* long pauses
and the sex that we had when I was 19. 20. 21?
And your, yeah well it was long. But the sex life wasn't. And it was hard-wasn't hard and she said sex was so fragile but I always thought it was so strong. So many people talk about it. Maybe not enough people actually talk about things that are strong.
And it smells like pee in here which is one of my least favorites. Along with tuna cans and emergen-cee and dead dreams and the lost remains of who I used to be.
And the last words you said to me before you sunk was "write" and so that's what I will continue. Thank goodness you didn't say anything like "get better" or "leave him" or "stay with me" but I guess you did say that last one, in a way, did you say that?
You did say "when are you coming back" and none of this is making sense because now you're the love story you're the mental note and the cup of chicken soup and he's the chicken in the can, man but he's supposed to be the love story and he was first before any of you and this was what I wanted and he is the one I am in love with but really, you are the love story for right now. And how fucked up is that.
and the ocean is outside my window but it doesn't speak to me like the mountain does, and the mountain does. All the ocean ever says is "dream" or "be careful" or "big" and I press my nose up against the glass to try to listen and the glass is warm, which doesn't seem to make sense because windows are usually cold but then I remember I am on an island and the water here is so clear it looks like honesty or
honey from the old farmer's market in flagstaff arizona where my almost brother-in-law worked which was fun and the food was good and the honey sticks were even better.
and I'm thinking about how my nose is always cold and so are the tips of my ears and what would the mountain say to me at this point and I hear
"God will take care of it" and "You are beautiful" and "how can we help"
and an ocean is a mountain with no sound.
11/19/2010 (1/4/2010)
I'd like to put money on you. I'd like to put a lot of things on you like the hope that there may be men better than this in the world like I may be better than this at some point in the future. Not only in the points that I remind myself but also when I'm just being, just laying in a park, if I may use that expression, if it's not yours-if the idea of being in a park may work here too, with me. if you, and your ideas and how I think you know so much by not knowing so much could work with me if I -may I.
I would meet you there. But the thing is you see is that I think I'd rather put money on you. I'd like to just sit here and bet on you being the perfect man. You wouldn't really move outside of that, cage, this dream box that I have you in or where I meet you at the bathroom corner or inside my heart when there's no where else to go.
You're beginning to be like him, that idea or fantasy or thing that I write for, the elusive feeling, the muse...music, I love your music I love the music he listens to I love that we all could make music, not really.That idea doesn't appeal to me just sometimes
and years may go past and I may learn that you really don't have enough hair on your chest at all and maybe I won't want to learn all about that blood test and maybe you'll have a small dick and I've always gone for big dicks all these years and who would ever know and once you take your clothes off it's hard to just walk away due to a size issues, and believe me I've been there and what do I know anyways I live on an island know and i have no ability to make my self happy. i have no ability to make myself food. But I do have a lot of hurt and a lot of anger and a best friend who will talk to me at hours on end and she's actually in your bed right now can you believe that. But anyways that's why I'd rather just have you stay as you are, where you are so elusive and never able to know the wacko maniac of me, myself and I think really the most loving thing I can do would be to keep myself away from you. Yeah super far.
But I would like to put money on you. I bet you'd be the perfect man. I'd like to put a lot of things on you.
11/18/2010 (12/31/2010)
it could come from the west the north the east
but you'd never know you wouldn't see
you wouldn't look back to rescue me
you fight for your own and pay well for your meet
all i wanted was a place to stay
you had a nice dog and not much to say
and I mistook you for a holiday
la la la bomba lili loo la lay
11/17/2010 (1/3/2011)
Why did you call before I left
to tell me to press on and give me your best
how can I make you see that I take as I please
and it's pissing me off you're not bending a knee
just because I'm married
It took my six long years to miss you
you didn't come in the sanity of my prime
like a worn out london issue
with the article cut off every time
give it up this time.
i hear the rooster crow
but its not morning
and you are getting softer inside of me
you are 20 years older i am 20 years old
so that gives us 20 years before our treasure is sold
give it up this time.
(more written on paper)
11/16/2010 (1/1/2011)
I'm sorry that I love like this (song)
11/15/2010 (12/15/2010)
I am getting too used to the pain
I dream about you making funny sounds
In all my dreams my arms are tired
In all my life my dreams are dead.
You will be where it snows this winter.
You will still be inside my head
A distant simple mister, I
the complicated young and wed.
The idea that I feared and hated
the fantasy that would come back again
perhaps this misery I created
no, i could never make this in head
i could take part in that city that you love
i could take it all in stride
i could love the ones you love
i could bend and run and river wide
finish with my pride
fail and win and wail
set a better sail
i could take the rest of you it's the best that I could do
won't you take me to that city that you love
i could love everyone you love
you've got it all under your thumb
i won't bore you with the crazy things I've done
I am getting too used to the pain,
I dream about you making funny sounds.
In all my dreams my arms are tired
in all my life my dreams are dead.
11|14.2010|
shower rock concert
|11.13.2010|
We're taking a break from producing new plays at the minute in hopes of concentrating on delivery and tech for this weekend's performance at NO Fringe. Come and see me!
|11.12.2010|
Clownscape
|11.11.2010|
|11.10.2010|
Have you seen oil in the water? (revised)
I traveled to virginia to photograph a wedding while mine was on the rocks and I saw some people that I didn't know and some people that I did and some people that I could have, if I only would have remembered their name. And they asked where I had moved to in the last year and I answered Biloxi, Mississippi and many of them were familiar with the area and those that weren't were familiar with the gulf coast or at least what was happening with it in the news. And they asked me the strangest thing, they asked me 'Have you seen oil in the water'. And I understood. Very much and I said no. I talked about how I had not specifically seen oil in the water but I had seen several people working on the clean up and how when I first approached Biloxi I read "hundreds of dead fish show up on the Biloxi beach". And I never saw them either. So they went on their way and I wondered if I had accidentally lighted some weight off of the shoulder of their conscious. That I could have lifted their ignorant sadness and go on and tell the next person
it's cleaning up, I know someone from the gulf, and she hasn't seen any oil in the water.
So it's ok now.
And maybe I take it all back. Maybe I should have said that we were all drinking oil down here and hadn't they seen the pictures and that oil takes a long time to rinse out and by a long time I mean like forever. And that even though less than one billionth of a percent of the ocean's waters were covered in oil this last summer that that's still a lot of water.
and it is still covered in oil.
And I think about the things that people need to see they believe. Like abuse or God or hunger or love or truth, and maybe it's not all laid out there in front of them. Perhaps it is unseen. So then no body cares because no one is tweeting about it and damn, don't those oceans look good and she says everything is going just fine and we don't really know who to believe because the weather in Mississippi is a teary eyed wolf.
If we don't have to see to believe and we're not supposed to believe that everything is as it seems then what. Then it is the things that we don't see that have truth. Does that make any sense?
I thought the same thing. About the water. That being down here I would be able to do something. That cleaning a spot of oil off a puppy would make me, us feel better. But I didn't clean up any spots or even look for any to clean up, to be perfectly honest. All I did was this, and you're looking at it. Mine, and it's really black and oily, grey and greasy and if you can see it than thank thank you-it needs to be seen, even when it's not there.
Have you seen oil in the water?
|11.09.2010|
The ending is now with this thought. That maybe I am the problem with our generation. Our material generation. Mine. Is a build a bear sitting on the dresser and an very tall coke bottle, metro litro sitting next to our wedding picture, which is now more than two years old. Me. with more creative gusto and go get-er-hood than the average 20 something and nothing to do with it and no one to share it with. I have been a wife for more than two years and I have made dinner less than two times and cleaned the house less than 40. I mean really cleaned it. We usually eat cookies and if it's not cookies it's juice and if it's not juice it's either frozen or chocolate or both. I am thinking about the sound of people smiling. And hearing that. There is a yoga mat hanging up by the television and Polaroid camera hanging on the walls. I'm thinking about motivation and opening your eyes and seeing what's in front of you. I'm reflecting on Craig Childs and missing wilderness, desert, sky, forest, the river, and dreading the island. The one I will be living on soon. And excited for the island! And the notion I tell myself that I will grow up there. And the security I have within the people I have surrounded myself with that show me that I never need to grow up. This apple tastes good, and I usually don't like apples. There is a box of rice krispy treats by my husband on the couch and I don't remember the last time I had a rice krispy treat at all but I do remember that my sister and I used to make them, she was always cooking something and burning herself and now she's just getting burned in a different way. And I haven't talked to her in about a year but dream about her all the time. I dream about her in overalls. Or dead. Or having a baby. And I think back to the one time when my best friend Evelyn was riding in the car with us past the tennis courts that I used to practice at for 11 years in a row and she said "but your brother and sister don't have the same genes as you" and my mom answered without skipping a beat "yeah, but they have the same overalls." I remember watching a reading rainbow special on making paper out of jeans and I've always wanted to do it and I hope you like these jeans. They're not paper yet. And I'm thinking about this, and how it's going and fantasizing that maybe it is good. real good. And I am wearing socks. Matching, because I'm into that now because the dog's leash ran between my toes and almost tore them off. So i'm feeling a bit burned, and torn, and everything. Everything in the exact sense, and whirling like a dirvish that is not one. And planted, because we are born in tiny bits at a time or I think that's what the greeting card said. You could put my into categories. Quirky Self Employed. Young Married. Recent College Grad. Art Obsessant. Jobless Boob.Christian Artist. Idiot Child. Intellect. Worry-wart. Man Whore. Uncultured Swine. World Traveler. You could place me into all of those. And my husband just put my sock on because it was falling off and we are sitting on a red couch which is interesting because, as a professional photographer most people feel that I have a studio, or a workspace, or a desk, but really i just have a bed and a couch and a dog and a husband and a computer and i sit here all day and make things, make things to hide behind or sometimes like right now I make things to not hide behind and this, right now, this is progress and I remember what it's like to feel. squishy on the bottom half of my brain. pressure on the top part of my heart. weight on the middle of my throat. clarity in my eyes. free.
recap of images
and I had _____ for dinner
I fear _____ for the future
I miss ____ from the past
I'm wearing ____ in the moment
Considering the human condition, besides the fact of how fucked my husband thinks it is and all it's works in progress. to be a real challenge. a product of perception and all the bullshit you hear and all the great things you hear and how hearing can make your ears feel very tiny very soon. And how I need a new color conditioner. And so I asked people at the festival. A photo for the human condition. A penny for a word on our mental environment. This is what found.
Well, it's the last day of the NO Fringe festival here. Have we seen some art? Drank some local beers? Bought any crafts? Extra points to people who bought my photography earlier today ;) Well Here I am. I've given you 30 minutes of self written material that I started writing six months ago. When this idea was born, and I'm not quite sure if it is a mistake child or not at this point. I've been writing a play a day since July. Many of them are terrible. Some are super. A few you saw tonight. It's important because I want to bridge the gap between visual and performing arts. I want to bridge the gap between perceived small press and public performance. I want to build those bridges, burn them, and them let the fires light my way to start again. Re-evaluate. Re-consider and start all over again. Thanks for coming tonight. You can follow us on twitter, if you're into that at @mind_party.
|11.9.2010|
I think about you before I go to sleep. I think about the way you will perceive me and my words. How much you will like me. What I will wear. If you will even be there. Here. It is now that you may see more clearly the things I am talking about.
I think about you, and how you were a thing that happened, even though I'm not sure why. The drive there. How I was forced to wait to make you a reality. And then you began, and at the end of it was a free pot of tea and not enough honey to go around.
And now, here. With the hand cramps. And the insecurity and canker sore and unhealthy dose of inactivity paired with compulsive activity.
And the needing, the needing is the worst part. The codependency and the unsureness. No, perhaps that isn't it at all. The worst part is the not trying.
The hiding. Behind square and beautiful things. The hiding for sure is the worst. He says the worst part is that beauty becomes a paycheck.
|11.8.2010|
puppetsll
|11.7.2010|
NaNoWriMo works in progresas, a reading
|11.6.2010|
A typical strong man will never do it for me. I find the underdog undeniably sexy. I prefer men with a bit of a gimp, a sort of limp, a lopsided nature. When I see a man that may be attractive I turn my head a little and imagine he was using a cane. I may ask him "can you limp a little"
yeah, there you go.
I once had it bad for an amputee I met in Switzerland. I told him that he was the man that I knew I would meet my entire life. The one I was waiting for and had seen before in my head.
And it was true, I had seen him several times before I actually saw him. It was uncanny.
He was from LA, and had just gotten out of a relationship with a lesbian. I understood.
"Wow" he said. "Did the guy in your mind have one leg?"
"I don't know," I answered "I never got to see the bottom half"
...
He never did take me to Paris, after all.
--------------
i am a woman. i like being a woman, it's allright with me. I'd rather be a woman and make jokes than a man and be a joke. ya know? But I like men, I really do. I'm 22 and I've never done drugs, smoked a cigarette, been drunk, etc even though I have an addictive personality. All the addiction just goes straight to men. Not that I have anything against lesbianism...it's just not for me. You know, I love gay people. I was a musical theater major once, how can I not love the gays? In fact I think I love the gays a little too much, I was engaged to one once for 2 years. I know, I know-wrong type of love but I didn't know at the time and you're sitting there thinking didn't you sleep together? How could you not know? And I tell you what-it could happen to anybody. There is nothing quite like sleeping with a gay man who is pretending to be straight. It fooled me.
Yeah, so I love gay people but I don't really love it when gay people don't tell you their gay, and then ask you to marry them. Yeah, in fact now especially that totally gives me the creeps. I try to stay away from that. That's the problem with being gay. See I'm straight, and when I meet people I tell them that. I'm talking to you closeted gay person-tell your fiance now. For my sake.
So yeah I love men-I'm actually married to a straight guy now, it's going well, it's not perfect but I love him, and sometimes we fight. Obviously because we're married and don't have kids so what else is there to do? And there was a time when being married in the military really wore on me and there was a time when just being married really wore on my husband and he was telling me how he was struggling with it and I said what's the problem is it the sex? And he said, no, the sex is fantastic and I said well do you think I'm beautiful and he said yeah, that's why I stay and I said well am I one of your best friends and he said for sure and I said well what's the problem and he said you're a psychotic emotional train wreck and I said yeah, duh. That's why the sex is so good.
no but really, I said so what you're saying is. It's hard...
and he said. yeah, I guess so and we sat and watched flight of the concords.
the next day my husband comes home and the house is a total mess and he said why didn't you clean the house and i said i'm struggling with it and he said well don't you like to have dishes when you need them and I said yes and he said don't you like not stepping in old dog vomit and I said yes and he said can't you think better with a cleaner house and I said for sure and then he said well, then what's the problem and I said
it's hard.......
but no, seriously. no joke about it, marriage is hard. I grew up with two parents that were always fighting. literally. it was seriously terrible and I thought they were both idiots the entire time and I remember being 8 years old and making them a little mason jar filled with pieces of paper to give to them when they were fighting. I told them the rule was that they had to open this jar in the middle of a fight and read the notes and they said things like "God loves you" or "be kind to each other" or "fighting hurts" or whatever and there was one that I kind of slipped in there at the bottom and it said "please, get a divorce". I was 8, and they didn't listen to me till I was 20. And they (my dad really) went about it in totally the wrong way. Believe me, they should have just taken my advice when I was 8.
|11.4.2010|
the frog in the moon
|11.3.2010|
Celebrating the dead like in dancing on the squares.
|11.2.2010|
It would be silly if you left me while I was writing this song
since it's about how we'll always be.
|11.1.2010|
How can I stay out of trouble with your trouble on my mind.
-A song for my brother.
|10.31.2010|
Trick or treat the audience. I'm sure they have something.
|10.30.2010|
At the end of the prayer there is a tail
of that prayer
and another prayer
that begins over there
speaking about the same things
or maybe crying out for war
delivery
or peace
At the end of our prayer there is a table
chair, and feast
a new prayer begins so that there is no
dividing line
no moment of silence
between apples or of pears
just the going on and the happening
of another further prayer
and we pray for those that are praying
and for those who have just begun
and for those that will never pray once
and for those who's prayers are sung
the prayer will ever finish
it is a hammock between two forest legs
a laugh between a rock and a hard place.
the prayer's end is the end of another prayer and the beginning of a prayer
and He hears it all between the lines
At the end of our prayers there is a tall man.
|10.29.2010|
You're the one who taught me how to know anything.
|10.28.2010|
How I start:
a phrase
by stepping away
a rhythm
reading
remembering
listening
|10.27.2010|
To my husband who said I would never be anything but a boob. Riding horses off into Montana sunsets. Thanks for the idea.
|10.26. 2010|
Who will know my name when I find my home
And when I find it will I want it to be my own
a landlubber's hands and a mermaid's legs
a memory worth making and a monster's meat.
I'm taking my time with moving my feet.
Will I start the journey at the journey's end
Who will know the wisdom when the wise are gone
And will they know the difference if I speak it well.
When we all agree who will know right and wrong
Who will do the praying when the prayers is done.
|10.25.2010|
I will never ever learn (revised)
I will make the same mistake much more than twice
I will never make a new one you will always be my favorite one.
I will gather the sticks for stones
I will gather the stakes for missing two by two.
I will make this mistake as many times as possible.
|10.24.2010|
I will never ever learn (song)
|10.23.2010|
Two people on a couch.
|10.22.2010|
Safe. Revised.
It started with the dream about the plane and then it got worse.
Can tell me what color bags you see?
Blue, Black, Black, Red...
And we were beginning the flight. And I re-read the instructions packet each and every time, Just in case there were revisions, even though i had flown over 100 times.
White, Blue,...
When the plane would land I would text him "Safe" because before the flight I was sure that I would die. I would text my best friend all my internet passwords and tell her what my post death desires were.
..and they changed every time.
"Safe"
Two down, 4 more flights to go. And it was so If there wasn't a text message received then the message would be received. The message of
"Unsafe"
Red.
Can you tell me how many bags you see?
1, 2,
And the proclamation of such an truth was a relieving event. I tried it in other matters. After getting out of the car after a ride
"Safe"
and after walking to my front door
"Safe"
3, 4, 5,
and the more safety there was to have, the more danger there was to go around. If flying was on the list, then so was swimming and jumping, walking in crowded areas of town and also very not so crowded areas of town
"Safe. Safe. Safe"
I got to the top of the staircase
"Safe"
and walked back down
"Safe"
6, 7,
I wasn't even sure if anyone was still receiving these texts after awhile, I wasn't getting any sort of jubilation on the other end and so I would text more numbers and especially random numbers.
Eating dinner and not exploding. Safe. Not eating and not dying. Safe.
Showing with hot water. Safe. Smiling at a stranger. Safe.
Sometimes I would get a response. People would say
"who is this"
"i'm so glad"
"me too"
"stop"
8, 9, 10, 11
white bred. strange sounds. common cold.
safe. safe. and safer.
I was feeling very successful and very scared at the same time. And then scared of success for what it meant I'd have to go through. And who would I tell if I wasn't and would they be so sad that they wished it would have been them or
12, 13,
step. safe.
step. safe
step
safe;
step
safe
step step
safe
|10.21.2010|
I told him about all the travels and he said that I had excessive anxiety and that moving was my escapism which made me quite nervous and intent on leaving the room. He also suggested that I buy a bulldog.
|10.20.2010|
Film short. The hangman snowman.
|10.19.2010|
Drawing faces on balloons.
|10.18.2010|
I think it was the one night by the car when I dropped him off at home in his usual slutty state and I knew that he wanted me to come upstairs as usual but I didn't say anything because I liked to be invited. And he said why don't you come upstairs and I said "I haven't shaved my legs" and he kissed me so passionately I thought all my leg hair may as well just shutter off completely and I figured it was so romantic. That he was that man who didn't care whether I shaved my legs or not or whether I was truly the unkempt amazon wild woman that I could be and that I could go on, forever, how I was where I was without ever shaving or shaving off bits and part of me that I felt were entirely un-necessary to do so. I mean don't you get it? It's stupid to always shave your legs when it comes back 2 hours later. And it even hurts. and is dry and itchy. and what a waste of water and it all made sense and angels were falling in my lap but then I realized several years later that what he really meant was that one time, back then, there, it was ok, once, he could have looked past it, but usually, yes, please if I could just shave those. Trees. Stump legs bark just get rid of them and usually if you could look more, well you know, normal. And I never felt uglier even though I knew I was pretty and it reminded me of all those years ago when the other man would turn his back to me every night and I would fall asleep listening to our neighbors having sex and I would cry the type of tears that are unstoppable. And I'll probably take a shower now. And hope I don't hear anything on the other side of the wall. We haven't taken the dog on a walk in ages.
|10.17.2010|
Me reading random tweets I have written.
|10.16.2010|
If ya'll haven't realized by now, I'm behind. I talked to my psychologist. She said the same thing I said to my cousin when he was going to apply to his university in France which he just got into and I am so proud of him: Don't be afraid to make crap.
So here we go, here is something really crappy. We've got to get this ball rolling again and if I don't it will never roll. I'm convinced no one is reading this right now anyways.
That girl definitely looks like a boy. I'm wondering if I can actually kill myself this way; by consistently making the wrong decision over and over again. By now I know. It seems like I am unfortunate enough to need to make a very hard choice which I will put off for as long as humanly possible. This kind of killing. New York City just got 80% cool now that you're not in it. Leaving it wasn't so hard solely because of the dirty pleasures of it all as much as coping with the fact that you weren't in the next borough from me. A rooftop in a rainstorm. I love yous in a stair well. Sitting too close for society to sit still with but in the dark of the city at 2AM no one bats an eye. It's true that I shouldn't have been there but you had all the freedom in the world and I wanted to fix what I had broken several years ago. I never heard a thing you said and we'll never know if this is fact or fiction but what I am talking about now is the loosing. The shifting plates underneath my skull that tell me that I have lost my sanity, my youth, my identity, my lust, and my skill set. This time they are all intelligent choices; I know what I am doing. And I seek. The student believes she is ready but no mentors are behind the mirror. My psychologist said that if I try to sit here and write dark things that I will only be able to write funny things. She is wrong. This will get dark. And so I am leaving. Ciao.
|10.15.2010|
I fall in love with way too many homosexual men and this needs to stop.
I was going to call him. Really. It was one of those things between almost happened and could have happened. I was going to call him and it was going to be good, or it was going to be all right.
I would start with something obvious "I'm truly fascinated by you" or "do you have a girlfriend?" and I would use, him, the dog for the caveat for this entire experience. I would simply go, take the dog on a walk and call him, the one I was going to call.
but i felt like I had to poop, literally. but we both agreed that maybe it was better this way, more urgency.
and i wanted to go on a tirade. and talk about all the terrible things that had happened and how he was the birthday party that I needed to happen to make everything go away and I didn't care if he had some horrible disease or if he was homosexual because they all ended up being somehow, somewhat, in the end.
and I mention taking a greyhound up the coast and showing up on 57th street and we could talk about beer. and how my dad used to brew it. or anything really. and nothing would happen because it would be socially illegal but we could sit there and talk about all the things that could happen and I could still treat myself to a doughnut the next day.
When in reality I would definitely rather take a train, and you'd think that I should mention this because trains are so much more romantic and European and phallic and fast in general and they use them in all the songs but no, it would have made way more sense to use a greyhound. in this case. because of the necessity of it. no one takes an greyhound unless they have to, and this clearly showed the desperation of the situation that really wasn't desperation at all and was more like a dream than anything.
And I leaned out the car door and I spit it all out, right there in the parking lot and it was only 20 minutes after we had watched the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and i hated that whole movie except for the last two lines and remembering them makes me feel tiny and small and succulent and like I shouldn't have made that call at all.
i know i could have. and the moon was full which made all the difference she said and the worst thing he could have said was 'huckleberry" and the best thing he could have said was "i'll come get you"
and by the time i took a poop I looked outside and fate was raining. meaning it was raining outside, literally so the dog didn't get taken on a walk and I didn't make the call because who really follows through on that kind of thing anyways, even though it would have been the most romantic thing I had ever done and I was sleeping next to solitude and something sacred that had sworn so many lies and nothing made sense because who would take the dog and what about the swearing and those pictures of when he was younger.
and we could hold hands and look down. down the other layers of the soiled city for holding hands sake and talk about how fantasies never go anywhere but up.
and sure enough i'd greet the next day just like the usual cracker box and wished there was a way of knowing without risking but knowing that even if there was it'd still be here beneath the mantle of a wish that couldn't work that I would suffocate instead of letting go.
And I leaned out the car door and I spit it all out, right there in the parking lot and it was only 20 minutes after we had watched the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and i hated that whole movie except for the last two lines and remembering them makes me feel alone and heroic and spiteful and it really wasn't raining too hard at all.
|10.14.2010|
Hi guys. Is anyone out there, reading? I'm feeling a large burden with this show and would love for this to be a collaborative effort. A team plan. Yours as well as mine. I'm looking for that, and craving it too so let me know if you're interested in being apart. Mindparty.submissions@gmail.com
|10.13.2010|
slow theater
|10.12.2010|
The room with music always playing.
|10.11.2010|
The audience caught in a camera trap.
|10.10.2010|
Split screen with two different American yards of grass. We're talking about how the grass is always cleaner here. Yes, cleaner. It is never clean enough, is it? Through the viewfinder.
or celebrate the anniversary...
;)
this is your ghost.
|10.9.2010|
The sound of people's smiling.
|10.8.2010|
Training the audience to do tricks
|10.7.2010|
Constructing the photography. On stage. Live. Living *fine* art. Compatible. Maybe. Larger than life and centered around story. By the end of the issue they are in an art gallery.
|10.6.2010|
Ok we are going to take some time to brainstorm and further define our mission statement.
|10.5.2010|
Photographing the audience. A beginning.
|10.4.2010|
Creative ways I can stop my husband from smoking
1.fire extinguisher
2.milk spraybottle
|10.3.2010|
Silent pieces. Pieces that are silent. That stand alone. A 30x30 on a wall. Spotlight. Silence.
Perhaps music. A local. On stage. Playing for the photograph. That relationship. Choreography. A dance inspired from the photograph. Several silent pieces. You are the gallery. You are given food and wine. Maybe you are looking at the conversations of people in a gallery. Maybe you are not. Maybe it is the loudest gallery in the world and you are there. With orange lipstick on.
|10.2.2010|
This is exactly what I want to do or the love of mindset.
|10.1.2010|
Katie wears clothes for cold weather. She hold a two spoons and two eggs in each spoon. There is a space heater on stage.
she speaks
"there are two eggs in the spoon, there are two eggs in the spoon there are two eggs in the spoon"
etc. while crossing the stage
|9.31.2010|
T-2 minutes countdown
|9.30.2010|
Dog whimpering whist two people eat
|9.29.2010|
a man who received a toast he did not deserve
|9.28.2010|
Silent slide show
|9.27.2010|
A surprising yogurt!
|9.26.2010|
The dog who licks his own ass
|9.25.2010|
cigarette fingers
|9.24.2010|
My apologies
|9.23.2010|
A few years without bullshit
|9.22.2010|
Me going on about the Duggars
|9.21.2010|
The way I felt like a robot at the wedding I photographed
|9.20.2010|
Wine. Women. War.
|9.19.2010|
Empty Vessel
|9.18.2010|
Safe.
|9.17.2010|
Have you seen oil in the water?
|9.16.2010|
I am that person who leaves hair on the walls of the shower who showers before you. I do not do this carelessly, but deliberately, painstakingly. Long, Brown, Hair. The worst thing is the fact that this. Dead. Hair. could come to nest itself again on. or in. my body. In some hole. On some leg under-touched leg, wrapped around the second toe. Sometimes I leave messages in these hair spaghetti installations peering at you from the shower walls. My hope is that you will be able to decode them. They say help. They say I'm scared to die. They say I'm a mess, and nobody choose me for a wig but my years were good and long.
|9.15.2010|
the least painful thing i can do is scratch you. what do i know. i've drawn blood scratching. but that was so 2007 and we blamed it on the apartment anyways. or perhaps it is the most loving. its saying i'm willing to take the scum of your skin and put it under my bones. i'm pretty sure that's what love is but i haven't had my raisin bran for the day.
performance:
sound verification.
people are speaking in the background and someone is wearing the giant default twitter symbol on their neck as a sign and you are hearing certain words spoken loudly and more clearer then others but they are all strange words found on adopt-a-word and the performer tries to spell them to the best of their ability.
|9.14.2010|
Ode to 1st issue.
Day With An Art Gallery Man
I wish I wish I wish I ocean. The song. Where they sound like one. And the fact. That for the last two years I have lived by one, can see it between my eyes and the knowledge. That I have taken it for granted. And the decision. That I don't feel too bad about that. I feel bad about other things. Like the fact that she is a better dancer or the fact that I ruined the slide projector in my last show. Or the fact that my husband watches the television instead of me.
He took me outside into the gulf coast sunlight and there was romantic music playing at the bar down the street and yellow was in my mind. I felt like we should be having some sort of romantic interlude right then and there even though he was southern and gay and I was southern and married. This is life, I had been with gay men before. And they were good. This isn't the stage. Things like this can happen on the stage and no one will notice them. Married women kiss gay men all the time and get paid for it. This is the difference between the stage and the non-stage. The paying part.
He was pointing out the oaks and I was still thinking about the cypresses and he, Mark explained to me about how the cars crashed into the trees on the street and it bore the trees scars and how he thought that was beautiful, in a way. I thought it wasn't beautiful, in all ways but down the street there was a dinosaur eating a pink flamingo in a front lawn and I thought that was beautiful in several ways and maybe one day I will show you a picture. Soon. The future is only tomorrow.
I miss dance. I miss the bigger life. But I sit and think about making pop art till I pop.
Which I don't, no body does.
Except for those people. Oh.
|9.13.2010|
I need to start working more directly with my photographs. More closely with them. I need to involve them more in this performance aspect.
These are quotes:
As an artist I get to live 100 more years than the normal person.
..
I am a performer by nature, but I was always moving around too much to hold down any roles. The camera became my stage, and the pen, my voice, but there will always be an empty space where that live relationship used to be until I am back in front of human hearts again. I tried solo performance but it was so lonely. A beautiful mind is a terrible trade for friends.
..
I can only sleep in a crowded room; I reject stillness like nicotine.
..
I speak in a child's voice for much of the day. Everything is easier to love as a child.
..
I go to great lenghts to use the ampersand as much as possible.
..
my photographs have the right to remain silent. that's why i keep them around.
..
|9.12.2010|
No you cannot put my tampon in
or
If you can, I can't.
If you can't, I can. I can string it all together. I can make you remember and soon, if you don't, you will be lying. I will take you to the ocean and say
-oh. ocean.
o as in ours. as in our ocean. I will take you through sitting on the shore behind my back in the dark. or planning. or beforehand. or the birthday.
I will take you to the bathroom sink and say
-sh. sink
as in shared. our shared sink, and our ocean. I will remind you of all the reasons that we stay like this, stuck like this, if you can't remember I can and soon you won't be able to walk without knowing that you are walking on our street. down this path. where we once stood.
|9.11.2010|
Fuck. Nature.
|9.10.2010|
Song for my sister
|9.9.2010|
I wanna cross my heart & hope to live
I wanna make jokes like my brother did
I wanna make mistakes and make them big and strong
I wanna meet a man who's real
good but still with sex appeal
I want to make love in a winter city storm.
Men they love
Wood. Woman. War
Not exactly that order. I'm not exactly sure.
wood women war
That's the order I would have it.
Helen was the only one worth fighting for.
The woods the only place to go when you don't love her anymore.
And then there's war. why war. why bother with war.
I want to have my cake and eat it too
I want to free the lions from the zoos
I want to prove all you unbelievers wrong
but instead I sing this song about
wood women war
the only things in life. they keep dying for.
and they choose war. mmm....
i wanna cross my heart and live
i wanna cross my heart and live
i wanna cross my heart and live
|9.8.2010|
Big thanks to Rob Neill for helping out with some direction and feedback last night!
Best Dream Ever
You know when you are having the best dream ever, the kind where your whole body feels the energy that it lacks throughout the normal day and you are more famous than you'd ever thought and all the men you'd ever loved, and even those you didn't know you'd ever love want to kiss you and they are taking you to pubs and clubs on top of other pubs and clubs and you weren't much of a drinker in the first place but you're very happy to be there and you are sharing single french fries and holding hands in doorways and you're trying to take notes to tell your mom all the best parts when you call her the next day and the night is cool and you find yourself cleaning up the house of that man you have always had a crush on and you're thinking "wow, where did all this energy come from? This must have been the right decision all along" and everyone knows your name but not in a bad way and you were really very sexy that entire time after all and then you wake up and it's like being punched in the stomach and the dog needs to be taken out and there are clothes all over the floor and the kitchen sink has turned into a giant monster and your husband isn't in the bed beside you or maybe your husband is in the bed beside you and instead of telling you goodmorning he tells you to go to hell and you spend the entire rest of the day trying to go back to sleep because this man of your fantasy dream was just about to kiss you and you want to know how it could have happened or exactly where and what time of night it would have been but all you can think about is how, in reality, the kiss wouldn't have happened there, or not at all, or maybe in the doorway after the night out but that doorway wasn't even in your dream and now you are just daydreaming which is not half as cool as dreaming and its getting very late and spiders are starting to run across your faucet and you know that you should just wake up and get on with your day and that slowly you will get settled in the small and un-spectacular things of your life that make you happy or get you through the week like receiving mail or taking a really nice picture or a phone conversation or watching 19 and counting and you spend much of the day thinking that you will take that chance. that you will go there. that you will live that new life. but you don't know if he feels the same way or if new york is even open these days and slowly the feeling releases itself into someone else's dream that day and you are left feeling a bit happy but a bit scared that things will never change because you'll never let them and he never returned your text anyways so obviously that is a sign and you call your mom and do the dishes and sweep up all the paper towel bits that the dog has eaten in the meantime, while you were daydreaming, and eat some strawberry applesauce with a fork and weigh the risk against the loss and convince yourself that you really are going to do it this time. the leaving part. if only. but not really. or maybe. but just not this time. because youth is a cake and we're all eating it so there is always more time for the right decision. right? it will find me and kidnap me somewhere in the dark of a dream some night. the dream will rescue me or ruin me.
|9.7.2010|
I like blankets and cold weather. I like mountains and not being awake. I like snow. The moon. Weather. Making music. Yellow. I like to learn. And try new things. I love monkeys and wind. I like restaurants and going out to eat. I like conversations, I love men. I like ice cream cake, but that is the only kind. I like what Jesus has to say about a lot of things. I like the honesty of hypocrisy. I like dry things. I hate orange. I love orange. I like shelves. And yolk strainers, and apple cutters. I like people, men especially whom are weak, lop-sided, without parts, limping, lost, half. I find the underdog undeniably sexy. I like new york city, and the swiss alps, exclusively. I like coincidences and certain surprises.
I cannot eat eggs, the make my stomach hurt. I cannot eat rice; it gives me a headache. I cannot eat fruit, it makes me have a stomach and a headache. I cannot eat too much cheese or yogurt or bad things happen. I cannot eat silk milk or wheat bread because it makes me feel like I am sick. I cannot eat lamb or buffalo because I like lambs and buffalo a lot. I do not like wine or beer. I would prefer hard alcohol but I do not like vodka or whiskey.
|9.6.2010|
How hot weather makes me feel.
How cold weather makes me feel
|9.5.2010|
Tries to get peanut butter out of one of those dog toys.
|9.4.2010|
Things people say to you while pooping.
|9.3.2010|
Women, War, Wood (song)
|9.2.2010|
I had just learned that many men value war over women and it made me want to puke. I always thought the Trojan War was the only one that made any sense anyways. I apologized for everything, quickly and without reserve even though I knew that I wasn't in the wrong. Love is so different from marriage. Commitment is so different from undefined passion. More special. More work. Now that I know that you are reading this it is as if I am speaking directly at, to, with you. Prepositions were always my favorite. No one had ever taught me how to be a woman, I remember my mother handing me a stack of books on puberty when I was 6. No one ever taught me how to do my hair or how to remove my hair or be proper. And then my friend said it, over the other line of the phone "i think that is what women are supposed to do"
-what do you mean, never show that they are emotionally week? Just how men never want to show that they are physically weak?
-yeah,I think that's it
but I didn't get it. Wasn't the entire idea to be a weak woman, do be cared for, so someone could be stronger? Our war is in the giving? I was not built for that. That emptying. But I knew it was not only a decision I could make to better recent things but one I'd have to remake every day for the rest of my life. How exhausting. Couldn't you just sit in a room with someone? Couldn't we be ourselves? It was hard to breathe. Wasn't it the man's job to not be weak?
What ever happened to comfort in the home? I had a small time of sunshine, of happiness, of new.
But it's when I know that I don't believe in what I am doing. I only want to win. To hit the high note. To succeed. That I feel like I am getting smaller than a stone.
|9.1.2010|
I performed the debut of my one woman show, Mind Party last night in New Orleans. It was successful; we had a patient & listening audience in a venue that doesn't normally have multimedia performance art and they were kind enough to ask us back! We had some technical difficulties which led to a late start but it happened!
It was a sight to see audience members wearing party hats and what a great audience they were! We even had a little girl up on stage finger painting! I will upload the video here when we get it :)
We're excited to start working on our next volume.
SEP|OCT Photo.Voltaic Issue.01
but Photo.Synthesis Issue 02 s always available to be booked as a continuing issue.
100.00/booking
unless you are in the same city, to cover travel costs,
unless you want to workshop with us. In that case free of charge and we will not consider it an issue on its own:)
Here is the script & program as it was performed last night:
Mind Party: JUL|AUG: ISSUE 01:
PHOTO.SYTHETSIS
by katie king
CHARACTERS
You. And whoever is around you. Whoever you happen to be at this point of it all. I ask my husband to wear a mask and be my tech guy but You can ask your mom to be there, or your dog. You can ask a local, or you can do it alone. One is not better than another.
SETTING
The setting is the present time. You are wearing what you are wearing, don’t go home and change that would be silly. On stage there is a table CS. On the table is a metronome, and glass of water. Behind that table is a stool, in front of it, sitting on the ground is a very strange houseplant in a grocery bag. Behind the houseplant are various props laid out on a plastic table cloth. Downstage at the tech booth, there is another small table where an old fashioned slide projector sits as well as a handheld voice recorder. There is a screen that images are projected on UR. Katie King wears a party hat, sits on the stool and holds a microphone while speaking.
My name is Katrina & I am sorry.
Or
Where Waldo Goes To Get away {3 minutes 10 seconds}
A metronome begins clicking away. Photo Projected: http://www.flickr.com/photos/asenseofplacephotography/4890150602/in/set-72157624684677732/
The metronome stops. Katie is sitting on a chair with an orange party hat.
… … … …
Hi. I probably know you. What I mean by that is that we've probably already met. I may have sat next to you on a plane, bus, or subway. Perhaps that was me waiting your table last friday night. I'm pretty sure we know each other.
I can't properly introduce myself in the south. My legal name is Katrina. My Grandfather’s South Carolinian manners didn’t teach me how to charm myself out of that one. My husband's name is Steven King and he was born on Halloween. Wait till you meet our dog. He’s part wolf and he will pee on you when he meets you.
Have you ever read that book blink? Where Malcolm Gladwell explains to you how your entire perception of a person is made within the blink of an eye. I’m not sure about that, but I’m not sure about that, either.
I am a photographer by profession. I hold some glass and plastic in front of my eye when I see something I’d like to see again. Or when I see something that I know I could make into something I would like to see again. At time it gets rough because you see a photograph you want to make but admitting that you want a picture of that thing is embarrassing. The first time this happened to me I was studying in Panama and I was drawn to the scene of a very poor child standing by a shack on a hill. A poor child that probably would have been set for life if I only would have given him my camera. But I wasn’t thinking that; I was thinking about how small he looked compared to that empty brick building. Tiny & up against big troubles I knew nothing about. I looked to my friend Erin, who had big eyes and was always talking about being a mid-wife and who now has a baby of her own in New Mexico and I asked her "hey, will you stand next to me while I take this" and she did, and it made me feel more O.K. about it.
That's one of the only things we can reasonably ask from people in our lives, and one of the best things we can do for another person-stand here while I take this. Maybe they’re taking in some really beautiful scenery. Or a really bad blow. Some bad news, or just air. The kind that astronauts need. And while they’re taking this, they know that the inside of their hand is attached to a piece of plastic on the other side of the globe but hopefully is is flesh instead of plastic or maybe it is a heart
And the heart is beating
And it’s saying
I’m here. Notice Me. I’m standing next to you while you take this.
{Katie begins playing Spin the Donkey}
What do I know? I am a colorado springs-austin-flagstaff-seattle-girdwood-lugano-heredia-london-olympia-gimmelwald-tuscon-san diego-virginia beach-new york city-mississippi transplant. All that motion can get dizzying. But you do figure out a few things. How to find your roots quickly. Or how to bury them below.
I’m at the point where there aren't any easy answers any more, & I'm quickly running out of people to ask questions to. I’m under 25 and already lying about my age, but I remember that quote-the quote about how we don't grow chronologically, not at all, the one about how we have sprouts coming out of our elbows and sometimes our knees don't ever grow. That's what I daydream about to make myself fall asleep these days; where I'm planted and where I need to be cut back; where do my roots go and does whole milk or good times save them? Whichever it is, I'm still reaching, there's a sun for this head to look towards somewhere and I'm thinking it may be above rather than below.
{end of game}
They tell you not to go to psychologist offices where the plants are dying. They should tell you not to go to plays where the-
You like it here but you don’t know that yet {2 min 30 seconds}
Photo Projected: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterbaker/4773967015/
During this play a man in a horse mask is holding a plant in a grocery bag. Katie speaks from offstage into a microphone.
… … … …
I was on the subway and a man was carrying a plant and standing next to his wife and I couldn't stop starring at it; something green growing underground, inside a metal train. Maybe they, the other passengers sensed it too, the intrusion of nature, this green invasion but suddenly three couples started hard-core making out all around me, and it made me wanna look which made me want to look away which made me want something very green. You see, in the new york city subway, you don’t look at anybody. Not the person sitting directly across from you, not the person sitting across the train. We are day workers. Dentists. Students. Tired Americans and more, and since there is no space to zone out in after a hard day’s work, we are zoning out in the space of our own minds. And if you intrude that mind space, it can become confrontational.
If you do look someone in the eye in the city on the subway you’d better have a hell of a good story, a beautifully apologetic smile, or a look that says “blaze blah” loud enough that no one takes offense. If you care about offending, and I did that summer. Or so they say. People like to make things bigger than they are-there is something so comforting/dangerous/distracting about having something out there existing that is bigger than we are. I can speak about such things especially, because I am a woman, and I am small. It’s quite possible that nothing could happen to you at all after looking someone in the eye in the new york subway. Nothing happened to me. You could go right along your day and it would be alright, but people like the idea that there is some strange place in the eastern united states where we can’t look people in the eye or we’ll turn into a pillar of goo or something. In the same way that people like to watch horror movies or America’s funniest. Don’t listen to me. Make your own choices about who you eye.
Listen to me. There are a few things in new york city you are allowed to look at on the subway. Musicians. Your I-pad, your shoes, and plants. It was my 6th trip to New York City and I was hopping across the boroughs like a grass hopper. It was the way I grew: hopping-ly. I worked at cafe LaLo and read backstage magazine on my break. I was beginning. And beginning is the name of progress. And progress is the beginning of a romance on a train with a man with a plant in a grocery bag.
Mirna, my Mother’s Muse
Or
My parents are weirder than your parfents {2 minutes}
{Katie begins finger paining on an easel. It is an abstract. When she is done she places the painting in the box}
… … … …
For the entire length of my 6th grade year we lived with a naked manikin in the middle of our living room. It became clear quite quickly how new friends or boyfriends would fare in our family by how they reacted to her, the mannequin, in the living room. I'm not sure how this affected me but it obviously did because I am here speaking about it. My mother named her Mirna.
Mirna was my mother’s muse, and they were very close, and Mirna was very naked. Except for her eyelashes, which were real and fake, at the same time. Mirna wears blue eyeshadow in all seasons, not only in the 1960’s, but even now at this exact moment. I think part of the idea was that my mother was beginning to focus on drawing and she needed a naked figure to work with. If I remember correctly, there is a home video in which I walk into the living room with the cam corder and both my mother and father are drawing naked women on easels. Who knows, really. The interesting part of this story is that Mirna could talk, really. I constantly remember going to her for advice. I would have to look up since she was over 6 feet tall. I remember trying to dress her in the evenings. Either way, Mirna would end up totally nude by morning.
Over the years Mirna shifted about the house: an arm above the living room cabinets, a leg in the basement, a hand set on a shelf by the dining room table, and the torso & head, somewhere, somehow looking out for us. Once for a student film I was doing, I carried Mirna's entire arm across town on the local bus. I was 15 and embarrassed about the arm so i kept it wrapped in a brown blanket as its disguise. While riding on the empty seats of the bus, the arm out onto the floor after hitting a bump for all to see, just lying there with a bit of a "hello".
It's times like that that I am entirely expressionless. I don't even look around me to see what other people are thinking, I just slowly bend down, pick up Mirna's manikin unattached arm and proceed to wrap it back up in the brown blanket. Mirna was pretty expressionless, too. Not blaze blah, but, well, you could probably look at her on a subway. And she would look back. She was my favorite houseplant, eyelashes and all.
A little bit of calcium & confidence (3 minutes 30 seconds)
{New projection: http://www.flickr.com/photos/imgoinghome/4441845816/. Katie stands on a stool}
… … … …
The USA’s most popular houseplant is the poinsettia. This (refers to picture) is not a poinsettia. The National Geographic wrote a tribute to one of Paul Ecke’s poinsettias which was 8 feet tall. Which is about how tall I am right now if you were sloppy at using a measuring tape. It is said that sailors used to have to fight dangerous seas to bring back rare house plants for early English collectors. Can you imagine? Braving the sea so that someone on land can have a plant in a pot?
In the seventeenth century people only dreamed of being able to bring home certain plants we can find now at Wal Mart. Fascinating: The lengths we go to to bring nature so close and at the same time the lengths we go to to push it so far away. It reminds me of love, or death, or cancer. In the victorian era there was floriography. Yes, ladies & gentlemen, the language of flowers. A striped carnation, a refusal of love, “um. I’m not really that into you” a yellow poppy, signal of betrayal “I know you know what I know”. Now, there’s just facebook. And the flower sending app.
Lately people have been wearing these moss terrariums around their neck in glass bottles on websites such as etsy.com, the worldwide handmade marketplace. I bought one specifically for this show. They used to be called aquariums or fern cases in the 1830’s when Nathanial Ward discovered that plants could be kept alive in sealed glass. A tiny greenhouse. Would anyone like to take a look at my tiny moss terrarium? This moss was gathered by Debbie Oliver on July 29th, 2010 from South Central Pennsylvania. It is said that moss can be up to 5,000 years old. This moss, said to be growing in moss banks in antarctica is set to be photographed by Rachel Sussman who is out to document the oldest living things in the world and one of them is moss. It could be having its birthday right now, would anyone like to sing for it? Perhaps we should take a moment to think about this moss in Antarctica that could be 5,001 years old if you believe in time, or if you believe in anything. Or if you believe that only gold does stay after all. (Moment)
I am genuinely interested in the history of all this. When did we begin bringing houseplants into our homes let alone wearing them on our necks? Did nature become fashion with adam & eve? Is keeping plants in glass houses around our neck our final victory— that we have conquered nature despite all those photographs you see where the foliage is taking over our sidewalks and our buildings and our telephone wires? People say we can’t stop nature because a tiny blade of grass battles to grow between slabs of concrete? Or is it yet another plea-a physical demonstration that we need to be closer with nature, with something green, with something that has the potential to grow taller then us which makes us want to look, which makes us want to look up, which makes us want to look away.
William Morris is quoted to have said “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. I think many of us make the mistake of only hearing the very first part of that advice “Have nothing in your house that you do not know”. What would your life be like if you took out everything that was neither A.) Useful or B.) Beautiful?
{Katie wears oversized orange sunglasses and a blank slide is projected pointed towards her}
It’s all about our perfect distance from the sun, the bright shiny thing hanging above the world we were born into that we are told not to look at that I starred into this morning. Perhaps nature is our personal genie at the collar bone. Maybe if we rub it it will grow, or we will. Let me be honest here, I have never kept a house plant a live in my entire life and I’m only borrowing this one. But I have stared, for very long amounts of time, at mountains. And the mountains spoke. And they said Hi, I probably know you. What I mean by that is that we've probably already met.
Bed Cabbage |by August Kane|{3 min}
Photo Projected: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterbaker/4773967015/
During this play, a recording reads the following text. Katie will wrap up a cabbage and give it to a member of the audience.
… … … …
This morning I woke up in a pretty serious headache and an aching throughout my entire body which reminded me sharply of the amount of booze I had to drink last night. Now, when most people wake up after a night like this there's usually things that are a little disorientating; some people wake up with strange people in their beds, some with vomit or even some to unexpected piss from a few hours before that they were too inebriated to realize, but I woke up with this (presents plant). I have no idea what it is, but I know that it's a plant, and it's alive, and it was in my bed with me last night. I'm not a plant person; I'm not an animal person. I don't like to have things in my apartment. Bed, food, stove, bed, and now, a plant. I probably used a good 30 minutes of my morning looking at this plant and trying to figure out what type of plant it was. Me, the person who doesn't have anything hates animals, and plants and things looking at this plant wondering what the hell it is. I got so into it that I actually took it down to the florist who lived around the corner. He said it was a cabbage.
oil & water do not mix & I think we know this {3 min}
Photo projected: http://www.flickr.com/photos/torriefox/4726835744/
During this play a bubble gun is pointed above the slide projector so that the bubbles float down the photograph, giving the impression that we are on the ocean floor. Steven is making astronaut noises in another microphone.
… … … …
He told me that it had to do with the fact that he thought I had never hit rock bottom, and the way he phrased it it seemed like there was this more than tiny gem to be gained at the hitting of rock bottom and I wondered how many more rocks there were to get to rock bottom and what exactly things looked like from the bottom up. Maybe you'd see the underside of a swan, the belly of a whale or something more confusing like the entire ocean galaxy hitting on you in some kind of night sweat. It all seemed to be about how far the night was from the day and if we were smart enough to wear our poor faces for the bad ones. I was immediately grateful and offended. Grateful for all the people who have expected me to be good and offended that this curly haired man across from me had not recognized that I had hit rock bottom. Wasn't it obvious? Couldn't you tell by just glancing off my face? Weren't my eyelashes bleeding, or didn't I have eyes at all?
{Katie appears in front of the screen wearing a scuba diving mask. She swims}
You know that feeling when everything is going wrong and you feel too embarrassed to even look at people because your depressed mental environment may become contagious, or worse, they could understand? I was sideways standing up and I knew the right choice, the one to plant my feet on the ground was very simple, it was only about taking one step but I refused to do it, and it was getting erotic just tilting there, not being able to breathe.
What I learned that day is that one of the most refreshing things of this world is to sit with someone else who is at the bottom most rock and be there with them, to notice you are both gasping on the soil of an oily ocean together and thank God, in a sick and humanly selfish way that while you were sinking all those years ago, there was someone on the other side of the pond who had already sunk, {the horse man brings a yellow goldfish out in front of the screen to attack Katie} but to them you looked like a flying saucer, or a disregarded bullet, or some unused piece of fiber.
I don’t know, maybe when you hit that level all the ocean trees would grow a little taller, or maybe someone's bed in the northwest would quake, or maybe all of those bright eyed leprechauns would show up and wish you to the top.
{bubbles stop. Lights out.}
One of the oldest living things on this earth are clonal quaking aspens. Someone said 80,000 years. I said, that’s a lot of years to be an aspen. The aspen said, that’s a lot of years to be anything, except in love. They have eyes, that are totally black, like most aspen do and sometimes I wonder if, after 80,000 years my eyes would turn totally black too.
the desperate & determined people {9 min}
Photo Projected: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tweng/4403902124/
Half of this play is recorded in a geeky man's voice. Think the geek from American Splendor. The other half is read by Katie. The script is in a music stand.
… … … …
{Katie takes the houseplant out of the grocery bag and places it on a stool CS. She then measures each leaf with a measuring tape. She then makes a list for each leaf with measurements like “2 years” or “3 cups of oatmeal”}
The clouds smelled like hot chocolate that morning and we were driving through hickory north carolina. We were on I 40 moving westbound to Tennessee and from there we were going to Gatlinburg to have ourselves a great time. I became certain long ago that there are some things that you should never understand and this story may be one of them. We were dreaming of New Orleans and everything that could go wrong but the blue ridge mountains were not far behind the boarders of our brains. I was trying to maintain the correct growing temperature for something that could last and not spoil but it was taking everything I ever had. I found this houseplant at a garage sale on elbow road and insisted on taking it with us in the car. We were road tripping as any young and beginning things should do. It sat between us as we drove across the united states. We had just passed the world's worst chinese buffet where the fried bananas and red jello left a depressed taste in your mouth. I was determined to keep this plant and keep it growing. You see I had never kept a plant alive my entire life, but he was exquisite and I named him Underwater, because that's where it looked like he belonged.
{Recording stops. Katie begins reading. Adorns a masquerade mask}
We were planning the perfect way to make new friends. Party tricks that included us instantly creating an informal nick name as a way to remember the name of someone we had just met. Someone named Rick would instantly become The Ricktor. And so on. Eventually we would segue into Underwater, the strange houseplant that began living between us, and ask if they had any tips for transplanting him, creating the right living conditions, or the correct dosage of water, or perhaps just the name of the forrest from where it came. The oldest tree in the world is a Norwegian spruce. And it looks it. It looks like its hair is falling out, or the the backbone of an eaten fish, or the numbers left after a war. I do not like hair, fish, or wars but it is the one of the most beautiful thing I have ever never seen. It could be having it’s birthday right now, would anyone like to sing for it, perhaps we should take a moment to think about this tree in Norway that could be 9,500 years old if you believe in time, Or if you believe in anything. Or if you believe that only gold does stay after all. (Moment) Anyways, people would tell us all sorts of things, everybody had a name for this plant. I don't think anybody understood that we were just trying to keep it alive.
(Recording begins again. Katie slowly waters the plant from an oil jug which contains water )
Underwater became our favorite party trick, people would want to pose with it, and we would let them. Would anyone like to take their photograph with the plant now? The thing about us is that we were always asking too many questions, always relying on the ears of the world because we were young and figured that the future would always be better if we wanted it to be. The plant became a permanent fixture in our lives. Some said it was oversized, some said it was fun, or good looking, but we were just taking care of it for a little while, stopping to water it with whatever we could in the moment. I have to admit, some of it wasn't very good water. Some of it wasn't even clear, but we were getting noticed and I was realizing, slowly, that I was keeping my very first houseplant alive. People told us strange things and we took their advice. “That thing doesn't have any roots, you'll have to plant it somewhere” or “There's no reason to keep a houseplant with you like that all the time, you've got no good reason to keep it”. We went to work, researching where to plant something like this or why someone would do such a thing. I think we had forgotten that we were just trying to keep the thing alive.
(Recording Stops. Katie Begins Speaking)
We began not being able to see each other as time passed. There was always plant between us. We knew the plant was growing because it was reaching out both windows when we drove. People were offering us all sorts of fertilizers, I guess they wanted some sort of miracle growth and we took everything that they offered us. But it was getting expensive. We never had the right sort of planting pot, or moist enough soil. Friends and family started to visit more frequently and we realized that their faces had started to change. They looked less interested in our situation and more hopeful for its demise. One thing we learned about people along the way is that they always had something to say, something to teach, something to fear, and something to have an opinion about. Not me, not us, we were just driving, taking one trip after another and carrying this growth across the country. It never really grew in any sort of direction, up or down, or sideways, it just grew. We were grateful to people for their information, everyone seemed so knowledgeable, so expert at growing something that it was easy to just sit back and relax. I guess you could say we became greedy, it was clear that with enough questions we didn't have to think for ourselves because other people could do that for us.
{recording resumes.}
“You're giving it too much sun” they would say or “Let me take care of it for awhile, I've seen plants like these before and I respond very well to them”. We weren't sure what we were doing, but there we were so many things that were said to be right. I had forgotten that I thought it belonged underwater at all.
{Both Katie and the masked man stand profile looking at the plant, taking notes intermittently. Katie then attaches a dog leash to the plant and holds it, CS} When staying at hotels across the country we would let it have the bed, we would stand on either side and watch it, both proud of something that we hoped to be enough for the world. Then the press started getting involved. They wanted us to have something to say about it, but we couldn't think of a thing. We quickly realized that the easiest way to upset people was not having anything to say about very much at all, the newspapers were saying that Underwater had gotten to be overgrown. We were worried, because we were feeding it the very best ingredients at that point. It was summer in Mississippi and it was beginning to become an embarrassment as it didn't fit inside our home. It was causing fights and arguments between us and we were shouting through the branches because we couldn't hear each other what with all these leaves. But I was proud, I was keeping something growing, whatever it was.
The Slide Projector Turns off.
It turns on..
This image shows: http://www.flickr.com/photos/_belafonte_/4399416938/
It turns off.
A metronome begins clicking away.
End of play.
Anyways. Here is today's play:
Two people are on stage. One has a milk jug and listens to neutral milk hotel. The other has beets and is listening to the beets. They compete. It is a stand off.
|8.31.2010|
Tonight's the big night! PS: here's a photo of Paul Ecke and his poinsettias, since we talk about him in the play I thought he deserved a little tribute! ;)
|8.30.2010|
Katie stands in front of projector with a white pad of paper in her hands. Different middle-of-body shots are projected and she reacts to each one.
|8.29.2010|
Greed, revised by Shelly Wade
|8.28.2010|
Thank -You to our backers! We are funded!!
|8.27.2010|
Ok we've got this edited down to 26 minutes reading time. We will be uploading some videos of some edited out material though, just for you all to get a taste and see. We have a fabulous new flyer made by Otis Pig which we couldn't be more happy with
and we only have a few more hours in our kickstarter project to go so please, if you are reading a long, take a second to donate it would really help us out!!
Big thank-yous to Rose Florist in Biloxi for letting us borrow a houseplant and to Elle Moss for letting us borrow an animal mask!!! Thank you's all around!!
By the way, listen to some of the new music we have been uploading here.
|8.26.2010|
Thank yous are in order to Caleb Manci, Erin Hawkins, and a few other shining stars. We are editing this thing down. Our second read through was longer than our first!!
|8.25.2010|
Video by Natalie Eickmeyer
|8.24.2010|
Piece by Otis PIg
|8.23.2010|
Piece by Stella Martin
|8.22.2010|
This is the story I would have told you if you hadn’t fallen asleep.
This is the story I would have told you if you hadn’t fallen asleep. You always slept with your back towards me, which was frustrating and made me envision you as a seal. I had never slept next to a seal before, but I figured that it would be a lot like sleeping next to you. I’m not saying that your skin was that soft, or that you particularly loved the ocean, I am just saying that you were stubborn, like a tiny whale. As the years passed, I would sleep with my back to you, as well so as to not confuse someone who somehow may be able to look in upon us so that it would always be a secret as to to who was turning their back to whom. I thought maybe this could trick you into feeling like you were being betrayed and wrap your arms around me in a moment lost to midnight weariness, but you were not a man to be easily distracted from your goals, and one of your goals was being very stubborn, which made you much more like a cockatiel than a seal in the first place.
We adopted this stance into most parts of our daily routine. When we would brush our teeth, we would take turns on who could face the mirror and who could face the wall. This was challenging, since you always brushed your teeth with turbo speed while I treated it more like I was getting paid by the minute. So you always had to spit before I did which means that I always saw the last part of your spit running down the drain before mine came after it and while this was happening I would be looking at the ceramic sink and thinking about seals and how they sleep with each other, and if they ever got along with dolphins.
Eating was a bit more of a refined habit. We had positioned the dining room chairs so that one would be looking at the television and the other would be looking out the window. This always provided an opportune time for you to get on my case about looking out the window
-Are you looking out the window like I think you are
-Yes
-In the way that you always do
-I think so
-I don’t like that. I don’t like that you look out the window like that. And sigh. And wish you could be so far away.
-*Sighs*
-You haven’t even said anything about the rice yet, is it sticky enough for you
-It’s sticky enough for me. It’s always the same. We’re having rice and salmon and broccoli. I like the broccoli, it is soft & steamed, and you could have done much better on the salmon.
But we weren’t eating that at all, on the table could have been caviar, or country fried steak, or kale soup, but no one paid any attention to that matter. With the new seating arrangement, we always had our backs to the dining room table.
I remember the conversation that sparked this behavior.
-I don’t find you attractive anymore.
-Why’s that
-I have seen you too much, you come in here way too often.
And so it was. There were other things, other sad stories that I could tell here, but none as interesting as the one I almost told you about when you were falling asleep. You had this funny way of speaking about ridiculous things when you were just about to drift off, that it sometimes felt like we were having a conversation, it sometimes felt like we were speaking in a strange language.
-The eagle mask is falling of, it is not so made of feathers.
Or
-When I was with you I fell off my bike and the wind blew up my skirt.
Eventually I started responding, there was nothing more endearing to me than these little bits of nonsense that would roll off your tongue as you were just beginning to enter dreams.
-It isn’t always raining in the next town
You murmured.
-It isn’t. Isn’t that what it’s famous for? I asked you, scared that you would wake up and realize it was all a game.
-Yes. Actually no. There’s no rain on top of the streets there.
-What is there?
-Patience.
-Wow
-Goats.
They would be short conversations, and I still can’t decide if they really meant anything or not, even after all these years.
This back-to-back relationship was affecting me on several levels, and the most recent one was my dreams. I had the dream that kept happening, the re-occuring one about how people stop seeing each other.
-How are you
-I know how you are. You are that way. The way in which you will always be. With your annoying tendencies. And boughts of laughter. And the way you always seem depressed & excited about life at the exact same time.
But I hadn’t laughed since last tuesday and I wasn’t annoying at all these days, I had grown tired, smaller, and quiet.
There was a mountain that I had always wanted to show you, it was my favorite mountain and we would go there together in my dreams. Every time this particular dream occurred we would somehow miss the mountain, like perhaps we would forget to go see it, or the mountain would be on vacation, or we would run out of time, or you would want to leave early. I had this dream ever since we got married and, in every episode, something prevented us from seeing these alpine mountains, the most beautiful thing in this world.
Lately when I have this dream it goes a little like this: we are driving along the coast next to an empty beach and on this empty beach the only things that are there are these brightly colored umbrellas and lazy palm trees, that are falling over in their sleep. As we drive along this road we see three lawn chairs that are set up on the beach and three men that are sitting in the chairs and drinking beers. They look to be in their 40’s, and they look to be close friends, or at least be really good at pretending like they were the three closest of friends. But the funny thing was, that it was this beautiful summer day, and outside the sunset was just about to bleed across the sea and the water was warm and the stars were not out just yet and these three men, the ones in lawn chairs were facing towards the road, with their back to the ocean. I didn’t understand, I wanted to run up to them and say
-Hey! Look! There’s an ocean over there, you can put your toes in it, and ride in it and if you stand still for long enough the sand will rise up and gather on your legs so that if the ocean pushes you this way and that you’ll still be standing up! You should turn around.
But it was clear, that not only did they know what they were doing, but they didn’t act as if they were missing anything at all. I looked at you and I asked
-Why are they sitting the wrong way
-It’s the gulf coast,
You said
-They probably have a very different relationship with the sea here.
And the next part of my dream, that I can remember was that we were finally there, at the mountain, and I was thinking about all the wonderful & exciting journeys we were going to go on and how you would fall instantly in love with this place that meant so much to me my entire life and when we got there we went outside to see these alpine creations and all the locals were sitting outside, on their farms, in lawn chairs, and all of them were facing us, and their back was to the mountain. And the mountain was covered in fog. And everyone was going about their business just like usual and I wanted to run up to all of them and say
-Hey! What are you doing? Look-there’s a mountain over there, can’t you see? And its the most beautiful mountain in the world, it is full of waterfalls and snowcapped peaks and rivers and running springs, and cliff faces and strange weather and sheep and cows with ringing bells and little stands where they sell homemade yogurt, in almost every flavor you can think of-and the fog there, don’t you understand? The fog & the mountain, they are making love, and the fog will be gone soon but look at it, even the fog is beautiful, the shape it takes, the way it dances around those peaks. It’s spelling out the word “love” right now, can’t you see it L-O-V-E. And when the fog leaves, the entire mountain is covered in snow, even in the summer. It’s fascinating, I could spend me entire life looking at it. And sometimes, when the sun sets, the entire village comes out to watch it and the mountain top gets so read that it looks like hot lava was poured on it like pudding, like wild pudding and on August first, there are fires on the top of the village and they are lit everywhere and they are blazing across the mountain range as a symbol, a symbol of independence & of freedom. And if you stare long enough at it, it will speak to you, it will really truly speak to you. What are you doing? Come on, I can show you a bench where..
And the locals only looked at me, with the familiar twinkle that they knew exactly what they were doing and the only thing they told me was
-Don’t sleep with your head towards the mountain
And then they went on, eating and playing and haying and gathering and doing other local-like-stuff and I looked at you and I asked
-Why are they all sitting there facing the wrong direction
And you said
-It’s the Alps, work is hard to find here. There are many storms in this area. They must have a very different relationship with that mountain here.
And on our way back we pass a river and I get out of the car and ask to be alone for awhile because I need to cry, into something liquid, into something bigger than me because I am so upset and I see this rushing river and by it I see this fish, and I hate fish, and it is dying, and it is looking right at me and I say
-No.
And it says
-Don’t move me
And I say
-There’s a river behind you. It’s only a few feet away
And I can see its skin and it is drying out and it says to me
-I know that river. I know where it begins and I know where it ends, I know what the bottom floor of that river looks like, and I know how warm the water gets in the summer. I know that the water is green right now and that the light is slowly cascading across the wider part of the river where the cypress tress overhang..
But the water was clear. And there weren’t cypress tress at all, there were pines and the water was freezing, I could feel it with my toes.
And I cried over that fish, and I tried to give that fish a puddle to breathe in, even though I hate fish. But I felt so bad, bad that it was scared of an oily ocean. But even worse that it wouldn’t even turn around and looked. Because the river had changed. And that fish did right there. One eye on me and one eye on some river, somewhere, that wasn’t anywhere, that he didn’t want to see.
The river had changed. And I woke up as usual, in a sweat, with a seal, on that river where the cypress trees overhang.
This is the story I would have told you if you hadn’t fallen asleep.
|8.21.2010|
I eat everything {4 min}
Photo Projected: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tweng/3241535608/
During this play a recording is played where the following conversations are had. Katie will use finger shadow puppets to indicate which person in the picture is speaking.
Running Time 3min: 30 sec
… … … …
A-Will you tell me how I'm doing
B-What do you mean
A-I want to know what I've turned into, from your perspective
B-A reaching thing
A-I see you as a dark thing in a cave
B-Go on,
A-you go on; i'm not afraid of being disappointed
B-well I never thought you'd become a liar
A-oh, its the summer..
B-i see you as something not reaching
A-not reaching yet?
B-no. just not even reaching.
A-but there's still sun somewhere, right? There's a light on somewhere.
B-there are so many lights out there it's dizzy
A-i hear that a lot, but none of them are-
B-reaching. no, they don't do that. they're just
A-There
(Pause)
B-last night I actually almost cried because I realized I would never be a star captain
A-you should say so ,i've been doodling about nationalism
B-I know, you want to buy the world a coke
A-that's not it, I just want one world.
B-not everybody does
A-I find that sad
B-i find it human-you would understand if you thought of it in terms of people
A-how so
B-you want to be the only woman I have ever loved
A-this is correct, but you have boarders, real, actual, skin-ends-here boarders. (Photo Projected changes to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/derricksphotos/4289732038/)
I could eat you. Why fight for it? Why fight for something so temporary.
B-I like what your saying; it sounds important even though it isn’t
A-someone told me once to believe in anything, even if it's a loaf of bread
(Pause) Photo Projected changes to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tweng/3241535608/
A-I miss him
B-Of course you do
A-Oh, not him
B-No wonder
A-there was a time in my life when I kept asking people those big questions in life.
B-were you scared?
A-yes. No one came up with anything really important. Or even interesting. Except for one.
B-what did you ask him.
A-how do you think this looks?
B-it doesn’t look like something you’d wear
A-I like wearing stuff like that. So I can surprise people.
B-You’re are a birthday, just like the songs says.
A-I asked him what he was most proud of.
B-Oh, that’s a good one. In a bad sort of way.
A-He thought about it for a long time, so long that I thought he was ignoring the question. And then he said, with no pride and no humility, only the factual attitude that he had found what is true and he said “touch someone”
B-wow
A-and I thought, and I still think, that he was talking about me.
(Pause)
A-man, do I love new york city. what if I told you that I was quite unhappier than you had originally perceived me to be and that if you were to become a bigger part of my life I could be a better person? -the entire thing would be like a giant birthday party...
B-i'd tell you that you should be seen for codependency.
A-right.
{pause}
B-i'd think about it.
A-thanks. I love you
B-what does that mean
A--It means that I love me when I'm with you or that I love the idea of you or how you look with me in pictures. It means that, at the beginning or end of all this I can explain all the confusion away with saying that you fit into my idea of a perfect life, even if that perfect life never happens.
(Pause.)
A—i thought you didn’t like ketchup
B- I just never had time for ketchup before
A-anyways, the next thing I knew she was pleading with me and saying they would send her back to korea if I didn't lower the rent fifty dollars
B-and you said
A-may you always have time for ketchup. And you said
B-there's a korea for me somewhere baby-is there anything you don't eat?
A-no, I eat everything
B-Wow
A-you should have been born a sea horse, Do you want to try some?
B-Is it good
A-Yes it’s really good
B-Then no thank you
A-Well there’s the moon
B-that’s actually a street lamp…God hates the south
A-what
B-well it's really hard to find that these days, everyone is usually always a vego-something
A-not this girl
B-I know that girl, she borrowed my hat. i've been taking the tips out of the tip jar at this restaurant for years. It's pretty easy, most people think I'm putting one in.
A-Why
B-I don't do interesting, I pride myself on being a dull person
A-So, you're exactly the same after all these years, what about me? How have I changed?
B-Well, yeah, you do seem like you've given up a little bit. On these old ideas you used to have like you would find the perfect love stories, these big dreams, you seem a bit more planted in reality, and I don't think that's a good thing
A-these french fries taste too much like potatoes
B-that's the point isn't it
A-i don't think so. i like my french fries when they taste taste less like potatoes and more like french fries
(Pause)
B-I feel like we should be hearing Christmas music. Wouldn't that be nice?
A-Yes, I think so.
A-Wait. That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, considering everything.
B-Well then let me ask you this, what sort of sense is there to be made?
|8.20.2010|
Greed, revised
|8.19.2010|
Our first read through was at 43 minutes. I think it is now at 32 minutes.
That is about all I have to say.
|8.18.2010|
There is a mountain that I frequent, because I got very tired of bars very fast. It is the most beautiful mountain in world and it knows it. People travel from all over the world to a bus to another bus to a train to another train to a bus to a gondola to another gondola to see this mecca of a mountain.
that story.
There are No Dog Parks in Biloxi
There are no dog parks in biloxi. or in any of the surrounding cities. In ocean springs, gulfport, d'iberville, or. the rest of them. The closest dog park is one hour and a half away. Or that's what the lady at pet smart says. In Biloxi there are also no dogs allowed on the beaches, except for the beaches in ocean springs which we have never been to yet. When we first got our place we asked what people usually do with dogs. Our land lady pointed out that the next door neighbor took her dogs to the beach, and also to the graveyard a few streets away. My husband jokes that because the dogs next door are so quiet, that they must be dead, which is why they usually frequent the graveyard. My husband is a man of simple logic. Which is why I like him, because "simple" and "logic" are not things which I am familiar with, and I always like trying new things.
I ask the people at petsmart what people usually do.
do what
with the dogs
for what
for socialization
oh, the hard rock casino is pet friendly. you can take them to the lobby there.
it took me several moments to realize that she actually said what she said.
|8.17.2010|
I would like to thank a few people. I would like to thank Aaron Nitzkin for professionally editing some of my play, even though I had to pay him and even though he tried to change Mirna's name to Myrna. I would like to thank my psychologist whom I talk to over the phone for listening to me talk about the play. Even though I have to pay her and even though I think she has our phone sessions while she is out running errands. I would like to thank my husband for sitting through a 43 minute read-through of the play last night and timing my pieces for me and not saying a peep. Even though after the read-through was done he didn't really say a peep either, but I still love him.
And one day I will still love this, but right now I can't exactly say that I do.
|8.16.2010|
We have a script. It is um. Um. It is looking for eyeballs to see it. Do I have any takers?
Inspiration. July. Miss Miranda July. I wish I had her name, her hair, her creativity. Ok, perhaps not her hair. A woman I could never hate because my breasts are actually larger than hers. She offers me inspiration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuU99STtP2s
|8.15.2010|
Sometimes when I am really sad.
Sometimes when I am really sad. because of everything that's happened which you know nothing about, and I hope you know nothing about, for my sake, but also for your sake but mostly for my pride's sake. Sometimes when I am really very sad. Because of everything that hasn't happened, and some things that seem like they will never happen, and some things that I am unfortunately certain, for a fact, will never happen because of other things that happened in these would-be-happenings place. Sometimes when I am sad like this I wake up at 5:00 in the morning and think about creating a false twitter account, one where I can tell people the truth about everything awful that is going on in my life right now and I think about someone finding those tweets and those tweets being re tweeted and each time someone reads those tweets I think of someone actually caring about what they read, even it it passes through them in .02 seconds, that's .02 seconds of someone actually caring, about something, which really make me sad. I think if there are enough retweets then maybe it will eventually equal one whole person who cares, because like the poem says, everyone who I counted on really did take a vacation at the same time. And it blows. And sometimes when I am sad at 5:00 in the morning because people know way too much already about what they shouldn't know anything about any no one is on my side and everything is getting legal and dark and generally not good and specifically not good I go onto your website, and I re-watch all of your videos, and I look at your pictures, and I remember how much I have forgotten you. And I know I'm only doing it because things are bad, and that makes me sad, too,
and I go to your website and I look at the contact button. contact. and I click it. isn't that the lamest thing you've ever heard. and I literally click it because it makes me feel like contacting you. and when I click it, I remember everything good about you, which is everything, because I don't know anything bad at this point, but I don't want it to always stay that way and I think about how easy and good and fun and simple and funny and big and great life could be and then I remember your face and once again, am reminded of how much I forgot and I wonder how fast you are forgetting me and if it is the same fastness or more. even though I know I shouldn't be doing this and if x then hurt and if y then hurt and it's all really just so hypocritical in the first place. but I remember there are places of good in this planet, and maybe we would all run into the same problems, who knows. and maybe we would find bigger problems, who knows, but when I am sad, I go to you or rather, I go to your website. And after everything I look at that stupid picture verification box and I think wow, this is so stupid. and after everything I am a little bit guilty enough, guilty enough to be less sad, and that's kind of how the whole thing works. unless it's an especially sad morning, in which case it still helps more than a little bit.
|8.14.2010|
My name is Katrina and I am sorry.
stories written from the gulf coast
I can't introduce myself to people in the south. Hi, My name is Katrina. How are they supposed to like me? And I was born on Sep 11th. My husband's name is Steven King and he was born on Halloween. Right. Do you like our dog? He pees when he meets new people.
I have been feeling really nervous whenever I go out in public lately, like shaky-can't look people in the eye nervous. I think it's because I have a complex where I think that everyone wants to fuck me. To expedite this, can the people in the room who do not want to fuck me please stand up? Ok. Thank You. That makes me feel better in some weird way. Some of you were lying, I know, but that's what we do.
I don't exactly know what I am supposed to do here in front of all of you. To some of you I may be that thing you can look at when the conversation with the person beside you gets awkward, or maybe I am that person you look at because there is no one beside you. I could make a joke now and say you look over here because there is someone beside you, and you don't like them very much but I don't like those kind of jokes. I'm very pro relationship and pro liking people. You'll learn that about me pretty quick. I hope I'm not supposed to entertain you all because I've had a pretty rough last couple of months. Pretty rough as in I hope there are several million people in the world who do not have to endure what I have had to endure these last months. I also hope I am not here because I'm supposed to make you cry or something, I can't even make myself cry on stage let alone people I have never even met who may or may not want to fuck me and may or may not be liars.
Welcome to mind party. It's a weird thing created by a weird girl and I hope it gets even weirder. It's my way of going for my career job of being a performing artist. I want to make art, but because I am an exhibitionist and a voyeur, I don't feel complete about making art unless I do it in front of people. It's pretty simple actually, I write 10 3 minute pieces and perform them places for fun. If you want to write something you can, that would be really cool. If you do want to write something you can come up to me and talk after this performance. I'm not one of those writers who pretends like I am lonely in my writing and then goes to some after party somewhere in a cool house. I'll actually be trying to make myself look busy in some weird corner thinking about those people who didn't want to fuck me and what I could do to change their minds, just kidding, I'll be planning my quickest escape out.
I am a photographer by profession. I hold some glass and plastic in front of my eye and press a button when I see something I like to see. Or when I see something that I know I could make into something I would like to see. Sometimes it gets rough because you see a picture you want to take but admitting that you want a picture of that thing is kind of embarrassing. The first time this happened it was in Costa Rica and I wanted a picture of a very poor child. I looked to my friend Erin and I asked her "hey, will you stand next to me while I take this" and she did, and it made me feel more ok about it. I think that's one of the only things we can ask from people in our lives, and one of the best things we can do for another person-stand here while I take this.
Anyways, this is a slide projector. You probably knew that unless you were like, 5. I'm going to put some pictures on it and speak some words. I hope you like me. I hope you have a great night, thanks for coming.
Magazine Idea
I want this to be a living magazine, literally. Like I want the magazine to have a head and to have legs. I want a magazine to be published called mind party, and I want it to be performed, and then I want a CD and I want a tour and I want this to happen every month, and I want it to go on tour, and I want it to be a party. And I want it to be mindful, and that's what I want. And I want to be apart of it but I don't want to be all of it and if I can have this, and be a rockstar, and have my dog, and my husband, and my mom, and spend half my time in new york and half my time in switzerland and half my time not fucking up anyone's life then that's really all I want. Ever. And I'll have to remind myself of that in the morning. When I take my retainer out, or when it starts to rain.
Giving myself some credit: How would you like to...
Have your mother and sister go through a divorce and have your husband tell you he hates you every day and move across country and not know where you are going to live at the end of the week and move away from the only thing that's ever kept you alive and have the town that used to love you blacken your name with black chalk and have your in laws hate you so much that they could kill you if they could get away with it and to loose all your self respect and dignity and sanity and youth for something you don't even know is a good thing and try to make your first woman show. try. it
|8.13.2010|
What good is the knowledge of good & bad
if I"ve never use it and I never have
I want to be more than her memory that you still let be
but I'm running a fever of jealousy.
meet me between where the rocks catch the water
meet me between what is good and whats fair
take me to stories that aren't looking for endings
i know it's not right but i'm meeting you there
natural fool
stubborn as mule
natural fool
stubborn as mule
pardon me but you're undoing the done
and bringing back battles i thought I had won
I want to be closer to you then your memories
but I'm loosing what's left of my sanity
meet me between where the rocks catch the water
meet me between what is good and whats fair
take me to stories that aren't looking for endings
i know it's not right but i'm meeting you there
natural fool
stubborn as mule
natural fool
stubborn as mule
What good is the knowledge of good & bad
if I"ve never use it and I never have
I always seem to go back to Paleo when I need to hear what I need to hear. Today I was listening to a tiny interview and he said something along these lines "its not about quantity or even quality, it's about you being who you are for good or for bad, it's about what comes out each day and I don't judge that". Ah ha.
|8.12.2010|
the lone Norway spruce
I have been researching David Cale and Miranda July. I like their stuff and have been looking up to them as an aspiring solo performer. I admire & respect both of their use of sensuality and playfulness. I admire their hope and the way their words sound when they make them.
a little about me, Katie LB King
I am interested in finding things in places where they do not belong. It is something that has always fascinated me. It is something I look for in my relationships, photography, and in the theater. Someone once said that we do not truly become who we are until we are placed among circumstances where we do not belong and that really hit me in a big way during college. I became sort of obsessed with always putting myself in new situations and at the same time it wasn't really an obsession, it was just a reality I kept finding myself in and I had never yet found a life that I wanted to stick to yet. I am interested in nonsense, because I think it makes a lot more sense than sense, and I am interested in people's faces-everything about them, especially the beautiful ones. I am totally enthralled by beauty, mostly landscapes, but also physical landscapes. I am utterly obsessed with men, with sleep, with dreams, in idealism, and in hypocrisy & death. I am interested in God but it is not something I write about. I love people, the vast majority of them, what they value, what their struggles are, where they get lost, their potential. These are my inspiration. I think one of the worst things we can do to anyone is to tell them what they are. In any way. And at the same time it is almost what I crave most, for someone to look me in the head and tell me what I am and what I am capable of.
|8.12.2010|
We're editing ladies and gentlemen...editing. Thank you to everyone who submitted. I was very grateful. Last night I drove to new orleans to check out our venue for the show. It's super, great atmosphere and people supportive of the arts. It's going to be a bit of a win over challenge with the cafe setting and us coming in with something a bit different than usual, I think the usual gig there is music but some people I met were already excited about the show and I'm excited to learn more about them as well.
(kissing noises made into microphone)
I want to find your lips in the dark
it's something we used to do
it's something we forgot
I would like to mean more than her memory
it's something I need to do
it's something you need to forget
I would like to whisper to you when you are sleeping
things your mind doesn't notice during the day
like what the wind smelled like
and who was around the corner when you weren't
i'd like to throw you a bit of a mind party
where we can put balloons on our heads
and waltz around like circus toys
the good ones, not the bad ones,
the tomorrow ones
toys
I would remind you of the worst things a mind can do
like thinking everything is still the same when its not
or assuming a person to always be the same way
especially when it is bad and not allowing them enough
room to grow, as a person, in your mind. because people do grow, and whoever said that people never
change had probably just forgot to notice about all the
change around us and the lengthening of our hair.
there is lighting in the kitchen window
it is lighting up the mirror and the screen
and the place between i love yous in this house
when the room lights up it helps me
it helps me find your lips in the dark
i know their name
and maybe if I could call them they could remember
what I taste like, or some words that I said when I was seventeen.
i would like to find your lips in the dark
it's something i could do right now
it's something I forgot
i want to take you to this place
where you can know that anything is possible
and love is a reason
and love isn't a reason
and beauty is everything
I don't know if we will die at the same time
or if we should
but I know that I would like to
but before that, and before all your memories become more than what you have to live for,
I'd like to find your lips in the dark
it's something we used to do
it's something we forgot
|8.11.2010|
Daughter do not sleep with your head toward the fountain. The water will get deep. It will take you. Places you never even seen in pictures Away. People who never got to love you. Away.
Daughter. Listen. I've got something to say. Reasons no reason at all and time is all work and no play.
Daughter. do not sleep with your head toward the mountain. It will tower you. Become you. It will look down upon you till you stay. Stay too long in places you never thought were worth much. Stay. Forever in a crimson bedsheet where all the heads of roses were off on holiday. Stay.
Daughter. Listen. I've got something to say. Reasons no reason at all and time is all work and no play.
Daughter. do not sleep with your head towards the ocean, the river, or the mud, sleep with one eye half open and the other on how much water is in the tub. It will fill you. Consume you, teach you nothing new. It will teach you a new god to sing your praises to. Daughter don't sleep by the ocean it is dark and far too fair. The oil will start to fill you before you even know it's there.
Daughter listen then forget and find your own new things to say. New things come for old things but they whisper to their prey.
Daughter, do not sleep with your head towards the weather. It will follow you. Implore you, wrap you up in its hot moods. Keep going, and go further but never eat the weather's food. It will be there when you get there with your face upon it's back. It will stand there like a groom man with the smile you will lack.
Daughter listen to forget and look but never see. I want you to keep moving, I want you to never know me. Never, in the winter hear a laugh upon your sleeve. Never hear a whimper when a woman forgets to leave.
Daughter keep your head down the sun will rise too high and your dreams will all be evil, they will shake you in the night. So to catch the dreamer's weaver put your feet at weather's way. Catch the birdsong of the needle and sing a song along your way. Plant your feet where they are dreaming and keep them pointed towards the weather. It will forget you along the way.
the locals tell you not to sleep with your head toward the mountain. It could cause nightmares. It could make sense. Something so beautiful can be dangerous. Powerful. And our heads could get in the way.
|8.10.2010|
(to audience)
-The frustrations i have had with this play so far are very similar to the frustrations humans usually have in day to day life
-where do i begin
-where do i come from
-why am i here
-am i good enough
-am i strong enough
-am i long enough
-do i make any sense
-am i alone
-will someone help me
-will anyone help me
-will they like me
-how much will this cost
-am i good
-what am i doing
-who's idea was this anyways
-where am i
-am I me?
-what will they think?
-am I done yet?
-are we there yet?
-what's next?
-will anyone be there?
-who will be there?
-why?
-when?
-will I live?
-will I last?
-will I fail?
-(takes breath)
-(takes breath)
-(takes double breath)
-(takes double breath)
-{puts orange peel in mouth)
-(puts orange peel in mouth)
-{squeezes orange with hands into cup}
-{squeezes orange with hands into cup}
*cheers*
|8.9.10|
Where I come from it's more about where you're from and what you wear and what you don't eat than who you are and wear your values live. Where I come from there are a lot of children who get told that life is beautiful and a lot of children who never eat enough at the end of they day. Where I come from people kill each other using planes as weapons using shoes as weapons using weapons as weapons and where I come from people are killing each other with knives and forks and where I come from it is a beautiful world with canyons and deserts that flood and glaciers that have desert sand on top of them. Where I come from people will not like you if you do and people will not like you if you don't. Where I come from the sun always rises and the sun also rises and the sun is certain, rising in the east. Where I come from people move their bodies when they listen to music and they move their bodies when they are making love and they move their bodies when they are angry and at the end of it someone moves their bodies just to make sure they are getting the dance right on all the left feet and it is understood. Where I come from people spend most of their lives in a classroom, or a car, or a mind. Where I come from the goal is to not think at all or to really think and to come up with some answers or at least some questions for the young ones so we can tell them it will all be alright till they are about 12 when they start to realize that it might not. Where I come from people ask how you are but it doesn't mean anything and people ask are you ok but it doesn't mean anything and people ask do you know what time it is and it means everything and in new york city we are not supposed to look at people in the eye and in Oregon we are not supposed to pump our own gas, in Costa Rica we are supposed to ask for seconds and thirds even though poverty is waiting outside the door and in London we are not supposed to say we are from America and in the South we are supposed to smile at people and look them in the eye but not long enough for them to know our names or our sister's name or the name of what is happening. And where I come from the Devil is applauding us when we are breaking the rules and the minister is playing golf while we are on the telephone with nature and it's telling us it's time to cut the cord. Where I come from it's more about what you say and how you think and who you look like and not at all really where you're from because everybody's roots are standing up and coming out, out of thin air, down from hot air balloons and are waving out to dry. Where I come from everybody is too concerned with who can and can't get married instead of what a good marriage actually is and consists of and people are too obsessed with the easy and dirty way out of it and I will go down with this ship and I will go down golden and where I come from you can do a million things that don't make any sense as long as one of them does and it's not our job to make sense of it anyways, that i'm sure of but it is our job to make a little sense and if we collect the dots maybe somewhere, sometime, our daughter will connect them in some lonesome august cafe night.
|8.8.2010|
I read something very inspirational by one of the photographers I would like to work with on this project today and I could really relate with it in terms of this play he wrote
i am collecting the dots instead of connecting them
DerrickT on flickr.
performance: singing the national anthem while gargoling strawberry milk
|8.7.2010|
I was having dinner in a place I probably shouldn't be having dinner but I remember that the furniture there looked as if it had aged prematurely, or before it's time. I remember it was cozy, and had gourmet coffee, and mango sorbet and a very fashioned espresso machine. I remember we were on the lower east side and it was somewhere near 3AM in the morning. We were celebrating something, something I don't quite remember, and someone was toasting to some harem somewhere in the park across our way.
-I feel like we should be hearing Christmas music. Wouldn't that be nice?
-Yes, I think so.
So I went to the waitress and ask. She played something in Italian. Christmas could have been all around us but it was June and we were both away from family in two many ways. It was inside this little brown & golden nook that one of my favorite conversations ever took place.
-hows writing going
-ok
-are you writing a lot lately
-mostly, poems, short stuff
-that's what i do to
-i can't really seem to get out a story
-why
-well it's just not really my thing I guess
-why not, i mean, what's your fear with it
-i guess that it wouldn't make any sense
-well then let me ask you think, what sort of sense is there to be made
{i suppose. rocking chair camera}
|8.6.2010|
-these french fries taste too much like potatoes
-that's the point isn't it
-i don't think so. i like my french fries taste less like potatoes and more like french fries
-which type of body wash should we get
-aveno
-groans
-ok ok fine! I don't even need that anyways, lets get something else, something you like, you choose, why don't you choose the body wash
-no let's just get the aveno
-no, think about how expensive that is for how little you get? and moisturizing? Who needs a moisturizer when you live in hurricane country.
-let's just get the aveno. I want something that works
-no, really. your choice. totally up to you.
-aveno
-ok which one we could get any
-stress relief.
{sure. hairdresser}
|8.5.2010|
-what should i bring to dog training
-the rabies vac, treats, and your dog
-i don't know why i'm taking a shower with my glasses on anyways
-i just came back from the flower shop
-what do you do
-i work at a flower shop
-maybe marriage counseling
-perhaps
-doesn't that have to be consensual
-only if it's not on tv
-i don't know
-ok
-last time we went to a marriage retreat there was a cheer leading retreat going on at the same time. it didn't go over well
-ok
-welcome to olympia
-you depressed yet
{not so good}
|8.4.2010|
-do you have any information on the weather
-the weather
-yeah
-no, i don't
-hm, you don't have any information about the storm
-no
-oh ok thanks
-the men over there said it was coming from the north
-the hurricane
-the hurricane?
-well, they said it was mostly evaporated anyways
-mm hmm
-well would you know of a good weather channel or radio station or anything like that
-i sure don't
{sure. car with tree}
|8.3.2010|
-what do you think
-i liked it, except the part about the ocean being oily
-oh, why not
-well, you know that's happening right now
-right
-well honey i wouldn't actually say that
-why not
-well because that is happening
-that's why I say it, because it is apart of what's going on right now
-right, but i wouldn't actually say it
-hm. why not
-well
{sure.}
|8.2.2010|
Once while staying in a hotel in flagstaff arizona I dreamt my own death, which I had never done before and which I certainly do not plan on doing again. I was sitting on the right side of the plane in the window seat and an extremely blonde almost albino woman was sitting next to me and holding me and explaining exactly what was happening step by step as we went down and plummeted to the cracked earth. Was she a comfort? A sick angel? A voice recording? I didn't know, but I did know that it scared the living shit out of me. I decided it did not matter and pressed it to the back parts my brain as it was Biblical that you weren't supposed to know the time or the date of your own death. About two months later I was in San Diego about to board the plane to New York City. I was as ready as a busy bee, and I remember the small airport and the walk to the plane. I was the very last one on. I looked around and saw the flight attendant, she was the sick angel it was her but I swiftly disregarded this as, in my dream I was sitting next to her and there aren't a lot of instances where you end up sitting next to the flight attendant. The coast was clear, I was sitting next to a dark haired woman and she was next to the window even though we were seated on the right side. Deep breath. Deep breath. Almost. The woman sitting next to me stood up. I figured she was getting something out of the overhead. She brought the flight attendant over. "I can't sit here" she said. "May I move my seat." There was one more available. She moved. It became clear that this woman did not want to sit next to me for reasons which I will never know. I wasn't a harmful flight passenger, I was petite, white, non-partier, not-talky. In over 100 flights in my entire life no one had ever asked to move from sitting next to me. I was alone and next to me was a bare window seat. I understood. I knew that in case of a crash I would move to the window seat to allow for the translucent blonde airline attendant to sit next to me in the window seat and that would be the end upon us. I panicked. I shot up out of my seat, explained that my husband had just gotten in a serious car crash, and walked off the plane, after the doors had been closed. I explained that I did not care about my bags. I left the plane. I cried for hours. That plane did not crash. I waited another 6 months to move to New York City. Like I said, over 100 flights later, I am very scared to fly.
{fits. guy in blanket. may shift focus}
|8.1.2010|
We're editing ladies and gentlemen. We have the theme for September though, it's celebration.
|7.31.2010|
Thank you once again to Mike Levin, Sharon Creech, Otis Pig, Walter Grodzik, David Smith, Kimball Denetso. Last day for submissions for the Month of July.
Mind Party: Bring Your Own Brain
Issue 01:: July-Aug 2010::Photo.Synthesis
a living magazine of art and weirdness?
a living journal of katie king?
a living magazine: you're invited
who the hell knows. we're on the road again and mississippi is sending us thunderstorms.
|7.30.2010|
I have to apologize or boast or something, dear audience and readers I must confess that during the writing of these performances for the last month of July I have been battling a very terrible dragon, one with the ability to appear and disappear, one so ugly I don't speak about it or want to know its name. It is underneath all the lines I have written and it will drain and fuel my performance on the day but for now I'm delirious with desire to keep him quiet and under the blankets for awhile before he dies or the hot fire is let loose. Bear with me, I've got curtains on my heart time and again.
|7.30.2010|
he told me that it had to do with the fact that he thought I had never hit rock bottom, and the way he phrased it it seemed like there was this more than tiny gem to be gained at hitting rock bottom and I wondered how many more rocks there were to get to rock bottom and what exactly things looked like from the bottom up. Maybe you'd see the underside of a swan, or something more confusing like the entire ocean galaxy hitting on you in some kind of night sweat. It all seemed to be about how far the night was from the day and if we were good enough to wear our poor faces for the bad ones. I was immediately grateful and offended. Grateful for all the people who have expected me to be good and offended that this curly haired man across from me had not thought that I had hit rock bottom. Wasn't it obvious? Didn't it resound by just glancing off my face? Weren't my eyelashes bleeding, or didn't I have eyes at all? You know that feeling that when everything is going wrong you feel embarrassed to look at people because it might become contagious, or worse, they could understand. I was sideways standing up and I knew the right choice to plant my feet on the ground was very simple, it was only about taking one step but I refused to do it. I figured I deserved crumpets, and it was getting erotic just tilting there, not being able to breathe. What I learned that day is that one of the most refreshing things of this world is to sit with someone else who is at the bottom most rock and be there with them, to notice you are both sitting on the soil of an oily ocean together and thank God, in a sick and humanly selfish way that while you were sinking all those years ago, there was someone on the other side of the pond who had already sunk, but to them you looked like a flying saucer, or a disregarded bullet, or some unused piece of fiber. I didn't know, maybe when you hit that level all the ocean trees would grow a little taller, or maybe someone's bed in the northwest would quake, or maybe all of those bright eyed leprechauns would show up and wish you to the top.
{yes. group of trees}
Performance:
Smashing tomatoes
Gary Paul Nabhan writes "The surest way we have to lodge ourselves within this blessed earth is by knowing where our food comes from" and I like the notion that one day I could actually eat local or know a thing about anything that I digest in this body besides waiting for 11 cars to pass through the burger king drive through before I do, wasting gas and health and whatever energy I seemed to have in those days but I knew that it would be a long road and I wondered whether the surest way we have to lodge ourselves within anything in particular at all wasn't to know where our thoughts come from or where our fears come from or where our sense of worth comes from and if it was a book we were read to as a child or a movie somewhere or if we're just born with them. Maybe if we could understand what we thought was meaningful in the world then we could start living meaningful lies. Who knows, there were spots in all the theories, People are obsessed with roots, where they came from, past relationships, the heatwave of 97, and I thought it would be truly fascinating if we could concentrate on where our feet were standing and which direction we may grow towards in the future.
{languished. ok}
|7.29.2010|
"i didn't know you liked ketchup before I just mean, I thought you didn't like ketchup"
" I just never had time for ketchup before"
"anyways, the next thing I knew she was pleading with me and saying they would send her back to korea if I didn't lower the rent fifty dollars"
"and you said"
"may you always have time for ketchup"
"and you said"
"there's a korea for me somewhere baby"
" I need help. today is really important to me"
"you always need help, every day is important to you, every day is hard for you"
"is there anything you don't eat?"
"no, I eat everything"
"Wow"
"what"
"well it's really hard to find that these days, everyone is usually always a vego-something"
"not this girl"
"i've been taking the tips out of the tip jar at this restaurant for years. It's pretty easy, most people think I'm putting one in."
"Will you say something interesting"
"Why"
"So I can write it down"
"I don't do interesting, I pride myself on being a dull person"
"So, you're exactly the same after all these years, what about me? How have I changed?"
"Well, yeah, you do seem like you've given up a little bit. On these old ideas you used to have like you would find the perfect love stories, these big dreams, you seem a bit more planted in reality, and I don't think that's a good thing"
{korean guy. ya.}
|7.28.2010|
I have to take a minute here to sincerely thank everyone who has been a process of this project so far. Seriously. I can't believe you guys, you are my best friends, my mentors, the people I look up to, and where I go when it's dark. My heart is always so opened when I talk to you, to those who have helped, and to those who haven't helped, to those who have had something to say and to those that haven't said anything thank-you so much, you mean the ocean to me. To name a few Nancy Barnes, Rob Neill, Joel Morely, Emily Sue Neuman, Jonathan, Lee, Steven King (my husband for listening to me incessantly about this), Stella Martin, Caleb Manci, RaChelle Cheeks just to name a few. Thank you all so much. We're going to begin reworking many of the performances here, and throwing some stuff out. If you have been following along your opinion is always valued.
|7.27.2010|
14. have you seen my soul? or when she says bi-polar, she means it as a turn on
copywright katie king 2010
Katie King Stands on a monopoly board. with a bunch of money balancing on her head. throughout the play, perfromers come and take a single bill off her head, and
give this bill to an audience member. If at any point the stack of money falls off her head accidentally, next slide is projected/
(shouts at audience member) HAVE YOU SEEN MY SOUL?????????????
(stops shouting) I doubt it. Because I sold it. Not like that, but not like that, either.
I sold my soul for a monopoly piece when I was 18 years old.
on a sailboat in Canada.
but not just ANY monopoly piece
not the neat boot or the weird wheelbarrow or the cool thimble.
but a makeshift monopoly piece
a small.
metal.
grey.
couch.
and i was very tired.
and he was very bi-polar
and we were looking at the moon very hard with our cameras
yes, very hard
but not too hard because I always pretend to be looking at the moon during valuable, opportune moments when I'm too afraid to look people in the face
or that one time, when it was the only thing looking back.
(looks at moon)
this is all before, we bombed it, in general.
I forgot why someone was selling this grey cough gig. Do you sell monopoly pieces in monopoly? I'm not sure. I don't remember but I think someone may have been selling all that they could to get back in the game and I was already way out of the game long ago, and I could have cared less about the game but I just had to have this
place of comfort
this, tiny
room of
it will be ok.
this totally inviting
cute metal couch.
this couch that wasn't EVEN comfortable. wouldn't have even BEEN comfortable, especially not to scale.
but that just represented the idea OF comfort.
which was enough, unfortunately.
'what will you give me for it'
she said
she, being my best friend. who is also a real bitch.
'um'
i said, knowing she was bitter about me hoarding atlantic avenue so many hours ago
among other things. like my beauty or the fact that mine was the only passport that conveniently did not get stolen that trip.
she was serious. and i had nothing.
'i'll sell you my soul for it'
(believe me, she needed one)
pause
'i'll take it'. she said
pause. takes money off head and starts arranging a bank, and the pieces on the board. ask audience "anyone want to play?"
and it felt good. i was back in the game.
and there was no signature
so i figured it never really happened
(shouts) WOULDN'T THAT BE AMAZING IF NO BAD MEMORY EVER REALLY HAPPENED IF IT WASN'T SIGNED FOR
sign is held up. it it says "is this moment good or bad check one?" Katie King checks one and decides to sign it or not)
And yes I got it back but not till much much later. And yes, I even seriously considered calling myself "monopoly" once, ironically. I thought it meant one-who-does-many which is not really true or one-who-does-much which is REALLY true but now I know it means one-who-sells-much which is really NOT true. Just check out my etsy store.
and no, i'm not proud of it. i'm not proud of any of the horrible things I have done in the name of comfort. this milky, greedy,
16- hotels -on -broadway- &- parkplace- never satisfied, am I full yet?- 3 engagements, 4 foreign countries, 5 universities, 70 hours a week GREED that seeps through my Ukrainian-Scottish veins.
that rooftop. that prom night. this audition.
but hey, while we're at it does anyone have a pillow around here? a large, white comforter? any milano cookies? how about a one night stand? good, those never fooled me either. How about forced repeated stagnant validation?
audience members are encouraged to play monopoly throughout the rest of the show, on stage.
|7.26.2010|
Life As A Wife at a Flagstaff Party.
Performer sits on stage and looks from side to side.
|7.25.2010|
The need to be set free-Song
|7.24.2010|
For the entire length of my 12th year we lived with a naked manican in the middle of our living room. I'm not sure how this affected me but it obviously did because I am here speaking about it. My mother named her Mirna, and they were very close, and mirna was always naked. I think part of the idea was that my mother was beginning to focus on drawing and she needed a naked figure to go off of. If I remember correctly, there is a home video in which I walk into the living room with the cam corder and both my mother and father are drawing naked women on easels. Who knows, really. The interesting part of this story is that Mirna could talk, really, I constantly remember going to her for advice, and also trying to dress her in the evenings. Either way, one or another, Mirna would end up totally nude by morning. After the years Mirna shifted about the house, an arm above the cabinents, a leg in the basement, a hand set on a shelf by the dining room table, and the torso, somewhere, somehow looking out for us. Once for a student film I was doing, I remember carrying mirna's entire arm across town with my friend via bus. We were 15 and embaressed about the arm so we kept it wrapped in a brown blanket as its disguise. While leaving it on the empty seats of the bus, we hit a bumb and the arm tumbled out onto the floor for all to see, just lying there with a bit of a "thunk". It's times like that that I am entirely expressionless, I don't even look around me to see what other people are thinking, I just slowly bend down, pick up Mirna's manacin unattached arm and proceed to wrap it back up in the brown blanket. Anyways, I hope someone laughed, or took a picture, or wrote a little monologue about this moment, and Mirna. Fake eyelashes and all.
|7.23.2010|
Rosy Retrospection-Song
|7.22.2010|
January Comedy-Song.
The three of us girls sat in the middle of a northern arizona monsoon drinking Chardonnay or some sort of white wine and my mother decided to bring on a toast. "Let's toast to happiness, and good things" she said. And we sighed, and we clinked, and my sister said "We're toasting to something that will never happen" and we all knew it, but we did it anyways for hope and for the idea of it all. Between us there were 4 and 1/2 divorces and more than enough loss to go around. My sister told me about how my neice had knocked over the fish tank and all the fish sat there dying on the floor. She explained how she went immediately to Wal Mart to replace the fish so that my niece would not have to "deal with deal so early" which sounded nice, especially the first part and I wondered how many fish we could replace for the rest of our lives but more so the ones we couldn't and what an acceptable way to deal with death was and who would be there for us when we had to deal with it. All the men had gone and the women were left it was like some sort of war zone except no one was fighting any war, at least not a worthy one and mostly it was causes from the inside out but either way we only knew it was a matter of time before there would be two of us and maybe more because of babies and the shifting and the ebbing and flowing would take place but the loss of that toast will be with me, the meeting of glass on glass on hope on dream and where were all the other men? What were they toasting and with who? Were they drinking wine or clouds? No one knew, and I had been so withdrawn that I was having trouble connecting with people in general and I was mostly silent about everything and sometimes I would be regretful of this. I was once the baby, shouldn't I be bringing paper fireflies into everyone's life? Shouldn't we be enjoying all our time together? Shouldn't I sing a tune or hum a diddy and everyone would smile and we'd have a reason to take all these pictures? I felt the weight of happiness upon my shoulders but why was it so hard to connect? Why were there curtains in the dark that stayed till morning? When would we slap ourselves in the eyes and start to be new people, or at least happy ones. And I felt everyone breaking, and I saw everyone growing smaller but no one was holding a mirror to my face. No one was humming that sad song in the loss of that one toast, we were all hoping that it would turn out, in one way or another, for at least one of us, somewhere along the line.
...
lead to me to the side
of still waters
lead me as a bride
without a father
take me for one night
to somewhere far away
i need to know we are something separate
from all the people that make life get in the way
i need a secret now
i need us far away
i need us with no eyes
i need a love to save
remember me that way
without a thing to say
without a face to save
remember me that way
let us on our own path to wonder
let us both grow old in our own special way
let a new knowledge form our choices
let us both find our separate voices
please don't let other thoughts drive you away
remember me this way
with both hands on today
just don't forget i'm here
or that we loved that way
remember me that way
i need a secret now
i need us far away
i need us with no eyes
i need a love to save
i need a sign that shows how strong love can get
i need a signal that we live our own lives
i need to know we can love in our own way
remember me that way
the secret that we shared
how high we both got swept away
how we had no cares
but seeing each other every day
there was no one else there
don't loose me along the way
let us have something special
and let it live.
give us a place filled with holy water
with just our names and a couple of lazy days
remember me in your own way
not what other people say
when yous see me be swept away
remember me that way.
this is my one wish.
|7.21.2010|
I am here and you are there and maybe you are wishing you are here and maybe I am wishing I was there but most probably not. I am dealing with how you will deal with me and how I will be heard and how much you will listen and I'm feeling like that should be sort of backwards, that that should maybe be upside down because I am feeling like I should be listening and you should be speaking so just for a second will you all get up on stage and allow me to sit down? (Performer sits in the audience) Thanks. I feel like we should be talking about something important. Today I cried for longer than I'd like to admit over the piano I had when I was a child and how I had just found out that my mother threw it away. I had this piano for over 22 years and it was dark brown and my mother always referred to it as an antique which I'm not quite sure it was but I wouldn't really put it past me because the thing was quite old. My sister was the one who started playing, and I remember as a young child I would sit under the piano and pressed the pedals whenever she needed me to and I would know that it was the right time because she would nod her head. I was entirely enthralled and fascinated by this beautiful machine and I spent the next nine years learning how to play. I played that piano every single Christmas and when my brother and sister left to live with their dad I spent and entire day playing "I'll be home for Christmas" over and over again and sobbing over the keys. I fell asleep on the piano several times, but that's not saying much because I've fallen asleep on just about everything. When I played the notes I did not think of them as just notes, I thought of them as individual humans with different characteristics. F surely did not like G but A and C were best buds from a long time ago. G was moody, but had a lot of friends and B would never listen to anybody. These notes became my friend as a child, I would sit for hours on the piano bench and just play, with great motion, with great passion, and I would usually play this song the most. Does anyone else have a story about a piano?
|7.20.2010|
Type: Reading
Length:
Credits: Katie King
Photo:
Action: Katie sits on the stage facing a houseplant, reading.
it's flooding in the desert
and oiling in the ocean
but only after fires
only after noon
blow me, steady, faithful
we're all on hot fire
blow me till the water faucets fuse
and I will fill your guns with the sandman
who will put all their liars on their course,
straight & steady
on a falling screaming horse
seven layered canyon
under seven layered sunset
like the seven deadly sins that I have made
i would let them spill their colors
i would run them into ocean
but i wouldn't be quite there to see the day
are all the good ones medicated or un?
i can't remember but I'm sure they all have secrets
on how to live life better, and how to run smoother on dreary days.
(pause)
They said it could be some sort of condition, and they were trying to diagnose me with it day and night. Apparently this primal urge to move, the idyllic notion of nomadic, the cling to going and then going faster was something that was looked down upon in the psychological world. He wanted to know a lot of things, like what I was running from, and always, always how Steve was doing in the navy. Who gave a fuck how Steve was doing in the navy, really. Not every week, not twice, and definitely not over the phone while I was trying to keep my brain from being planted. I waited for the day they would medicate me, but it never came. He had solutions that never happened but some of them had to do with the fact that my greatest fear may be staying in one place or actually sticking with one thing. The way he phrased this scared me but I was fairly certain it was untrue. I was married, after all. I was also still into theater which had been consistent throughout my entire life. He was old and wore suspenders, and one time when he was off using the bathroom I photographed his office with my cellphone. It was filled with oriental rugs, most of which were red. And for an entire year he had the same book open on a gold metal stand, and the book was open to a page about red oriental rugs, I really didn't get it. I didn't get the whole process. He said the anxiety would set in once I moved to a place and then once things started to get steady I would run somewhere else because the real feeling of steady was in the movement of it all. If he only knew. I never understood what it meant to be planted. Didn't your feet get sweaty? I envied this sedentary houseplant, the owner of new york city, the man who forgot to call on thanksgiving because he was delivering turkeys to his colleges at Colombia. It took me over thirty trips back and forth from Columbus Circle to realize it was an ode to Christopher Columbus but that's another matter. Anyways, I thought they were all nuts and no one was thinking I was nuts besides my husband which was making us both wonder. I guess the crazy part was realizing that no one really cared if the whole world was nuts, and maybe it was better that way. I'd like to take my shoes off and put them on a platter and cut off my feet to give to you. Little zapatos. Or that's what they wanted. I wasn't even listening, just off craving the chase but it would consistently worry me that they considered it to be a condition. Of course, whenever someone found something that made them happy in life it had to become a sort of condition. The condition of happiness. A living plant in a pot, needing a transplant. There are several reasons why I have not been able to write this play. I will list them now
1. I feel like I cannot be honest about my life
2. I am depressed
3. I feel like I cannot speak freely
4. I feel like I do not know the outcome of some very important issues at hand and I feel like knowing them would influence the tone of this play.
She came and said "Gamma" (who died several years ago) "told me she would want you to do this" she said "it helps you write" and she placed a metal bowl of warm water under my feet. It really just made me have to pee but I liked the idea that Gamma could be talking to her anyways. She had spent the morning telling me how she was sure that my husband was reincarnated from a pilot in the old fashioned planes. A christian reincarnationist. A cavity filling in the dark.
but if nothing else, sandmen in all the guns, please. bulletproof jackets for all, for everyone. And maybe they were right, maybe thinking before you speak or at least before you act anyways is the best way not to regret your life or the other people living it.
and northern arizona in the rain smells like
why do we try to take people away from the things that make them the happiest? I think there is a happy limit and I could have crossed it long ago. There was a day I had it all figured out, I'm sure. And I hope I talked then, I hope I spoke as far as I could see then. I hope I don't regret that I have lost my voice now.
|7.19.2010|
Hello. Is anyone out there? I'm shutting down, I'm loosing it with this play, I've lost all sense of eyeballs in 10 visions long ago and I'm throwing out and starting with some new ones. Help is a word that I think often. Write is a more that I think more often. Just do it is a phrase that haunts me slowly and but I have nothing worth to teach is something that sometimes pats me on the back in the middle of a hiccup or reluctant fight.
anyways. here's today's entry
This very much reminded me of a cactus I bought while living in Costa Rica, it had an inside story but the main gig was that it reminded me to be wildly independent. Radiantly silly. More than just a good match.
You always says I seem stronger when I get back from new york. The city is the only place my mind is put on zone instead of drumroll, it diffuses the chaotic pleasures of my brain inside a cage. Thank you for asking how it went, it went fast, and good. I got in and out of trouble, and was covered in metal for a little while. It is in my future and beats underneath my eyelashes.
You is still sick. We are making songs up to get over it. He is sleeping in the sun of the season that I forgot all about; spring. I am wrapping up this quarter and I have two more to go till graduation, but I feel stonier and stupider than when I even first arrived. I'm thinking of words that end in "k i n g"....can you help me?
I have grown far too much a fan of comfort and lazy mornings. I have been graced upon the threshold of happy oolong days, dreaming of seventeen degree ice bars and what life would taste like without so much pepper greed.
have a good one, it's a ripe one for sanity and sparkle.
|7.18.2010|
What do you do when you're sitting in the backseat of a car on a southwestern July day and you're realizing that your family is racist and not only are they racist but they are teaching their children to be racist? What do you do when everyone has a gun?
Most of my experiences with racism had to do with a parking space, and most of them had to do with my family. Saying things like "but they are human beings just like us" or "your thinking is backwards" doesn't help.
Is it correct to assume that maybe there is nothing to do when you're sitting in the backseat of a car on a southwestern July day and you realize that your family is quite racist. Maybe the best thing to do is just say "i don't believe that and move on"
but I was never good at simple things, or moving on from anything at all.
|7.17.2010|
either I'm just already dreaming, or I saw my husband last night for the first time in five weeks walking a dog that looked just like ours in the east village. Either I'm seriously sleep deprived or I was kissed madly outside the kraine theater with stars underneath my eyes and was relieved of missing him and home and sunshine for a few morning minutes before he left south for ship's short way again. Either it's too hot in here or I'm in love with a wandering lost soul like myself just learning to keep our eyes closed enough to hear our soul's sewn zip together before we rickashay unborn residue of a once compromising empire.
We hear it strong, the sense we haven't made but we haven't learned it's tune because it doesn't have a north-spot....yet. touch is good.
and real.
and real good. but sanity is wiser loving the length of sunrise to surrender.
Sometimes marriage is hard. Real hard. Like trying to finish college-still stuck in meaningless military-5 states away-faded jean-dusty apron-distance blindness leads to denseness-5 jobs between us both--rotten-roaming,-love at room temperature-and no one's eating right-and things are getting lost like the important one's-hard.
but sometimes, your husband drives fourteen hours through a windstorm to see you for one lonely night before handing you over after midnight to the red brim choices you have mustered up in some hot spaghetti madness.
just to kiss you, see it happen, keep you warm on feels like 30 windchill, creeps up your sleeves & leggings, new york-sometimes-seldom lonely freak spring chill.
& everything is right in Kansas city.
because we are two suckers in love.
sucking really hard at modern marriage
but thief or bandit, still in love.
|7.16.2010|
new york shows me nothing more than it needs to
. a mother reading her daughter curious George near coney island
. two boys petting an Australian Shepard in Brooklyn
. a 45 minute saxophone concert on the A train
. the most productive wait for the G train ever
. a violinist playing on 42nd street....facing the wall...
. the writing circle of the neo futurists and all that it gives
. peanut butter chocolate mousse and the aftermath
. knowing the correct choice
. and maybe choosing it
. and maybe just knowing it
. and maybe chewing on it's rind while looking out over a bridge, down through people's hopes and values, runny noses and milky ministrations, counting the length of the stares you get on the subway & keeping all the winks deep in your pocket for when the purposeless sets in and you feel like you're loosing all your golden ones
. but there's so much gold outside still
. and you don't know what makes you feel safe anymore. or you know what makes you feel safe anymore but that it's just a delusion of safety.
of grandeur
of more than you bargained for
..
friendship is the truest blue i've ever heard of
|7.15.2010|
Greed {song}
|7.14.2010|
The clouds smelled like hot chocolate that morning and we were driving through hickory north carolina. We were driving on I 40 moved westbound headed to Tennessee and from there we were going to Gatlinburg to have ourselves a great time. I became certain long ago that there are some things that you should never understand and this story may be one of them. We were dreaming of New Orleans and everything that could go wrong but the blue ridge mountains were not far behind the boarders of our brains. I was trying to maintain the correct growing temperature for something that could last and not spoil but it was taking everything I ever had. I found this houseplant at a garage sale on elbow road and insisted on taking it with us in the car. We were road tripping as any young and beginning things should do. It sat between us as we drove across the united states, selling versions of ourselves in doll form at the other rest stations that we weren't sleeping at. We had just past the world's worst chinese buffet where the fried bananas and red jello left a depressed taste in your mouth. I will remember the way you used the steering wheel as a drum set to go along with all your 20's big band music, and the dozens of pairs of sunglasses we lost along the way, I will remember the one note that you can sing that makes you cry and I will always wonder why people can never see clearly enough to make any good choices, there are too many plants in front of our faces, too many things in the way of a clear conversation without a clever mood or grudge. Anyways, I was determined to keep this plant and keep it growing. You see I had never kept a plant alive my entire life, but he was exquisite and I named him Underwater, because that's where it looked like he belonged.
We were planning the perfect way to make new friends. Party tricks that included us instantly creating an informal nick name as a way to remember the name of someone we had just met. Someone named Rick would be the Ricktor. Sometime named Jeff would be Jeffstie the Bestie. The conversation would then transition into a bit of German poetry we had learned along the way, and pass a phrase on to them as a bit of advice. “das wetter ist zehr kald mit mein computer”. “The weather is cold with my comptuer”. Eventually we would segue into Underwater, the strange houseplant that began living between us, and ask if they had any tips for transplanting our houseplant, creating the right living conditions, or the correct dosage of water, or perhaps just the name of the forrest from where it came. Earlier that week I had been reading a Time Magazine special in the Duane Reed on 35th street in the city and it was telling me where the oldest tree was grown. I remember thinking that I should be the 13.00 issue or at least right that information down because I have grown quite fond of forests, but I forgot and may decide to research it in the future. People would tell us all sorts of things, everybody had a name for this plant. Everyone would dote upon it, 'oh, would you look at that gorgeous houseplant” they would say, “does it have a name”. I don't think anybody understood that we were just trying to keep it alive.
Underwater became our favorite party trick, people would want to pose with it, and we would let them. The thing about us is that we were always asking too many questions, always relying on the ears of the world because we were young and figured that the future would always be better if we wanted it to be. The plant became a permanent fixture in our lives. Some said it was oversized, some said it was fun, or good looking, but we were just taking care of it for a little while, stopping to water it with whatever we could in the moment. I have to admit, some of it wasn't very good water. Some of it wasn't even clear, but we were getting noticed and I was realizing, slowly, that I was keeping my very first houseplant alive. People told us strange things and we took their advice. “That thing doesn't have any roots, you'll have to plant it somewhere” or “There's no reason to keep a houseplant with you like that all the time, you've got to have a good reason to keep it”. We went to work, doing our homework on where to plant something like this or why someone would do such a thing. I think we had forgotten that we were just trying to keep the thing alive.
We began not being able to see each other as time passed. There was always a plant between us. The plant was getting large because it was reaching out both windows when we drove. People were offering us all sorts of fertilizers, I guess they wanted some sort of miracle growth and we took everything that they offered us. But it was getting expensive. We never had the right sort of pot, or moist enough soil. One thing we learned about people along the way is that they always had something to say, something to teach, something to fear, and something to have an opinion about. Not me, not us, we were just driving, taking one trip to another and carrying this growth across the country. It never really grew in any sort of direction, up or down, or sideways, it just grew. We were grateful to people for their information, everyone seemed so knowledgeable, so expert at growing something that it was easy to just sit back and relax. I guess you could say we became greedy, it was clear that with enough questions we didn't have to think for ourselves because other people could do that for us.
“You're giving it too much sun” they would say or “Let me take care of it for awhile, I've seen plants like these before and I respond very well to them”. We weren't sure what we were doing, but there we were so many things that were said to be right. I had forgotten that I thought it belonged underwatter at all. When staying at hotels across the country we would let it have the bed, we would stand on either side and watch it, both proud of something that we hoped to be enough for the world. Then the press started getting involved. They wanted us to have something to say about it, but we couldn't think of a thing. We quickly realized that the easiest way to upset people was not having anything to say about very much at all, the newspapers were saying that Underwater had gotten to be overgrown. We were worried, because we were feeding it the very best ingredients at that point. It was summer in mississipi and it was beginning to become an embarrassment as it didn't fit inside our homes. It was causing fights and arguments between us and we were shouting through the branches because we couldn't hear each other what with all these leaves. But I was proud, I was keeping something growing, whatever it was.
|7.13.2010|
Text: The first experience I had with the effects of decadence was with my very first business. Golf N Things. This business consisted of a small table with an umbrella in it, a cash registrar, price stickers, and a six year old me set up selling lost golf balls I had found on off-hours at the golf-course I lived across the street for for 11 years. I had a running collection of over 600 balls, from pink to yellow to designer disney to pink ladies to the regular Titlist. Each one of them I sold I personally washed and dried. All that washing and drying required a great deal of paper towel use-age, and I was trying to save the trees. I was convinced I was the “Spring Queen” and would spend my free time singing love songs to the ponderosa pines in northern arizona and using thumbnails to pin “Do not cut this tree down” signs on some of my favorites. I would re-use my paper towels, but this time I had scored an entire trash bag full of golf balls since the lake across the way had been drained. You'd better bet your bottom dollar my dad, brother and I were out fishing for these golfballs like they were little pieces of gold. The next morning I was quickly tiring of the drying part of the process and decided to stick a batch in the microwave, of course, the place where everything comes out dry. (Thinking back I'm confused as to why I did not just choose the dryer). After I set the timer for 5:00 I went to plop myself in front of Duck Tales and other Disney movies for the next three hours. Somewhere within this time frame I heard a loud “pop” and ignored it. Getting up was way too much work, even back then. I then remember my mother and father coming home and saying “Katie, do you know why the microwave exploded”. Uh-oh. “Are the golfballs dry?” I yelled “Yes”, my father said “They're also cut in half”. Boy was I glad it wasn't the pink and yellow batch! I remember us having to buy a completely new microwave. As I think about this story I wonder why I just didn't have the patience to let them drip dry, but that's another story.
Action: Performer flips channels with remote.
|7.12.2010|
I love you
what does that mean
It means that I love me when I'm with you or that I love the idea of you
or how you look with me in pictures. It means that, at the beginning or end of all this I can explain all the confusion away with saying that you fit into my idea of a perfect life.
|7.11.2010|
I remember him best lying on the kitchen floor in our spare apartment. He was having what I still consider to be a nervous breakdown complete with banging his head against the cabinets. I brought pillows. I listened. I watched him as he cupped his hand up close to his ear and said “do you hear him?” “who?” I asked. “God” he said, streaming tears. “What is He saying?” I asked. “He's crying.”
|7.10.2010|
-what if I told you that I was quite unhappier than you had originally perceived me to be and that if you were to become a bigger part of my life I could be a better person? -the entire thing would be like a giant birthday party...
-i'd tell you that you should be seen for codependency.
-right.
{pause}
-i'd think about it.
-thanks.
|7.9.2010|
man and woman stand drinking coke out of coke bottles with straws. they wear star glasses and try to roll coins across a table.
-"last night I actually almost cried because I realized I would never be a star captain"
-"I hope I'm the only person to cherish that"
-"you should say so"
-"so"
-"i've been doodling about nationalism"
-"I've never understood that concept one bit, why fight for the boarder between something when we're speaking about imaginary lines"
-I know, you want to buy the world a coke
-that's not it, I just want one world.
-not everybody does
-I find that sad
-i find it human
-you would understand if you thought of it in terms of people
-how so
-you want to be the only woman I have ever loved
-this is correct, but you have boarders, real, actual, skin-ends-here boarders. I could eat you. Why fight for it? Why fight for something so temporary.
-i'm separate from the one coke-less world
-well, that's what i'm saying. people take nationalism too seriously. it's like- I understand what you're saying. I understand the need to have something great to fight for, even if it really isn't that great.
-someone told me once to believe in anything, even if it's a loaf of bread
-ugh sounds starchy
{pause}
-man, do I love new york city.
|7.8.2010|
some inspiration. studio@collierschorr.com
|7.8.2010|
a woman stands center stage. there is a houseplant on her left.
a woman stands center stage. there is a houseplant on her left, and a river to her right. she is getting older and knows there is an end in sight but the end's not soaring over her, it's not hovering across her eyeball, no not yet. She realizes that it is a moot point to say she is growing older, but sometimes she has to say something to herself about this matter to herself to remind her that there is an end in sight, maybe in someone else's eyball, and hopefully not in a plane or even a mesa of fear.
a woman stands center stage and there is a houseplant on her left. everything wild inside of her asking to be put back together and cooled by the running of the liquid of the clearness of the water. it hasn't happened yet, but roots will grow and one day she may forget to realize how important even the small choices are. or she may grow before she doesn't.
a woman stands center stage and there is a river on her right. everything wild inside of her asking to be let go and separate by the running of the liquid of the clearness of the water. It's happened before, and it's bound to break her feet apart so they have no sticks for soil, no desire for burning solid ground. Just the gesture of restlessness loosing ground against all it's might. a mighty river, a good and worthy life, but no one's writing it for children eyes to see.
a woman stands center stage and there's a houseplant on the left, river on the right. No matter which one you choose, little girl, you'll be running that river all your life. cuz there's a -
douses herself in water-er.
|7.7.2010|
Photo
Man and woman sit across from each other on dining room table. Houseplant is between them so that they are very close to it and still cannot see each other's faces.
-Will you tell me how I'm doing
-What do you mean
-I want to know what I've turned into, from your perspective
-A reaching thing, seeing some sun, somewhere, but not enough water anywhere to keep the soil down
-I see you as a dark thing in a cave
-Are you wanting me to place this against what I thought that you would become
-of course; i'm not afraid of being disappointed
-well I never thought you'd become a liar
- if I was only still afraid in disappointment. If I could only teach myself somehow to run from things that disappoint me
-oh
-how am I doing
-shouldn't you know that
-it's the summer
-i see you as something not reaching
-not reaching yet?
-no. just not even reaching.
-but there's still sun somewhere, right? There's a light on somewhere.
-there are so many lights out there it's dizzy
-i hear that a lot, but none of them are
-reaching. no, they don't do that. they're just
-there
|7.6.2010|
Cabbage by Steven King
This morning I woke up in a pretty serious headache and an aching throughout my entire body which reminded me sharply of the amount of booze I had to drink last night. Now, when most people wake up after a night like this there's usually things that are a little disorientating; some people wake up with strange people in their beds, some with strange vomiting, etc, but I woke up with this (presents plant). I have no idea what it is, but I know that it's a plant, and it's alive, and it was in my bed with me last night. I'm not a plant person; i'm not an animal person. I don't like to have things in my apartment. Bed, food, stove, bed, and now, a plant. I probably used a good 30 minutes of my morning looking at this plant and trying to figure out what type of plant it was. Me, the person who doesn't have anything hates animals, and plants and things looking at this plant wondering what the hell it is. I got so into it that I actually took it down to the florist who lived around the corner. He said it was a cabbage.
|7.5.2010|
Stars by VR Mooshe
|7.4.2010|
Performer stands holding a houseplant and a grocery bag.
I was on the subway and a man was carrying a plant and standing next to his wife. And I couldn't stop starring at it; something green growing underground, inside a metal train. Maybe they sensed it too, but suddenly three couples started making our all around me, and it made me wanna look which made me want to look away which made me want something very green. It was my 6th trip to New York City and I was hopping across the city like grass hopper. It was the way I grew. Something green. I worked at cafe LaLo and read backstage magazine on my break. I was beginning, and beginning is the name of progress.
|7.3.2010|
one plant wears sunglasses and listens to rock. another potted plant wears pearls and listens to classical. Performer conducts them. Nothing happens.
|7.2.2010|
thoughts that went through my head as I traveled south on a chinabus from well, chinatown:
This is all typed out onstage
1.) omg I forgot about trees...
2.) trees...eh...who needs 'em?
3.) Lettuce
4.) everywhere I've been.
[7.1.2010]
|MIND PARTY: JULY ISSUE: VOLUME PHOTOSYNTHESIS|
Photo: Image Here
Text: Hi, I probably know you. What I mean by that is that we've probably already met. I know, I look like, mm hmmm. I've probably waited on your table, sat next to on a plane, bus or subway. Maybe I've slept next to you in a hostel bed, or auditioned after you number was called. That was probably me. I'm a colorado springs-austin-flagstaff-seattle-girdwood-lugano-heredia-london-olympia-gimmelwald-tuscon-san diego-virginia beach-new york city transplant. I've made more mistakes and more meaning than most people make in a lifetime but there is still something very big I want from all of you. It's the fact that-Hold on. Wait. I'm listening to myself. A lot of things. Like "one of the most important things in life is to realize when we are happy; to notice it." or "everyone needs a reason to change; something to blame their goodness on; so why can't it be pictures of houseplants?" I don't know. Do you remember the book, The Giving Tree? .
and how it turned into a stump and gave until it had nothing else to give. I don't know if I've been there yet but I do know that growth isn't linear, not at all. That tree grew upside down, didn't it? How would we walk on this earth if we knew how to feed ourselves. How would we face the day if we stopped being hungry? I'm at the point where there aren't any easy answers and I'm running out of people to ask questions to. I'm under 25 and I'm lying about my age, but I remember that quote-the quote about how we don't grow chronologically, not at all, the one about how we have sprouts coming out of our elbows and sometimes our knees don't ever grow. That's what I daydream about to make myself fall asleep these days; where I'm planted and where I need to be cut away; where my roots went and does whole milk or good times save them? Whichever it is, I'm still reaching, there's a sun for this head to look towards somewhere and I'm thinking it may be up instead of down. {stops. looks at plant, addresses audience}. They tell you not to go to psychologist offices where the plants are dying. They should tell you not to go to plays where the {exit}
Action: Plants tree upside-down on stage while wearing where's waldo mask.
|next slide|
|7.1.2010|
Plants
.
Fake plants. Grandmother's pressed flowers. Plants on the subways. Collaborative ideas with plants. Planting my first plant. Grandma's Garden. Being a transplant. Green buildings. Cactus in Costa Rica. Psychologist Office. Roses in my sisters room. Eating plants. Toxic Plants. Plant Memories. Drugs. Land. Earth. Contact.
Yes, Like I said, plants.
|6.23.2010|
This is what I know now:
1. I have a rough title: Mind Party ( a play about finding meaning without loosing heart)
2. a rough collection of material
3. and a rough road ahead of me.
4. that the set needs to be extremely minimal and portable
5. that it (at the same time) will be heavy in visual art, audience relationship & the fun factor. It will include original performance poetry, original song, and original monologues.
6. that I want this to be a breathing piece of theater. Meaning, that I never want the script to close its eyes & be set in stone. Because stone is for the stone ages.
7. the deadline to perform this puppy is Sep, 2010. It will be 60 minutes long.
8. that it will be nonviolent.
9. that I am still in the brainstorming phase. I have a few ideas running around my head, some which involve a collaborative writing platform, some that involve a collaborative performing platform, and some that don't. I've toyed with *our relationship to meaning *our relationship to transportation and *our relationship to comfort but I think I may want to focus on human's viscosity in terms of how they relate to movement and stress and what shape it causes them to take. What I'm currently struggling most with is the form & focus.
10. I have also toyed around with having certain people write 3-5 (no longer than 10 minutes) of what they believe their essence to be. This "essence" would need to be able to be performed by one person on a stage. Part of my performance would be using these essences as material for some of the show. It would benefit writers by giving them an opportunity to have their work presented on stage, and give me an opportunity to work with new works that require me to think outside of my own box.
|06.13.2010|
"Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear stress or tensile stress. In everyday terms (and for fluids only), viscosity is "thickness". Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while honey is "thick", having a higher viscosity. Viscosity describes a fluid's internal resistance to flow and may be thought of as a measure of fluid friction. For example, high-viscosity magma will create a tall, steep stratovolcano, because it cannot flow far before it cools, while low-viscosity lava will create a wide, shallow-sloped shield volcano. Put simply, the less viscous the fluid is, the greater its ease of movement (fluidity).[1] All real fluids (except superfluids) have some resistance to stress, but a fluid which has no resistance to shear stress is known as an ideal fluid or inviscid fluid. The study of viscosity is known as rheology."
That is all
Citation: wikipedia
|06.08.2010|
Hello. We are forming a wonderful support group and I couldn't be more thankful for everyone's hand in this. We are slowly etching away at this thing and I would be lying if I said that it was driving me anything but crazy. Every single person, whether educated in the traditional, or experimental has asked the same question "why". Except for two very special people. One who says "why not" and one who says "i love you" and "ok". From a psychological standpoint this is very interesting to me. We do not ask athletes why they play sports, they just do. I am a bit offended, honestly, when people ask me what my artistic statement is, or why I am doing what I am doing. I am offended because I am then placed in a position where I have the opportunity to bullshit someone. I just do it, it breathes out of me and I create things and I cannot explain why other than it is my survival. And I don't say that to be dramatic, I say that because it is true. From an intellectual and academic point of view, I well understand the point of theory, but from a philosophical and psychological point of view I do not. I want to make it clear from the beginning that for me, meaning is secondary to action. I speak before I think, for good or for bad and that is who I am & I cannot change that. I'm coming up for answers for the world, because "why" is the question they are asking but all I have to say is that the kindest answer I can give to everyone is "shhh". I wish they wouldn't, I wish they wouldn't ask at all because it literally hurts, and I am scared I may start answering, and I am so thankful to the two men in my life that know me well enough not to ask. And to the rest of the world, I have to figure out how to communicate with you and that is all part of the process. And I love it. Keep it coming.
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The best example I have to give those of you who are confused by what I am saying is this: During a very rough time in my life I called up everyone who was close to me and asked them "What do you live for?" They had a myriad of answers "romance, speed, obligation...", except for one person who was one of the several creative geniuses I was blessed enough to know in my life. When I called him up and asked him that question he laughed and said nothing, then he played me a brilliant improvised song on the ukulele, then he said "that's what I live for". And I loved that. And that's what I want this play to be about, if that makes any sense, and even if that doesn't make any sense.
|06.04.2010|
Hello everyone. I'm in the process of creating a new show, my very own first piece of traveling theatrical work. Because when I ask myself what I have learned after traveling the world during my time in college, I want to have an answer. I want that answer to be "i created a one-woman-show". It will be a living archive of my travels as well as a human artistic statement and college thesis. It will also be fun, did I mention that? Our opening performance will be in September, 2010. TBA. We are looking for performers, artists, writers, and collaborators. We are also looking for tech geniuses. If interested please write to us at zapatita@gmail.com. Our process will be posted here.
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