So I did a thing...The Infra Thin

 

The Hollywood Fringe Festival seemed to me to be an opportunity; an artist-participatory experience, and as such, after a year-long of following their e-mail blasts, and reading through their web-site of info, etc., I thought maybe this might be a place to explore the continuation of what began with my CalArts 2022 Artist Residency, namely the performance piece I created: Hauntology of the Infra Thin. 

I am not sure what I want to say about this experience: one has only 15 minutes to set-up for their performance, and then 15 minutes to take it all down and leave the space open and clean for the following artists, and navigating this one detail; a detail that had the potential (knowing experientially after my 35+ years experience in the professional theatre (Broadway and all that) to override one's ability to actually PERFORM after this brutal set-up situation, I nonetheless pressed on, telling myself that, "whatever happens or is, will be a part of my experience and I will not allow anything from that specific to interfere with the work I need to do onstage, and if such an unexpected ensues, then I will absolutely know how to use it in a positive form for the work." Without my fabulous friend Marisa Ward - who has toured with everyone from Aerosmith to Stevie Nicks and more, and my daughter helping as "roadies," this set up would not have happened.

It isn't easy to call an audience to fill the theatre, even as small as it is - some 42 potential sold-out seats if I remember the number accurately - and even though I have worked for the most prominent professional theatre Group in Los Angeles for over 16 years, not one person from this institution came to see what I was up to. And one wonders, "if they are in the business of FINDING artists and their works to have, so they can be the producing institution they claim to be, it is a small wonder why they have not had the kind of early successes they previously enjoyed, for these last 20 or so years...bordering on shuttering their doors season after season, and resorting to begging audiences with a pre-curtain speech each night to, 'please support the arts.'"

Of course, my circle of friends I work with came and supported me, and some friends and family flying in, and that kind of support is invaluable. Being an artist who finds they are continually working in some kind of small bubble has its ups and lots of downs. Why and I doing this? Who is it for? Where am I going to put all this work...paintings, paintings, paintings, etc.?

My show The Infra Thin was concerning the enormous potential that rests waiting to be called into reality and shared. The work of the artist. Something I have been doing my entire life and am an absolute authority on. What I don't have the authority on is how to further get it out into the world. How do some people do this? What is the secret? 

The previous summer I was with two friends, and after having just finished my year long Artist Residency one of them asked me in an accusing manner, "why aren't you selling your work? What is the problem? I have a friend in Minneapolis, and he does it, why can't you?" As if I have not done enough, have not tried my utmost. As if somehow I was dog-eared and sitting it out when I should be doing something more. Exactly what,  I have no idea, but more, somehow. I have to say this comment has plagued me, the accusation that I have been lazy in any way is bewildering beyond just hurtful, because all I have worked toward, continuously, is sharing my work, getting it "out there" aiming for a kind of success so that it can simply be self-sustaining. That's it. I have not experienced that kind of success and so yeah, it hurts. But I don't need it pointed out to me. Trust me, I fucking know. Oh, and PS by the way, I just finished a "Year Long Artist Residency," producing some 50 paintings, and a 90 minute performance...that no one from the Institute that generated the Grant - CalArts - even bothered to come to...so yeah I should be selling paintings, lots and lots of them, but I'm not. Not for lack of trying, believe me.

At any rate, I was really happy with the work I produced, my show The Infra Thin. And I am continually searching for, and being open to, what might be the next stage of development for this piece, as I believe it is worthy of more and should be experienced. I don't think I will participate again in the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Been there, done that, and while I can't quite put my finger on the issue with it that it clearly contains, there is something about the HFF that is completely self-promoting for the Festival itself...and not for the enormous contributing component parts that actually make up what is the Festival, namely the artists. I felt and experienced myself out and alone in a kind of left-field creating, promoting, producing, and performing my show, and that the Festival was not contributing or supporting or even experiencing what I created in any way. I am sure I am not the only artist-performer who felt this. That being stated, I am not sure what it is I expected from or with the HFF, but anything other than nothing would have been something.

COVID, AIDS, and Paul Thek

 Paul Thek died from complications of AIDS, in Manhattan on August 10, 1988. Paul was 54 years old.

 “Thek writes to [friend] Charles Shuts: 'As you may know NYC is ripe with plague now, "aids"....The gay scene here now is vastly different then what you may recall, many have died of it and sexual conduct has undergone enormous changes... also very highly increased social opproprium because of fears of its spreading to the hetero population.' Later, he writes to Shuts: 'It's better than The Plague! We get to go! It's better than dying alone for your own silly little reason! This way we get to go out with a real BANG!!” 

Paul Thek

The Tomb (Interior)

Stable Gallery, New York 1967

Paul is perhaps best known for The Tomb, 1967, sometimes mistitled “Death of a Hippie,” which Paul vehemently objects is incorrect, stating, “...that his work was incompatible with a ‘commercialized chic revolution.’” The Tomb is a life size portioned wax casting of Paul’s body, lying on the floor and set inside a built ‘tomb’ with the form, “...dressed in painted jeans and jacket, which hid the wooden torso, and had psychedelic medallions placed on [sic] its cheeks. Its head rested on two pillows while the shoulder length blonde hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and mustache enhanced its corporeality...Next to the figure Thek had arranged objects including glass goblets, private letters and a pouch containing the wax fingers severed from the bloody right hand.”  The mouth is agape and indicates a blue tongue inside, some have believed to represent a poisoning. Noted as a highly “corruptible figure,” due to its construction, this like many of Paul’s work hold a similar ephemeral and transient media based construction, and from here I would point toward his experience when visiting the Catacombs in Sicily in 1963 with Peter Hujar. He began making his ​Technological Reliquaries​ in New York after this trip. These were forms constructed with wax and other media composing various effigies of body parts or flesh. Arms, heads, fingers, slabs of meat, etc., would be encased in plexiglass vitrines of various shape and architecture. In discussing these Paul would share, “I hope the work has the innocence of the Baroque Crypts in Sicily; their initial effect is so stunning you fall back for a moment and then it’s exhilarating. There are 8,000 corpses -- not skeletons, corpses -- decorating the walls, and the corridors are filled with windowed coffins. I opened one and picked up what I thought was a piece of paper; it was a piece of dried thigh. I felt strangely relieved and free. It delighted me that bodies could be used to decorate a room, like flowers. We accept our thing-ness intellectually but the emotional acceptance of it can be a joy.” 

Paul Thek

Untitled (Diver)

Synthetic Polymer, Gesso on Newspaper

33" x 22"

1969

Paul would continue working in such fleeting compositions as his practice of painting upon newspaper indicates. This fragile media choice evolved in 1969 after discussing with friend Eva Hesse (another artist working in degradable media), and was a foundation for his work that continued to entice him the rest of his life. I imagine the effort of his hand effortlessly puncturing the corpses thigh, could be aesthetically rendered quite readily in the texture and form paint becomes once it has dried atop newspaper. One can easily identify the transient movement this efforts, the specificity of this one newspaper--painted, in turn devolving into the historical disappearance when following this to its logical conclusion. The news can be forgotten, the word, the event, the people and places which were summoned into the fold of the newspaper, appropriated for the media support which in turn becomes the destructive alchemical combination toward each one’s end. “Thek saw beauty in the mundane, fleeting character of the everyday and preserved it by painting vignettes over the daily paper, with fragment of news peeking through around the edges of his compositions...He did not so much kill off the original text and image as he damaged them. Only a whiff of the record of those times remained.” 

Paul Thek

I'm Not Going To Use Violence

Acrylic, Pencil on Paper

25" x 19"

1987

All are now living within such times. We walk upon a fragile foundation, as our lives are routinely upended with this fact. Gay men like Paul Thek and minority drug users, such as was the case during the 1980's AIDS crisis are not the only bodies singled out by a viral infector. A far superior and mobile, transient virus: COVID, and its offspring variants, generalize and make pedestrian all bodies. It efforts the realization that there are no minorities in its non-objective pursuit. Is this not quite the most remarkable mirror to these current times we are striving to get through, where struggles of superiority, majority, distinctions, are nullified and everyone is in the same horizontal line? No one is relegated behind, or promoted to the front. At long last, everyone receives a Participation Trophy. Looking back only briefly to the 80's, is it possible one might consider the AIDS epidemic as a practice run? How does one keep safe when the struggle to simply be as you are is corralled, subjecting a being to submission; one has to change behaviors and recognize limits, find new ways to be that have the highest potentials for safety. 

When I was 21, I moved to NYC. It was August 5, 1988. Paul Thek would be dead from AIDS in less than a week. I had to ask myself, how will I stay safe from the HIV virus? Can I? I had moved to perhaps to what was then the viral center. I found my way to the Gay Men's Health Clinic, where I could participate one evening in a safe sex seminar, learning what I could do to prevent reception of HIV, and if I were HIV positive, how to ensure I could not transmit it to another person. Equally important. What I learned that night didn't sound like fun. It certainly wasn't the gay, glamorous, open, free-loving world any young single man would have enjoyed. I was twinkling right out of the closet, and ready to explore, date, and play. After being taught by religion and also abused by peers that I was considered: wrong, sinful, amoral, sick, etc..., I found the courage to accept myself. I learned from the GMHC this acceptance still meant that when I wanted to find love, connection, relationship, it would have to be literally, "under wraps." Sometimes I think back and wonder if I wasn't in one room, wrapped from head to toe in Saran-Wrap, while the date was in another room altogether. Staying Safe. #onmenotinme Hot. Wild. Frisky (not). Nonetheless, I followed what I learned that evening, and have remained healthy ever since. I can no longer indulge, support, or have time for those I hear complain about the vaccine, claiming it is dangerous, or ineffective, or that they have to wear a mask. I have already survived one deadly epidemic, as have so many others like me, and I will survive this one too. My actions work toward keeping not just myself, but all those around me, people I don't even know, safe. Getting vaccinated and wearing a mask when necessary, are the two simplest actions needed to keep oneself safe, and also extends this out, carefully considering everyone else as well.

Untitled (Diver I)

Oil, Oil Stick, Graphite on Newsprint

36" x 24"

2021

We are all far more fragile than we ever want to believe, think, or feel. Life is but a momentary blink; oftentimes random, maybe accidental, and fraught with peril in ways we cannot fathom or perceive. It is also joyous, miraculous, full of love, and peopled with angels who continually surprise. And so, because of all of this and even in spite of it, our innate resilience strives in all ways toward life. We will be parted from this Earth, like dust to the corners, but our experience of life now, will impact those others who come after. If you cannot bring yourself to consider how the footprints you make upon this Earth affect the path of those next to you, those behind you, then you yourself become a viral infector, but a dumb one; willfully ignorant and mute, lost to yourself and unfortunately spreading far and wide, causing the very destruction you claim to save yourself from.

Untitled (Diver III)

Oil, Oil Stick on Newsprint

36" x 24"

2021

Deaccessioning Art: The Democratization of Jackson Pollock, Laurie Anderson, and the Baltimore Museum of Art

  In 1990 I was to see for myself a performance by Laurie Anderson, essentially the tour for her, Strange Angels, CD. It was at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, and was titled, “Empty Places.” Empty, perhaps as a nod to all that had gone missing, and the feelings which remained. A past she longed for but could no longer locate. Strange Angels would hold a seminal place in the Anderson oeuvre. It encapsulated the darker days of the late 80’s where the AIDS crisis, Reaganomics, New Age ideation, and Americana were cocooned in song. In this work she points to Walter Benjamin through her song The Dream Before. “...history is an Angel being blown backwards into the future...history is a pile of debris. And the Angel wants to go back and fix things to repair the things that have been broken. But there is a storm blowing from Paradise. And the storm keep blowing the Angel backwards into the Future. And this storm, this storm is called progress.” This teleological Angel who understands we can only perceive where we are in turning back and seeing from where we came. Laurie sang about Angels who were mowing down her lawn, and of the Visitors, the ones who in her absence "...ate all the grapes."

It was a time for the Unknown:

...for Communion, a N.Y. Times non-fiction bestseller, was the story of the Visitors who haunted its author Whitley Strieber. Strieber would write, “...This book is about forming a new relationship with the unknown. Instead of shunning the darkness, we can face straight into it with an open mind. When we do that, the unknown changes. Fearful things become understandable and a truth is suggested.” The unknown is the place to where we are continually aimed. It is in continual search for the scryer, the soothsayer, the missing card of the tarot.

…for the past lives of Shirley MacLaine. Out on a Limb, would delve into the far personal past. A past one could consider at great odds with the ego, concepts of the self, and how the great past effects one presently. “...I found myself gently but firmly exposed to dimensions of time and space that heretofore, for me, belonged to science fiction or the occult...people progress according to what they’re ready for.”

…for the Great Plague that was decimating young gay men, the chaos laid bare in its wake, and a government unwilling to do anything to help.

By 1990 Andy Warhol had passed, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat who was the great hope of the Art World. Left were David Salle. Eric Fischl. Clemente. Kostabi. 

Somewhere Anselm Kiefer was smelting lead into books, and Rene Ricard was searching for words with which to elaborate an insight toward a Julian Schnabel painting.

Laurie Anderson stepped out of this conversation altogether, and in performative style presented her works with a perceptively vaudeville render, albeit with help from a progressive IT department, and electrical sound-making machines. Presenting the looping of drum beats, words, violin phrases, and repetitious video-imagery upon a screen. Her loops were not unlike the circular drool from a stir stick dipped into a can of paint, held in the hand of Jackson Pollock. Drips and drools that were maneuvered not onto a canvas mounted to the wall, or resting in an easel, or vertically propped on bricks just inches above the floor and leaned back, but laid instead on the floor itself. Mr. Pollock hunched over and looking down, denied the horizon in grounding these works to the earth. Canvas was un-stretched and un-gessoed. No brush stroked its surface. It looked neither forward, nor back. It was working within the realm of the ineffable, the ultra-thin, the omni-present. Pollock disposed altogether the technology of tools the painter has, through his abdicated mis-use of their typical handling. And yet one only has to look at his paintings to see him at work, performing them, forcing his past production into the present as the viewer visually traces line after line, endlessly searching for a beginning, a middle, an end.

Jackson Pollock

Lucifer

1947

But what story is Pollock telling us? You know the one. The one he told once he found it, over and over again. Searching. Searching. More and more in each new canvas laid upon the floor, circular loops re-joining one another in an unceasing event and ever present. A terminal present. The one critical theorist and philosopher Thierry DeDuve informs us we are now living in. Inescapable, like this universe. The one Whitley Strieber suggests is coffin-like; an endless unknown forever. A present which is changing once held in our hands, but instantly slipping through the fingers. A kind of mercurial-sand. Like the story of a continual past Shirley experiences, forever recognizing she has already arrived as a result of the force of this. But arrived where? Like the video loop Laurie presents of a subway car running by. Running by. Over and over again. Never arriving or actually leaving a place. Like our society. Like the past we are fraught to experience again, but which is gone. Lost. An America we just can’t find. Hiawatha’s dream. And what remains is a sense of foreboding vertigo. 

How did we get here-there? From the 50’s: Pollock’s day, to the late 90’s, and how has this fed into the interminable present of 2020 in which we are stationed, here in the burgeoning, infantile, sickly, new century? The progression from moon landing up to now has been nearly nil were it not for iPhones and Twitter accounts. We have not escaped the Kuiper Belt, or so conspiracy theorists denying a moon landing would have us believe; conspiracy theorists who led the pack to the fake news phenom of a narcissistic delusional idiocracy, a President birthed from the sad inbred cousin of reality television.

Popularity is an unstable but malleable foundation for democracy. Popularity is a pop-music audience, and is evidenced with record sales. If democracy is the goal of the All, then the All can not entertain needs of speciality within the individual. Democracy is the outgrowth of the popular need, servicing the needs of the many, with aims for the good of all, and not just the majority. This is an impossible goal, for the majority can only service itself and not the All. The All has an inability to agree upon what is good, and can only at best reflect into the past for considerations of what the good may or may not have been. It is the present which invades an ability to establish a detached judgement perceptible of clarity, for we are fluid within the river of time. Good has to consider change, for good is only a passing ideology, it is transient and non-local. Made up of waves and not of particles. It is continual. Democratic formulae is particle driven, and as such significantly more difficult to corral into existence due to its nature. It is specific to the individual, and seeks to transform the particle into a wave, a cohesion that considers the past as prominently affixed with the future. And so in this format, good can only be a reflexive observation. It is not an experiential figure in present living. We can look back and together agree; “That was a good meal. That was a good harvest. That was a good rainy season. That was a good year for hunting. That was a good year for peaches. That was a good friendship. That was a good political movement. That was a good school system.” We cannot however agree, while currently situated, on a good. Perhaps at best we can agree upon a bad. “This doesn’t feel right. This movie is awful. This book is boring. These french-fries are stale.” Our terminal present requires we make an argument for good based on example, for which we have many an algebraic equation to establish categorization, but unlike law for which judgement making is based, good in art has the consideration of the new in an historical lineage of predecession. This means individuation. A non-conformity, creatively producing a new vision. A vision of the future, that which the artist is inherently capable of perceiving as they look into the field of potential where the new rests, await. The new situates itself within the clan of the avant-garde, and is not democratic. Jackson Pollock was avant-garde, prior to his popularity, as is Laurie Anderson. It is the antithesis of democratic, but in the long lens of the past, will be understood as the very stepping stones of the democratic process as it leads through individuation in its slow grind: a Mills of the Gods methodology, proving its goodness outside of and beyond popularity and majority rule. Art has always been the Angel being blown backward. Art has preceded democratic ideals as it gently but firmly exposed itself to the masses. Art is always new and teleologically like the Angel explains our present through the backward blow of past reference. The unknown is that which we haven’t faced, but which art is directing us to look. It is always good, and holy because it is newborn. Blame-free. Connected and formed from the past through understanding teleologically how it arrived. 

It is 2020. We are missing something. We are missing a generation who consider the past. A generation that seems to have no idea how they arrived, who believe they are inventing the wheel, who cannot look past the immediate access the device in their hand tempts for which their nose is endlessly buried. Who believe Beyonce arrived full blown without any awareness of the great ladies before her, and that Running Man, is a riff on a piano underneath a Timbaland song. But that is just fine I guess. They face the Unknown with the rest of us. The forward movement is still guided by artists, toward a democratic end for which the populace will arrive, eventually. At any rate, democracy is itself an impossible goal and an unworthy form because it can never meet its end. The populace will never allow it to be met. And no past that can be caught and held in the hand is of any value, because its true purpose was served, and forever flies away from us backward into the future. 

Andy Warhol 

The Last Supper

1986

    When I was in the 5th grade, I had a transformative experience discovering a painting by the artist Clyfford Still as I thumbed through an art book in the library. It was a large red painting with a darker blackish streak down the mid-center. I brought the book with this painting to the attention of my teacher and asked her, "how could this be a painting, how is it art?" She must have laughed, because I do not remember receiving a response that educated me, but this painting changed me. It motivated me to discover what an artwork could be, and what it means to be an artist.

Clyfford Still

1949-G

1949

    Deaccessioning a past, as exampled through the reckless auctioning of preeminent artists gifted works, rests at the feet of Christopher Bedford who heralds as Director for the Baltimore Museum of Art. This move, this eliminating of a past, in turn produces a destabilization that resultantly is unable to bear a future’s weight. Bedford pillages the foundations from a past history that has already proved its cornerstone bearings of stability. Move forward yes, create new opportunities for those who have remained for too long in the shadows, absolutely, but Bedford believes this is handled best by leveling the house and then looking for walls upon which to hang newly purchased artworks, only to wonder, "where are the walls?"

    In the 1990's, Bedford was a student at Oberlin College intending to study literature. His life's goals changed after visiting the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. He states he had a, "transformative experience," when viewing a painting by Dutch artist Hendrick ter Brugghen. He related his impressions concerning the painting to the Baltimore Sun, stating, "The figure glowed. It seemed completely and utterly present in the room. Even today, I could draw every detail of that painting with my own hand."

    Of course this begs the question, "what if?" What if this particular painting, which out of a past experience constitutes such a present of importance in Bedford's life that he could, "...draw every detail of that painting," was never there? A painting he would gladly deny others resultant of a deaccessioning he positions for a reparations-produced future financed not from a museum directors main objective: namely fund-raising, but instead pillaging a priceless past he so ignorantly and selfishly destroys? 

Hendrick ter Brugghen

Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene 

1625

The Fence

In 1991 Miss Saigon premiered on Broadway. Based on the opera Madame Butterfly, it has an Act II set-design of a chain-link fence that comes down from the fly rail above and tops a gated fence on the ground which entered from stage right and left, meeting in center stage. A dramatic entrance for an elaborate set piece. This fence in total then would enclose the U.S. Embassy and helicopter pad, reflecting the one once situated in Saigon. Artistically, this gated fence dramatized through set-design the division of one from another; the American soldiers, and the Vietnamese. In this scene the fence separates the helicopter that lands on the pad, (allowing the occupying American soldiers to evacuate safely) from would-be refugees. Ironically, the top portion of the fence was designed to corral the chopper blades of an 8,000 pound helicopter; a safety feature in all actuality, from the audience. The helicopter blades were crafted from nylon rope bearing a heavily-weighted ball on one end that circularly rotated above the cab. The fence was there in case the rope snapped and the weighted ball flew out into the audience, the result of centrifugal force gone awry. In any event the fence had a technical error during the performance and could not lower from the fly rail down to the Embassy gates, the helicopter effect would be aborted and this spectacular special effect could not be used. The performing cast had contingency staging whereby they would run up several steps to a landing and pretend to jump into a helicopter not there. Extra fog would be dispensed and added flashing lights alighted the audience, and hopefully no one felt they missed out.

The lower portion of the fence was designed to open and turn once it aligned at center stage. Visually and choreographically what this entails is twofold; first the audience is with the Vietnamese looking upstage through the fence toward the U.S. Embassy base where helicopters are departing, then the fence opens spinning sideways and reverses the scene. The Vietnamese rush through this opening while the American soldiers go around it running downstage. The audience is now with the Americans evacuating. The desperation of the Vietnamese rushing the closing fence, pleading to be freed, are upstage, facing the audience and the Americans, begging to be taken to a place of safety and freedom. Desiring refuge. To not be excluded, left behind, negated. Lastly, the original scene is returned once more and the fence opens. The Vietnamese run downstage through the opening changing perspective with the American soldiers, and the audience is with the Vietnamese looking through the fence as the last remaining GI’s board the helicopter. The helicopter flies up and out of the sight-line of the audience into the fly-rail, leaving the Vietnamese behind. The fence silently remains. Would-be refugees are alone on the stage, kept out from a vacated U.S. Embassy base. But kept out from what? From evacuating also? Evacuating to where, and leaving what behind? Why did they rush the fence? What were they wanting, needing, desiring, and asking for? What was the fence to them and conversely for the American soldiers? What does it mean to be deserted, left behind?

In A Chorus Line, the Pulitzer Prize awarded musical created by Michael Bennett in 1975, the dancers stand on a white line near the downstage lip of the stage as they audition for one of eight spots in a show. For two hours as the story unfolds, the dancers are put through their paces in ballet, jazz, and tap routines the choreographer Zach teaches them. While this for any audition is enough from which to cast the best, Zach wants to go deeper and has the dancers stand on this white line downstage, inviting them to expose personal stories of their lives, sharing their collective struggles, hopes, dreams, failures, and desires. Why do they dance? Why do they want this job? Zach’s questions probe the dancers to reflect on intimate details of their lives. Putting them on the line personally and professionally, literally and figuratively, in his quest for the perfect chorus. God I hope I get it, they sing in the show. Ultimately the question is, why should Zach cast one of them over the other one? It is not enough to perform the routines with skill, professionalism, sex appeal, and any other charms a stage performer must possess and display when called upon. They must also for this show evidence something deeper: their soul; their demons, their vulnerabilities, their excesses. All are gathered for Zach to sift through in his hands, searching for the grains he deems worthy of his time and effort. Who will brightly shine under his spotlight? There is no Human Resources department governing this job interview. No protections act is in place from which to refer unfair, sexist, ageist, racist, misogynist, or etcetera-ist, hiring practices. The question begs, why would anyone allow themself to be maligned and humiliated in such a way? How could any one job, director, or choreographer, be worthy of such desire? How does the line they stand upon in search of this job embody their desire for something as ineffable, elusive, and illusory as a moment in the spotlight? Does this story reach into the truth of a dancer, an actor, an artist, and is there a kind of line from which all artists subject the self in search of the dream to share and expose oneself so explicitly?

In Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, which opened at the Palace Theatre in New York City on January 18th, 1966, the Fan-Dango Girls, as they are known in the Playbill synopsis, stand at a  velvet cushioned waist-high rail and sing Big Spender. This rail separates the Fan-Dango Girls; taxi dancers as they are commonly known, as they advertise their wares, from the unseen men who patronize the club, just below. Do you wanna have fun…how about a few laughs…I can show you a good time, they sing. The song embodies the taunt they offer the men looking to hire one or more of the many girls for a ten-cent dance. This “dance,” a gentler evocation of the world’s oldest profession, situates the dancer in separation as commodity of re-sellable flesh from the would-be customer, the “John,” who desires companionship. The rail evidences needs the ladies must socially and economically struggle with. This is explicitly elaborated through Fosse’s choreography; they pose, snap, present, shimmy, writhe, and gyrate behind the velvet rail as they perform this famous number. A number not just for the men at the Fan-Dango Ballroom, but the audience who participates in enjoying the body in performance. They meta-sell youth, beauty, sex-appeal and sex, spotlit and available for the right price. But what price? How much is their need worth? Desire will pay for, and also cost much; needs, wants, hopes, dreams…relationship, a home, safety, inclusion, refuge. The refuge of a warm body in close companionship; perhaps a dance, not unlike the dance we all perform in life as we search and work toward many of the same basic wants and needs, dreams and desires.

I worked on the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon. It was an untenable time, the early 1990’s. It was a time when gay men and minority drug-users bodies were let and left behind, a result of the Reagan Administration’s policies of inaction toward life-saving health care initiatives or pharmaceutical developments. There were members of the cast and crew; some HIV positive and fighting for their life, working alongside virus-free company members. I thought of their personal struggle while performing would-be refugees; running up against a fence, hoping for a place better than where they were. Begging for help. The performance of a vulnerable body seeking refuge, and the performer, made vulnerable from a lack of governmental care. HIV-positive bodies seeking refuge also, but no helicopter could free them, and the proverbial fence was resultant of social stigma and minority oppression. The line between life and death did not cross the edge of a dark stage, it was imminent and real. No rail was cushioned in velvet providing rest. The Miss Saigon Broadway cast performed eight times a week with the fence, an object of resistance. The fence evidenced an engineered division and as such cultivated the embodiment of exclusion and then conversely, solidarity in desire the cast confronted. Personally, I wondered toward a time when a kind of resolve would provide the care these bodies needed. Care in action from a government who initiated concern for all who resided upon their shores. Not excluding anyone out with a fence and thereby also not confining anyone within. I found myself looking to a future I had better hopes for. Many times since then I believed we were getting there, but these last few years I am no longer as sure.

The Best New Musical for 2019 on Broadway was awarded to Hadestown with music, lyrics, and book by Anais Mitchell. In this show the actor Patrick Page plays the role of Hades, and asks the chorus whom he addresses as Children in song, Why do we build the wall, my Children, my Children?…how does the wall keep us free?…who do we call the enemy? To Hades the Children sing in response, poverty. I cannot think of a more succinct or explicit embodiment in word denoting how otherness is warped by greed and fear and then excluded, separated, dismissed, impoverished, and ultimately, let. Let to wither, disintegrate, fail, and die, inconclusive of their potential to be. How it is expressed whether artistically, or in day to day reality, this word poverty simultaneously seems to be performed with a fence, a line, a rail, and a wall.

We Are Sea-Farers

It was late. Well, not late for me as I had been home from work about an hour, but late concerning the day as it was now half past midnight. I decompress alone upon returning home while everyone else is in bed asleep. I enjoy the stillness of the house at this time. The dog quietly waiting for me by the door; kneeling I scratch her ears, stroke her long back, kiss her nose, then take her outside. The quiet of the backyard where various aromatic plants perfume the night air; Champaca Alba, Salvia Clevelandii, Patchouli, Plumeria, African Jasmine. I search the heavens for favorite stars and constellations, Cassiopeia, Orion, Southern Cross, Big Dipper, Pleiades. What animals are stirring; something in the Palm or Orange tree, an Owl, maybe a possum sitting atop the telephone line will stare down at me? Small planes overhead, their passing distant and nearly silent except for a slight drone and buzz. I track them by the lights blinking underneath and along wingtip edges. The dog goes for a last minute tinkle and sniff of the yard, and together we come in and close and lock the back door, our reflections silhouetted in the dark windowpanes. I turn off the dining room lights and then walk through the galley kitchen to the door leading into the garage. I open this heavy door, and click the switch turning off the front yard lights. Lights we have posted in brick columns the gated yard contains running along the burn of the street. I close and deadbolt the door. Next to this door is a small bathroom I use at night where I brush my teeth, and then back through this end of the kitchen turning out the light. From here in the dark now I cross the great front room guided only by the soft light of a singular post in the front yard. It casts a glow through the blinds and efficiently lines the floor before me like an enormous pad of paper. This is the dream light and it remains on watch until dawn, making a friend to moths and the errant random bug. Quietly I enter my daughters room. She is asleep and her white noise machine burbles the soft sounds of a stream she enjoys having on at night. I pull up her covers and turn down the stream to a quiet gurgle.

I walk to my bedroom and slip into bed closing my eyes, ready to fall away from the day into sleep.

It was a high pitched, singular, beep, I heard then. Like a small digital wrist watch could make. I opened my eyes waiting quietly, for the second, and then continual, beep, to sound; thinking, I would now have to get up, find the watch somewhere in the dark, and turn it off. But there was nothing. All quiet. No more beep from the perceived watch. Instead it was followed by a bright but isolated, flash, just outside the french doors in our bedroom. As bright as lightning but small, contained, and not much larger it seemed than the width of the doors and the narrow vertical side-windows which bordered them. The deep grey curtains were closed shut, and for this briefest moment were illuminated from outside. Lightning? I began to count;
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi,...
expecting a small distant thunder call. Nothing. I waited another few moments. No digital, beep. No accommodating, flash. 

I puzzled for a moment, something imagined, perhaps. Unexplained but certainly plain and natural had occurred. The tonic of two separate events collided. First, a beep. Then, a flash. Mixed together in my mind making the sum greater than the whole. Had I the answer to this minor mystery right then, I would have fallen fast asleep. I closed my eyes, laid my head back down and tried to settle my wondering thoughts.

Beep. Beep. I open my eyes. I heard the small but distinct digital sound again, twice, and then immediately following, right outside my bedroom doors facing the backyard; a backyard completely fenced in with 12' high ivy and bougainvillea covered walls, two lightning-bright flashes illuminate against the curtained windows. This time I sat up slightly, resting one side on a bent elbow. I counted to myself again, hoping for the thunder roll;
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.
Silent. No car driving past on the street, no plane flew or mobile craft helicoptered overhead. No one in the house stirred, not even my easily-stirred partner fast asleep next to me. Nothing was happening at the neighbors. It was silent. Not a sound. Nothing to give away or explain the beeps and flashes.

Of course I had to get up. Investigate. Look around.

What is it which prompts such a thought? To make one explore such things in the night, when everyone else is asleep and you are basically, alone? The need to protect your family and home? The need to understand the place you are in? Or is it the invitation to mystery so great, even if frightened or anxious, you still go out into that great dark room and peer around the corner.

I step into the great front room just outside and to the right of our bedroom door and peer through this space. With the glow of the dream light it is much more vast than it appears in the day, and as such I wait and look at unnatural shapes of art, furniture, plants. From here I can look out one of the front windows, the blinds about two-thirds closed. Open enough so I can see the outdoor security lights are not on. The lights on the brick posts lining our yard to the street are off. The singular glowing post is alone, and but for the tips of Milkweed plants and an Hibiscus against the window, I see not much to report. I listen carefully to nearly nothing other than maybe a faint humm of the refrigerator and the slight spill from my daughter's room where the burbling brook continues to play. I step a few feet into the front room and half expect a field of dozens of little grey visitors to come running past me like salmon swimming upstream against a current, but it is just me, and the dark, and the quiet.  I look toward and face the kitchen. There isn't a watch left out randomly beeping, nor are there flashes of lightning, even though it is cloudy and a slight mist was in the air when I arrived home. Lightning is extremely rare in Los Angeles. If it had been lightning the flash would have surrounded the house in a fashion causing all doors and windows to become lit up, but the only thing lit up was just outside our bedroom doors. I continue my search, slowly stepping through the dark toward the front door where I can turn to my right and look into the open back room and dining area. I see the dark silhouette of the couch, the enormous plant standing by a window, and the french doors to the back yard where me and our dog just visited the night stars. I walk through this area to the french doors and carefully step into their frame hesitantly looking into the backyard. Nothing. The pool shimmers darkly from ambient light pollution, but most of this is darkened by the huge fence, and trees shadowing the space. I turn and then look through the galley kitchen and notice, the light in the garage is on? I can see the frame around this door is brightly lit from some light on in the garage, but much brighter than I know the garage light actually contains. It is a bluish essence, like a cross between a neon light and fluorescent. There is a fluorescent light in the garage, but you have to turn it on from a switch which is currently blocked by a stack of unsorted boxes, and two bicycles. Simultaneously I can't help but wonder on the tightness of the seal around this door. I mean after all, it should be totally sealed making it fire proof as cars drive in and out of the garage and as I am looking at this three-sided lit rectangle around the door, which may or may not be now properly sealed, frozen by the mystery of it, when it instantly goes out.

What. The. Fuck.

I can sense my mouth drop open and I am stock still, immobile, with my back to the outside doors as thoughts like a damm bursting open tumble through my head in unorderly fashion, making senseless demands like, you must go into the garage and investigate, and, who is in the garage, and, why am I so far from any light switch, and, I should stay in the dark that way any prowler will not see me and I will have the upper hand because they don't know they woke me and I can slide along the floor and find my way to protecting the family and getting help and surprising them and I saw Jodie Foster in that movie with Anthony Newly, no not Newly, umm what is his fucking name, that movie where she was in the dark of a basement, it has a poster of a moth in a mouth, not unlike the moths now fluttering around the singular front post whose light is so brief and dim it couldn't possibly cast a glow into the garage and did it just go out and maybe there was a car in the street parked perpendicular in the street blocking the street and its headlights were on bright and like spotlights they shown through the garage window the one covered in blinds so no light actually can get in and I don't hear a car it is actually so quiet it is making this entire scenario more uneasy oh God why don't I hear a car driving around the block or a dog barking or the humm from the freeway just four blocks away or cars drag racing up and down Ventura, and before I realize it entirely, I have made my way stealthily through the galley kitchen and find I am standing in the doorway of the small bathroom next to the garage door. I may be shaking. I open the frosted window in the small bathroom trying to get a look out onto the front yard, hoping I can see some answer for why there was a light on in the garage. I see nothing, and continue to hear nothing. On my tip toes I step toward the door to the garage and place my right ear against it, and hear nothing. I pause and consider my options...wondering if and what I should do. I turn the deadbolt and quickly open the door as my hand reaches for the light switch, just past the door frame and click it on.
The garage is as quiet and silent as I left it just a few minutes ago when I shut off the front yard lights and locked up the house. I stare into the garage. I see the alarm light of the car blinking as it does when parked and locked. Nothing is out of place. No one had been in here.
I turn out the light, and close and lock the door.
I am standing once again in the dark. Slowly I walk through this end of the kitchen and into the entryway of the front door. I close my eyes and reaching outside myself I ask,
Who is here?

We are seafarers looking for safe harbor. We are astounded by your bravery.

I open my eyes, and am stock still.

What does one do at this point? There is nothing more to investigate. The answer to my question seems to provide a mystery I will wonder on for some time, perhaps the rest of my days.

We are seafarers looking for safe harbor.

Well, aren't we all, really? Here we couch ourselves in distractions of safety; our homes, our families, our friends. All together now while on a planet who spins through the depths of space and dark. A moon posts on our doorstep, the dream light catching our nocturnal wonderings like moths, or an errant bug. We are alone, really, and safety is an illusion we create but don't deserve or possess.

We are astounded by your bravery.

Betty Buckley Story Songs

I think when you have a voice like Betty Buckley, and for me, she is singular in this aspect; I mean, no one, simply no one, has a voice like hers, that it must be both an enormous opportunity for giving and a burden of responsibility. I can only imagine.

I have tried to imagine so often over many years of listening closely, a metaphor for what it is I hear in her. Recently, I was given some incredible insights to life when I asked, "...in a world of illusions, what is real?," and the most profound answer was simply, "...breathing is real." Betty's voice is like this. It is like a breath set free as a skip above a vast ocean of water, where the rest of us are submerged. It shimmers across the surface reflecting the light of the sun, and as such is ephemeral and bright, translucent, and simply a mirror of something else, not hers entirely, and all of it also, purely herself, and that which she brought into this life as a person and artist at the same time.

I first heard Memory, from Cats, on vinyl, in the bedroom of my best friends house. We were both in junior high and beginning to become interested in musical theatre. Riveted, I am sure I had him play over and over this recording, of this one miraculous song, of this unbelievable voice, from this odd and mysterious show, Cats.

I was to see my first Broadway show, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, some years later. Of course in the lead role would be none other than Ms. Buckley herself, playing this boy, Edwin.

A few more years passed and I was a student in New York. Instead of purchasing materials for class projects at F.I.T., I spent what monies I had to see Betty perform at The Bottom Line. Numerous times did I see and hear her perform there. The Bottom Line offered a close proximity to the artist and this was a large part of the draw. The setting was intimate and rough, sexy and old school, with a touch of glimmer from its star studded history imbued into the walls. Betty adding to this.
She sang from Joni Mitchell, and offered me a first encounter to her work:

Oh I am a lonely painter

I live in a box of paints

I'm frightened by the devil

and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

Surely she was directing this right to me, as it described me immediately. The voice she gave to a lyric; the turn of a phrase, and the sound created with the musicians backing her, was place-changing for me. She took me into another space, creating new frames of reference with her artistry, informing and illustrating new ways to enter into life, and for me, see as a painter.

When her CD, Children Will Listen, was released in 1993 it brought me back to her performing at The Bottom Line. From then on in my studio in New York I played Betty's recordings. Over and over I listened to her within a small loop chorus consisting of Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Emmylou Harris, and Joni Mitchell to near exclusivity of other artists while I worked. My collection of her recordings grew over the years as she did, each new release offering access to her routinely, in turn giving me access to that small and young, trusting and open artist within.

Recently I met Ms. Buckley while working on a production of Grey Gardens. To meet one who has had such impact, while coordinating a fitting for costumes is always something I have to negotiate inside myself very carefully. My feelings of awe and deep respect filed away. I did my work, was friendly but kept to myself as I have learned to do over the many years working on Broadway, and in film, and television. What I have always considered my, "waiting tables so I can paint," job, which gratefully I have been extremely successful with.

As rehearsal moved along I would spend my days with Betty, along with of course the other actors, getting to know them as they shared. Often actors don't make themselves too available. They are working, and necessarily so, focused on the work they must perform on stage. Friendships are rare, let alone genuine friendliness, so I, as I have done for many years, was friendly in return but kept to myself. I am a professional. I know what my priorities are, where boundaries must be set. Betty was an example as a star of the show in her daily kindness and availability and this wasn't lost on me. I slowly shared with Betty my deep appreciation of her work, and how much I admired her. I could see she was a private person. Her sensitivity toward others around her as she worked was genuine and a new respect grew for her. I was always considerate of these things so when we became friendly, it was gentle and slow, over the weeks we all were together.

One beautiful summer night I was at the Hollywood Bowl where Sting and Peter Gabriel were performing. As Peter sang, "Don't Give Up," one of my favorite songs, I closed my eyes to take it all in, sensitive to where I was in my life, the joy of being there, the emotion of the music, and that incredible song. In my minds eyes I saw Betty singing "Don't Give Up," and thought how perfect it would be for her.

The following night at the show I mentioned this to Betty. She lit up and exclaimed what a great song that was, and then asked if I had any other songs to suggest, as she would like to consider them for a new show. I could read her sincerity in this invitation, and taking it seriously composed a list of 11 titles for her, from which she chose the Peter Gabriel song, and one by Emmylou Harris, "Prayer in Open D."

Many weeks later I went to see Betty at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in her show Story Songs. She had been performing this show in many cities, and this was one of the last stops on the tour. Friends in New York had been texting me when she performed at Joe's Pub, that she spoke of me during the evening. I was stunned, she spoke about me? I couldn't imagine this, and was curious what she was saying. I knew she was going to sing both songs I suggested within the context of the show, and realized this must be what she was sharing. So that evening as she presented, "Prayer in Open D," she spoke to the audience of our meeting and the list of songs I gave her; I couldn't help but feel shock and a kind of out of body, time travelling distance coalesce from all my visceral memories of her and her work, her voice, her performing, and ultimately now, herself, there looking at me from the stage. Tears brimmed my eyes as she sang the Emmylou song. I sat still as I could, but all the while nearly shaking inside, removed from the space and with her connecting spiritually to the words of the song.

There's a highway risin' from my dreams

Deep in the heart I know it gleams

Being an artist, a painter, a writer, I know from experience the road is long. I am not lonely though, my box of paints is quite full, and I am no longer scared of the devil. There are angels along the highway, showing and sharing the way. Betty is one such angel. Her new recording Story Songs is brilliant. Brilliant like a star one finds in the deep dark night sky, multi-pointed and twinkling from afar. It is much like herself; deep, resonant, spiritual, nuanced...and that voice. I will always have this to listen to; as I paint, drive, meditate, connecting to more than I am with her music, and now can personally share with her my love and appreciation as a friend and fellow artist, too.

For the concern of All

It is only from the outside one can tell the size and movement of something.

I grew up learning this lesson. Daily. From mid elementary years starting on occasion, and then beginning in the 7th grade until graduation from high school I did not know one day where I wasn’t bullied and harassed from classmates for being what they considered a fag. The worst of this was from teammates on my basketball, track, and cross country running teams, and perhaps the most difficult to handle. Imagine striving for your best as those running alongside you taunted and teased. A living metaphor isn’t it? But what is the metaphor, and does it signify anything? Then there was the day I was physically attacked in a shopping mall and punched in the face as the attacker yelled, “fag,” knocking me into the wall as he walked away from me.

After time one has to question the toll psychologically, emotionally, and psychically what this does. 

For me I found my best defense in an ever increasing sense of the space around me and the inhabitants. A constant scanning and screening of those, near and far. An ability to see a room in its entirety in a flash, searching out danger. I would do everything in my power to avoid confrontation and attacks. Going to school was for me a nightmare I suffered with daily. Despite this, and perhaps because of this, I had to find those who I felt safe with. I searched places I could survive and be friended. I relied on these safe havens. A Peregrin nesting aside a church steeple. Sanctuary.

I knew I had to get through those years, somehow. I knew once I was older, I could leave home and move to a big city. A city large enough I could disappear into, and find those like me. Safety in numbers. Safety in the mix of difference.

Difference, the great equalizer.

I took with me an ability to scan a space. I discovered a psychic awareness, a doppler effect which stayed with me all the many years post high school trauma. It helped me in my work, this ability to see into something or someone quickly, evaluate, and respond. It takes an enormous amount of energy, this constant surveillance, and please do not mistake it for paranoia, but it worked for me and I thrived. It also allowed me to tap into a considerable creative flow. I found sensing, searching, viewing, also had side benefits of inspiration. It would come to me nearly constantly, and this I also sift through continually. It is as if a radio is on all the time, and hearing this ceaselessly I tune it out until a thing catches my attention. Then I zero in on it, reading and watching and listening, gathering information to distill, for art. 

I can’t locate the numbers for the lottery, or find my missing keys, but then I didn’t tune my awareness for this, and I guess this was not one of the side effects. I tuned it for protection. I sat on the side of the pond, from a safe space, and watched. Watched the ripples in the pond, learning their many meanings, and began to listen. I remained on the edge of the pond all the years once I was put there. Not swimming in the depths, lazing on my back staring into the nothingness of space, dumb to what lay below. I was on the edge, the perimeter, the outside. It is only from here one can see the size of a thing and how it is, or maybe isn’t, moving. 

I wonder now in this later stage of my life, with partner and daughter to care for and protect, how the times we have entered will effect our lives. I note I am suddenly sitting up again. Watching. Concerned and curious if I, if we, if our daughter, are safe. I don’t know that we are. I am aware now when we go out together, a little family, we are different. I am aware of others noting us, two men with a child, and considering us differently. I am not wrong in this. I know this territory well. It isn’t something I can mistake. I am an old tree. My roots are deep, and my branches have grown to reach out far as I have been a still and silent witness to many, many things. I am aware now of old feelings, from childhood years ago when I first learned them. It is very possible my nest is not as safe as it once was. I have with me now something I have not felt in the cities I have lived in for the last 30 years, New York and Los Angeles. Cities I always felt safe in. This something I thought I had left behind to the small town I grew up in. This something you could not possibly understand unless you were also on the outside, the perimeter, the edge, looking in.  

But you can trust those of us who are. We are your family members. We are your friends. We are your neighbors. We are your co-workers. We have seen this before and though time has passed since it was incredibly bad, it is now here again but it isn’t just our safety at stake, it is yours too. It is this country’s, and as this world grows small there are those who would give up their populations to have what America has, this place. If you want to take over something, simply undermine their internal relations, separate them one from another like chaff from wheat. Take the spoils, and harvest what remains. 

If we don’t stick together, if we don’t protect one another, if we don’t value what is different we will lose everything. 

I know this because I am on the outside. I know the size of the thing and how fast it is moving. I invite you to join me here, where it is safe, where we can all watch together and see through for the concern of All.