Tuesday, November 27, 2012

5 Performances for 3 Chairs

1.

In a stenchy room covered with black roofing felt, 3 chairs of variable durability, texture, color, and overall-personality are in a ring as close to what center as one says may exist.  I sit in the third chair, which you'll know is the third because I sat in it first. A bird is brought out to me in a cage by a designated assistant whom you probably know, IRL, away from the keyboard &c...I hold my face near the bird, near the tiny bars, and press forward deeply toward it, mimicking preposterous compassion for however long it takes to actually feel it and have evidence of feeling it, which I will reveal, removing the cage from my face and showing the audience the red indentation marks on my face, the proof of what pressure I was capable of or what ignorance I could pressure to capability.  I spit on the floor for far too long, so long I want to weep for a reason you probably won't believe.  I light cheap Virgen de Guadalupe candles and spread them around the room and the audience, buttering it in whatsoever manner, and from behind the table you haven't paid any attention to I extract a floppy puppet Jesus and loudly, violently crucify him with duct tape and thumbtacks to the chair which was all this time a toilet, my body.  Since I am ordained and have performed marriage ceremonies, I ask an audience member to approach and hand me the orange-rind I'll use for the rings, for I proclaim that this was my adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing" and to happy it, I bind myself and attempt sitting on my face, which is a neverending comedy, the slow approach of marriage.

2.

After the first performance ends (not that it can, in my experience), the audience plays find the stench.  To play find the stench, I clear myself of the floor and smear onto a corner of the felt-room, vaguely upright, flush not only with the wall.  Swizzle straws are passed around and everyone is told to breathe through them. This makes smelling more directional, more like a game or capitalism or the part of the joke before you felt like laughing.  I don't do anything.  I don't even hide or watch, but I might feel like laughing, it's a possibility, but since writing this I haven't seen the joke yet, I'll still say I don't do anything, I don't even hide or watch.  I don't laugh, but if I do, I'll stifle it, which will be doing something, so, in case, I'll stifle laughter, that's all I'll do, if even, I don't do anything more, I don't laugh, for sure. I've hid the stench.  They're searching for it, under tables, in the banged-up lockers, under my drawings, in the couch, in the dirty clothes, in the paint-racks--but they won't find it.  They'll find stenches, but not the stench.  I've hid the stench.  I don't do anything.  I hope I don't even watch.  I'll go to a chair.  I'll sit in it.  Until everyone gives up.  Because that is what must be done until everyone gives up, I must sit.  Not because that is the game I've made up.  It's necessity, of the broadly ontological kind.  If everyone gives up before I do, which is likely, considering I've decided as the performer to not give up before they give up, I will sit long after they've given up, wondering about the role of willpower and if I have it and if I feel good about having it.  I won't know how to perform this without doing anything more, and I don't do anything more.  I've hid the stench.  I can start laughing when I know I've hid the stench.

3.

The other 3 performances will be revealed by my assistants to the audience to have already taken place, for I cannot reveal them, since I would be lying, but my assistants, by revealing this to the audience, will start off lying, but by lying ensure the truth of their revelation by setting into motion the events that ensue which will howsoever prove all kinds of things falsely and not I've hid.

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