I Could Have Maybe Possibly Seen Paul McCartney Yesterday, In Theory, Like Hypothetically

I was having dinner with Lindsay at a Mexican restaurant, and she started telling me about the show that her roommate was in, which we were going to see afterwards.

"It's a performance piece--it's called 18/6, like eighteen-slash-six. There are projections, and people painting circles onto a canvas, and other stuff. It was done in 1959, and they're doing it again because of some anniversary thing with it. The playwright was really, really specific on how he wanted everything to be done, like he wrote out the exact movements, and dimensions of the set, and timing and audience instructions, and how many years after his death it would have to be before he would authorize it being re-released. It was this really underground thing back then, and for some reason it got really popular. They were hoping it would stay more underground, but the mainstream got word of it, and all the nights are sold out. It's kind of a really big deal." She looked a little sheepish. "Oh, yeah, and also, the guy who's painting circles on the canvas, it's going to be Paul McCartney--"

I choked on my tamale.

"--but not tonight, it's just a dress rehearsal, he'll be there another night. I guess that's how important an event this is supposed to be."

We took the subway to Queens and walked about six blocks, when we came upon a gaggle of warehouse spaces at a dead end overlooking the East River. Lindsay said to "look for one with the garage door half open," which made the event sound more eerily "underground." We entered and saw what looked like the skeleton of a really small house, with transparent plastic stapled to the frame to make walls, red and white and sometimes blue light bulbs lining the top beams, and divided with the transparent plastic into three rooms. They gave us brightly colored cards with handwritten instructions on which rooms to go for parts 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6. I was in room 2 for the first two parts.

Imagine your typical performance piece. Stereotypical, even. This was it. The actors entered, walking slowly to a beat. There was atonal music. They moved linearly and robotically, turning at right angles. They did some poses. One guy said monosyllabic words at irregular intervals. They left as they entered. Two minutes later, two actors re-entered, stood on opposite ends, and read two different speeches--on "art" and "time/perspective" that occasionally overlapped.

I switched rooms. The actors entered again. One girl stopped in front of me, grinned grotesquely, and began mechanically, rhythmically bouncing a small rubber ball. At one point she fumbled and it rolled by my feet. She held out her hand simply, her eyes imploring. I gave it back, and she resumed the bouncing. I wondered if it was part of the show. The actors came back, lined up, and screeched a few notes on some instruments--a small banjo, a kazoo, a recorder, and a violin. I switched rooms.

They re-entered. Some posed again, one stood by a projector while slides shuffled, one marched back and forth in front of a mirror, stopping every so often to brush his teeth or straighten his tie, and one squeezed oranges into juice and drank it. They exited. They re-entered. They pulled down scrolls of paper from a bar, read the different monosyllabic words on them all at once, and then marched off. It was over.

Lindsay and I left. She looked at me quizzically. "There were so many metaphors," I said wearily. We laughed. One of the girls afterwards made a remark about how it was "obviously" social commentary. I didn't get the obvious part, but I can go back in places and see where it could have been.

What I got from it was that performance art is not really my cup of tea. But I understand where it fits in the spectrum of theatre. I once visited a boyfriend when he was working at a theater in rural Indiana, where they essentially did choreographed musical revues for old people. The one I saw had a circus theme, and took 90 minutes worth of songs out of context in order to loosely wrangle them around elephants and trapeze artists. Thay even threw in "Send in the Clowns" because it had "clown" in the title. My boyfriend at the time complained about working there, saying that it wasn't what he wanted to be doing, that this wasn't art, he wasn't "creating" anything or making people think. Which was true; it was theatrical Cheez Whiz, icing, full-fat mayonnaise, purely for pleasure and stress-free entertainment, requiring no mental commitment.

Last night was the exact opposite. It forced you to not only forge connections for yourself, but decide where they would be forged, and when, and what the metaphors stood for, and if there was even any meaning at all. It was like they gave you a glass, a cow, some spices, pasturizing instructions, and then a hollow book of Les Miserables with a soggy Fig Newton inside. What I saw could have been very, very deep and over my head, or it could have been some playwright laughing his ass off at the thought of five actors walking around like robots and bleating nonsense. It reminded me of a story Rachel once told me, of a guy who one a poetry contest with a poem that consisted of one word: apple. The sponsors justified this because they said his poem made you question what a poem was, and what it meant that this was being classified as "good" or "winning" poetry, etc, etc. Or it could have been some frat guy who did it on a drunken whim.
Regardless, it suceeded in facilitating discussion and brainstorming between the two of us, even if it was only on the nature of what constitutes art and legitmacy and how we both preferred the middle ground, like Shakespeare, which I guess would be like fine Cheddar. Or Moliere, which could be Brie. Neil Simon would be American. Andrew Lloyd Webber--maybe Kraft singles.

The show is sold out for its entire run. Tickets ran around $250. I can't exactly call them suckers, though, because some of those lucky shits will actually get to see Paul McCartney.

Tit for Tat; or, The Mermaid Used to be Topless

I had the day off today, and all I managed to do was shuffle from Starbucks to Starbucks, buying iced coffees in near-November.

I was doing a crossword from last week's New York Times at one of them when a thirty-something man with shoulder-length dreadlocks tapped my shoulder and gave me a Sharpie sketch he did of me while I was at my little table, on a vocabulary-induced high from my orthographic binge. I was confused at first, not only because I didn't know what "Craps Natural" (five letters, ends in VEH) was supposed to be, but also that I wasn't sure if it was one of those things where he expected a donation for his gift. He left a minute later, so I guess not.

It was so nice a gesture that I bought today's New York Times from the front counter and left it behind on my table for the next person when I went home.

Even though I kept today's crossword.

The BBC Would Like to Issue a Clarification to the Previous Post

When I wrote the line "...Neither one of us went to the extreme of dying our hair pink, slathering on eyeliner, wearing spikes, or filling in the bubbles on Scan-Trons in class to make pictures of Nixon with a knife through his eye," my immediate thought was "Holy cats! Nixon?! What fucking generation did we belong to, anyhow?" Because, of course, if anyone it would most likely be Bush. Rachel and I were also two of the five-odd Libertarians in our high school, but while outspoken on social and economic issues, neither one of us were rampantly into Bush-bashing.

Then the literal truth of the line sidled up to the anachronistic humor, since we did not, in fact, make Scan-Tron pointilist masterpieces at all, with any political figure, past or present.

Then I realized how cool and hip and so punk it would have been if we really had turned our backs on criticism of the current administration and retrograded to picking apart the Nixon era. And then I figured, why stop there? What history teacher wouldn't kill to see a well-rendered grayscale of Benedict Arnold hanging from a mighty oak, or perhaps Rasputin's icy corpse by the frozen Neva riverbed? I'd give them an A just for that, regardless of what the test results were.


Another clarification: Unfortunately, regardless of how delightful a phrase it is, I did not actually think "Holy cats!" before pondering why on earth Nixon would be our rendering of choice.

Superbfairywren.blogspot.com regrets these errors in communication.

The More You Know

This is what I accomplished before going to work at noon:

-Went for a run

-Made a pair of earrings out of two quarters that were squished on the railroad tracks

-Began re-reading Macbeth

It may not look like much, but does anyone remember Sideways Stories From Wayside School? Mrs. Jewels reasoned that if her students learned three facts every day, they would eventually know everything there is to know. I figure at this rate, by the end of the summer I'll be ready to ship out with no stone left unturned, all my strings tied, and most of my metaphors thoroughly mixed.

For that matter:

1. Joan Baez dated Steve Jobs (of Macintosh fame) and her father was a physicist who refused to work on the Manhattan project.

2. Gooseberries are one of the best sources of vitamin C, were once banned by the U.S. Government for allegedly helping spread white pine blister rust (a tree disease), and grow in the Pini backyard.
3. This won the Pulitzer for Breaking News Photography this year:

Clocks

Did you know that you can light dandelion fluff on fire? It sparkles, fades, and then dies. If you have a bundle, the flame spreads to each one, sharing the glints before collapsing in wisps of smoke.

I've never been given to pyromaniacal tendencies, and sometimes I'd rather cliche'dly run through fields of dead dandelions than ignite them. But I can see how the aforementioned could become addicting.

Rolling back prices on natural phenomena

Did you know that sunsets are mostly just dust particles interefering with wavelengths of light? Cool colors are scatterings by molecules in the air, whereas red, yellow, and orange are light reflecting off soot and smoke closer to the earth. When I railed against pollution as an idealistic elementary school environmentalist, one kid pointed out that without pollution, we wouldn't have changing leaves in autumn or sunsets. Ever since then I've watched what I've said about tailpipes, other than to poke fun at their ridiculous size on souped-up West County cars. Sunsets appear at diffrent times each night, and the latest sunset actually occurs a little after the summer solstice. The sun will go on rising and setting no matter what happens to anyone on this puny earth--save a nuclear cosmic disturbance.

When Ben and I broke up three years ago, we swore to remain friends and that there were no hard feelings, and to prove that we went to Wal-Mart, which is what friends do here. As we left, he ran into a friend of his and started chatting, where I stared outside at the pastel orange sunset outside. Four months later he met the girl he eventually got engaged to.

Statistically, coincidences are inevitable.

Yesterday, Jared and I left Wal-Mart with our Combos and Turtle Chex Mix, respectively, only to greet through the sliding doors a scarlet sunset crowding the horizon. It was stunning. He told me not to be emo and I chortled at the very thought. I'd seen this coming for quite some time, but I'd still thought it wasn't too late to change things, or if I waited a little longer it would get better. He looked happier and more relaxed than I've seen him in months. I suppose that counts for something.

I'm fighting the good fight against The Emo. It's too close to call.