between art and life

Program #2: Music+Text+Film

2008-08-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

"I wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises. And if it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing."

-Robert Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 - May 12, 2008)

Saturday, August 23rd 7pm
&
Sunday August 24th 3pm
62nd & Hollis Street
Emeryville, CA
(Map it)

(A benefit for the La Casita Preschool)

We will begin Saturday evening with a 7 PM reception, (wine, beer, soft drinks, and snacks), performance at 8, followed by more wine, beer, etc. and a chance to chat about what you've seen and heard or just catch up (Sunday’s reception will begin at 3PM). We prefer that you come no later than 7:45 on Saturday and 3:45 on Sunday, as to not interrupt the performance. We will be asking for a suggested donation of $35 on Saturday and $20 on Sunday.

This event is a benefit for La Casita Preschool in Berkeley.

The Performance

1. Way To Sea

Music by Johny Blood

Performed by Joshua Batson, Johny Blood,
Dennis Finnegan, & Gwyneth Merner

Text by Johny Blood & J.C. Brunner

Images by Chris Willging

An underwater train journey.

A dream brings the narrator back to his late friend
and his past with the accompaniment of tuba, foghorns
and grainy black and white images.

2. War Unattended

Music by Dennis Finnegan

Performed by Joshua Batson, Johny Blood, Dennis Finnegan, Mark Bernfeld & Gwyneth Merner

Text, Photography, & Video by M. Mewborn

Read by Eric Robertson

Edited by Chris Willging

War and childhood in Asia.

Photos, music & video document the narrator’s
travels to where his father did a stint as a war pilot
and where his own obsession began.

3. Sit, Eat, Drive, Talk

Music by Dennis Finnegan

Performed by Joshua Batson, Mark Bernfeld, Johny Blood, Dennis Finnegan & Harry Yaglijian

A Film by Chris Willging

Family, travel, childhood.

The filmmaker’s journey through the Midwest with her parents to visit long lost childhood friends, elderly aunts and uncles, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Texts

2008-07-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

Performed June 14, 2008

Going, Going, Gone
by Eric Robertson

The Island
by Adam Sass

Witchenbye: Hotel
by James Brunner

Witchenbye: Hotel

2008-07-01T15:11:00.000-07:00

by James Brunner

This is Room 100. It’s bare except or the television screaming in white. It never goes off, just gets bigger and smaller.

You may get the Tower Room. It’s exceeding long with high ceiling. Children make their noise en masse outside in the schoolyard. It comes with a fever. Not many choose it or can find it. It may no longer be there.

Room 612 has a view of the parking lot. It’s very reassuring.

On the fourth floor, all the rooms are one. Desks and beds are laid out for efficient work and rest. Please keep the lavatories clean. Or else.

Some choose to stay in the elevator. Saves choosing. They’re pleasant! And they work.

The north staircase is the most used. It doesn’t clean easily and still carries the smells of smokers past. Cockroaches can occasionally be seen. Some food trays may not have been cleared. It can get hot.

Room 202 has vast curtained windows. All the furniture is large. The carpet is thick. There’s a table for the Board of Directors. They’re not here; they rarely come. It’s very clean. You feel someone might walk in at any moment. With a request for you, or to take your request, or maybe with an order. Whatever it is you know you’ll accept it or maybe they’ll accept it. Whatever it is, it will be acceptable.

The central landing on the fourth floor is simply appointed with a couple of desks, chairs and framed pictures from old magazines. The window ledges are rather high. You have to stand almost on tiptoe and lean over to see the busy students and professors hurrying in the courtyard below. It’s a perfect place to consider suicide. Never been done, though.

The terrace is a good place to meet and talk. There’s a flow of people and there are spaces for little groups to form and dissolve naturally. Most people are happiest here, in between where they’re coming from and where they’re going to.

Here’s the first floor reception area. Remember: waiting is not the same as striving.

The men and women who work at the reception desk see you as an object to be processed by screening. Just do what they say. Don’t be affronted if they appear to regard you with curiosity or without curiosity, with or without interest, in a friendly or unfriendly way. They don’t care about you at all. You’re just passing through. Do so quietly.

In Room 100, you’re trying to figure out what the TV’s screaming about. Actually, it’s you screaming.

The power plant is very impressive. Nobody works there, they just oversee it. It works by itself, making power and moving it, heating and cooling. Always turned on and pumping--for your benefit and mine.

You can get there by train. Who are all those people, heads nodding? Are they waking or falling asleep? Some are fresh and some are wilted. They all seem to have been riding for a long time.

“Which room is mine?” Which would you like?
Choose one you can have and make it your own.

Room 617 has a small kitchen and dining room. A couple of plants here and there could make it quite cheery. Put a home entertainment system with cameras, speakers, phones and screens. Watch yourself or allow someone else to watch you. It’s like picking at a scab or eating potato chips though; you can’t always stop when you want to.

Some prefer the dormitories. They make it easy to be oneself by resembling someone else. Deserted throughout the day, by night they’re saturated with the warm, heavy smell of communal somnolence. What a thrill to escape from the severe rows of identical cots and lockers into wild, turbulent dreams. And how satisfactory the relief at returning, your departure not noticed or remarked upon.

Sometimes you don’t get enough privacy. The sound of someone else shitting, or trying to come, or sobbing may disturb or arouse you. Pretend you’re not aware.

Tiger

2008-07-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

by Eric Robertson

There are 500 of my kind out there. Maybe less. 420.
You can understand why I'm defensive.
Pick my teeth with knife. Give an evil eye.
Just 420 of my brothers and sisters. My ma?
I don't know where she is.
Her fingers ornamenting someone's neck maybe.

So you can see I'm touchy.

Siberia is beautiful in the winter.
Birch trees all striped against the snow.
You can imagine a clear day.
An orange sunset against this.

I don't think about blood the way you do. That's for sure.
The earth spins me upside down.
I hear all the creatures that were.
So distant now. A trail of animal crackers.
A circus of silhouettes frozen on the horizon.
Crows picking the crumbs.
My memory like your childhood. That old.

Tony the Tiger selling cereal. Exxon gas.
Black Sambo a fictional friend. We all have beliefs.

I don't wear a white cloth bib when I carve my meat. None of that.
Not what you would call civilized. No no.
No factory farming. No conveyer belt.

I don't see blood like that.
Little drops rolling around some Styrofoam plate
wrapped in plastic. Red meat laying on absorbing pads. No.
When I see it I'm in it.
I hear it.
That's the closest I get to metal.
All that iron.
I hear it bubbling through my teeth through a clamped trachea.
I wear it on my forehead.
A giant bindi for my cousins in Bengal.

Martha

2008-07-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

by Eric Robertson

A person could feel small looking at those great big flocks. When I was a boy in the 1850s they flew over for hours. A mile wide and a hundred miles long. The jungle got right in yer veins just watchin' 'em. It was a damn sight. Evenin'-like. The whole sun gone. Just a little light around the edges.

And they only knew how to mate in great numbers. They couldn't get their juices up if they weren’t smellin' the air full of themselves for a hundred miles. That was their problem. There couldn’t ever a been an Adam and Eve. God must have thrown a batch of 'em down already winged.

Talk about wilderness. They were in the trees ever'where and they had so many nests they looked like berries on a bush. Those little eggs fed every crow and fox in the forest. Weren't enough natural enemies to eat 'em all. The crow and fox started having dinner together like they weren't natural born enemies themself. And those ladies in the trees just kept laying eggs one after another.

The hunters would build a campfire beneath 'em. Soak grain in sourmash for 'em to eat and then catch 'em floppin around drunk. Then they'd pinch there little heads between fingers like a farmer goin' down a row pinchin' potato bugs.

But now there gone. This year, 1914, has seen the last. Now I wish I could see those black clouds that went on forever. Now there's too much sun. The skies too lonely. All that lights on us with no blessed relief. We're naked now with out 'em. They was the clothing. More'n just a feather for a ladies hat.

The poor folk ate 'em… and the hogs. And some men made millions off 'em. Men who paid for colleges and had universities named after themselves. But all they could do was name the last pigeon Martha, after the first "first lady". When it was too late, that was the best they could do to relieve their conscious. As if that last girl was not just a walking zombie that didn't have more use with this world than an eraser at the end of a pencil. Seems like they could have come up with something better. What's a good name for the last lady? Enid? Nevermore?

When I was a boy we sang "A Friend of the Earth is a Friend to Me". I guess there not singin' that song in school anymore.

Hear that chuggin' off in the distance? That's the factory. Hiding the sun with all that black smoke. Kind of like the passenger pigeons. Except the air was good with the passenger pigeons. A billion wings all flappin' at once.

California Delta Smelt

2008-07-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

by Eric Robertson

Hey! Listen to Me!

I am a CALIFORNIA DELTA SMELT and I am tired of all these big ass, dangerous, just plain WEIRD creatures getting all the attention.

I mean do you have to be a whale to get saved?

All you people want is biggest, fastest, most dangerous, MAN-EATING!
It all sounds like some cheap porn site to me.

So the blue whale has a heart as big as a Volkswagon beetle
and the green mamba's bite will kill a man in seven seconds.
Does everything have to be in the Guiness Book of World Records for someone to pay attention? I mean do you actually have any idea how hard it is to lay 2000 eggs?

So I've Caused Some Trouble
and people can't use their jet skis everywhere
and farmers can't grow watermelons in the desert.
Well whoop te do! Is anybody dying over it?

I guess I should! That is what you'd like, huh?
If I just laid down and died.
You'd like to see my little white belly floating on top, wouldn't you?
Let's just forget about MY ANCESTORS and the millions and millions of
generations came before ME!

This is all about YOU!
Getting' the water YOU need
getting' the water for YOUR party pontoons,
to grow YOUR geraniums, to take YOUR warm, soothing,
two-hour-long BATHS.

This is all about YOU and that beautiful, crystal-clear, twice-scrubbed
water YOU NEED to flush down YOUR doo-doos.

I'm just a fishy little SMELT.
Go ahead forget me.You've got Shamu and Coco
and your cute little Ling-ling.

Watch your tv reruns of
Steve Irwin grabbing snakes by the tail
dangling his baby in front of alligators.
See if I care!

You just do what you do and never-mind exterminating me.
I'm just a little California delta smelt.

the program

2008-05-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Saturday, June 14, 2008
1512 62nd St. @ Hollis
Emeryville, CA
(Map it)

Reception: 7:00 pm
Performance: 8:00 pm
Followed by wine & victuals
until whenever

Suggested donation:
$10 or whatever you feel it's worth
(admittedly a complex calculation)

-Robert Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 - May 12, 2008)

Music

Johny Blood & Dennis Finnegan

Text

Going, Going, Gone (Tiger/Passenger Pigeon/Whale)
- Eric Robertson

The Island - Adam Sass

Witchenbye: Hotel - James Brunner

Images

Paul Mueller

why we are doing what we are doing

2008-05-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

We do this -

Because we seek connection

Because some of us are overwhelmed by solitude

Because others of us enjoy solitude, but only to a point

Because we like you

Because (some of us) find television dull

Because it's rent free

Because our parents (some of our parents) paid good money for our education

Because we were never good at self promotion (none of us)

Because we think you will find it interesting, if not enjoyable

Because Flag Day only comes once a year, and you have to stand up for what you believe in.

Because all the great literature has already been written, so we wrote this.

Because (some of us) adore television and want to present you, the viewing public, with something just as entertaining

Because it's an election year

Because even when you say the same thing over and over, sometimes you have to say it again to make sure you said it right

Because when you present something to an audience, you're on your best behavior.

Because we enjoy each other's company

Because it helps us get out of bed each morning

Because in doing this we render homage to the artists who inspire us (to wit, Robert Rauschenberg, October 22, 1925 - May 12, 2008)

Because - we do