(and if you are still wondering what exactly HAS #occupy accomplished?  visit http://occupydidwhat.tumblr.com/ - you might be surprised.)

i’m with those who think it is probably more important as a cultural movement than a political movement.  i hope #occupy is changing how people -Americans in the Land of the Free in particular – interact with their world – what they expect, what they want, what they see as possible.

for me personally, even though I have not been that directly involved, #occupy has proven a lot of what i assumed i knew about social movements, but it has taught me more about what i don’t know, and where i am weak in that regard – in really understanding and not just assuming things about the current dynamics of law, justice and politics, and then that intersection with my world of art and the creation of meaningful experiences (not just entertainment, catering to artificial mass taste).  so much of how the world works now is unnatural, nonintuitive, not what it seems – we get sold values and the definitions of what things are or should be just as readily as you are sold a can of Coca Cola.  the way things are framed, how they are defined and by whom (especially the by whom) create our perception and experience of the world.

we all know this – it’s part of becoming an adult, realizing that almost everyone is trying to sell you something, and not just person-to-person.  that capitalism has produced a systemic, institutionalized, government-sponsored snake oil culture industry, influencing everything from what you eat and where you shop to who you vote for and how you feel about all of it.

but what is harder is figuring out what to do about it – and that is where i have really struggled with #occupy on a personal level. how to join and fight in a way that feels right, that uses our talents and desires and makes us feel empowered and engaged and excited and productive in our own way.  not all of us want to take to the streets and fight the riot police.  not all of us want to work tediously in committee meetings or court rooms.  some of us just want to #occupyart:

“The marches are very powerful and motivating for anyone who begins in the march,” said 27-year-old librarian Jeremy Bold. “For passersby, they see people who are very vocal and angry.”

…

“Personally, I don’t like labels,” said 25-year-old musician Dotan Negrin. “So I don’t consider myself part of Occupy Wall Street. I’m not a protester.” Negrin has been travelling the country with a musical project called Pianos Across America. He has driven and dragged his upright piano as far as LA, Seattle and Chicago to play in open spaces and welcome people into the the performances. For the past few months, he’s been playing in Union Square Park, which has become something of a second home for the occupiers.

“I always play Union Square, so I figured I might join them,” said Negrin.

His goal in life, he said, is to “try to do something really extraordinary while trying to make the world a better place.”

“That’s my sort of protest,” he added.

.::.

YES to that.  yes.

and i do know that Occupy has space for this.  that if you build your own movement,  it will be supported.  it’s one of the great things about decentralized models. everyone can play. i think that is what makes it strong. but i have still struggled to find my voice here, through no fault but my own.

.::.

i still support #occupy 100%, and believe that we all do need to fight what is going on in the U.S. — that complacency and entitlement are social evils and killing us. i might not be in the streets, but i have put a lot of energy into this and  i need to let myself stop feeling guilty – and peer pressured – to participate in #occupy in ways that don’t feel comfortable for me.  i wish the same for everyone else out there who is interested and supportive of the movement, and that we all find a way to fight the good fight in our own ways.

.::.

(use the #ows tag to see all previous posts)

in the 4 performances over the next 3 days, between going to work in the daytime and then going to the theatre and putting on our white make-up and amazing costumes and everyone in the cast being fun and talented and wonderful and amazing and getting on stage and for 90 minutes creating a dream, an offering of bodies and tears and music and sculpture and art and dance, and having the audience respond so well and participate in that with us – it was magic. the real kind.

we gave everything and more.

it was hard, sometimes, standing there in the middle of the stage, believing that that’s where i was, who i was with, what i was doing, who i am.

i was and am so grateful for everything Bad Unkl Sista has given to me.

and thank you so much to everyone who came out to support.  seeing your faces, hearing your reactions – it was so important to us for you to be there.

some photos are here:  Shoot That Klown: First Breath-Last Breath and here (same photog,  flickr link)

i had no idea what this was when i first met Anastazia in 2006.  our first interactions were fashion related, as she was making and selling costumes when she first moved to SF. but time went by and she moved her focus back to her primary art, performance, and i moved with her.

and now this weekend we are in the midst of the largest production in SF to date – First Breath – Last Breath: a full theatre production, all our own, sharing the bill with no one else, 90-100 minutes on stage.

this cast is really amazing – seasoned butoh dancers, aerialists, a contortionist, an opera singer, sets by SF artist Shrine, and the live music with is incredibly unique and beautiful. i feel so lucky to be a part.

the title refers to the cycle, and cycles, of life, but it is also personally very fitting for me right now. BadUnklSista was my first real breath as a non-fashion-performance artist on a stage, and due to life shifts, this is likely going to be my last performance for a long while.

shows are tonight @ 7:00pm, tomorrow at 2:00pm and 7:00pm.

reviews so far: SF Examiner + SF Chronicle 4/26

“about the liminal spaces between the defining moments of our lives.”

the Fox was all lit up for a show, and watching the crowd walk by in the time we were having dinner outside @ Rudy’s, i was trying to guess what kind of music it was (since i had no idea from the name on the marquee) based on the superficial look of the crowd – age, gender, race, fashion = 20ish, 50/50, super mixed, hoodies and skirts . collegiate. i realize that this is a tricky game, stereotyping.

there were a lot of flannel shirts, which doesn’t really scream hip hop to me, but maybe that’s because i’m a generation too old, so i guessed something grunge/punk-ish. jay said, no, it’s hip hop. so then we googled it. and yes, it is hip hop. and then a staff guy came out of the Fox and asked if we wanted free tickets to the show, and we said YES! but when we got inside, they were singing a version of Rolling in the Deep. the whole crowd was singing a capella. it didn’t seem hardcore is what i’m saying. it felt a little…..awards show.

also, my observation about the punk/grunge element was not wrong – 3 out of 4 dudes in the live band (not pictured anywhere on the websites) looked like Dave Grohl and they were playing hard rock as the backing for the MC. one was a guy with a violin. as a plus, i did totally appreciate the live band element.

there was, also, as visual reference to the tour name/theme, Camp Gambino, stage decoration in the form of some tall but fake pine trees and a small tent staked at each edge of the stage, and some background visuals of the moon/sky now and then, so as to look as if the band were playing at a campsite.

i’m all for mashups, but at a certain point i feel like the patchwork of cultural references/sights/sounds is too much. too overtly mimetic. like one of those spoof movies where the visual and character references come at you in a heavy stream of hyperbolic pop nostalgia, but with strobe lights.

i think Donald Glover is maybe overacting the part. and that is sort of where i start to define the essence of hipster: unabashedly revisionist.

In fiction, revisionism is the retelling of a story or type of story with substantial alterations in character or environment, to “revise” the view shown in the original work. Unlike most usages of the term revisionism, this is not generally considered pejorative.

i would agree that this review seems hella jaded/youkidsgetoffmylawn, and maybe it is, but i am not the only one feeling it. see: the 40-year cycles of pop culture nostalgia (kottke):

If you combine this with Kurt Andersen’s recent piece about the slowing rate of change of pop culture, perhaps there’s another lesson here other than Gopnik’s assertion that we’ll be nostalgic for the Obama age 40 years from now. Maybe we’ve reached Peak Nostalgia and in an effort to find more and more nostalgia for an ever-increasing audience, culturemakers are mining more from those eras outside of the appointed 40-year era and as a result, pop culture is feeling more timeless, echoing all eras, until it becomes a culture that can’t draw upon anything but itself.

anyway, we left before the show ended.

like an old country woman who has never been farther from her birth place than she can walk or ride a horse
this is the world i’ve known

this path, this commute
these comforting memories of trees
this is what i might miss more than anything

.::.

i feel really young and naive.

i’m not too hot on the HP Pavilion in San Jose as a venue – it’s just never gonna sound good in a hockey arena – and our seats were pretty far away so Thom Yorke looked like this weird little dancing seahorse way down there on the stage, but i have no complaints about Radiohead. they are stellar. they don’t phone it in. they are not resting on their laurels. i think it’s hard for some people to interpret when you say that music like that – hard rock music – is beautiful. but i think it is so beautiful. the music pushes all the right buttons for me in terms of what’s in the soundscape and how it’s composed together, and the lyrics. oh, thom yorke. such unapologetically romantic levity and despair.

the visual set-up was also pretty amazing, with a waterfall of programmed LEDs and moving projection screens that made for intense but beautiful designs. so kudos to whoever the lighting/visuals team is.

i realized somewhere in the middle of it that it’s been a pretty long time since i went to a concert and actually didn’t care at all what they played. they could play any of it. they could play things i’ve never heard before. didn’t care. all of it good.

but i got pretty excited when they played There There (“just because you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there” – which i’ve quoted many times), and when they played The Amazing Sounds of Orgy (“i want to see you smile again the day the banks collapse“, which I still have on an old t-shirt from 2001).

i was looking back through my old blog posts about radiohead, and laughed when i saw the post from 2007 about In Rainbows, complaining that it was getting too electronic. i wasn’t sure about that move – it has failed for so many other bands. but oh, they made it beautiful and now some of my favorite tracks are the most electronic ones.  Idioteque was a the final encore and that was pretty intense.

in short: great show.  i love radiohead. 4evar.

(setlist) (photos+review from SFBG)

There’s a chalk board up front covered with an enthusiastic depiction of the plot line, the definition of “metaphor” and “simile”, and examples like “Her eyes are diamonds.” This is not literal. No one in their right mind believes the poor gal has jewels in her eye sockets. And yet we so constantly mistake ourselves for real, believe our true life stories, trapped in our characters like similes who forgot they were merely “like” or “as”.

–BHJ

the pain in my right arm, this constant, chronic pain from my ear down the right side of my body, into my fingertips and hip socket

is most literally

from a tension held so long, a finger cocked, waiting to pull the trigger.