Oh, man! Yikes, one week to go until my performance piece at the artSPACE durban Gallery! My installation is completed and I have delivered it to the gallery where it will be installed on the afternoon of 29th October, just prior to my performance. I am so AMPED! You know when you are at a funfair, and you gave gotten into a rollercoaster car and the safetybar has locked you in? You are aimed at the sky, clacking up that seemingly endless steep incline. That feeling of panic, fear, exhilaration and anticipation as you reach the peak and start tilting downward, facing that virtually 90 degree drop, straight down! Oh! Here comes gravity! There is a split second when you experience a moment of complete and utter calm… and then…release…and the rush as you hurtle downward, all control surrendered to the momentum, and the moment, and the purity of uncontrolled, unrestricted experience. This is what it is like to be a performance artwork. Gary Oldman describes that moment so well in a movie called The Professional (1998).
I like these calm little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven, he says. Granted he is playing the role of a sociopathic policeman bent on trying to exterminate a very young Natalie Portman, but you get what I mean about those calm little moments before the storm. I think it is really going to be something to experience…not just for the viewers/audience but also for me. A totally unique experience for all involved!
And as much as I am looking forward to it, I am also really exhausted. However in saying that, I have found that functioning on nervous, exhausted energy is a good thing in a performance. One week of fasting left too, which I have to admit has been brutal! I have really experienced the toll when I have had to exert myself. When I have gone for runs I have especially felt it; heavy legs, like lead and jelly, all at the same time. Just no gas! Plus I have gone down two belt notches, 40RTY days is a long time! This combination of exhaustion and fasting, and the force of will to see the performance process through to the end, is what pushes you deep, deep within yourself, to that place you need to be in order to put yourself wilfully through something like this. There is a reason they say one must suffer for one’s art and nowhere is this more literal than in performance or body art.
I have written in my posts before about my belief that the artist must have solitude. It is nice to see that I am not alone in this belief. May Sarton, the poet, writes about solitude in her aptly titled, Journals of a Solitude, and she really just expresses it so beautifully which is why I wanted to share her thoughts with you, dear reader.
In an entry from September 15, 1972, Sarton writes:
It is raining. I look out on the maple, where a few leaves have turned yellow, and listen to Punch, the parrot, talking to himself and to the rain ticking gently against the windows. I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my “real” life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone…
She considers solitude as the birthing-place of self-discovery:
For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am exhausted by the reverberations after even the simplest conversation. But the deep collision is and has been with my unregenerate, tormenting, and tormented self. I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose — to find out what I think, to know where I stand.
This is so me, and my life and my art…
Suzanne Vega is another artist who writes wonderfully about solitude and that is how I will end off, with the lyrics of her ode to solitude:
Solitude Standing
Solitude stands by the window
She turns her head as I walk in the room
I can see by her eyes she’s been waiting
Standing in the slant of the late afternoon
And she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame
Solitude stands in the doorway
And I’m struck once again by her black silhouette
By her long cool stare and her silence
I suddenly remember each time we’ve met
And she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame
And she says “I’ve come to set a twisted thing straight”
And she says “I’ve come to lighten this dark heart”
And she takes my wrist, I feel her imprint of fear
And I say “I’ve never thought of finding you here”
I turn to the crowd as they’re watching
They’re sitting all together in the dark in the warm
I wanted to be in there among them
I see how their eyes are gathered into one
And then she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame
And she says “I’ve come to set a twisted thing straight”
And she says”l’ve come to lighten this dark heart”
And she takes my wrist, I feel her imprint of fear
And I say “I’ve never thought of finding you here”
Solitude stands in the doorway
And I’m struck once again by her black silhouette
By her long cool stare and her silence
I suddenly remember each time we’ve met
And she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame
