How perfect do I have to be, Assholes?
July 11, 2008
It has come to my attention that I am being overlooked for no good reason -except that I speak out of context. I’ve had it with you charlatans. Sure this photo is 20 years old, but I will not be intimidated by your unwarranted envy. A few injections of Botox and a box of hair dye, and Voila! I’m back, so don’t count me out yet. Paul Geremia, the infamous blues musician, wrote a song about me on his “Devil something” album called ”Same Old Wagon” but listen, Paul, it’s everyone else refusing to lay their wagon down, not me. Heavy with cocktail chatter and silk scarf techniques, always the jewelry or convertible, the child at Yale, the lover in Rio, the thick name droppings on the floor. Their eyes are usually too close together, like a Fox dressed in finery. Self esteem stems from a homemade apple tart, one-act play treatise, fund-raising chairmanship. They sniff out the real and deflate it. There are lessons my mother never taught me that cannot be obtained from self-help books. The real “Secret” is how they accomplish it. How low is the bar?
Artist Rick Hayes Opening Features Plastic Soldiers posing in Ice
July 11, 2008
It is terrible that I didn’t get a good picture of Rick’s art work. It is out of this hemisphere. If only George Bush attended the gallery opening and saw the frosty blank faced soldiers, stiff in their plastic uniforms, pulled off the sale table at the local Toy’s R Us, installed and photographed and manipulated by an artist deeply connected to the reality of his time. kill, kill, kill, in a frozen sea. Kill with a frosty heart. Bliss, the soldier in uniform, with his clear cut orders and starched plastic uniform. Anonymous, he marches through the frozen dead souls of past tense heroes of foreign wars. the medals on his chest are rubber, bumpy, as army green as his body, frozen in combat, no before, no after, a continual murder machine on ice, chilled to the bone with pride, mommie has a bumper sticker: My Son is a Marine. Mommie has encouraged the crucifixion of her son for the sake of her bake sale ego. Ice crystals reflect the truth, as they melt in Global Warming trends, mommie cries. Rickhayesvt.com
Side Swipe from a Grief Drawer
March 27, 2008
Over and over, in your head, you say, what have I done? What have I done? What have I done? Standing in front of a bureau drawer you’ve been cleaning out, discovering your dead father’s driver’s license or a black and white photo of yourself, at a beach, standing knee-high to that father. You shut the drawer and go on. Maybe clean out the linen closet. Too late. The image of the face on the plastic weathered driver’s license is now lodged in the middle of your throat and when you swallow, the image sinks deeper and cuts into your center, the center from which all activity and motivation spring forth, and you want to sit down but the image might kill you, so you open the linen closet. 
Mice turds and urine sprinkled throughout the sheets and towels. The mice have eaten holes in your favorite sheets. Hands rip at the mess, pile it in the car for a later trip to the laundry. A temporary respite from the jabbing ache of longing, regret, loss, loss, loss. And you think, all is lost, so why bother washing the sheets? Dangerous thinking. Phone call from daughter driving a U-Haul cross country alone. Her cat is freaking out in the truck and has pissed on the seats, in her purse, on her lap. Ah, a problem, a smooth-out time-out. The gift of an unsolvable problem of the now. Will I have to pay to have the truck cleaned, she asks? Does vehicle insurance pay for cat piss cleaning? I offer to call the U-Haul people. There are no U-Haul people, just U-Haul recordings. What have I done? What have I done? Why am I standing in the middle of the living room asking what have I done? What does that mean? I have no idea. What am I going to do? What happened? What is happening? What is this? What is what? Let’s not walk to the mailbox today. Let’s not clean out any more drawers. I brush the mattes from the dogs paws. Mud season. Futile. The brush in my hand is weightless, the dog seems unreal, like a stuffed animal. In my head, full color, my father’s face on the driver’s license, resigned but dignified. One eye droops from a growing cancer of which he is unaware. Date of birth. Safe driver. Frayed, dirtied edges of plastic, a small square of plastic, impersonal, lawfully executed. My father is gone. And I will be gone. And my daughter may find my driver’s license in a drawer and your daughter or son may find your driver’s license in a drawer. But after all, we’re going to be dead and that’s perfectly natural. The lesson is: when we feel concern about mice eating our sheets, traffic jams, a neighbor’s gossip, lost job, bad credit, the inevitable broken heart, we can rest assured that someday all that will be left of us and our concerns is our driver’s license and maybe a building, some money, a novel, a good deed, our children’s and friend’s memories of our shenanigans. And so I suggest, don’t play it so safe. Live and die large. Fail large. What our children need are good stories about outrageous people who were ahead of their time. Be ahead of your time and make the discovery of your driver’s license in a drawer a cause for celebration and laughter.
What is Performance Art?
August 1, 2007
There are no rules to break with performance art, because there aren’t any. This would lead one to assume that it is a farce. Sometimes it is.
Performance art encompasses so much territory that it almost consumes itself. Anything goes, and that includes an artist not showing up. I have a friend in Berlin who actually posts elaborate, expensive posters for his shows and does not show up to perform. People pay admission, sit down and wait for something to happen. And things do happen. A room full of strangers, for the most part, sit and start talking to each other. With time on their hands, frustration and confusion in their brains, they try to collectively figure out what happened. When they exit, they are given double their money back. Sometimes this artist has the whole thing taped. It has now become somewhat of a “happening” in and of itself. A party. A place to meet people who like performance art and discuss issues of the day.
I offer this example because I think it conveys what we’re dealing with. If you think you “have the right” to the normal expectations of an audience member, you’re mistaken. And that, I think, is the main difference between “legitimate” theater and performance art and cabaret — a form of performance art that always includes music and signing. Read more
Featured Article:
Thanks to some wise nightclubs owners, live entertainers continue to eat well during this economic downturn. It was during the Great Depression that Cabaret and Vaudeville got their start as people swarmed into the pubs to forget their troubles for a few hours. The cost/value ratio of live entertainment suits the recession pocket book and mind-set. If you stay home and wallow about your wallet, you’ll soon find yourself in the emergency room for a failed suicide attempt, chronic depression or Epstein-Barr Virus. Without health insurance, your stress-related illness will cost you upwards to $1,000 dollars. A night out in a cabaret will run you about $50. Take your pick. See you at The Sidebar….