intellectual properties

line cook philosopher + the spiders in our minds, halloween 2009

i have found myself passing this one to a few people over the past couple of days, for distinctly different reasons, and it also relates much to how and why i do the kind of performance art it do, so figure i might as well share it with everyone:

http://linecook415.blogspot.com/2009/11/being-present.html
11.02.2009

Being present.

Your girlfriend broke up with you. Your dog died. Rent is late. Your car broke down. Your roof is leaking, and you’re so broke that you cant wash your work clothes. Everything is fucked. You’re completely overwhelmed and miserable, and now you have to catch the bus to work.

Everyone has been there. Life gets so complicated and messy that spending twelve hours in a kitchen seems impossible…and it’s only your Monday. You walk around in a haze of distraction, barely present. In the middle of a pick-up, the meat cook nudges up to you and taps you on the shoulder.

“Hey dude. You gonna plate that risotto?”

They say to leave all of your problems at the door when you come into work. Be present and aware, every day. Just cook, and you get to forget about everything. And to a certain extent, I agree with all of this. The problem with this approach is that every cook handles their problems differently. Rudy might get drunk before he comes in. Leslie will slam her oven and refrigerator doors all night. Doug will try to laugh it all off, barely containing his misery, and David just might break down and cry around the time the second turn is sitting down. It’s a funny thing to be asked create such highs for others while feeling so fucking low. You’re not a robot. So I say take a different approach.

Dont ignore it, embrace it. Let it feed you. Immerse yourself in it. Let every single bit of whats on your mind seep in and consume you, to the point where you feel like you cant take it anymore, then go cook. It will be horrible at first. You’ll feel overwhelmed, slow, and you’ll barely be able to tell the difference between your spoons and knives. You can handle it though; You barely even notice when you cut and burn yourself anymore. A little bit of adversity isnt going to kill you either. As you go on, you’ll start to have a little bit of clarity. The intensity of your problem, coupled with the intensity of cooking, will help you to see things for how they really are. Then suddenly you’ll feel that lightness return to your step, and your focus will shift. Your problems haven’t actually gone away, but you’re at least starting to feel better about them.

Cooking is a place to find peace. In all of the chaos and noise, a good cook is quiet, with their head down. Their distractions become part of their focus. Dealing with these problems on the line, instead of shutting off, or repressing, or simply trying to distract oneself can contribute to a stronger, more focused cook. Sometimes making things really hard is the best way to move forward.

now, i can’t really relate this to my own job.  it seems more relatable to physical work, work where things are created or destroyed (cooking, building, cleaning, making, doing). but i can definitely relate it to my moonlighting as a performance artist, and it encapsulates a lot of why i continue to do it, and why, these days, i almost feel like i NEED to do it. because focusing on work/doing can be actively meditative; a chance to let things wash over you and to work things out. focus that anger into your art. push it through.

one of the reasons i love working with anastazia of Bad Unkl Sista is that with every performance, she encourages us to take the things that are eating us up inside (for halloween, it was, thematically, the “spiders that live inside or minds”), or maybe, if you’re particularly joyful person, the things that are making us bubble and fizz inside, and try to really focus that energy, that feeling, like a laser beam out through your eyes and body, even if (and particularly when) standing totally still on stage. in addition to staged performances we often do crowd-iteraction - going up to them unsolicited in our crazy weird costumes in character, interacting with them and bouncing around them, making them play with our props or toys, or respond to silly questions, and/or freaking them out.  before we headed out to do this @ the spider ball last weekend, backstage she reminded us about taking the things we have inside and projecting them outward, but clarified that this was not “taking it out” on people.  if you have a lot of anger inside, she wasn’t suggesting we go out and be violent, angry characters.  but somehow take that energy, accept it, let it envelop you, and find a way to productively GET IT OUT as part of your performance.

before the evening began i had suffered a terrible headache all afternoon, and besides that hadn’t been in the best mood all week.  i had PMS.  i was not feeling good in my body.  i was frustrated with a number of things in my life.  i knew that doing this performance was going to give me a chance to get some of that out of me, but it’s always surprising to me how it manifests.  the prop that was assigned to me to use, to project with, to take into the crowd and interact with, was a piece of ventilation tubing painted red and twisted into the approximate shape of a heart. at first, i did not know what i was going to do with it.  but what happened when i stepped into the crowd was that suddenly, despite the frustration and general irritability i was feeling inside, i wanted to offer my heart to everyone.  and so i wandered the room, holding it up to my chest and simulating a beating pattern and then offering it to people as i approached them, and if they took it, if they played with my heart, i would jump up and down with joy.  and somehow, this made me very, very happy.