(this is what we call a segue in the trade, folks…) Nikol is a fiber artist. but i mean The Real Deal Holyfield- - she came back from a sheep sheering the second day i was here with, like, two garbage bags full of freshly shorn fleece that she is prepared to wash, dye, and spin by hand. in only a matter of weeks, she will be receiving three sheep of her own and installing them in the backyard – along with an assortment of exotic chicks (of the chicken variety, you retards).
okay – here is where i’m supposed to transition into a sermon extolling bucolic, Arcadian life. it’s not quite like that. this is not a hardbitten but idyllic locale, made somehow purer by the native intelligence of its nobly savage denizens. it is not that greener pasture made all the more winsome and enticing by it’s anarchic filthy urban counterpart. it’s cold, ugly, and uncomfortable. it’s a sometimes scary world where you need to know where to step. this world does not sit propped up on a pedestal offering the kinds of accessible interfaces we’ve come to expect in our digitally literate world. this is a world that you’ve got to grab with both hands, get your center of gravity underneath, haul up and crack open. my hosts Nikol and Ron, in particular, are individuals who have seized on an idea about freedom and gone about manually constructing the frame and the engine that is going to sustain that freedom and feed it in such a way that it continues to flourish with the reliable pendulum of the seasons.
all around me are constant reminders and nuanced reflections on the idea of production. particularly at this time of year. the denizens hereabouts are burning fields and setting up massive irrigation ducts, organizing livestock, putting up new silos, preparing for the advent of the spring. it’s a bit different from production as it pertains to theater. both aspects can be reduced to ratios and yields and they both connect with something much higher, ineffable, and humbling. but farm-life is attached to a cycle. arbitrary weather systems can blow in and shift day-to-day circumstances, but there is a fundamental pedal to the year that connects with the great machinery of the cosmos. your harvest is directly proportional to your vigilance, accumulated knowledge, and submission to practical realities. my experiences in organized “professional” theater are increasingly sedentary, arbitrary, and disassociated from the world outside the theater’s walls. similarly, my experiences in the city are increasingly arbitrary, mediated, and full of distractions and dissipations. where does the rubber hit the road? when will the law of gravity win out and drag the bloated, hyper-stimulated, and atrophied corpse crashing to the ground?
i began this journey with a few notions that have been gaining steam as i go along. one is the necessity to invest in practical and pragmatic approaches and language in my life. in my first few days here, i re-examined a mission statement that i made four years ago when i began my work on the Thoreau project. here is a little bit from that:
Mission Statement
1 The Abraxas Stage is a visionary and progressive new artistic body dedicated to creating new theatrical work that is equal parts informative, efficacious, and entertaining.
2 We will explore historically significant thinkers, concepts, and events through collaborative art making processes and develop material that is intellectually compelling and imminently accessible. We will transform academic source material into new forms that resonate with relevance and meaning for citizens who are answering the challenge of our new intellectual and spiritual landscape.
3 We will open a door amply wide for individuals of eclectic backgrounds, especially those interested in confronting the impediments that obstruct us from becoming more evolved on a personal and social level. In America today, we face several untold acute crises that are exacerbated by the detracting forces of cynacism, anti-intellectualism, and spiritual poverty. The Abraxas Stage will work hard to carve out a physical space, a region of thought, and a spirit of communion where these detracting forces can gain no purchase.
4 We will hold Joy as the highest value that we can possibly share with an audience. We will constantly seek a greater understanding of Joy through the diligent investigation of Grace in the human body and through language. We will achieve this by employing expressive modes that are based equally on Western classical modes, integrated non-Western folk practices, and an informed understanding of rapidly evolving contemporary modes.
5 We will present an alternative to the seductive coarseness and vulgarity that has become a chief currency in popular entertainments. We seek to present a countervailing force to the monolithic grip that televisual culture holds over modern man’s time, imagination, and senses.
…not bad, huh? i still find those to be some fairly persuasive organizing principles. it’s a good shape and structure, a good “via” to direct human, artistic effort.
what i find lacking, though, is the very force that drove me out to this thriving, sparse place where the weather cuts across unabated, where the ground is uneven and treacherous, where one farmer’s massive controlled flame can jump across the field to another’s lot in an instant- - i want to work with spirit as force of nature and there is something petty, small, and stingy about cramming spirit into linear narrative, into drab rehearsal studios, into the tired values of the cultural elite. spirit is wild, ancient, untamed, free. it can be channeled thru the human form, but its constant wish is to rumble as cloud front across prairie, or crash from the surface of ocean down into undersea canyons no man will ever see, or dance nimbly out into the cold and rainbowed reaches of space. spirit will blow your mind, motherfucker, and you better have proper instruments if you wish to handle it in its rawest state. i learned that when i visited Thomas Richards in Italy three years ago. Thomas and his creative partner Mario Biagini work with ancient vibratory songs as the chief material from which they form training exercises and performance opuses. each work session and rehearsal is like a séance. extraordinary forces reach thru time to dialogue with the living. Thomas and Mario masterfully conduct these forces and guide others in touching them. in the text “The Edge-Point of Performance” (an edited conversation he had with Lisa Wolford), Thomas describes part of this aliveness:
“For someone who is sitting witnessing a doer in the process of the “inner action,”
there can happen the phenomenon of induction, to utilize Growtowski’s term. If you have an electrical wire without current flowing in it, and you take another electrical wire with current in it and put it nearby, because there is current in this first wire, there can also appear in the second wire close to it the traces of an electrical current. This is the phenomenon of induction, and it can also happen when someone is witnessing the performing structure in which the doers are going toward [their] “inner action”, this transformation of energy… But it’s not the objective of our performing opus to produce induction. If it became our objective, I feel we would immediately lose this something “inner.” So that’s another aspect through which, through a special kind of reflection, we can better see ourselves and our work, to objectify what we are doing.”
(The Growtowski Sourcebook, p. 441)
so, that’s a bit of what i’m driving at, too. this going toward the “inner action” that allows such a phenomenon to occur. i think and hope i am creating the kind of work that connects with a similarly iconic, irrefutable, and ancient super-(or purely-)natural force. this has as much to do with personal faith and commitment as anything else. an abiding faith can open floodgates. submission to a set of laws, submission to an irrational yet unconditional love. it is from faith that the artist may derive commitment. i’m working with all this stuff. i am attempting to establish an itinerary—a work schedule and a way of working that will enable my arrival at a degree of faith and commitment that unlocks the gateway to the hyperlane where spirit surges by on its way to the outer edges of the universe.
in practicing in this way, it is my hope to become a communicant, of sorts—that is, someone sustained by my contact with extraordinary forces who is also capable and willing to share the good news gleaned from that contact.
