Interview continued

    AMERICAN LANGUAGE

    An Online Book of Live Performances by Alan Reade

     © Alan Reade, 1999

    Nick: I see you representing and re-representing your self to yourself and others. The work of yours I have experienced--"American Language," Obliviotopia, and Bear A-Go-Go--make strong statements about our responsibility to reflect on who we are and how we got that way, to, in effect, live life as process. But a process with a history that is both unique to you, Alan, and unique to me, Nick. You are a "border crosser," migrating, mitigating, taking what you need as you go. Why do you live that way? Why reflect on that process through mixed media? Why not long confessional poetry, or Virgin Mary's made out of feces, or...?

    Alan: First of all, have you seen any pictures of Chris Ofili's work, "The Holy Virgin Mary?" It's this sweetly innocent-looking, seemingly tribal-influenced painting. Ofili, as I understand, is Nigerian--so I can see elephant dung counting as a medium indigenous to Africa. Porn magazine cutouts he uses in the painting? Native to America. I like the idea that it's about the lowly things of two cultures coming together to create higher beauty! Isn't that a Christian tenet, this idea of higher love from humble beginnings? "Away in a Manger," etc.?

    And anyway, regarding the controversy over that work, has anyone analyzed what is actually in paint? I can see Giuliani [New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who protested the Brooklyn Museum's funding over displaying Ofili's painting] now: "Oh no! You can't call your painting 'Holy Mother!' You used acrylic paint containing a chemical that's also used for abortions!" Can you imagine anything more insane?! And from someone who's a mayor, not an artist or even a critic; from someone who's probably only been to a museum to cut a ribbon--whose primary responsibility seems to be turning Times Square into Disneyland. What hubris!

    But about your question, yeah, I am very process-oriented, both in my work and in my life. There's little separation there. I'm also interested in masks, filters, the "life behind one's eyes," to quote the spiritual teacher Caroline Myss. The borders I'm crossing are more internal ones, I think. For instance, Obliviotopia is ostensibly about traveling on all kinds of cars, planes, trains, etc., but the most moving piece for me is the one about the fish ["Apocalypse Whenever"], where the fish goes crazy when I make the bed because he sees the bedspread unfurl toward his bowl every day and thinks it's the end of the world. It's about this sudden realization that "Wow, I'm doing something seemingly innocuous and it's having this catastrophic effect on this tiny animal that is dependent on me!" And in that, there's a border crossed to a higher realization that what we think of as catastrophic is maybe just the Universe flicking an ash or something. And sometimes I can't express these ideas in the writing alone: The pictures, the sounds, the fact that people will hear me talking in total darkness, all of these add up to what I'm trying to say. It's harder for me to represent that "not live" in other media.

    The truth is, "American Language" is at best like a Polaroid of an event, not the real event. The real energy is in the performances, but it's also fun to see it all broken down flat on the Web.

    Irony as a cultural right is something that I see as being unique to our generation, and, frankly, something I worry about. I am incredibly ironic, and my irony usually manifests itself as irreverence for established institutions such as gender, government, or class. I see this in a lot of other people in my generation. We seem to have created our own ironic language, so our point of contact with the world is not like that of our parents, or even of kids younger than us. Do you think this creates a generation of insincerity, or do you think that having an ironic "filter" frees us somehow? And how do you see these ideas working in your art?

    I don't see so much irony in my work--ironic, huh? But truthfully, I don't. There's irony that's really cynicism in disguise, which I don't subscribe to--and I think that's what I worry about, hints of an underlying nihilism toward the human condition that I see around me and in most forms of media. But seeing things in a broader perspective with humor--well, if that's irony, I'm all for it. In some ways, if you aren't equipped with that, the literalness of bad situations can crush you, I think. Like if you wake up one day without filters and go "My god! I'm one of six billion people! I have to slave at some McJob to get by, and everywhere I go there's other people and litter and stink!" Well, maybe I'm applying things too much to life in San Francisco. But you know what I mean. I'm all for filters, even denial, in healthy doses. I'm all for memory fading over time.

    I'm thinking of comics who are told by their mentors that they will never be "real" comedians until they can make people laugh without being "dirty." I feel that way sometimes when I think about irony. Do you think that humor and irony and "dirtiness" are always integrally related? Have you ever tried to create "earnest" art?

    I don't think humor and irony and "dirtiness" in that sense are all related in an ironclad way, but they can be. Lenny Bruce is a perfect example of brilliance and vulgarity in one inextricable package. But the thing is, I don't hear anyone who talks like a Puritan anymore. Or maybe they just avoid me. So my pieces tend to reflect language I hear around me. Like in Unspeakable Love Acts, where these guys are saying these awful things about women ["Pornography in Four Parts"], I've heard or read very similar things, and I didn't have to go very far afield to find that kind of language! But some of the pieces, like "Small Window" in Dancing With The Dead, are very rated G.

    But, you're right, my funnier pieces tend to be the more ribald ones. Maybe that's because in performance, those pieces are spoken, not sung. A spoken piece has to represent the spoken language of the culture more closely, unless you're going for a period piece. It's harder to write a song that's funny, although "This Mai Tai" in TV or Not TV is funny in a way that you can't see on the page--at that show, I handed out little New Years kazoos that people were to blow during the instrumental sections. As they cheered and kazoo'd, I flashed pictures of the Gulf War on the video screens, making the audience into unwilling cheerleaders for the war. So I guess it varies. Maybe I do have an ironic streak.

    Now what about those tarot cards you mention in the show notes? Do you read? Do you key off of them as symbols for your work?

    Well, the cards appeal to the Jungian in me--I like to project into some symbols that are not my own. It helps me focus. I've been reading [tarot] cards for more than 10 years. In New York, I did it professionally for a while. I got tired of working as a graphic artist in ad agencies, and decided to quit, go on unemployment, and become a building super. That was really boring, so to make some extra cash, I would take the subway downtown and do readings in the West Village at different bars. It worked out for a while, but then I started meeting creepy people on drugs who wanted the cards to tell them what to do. I thought, "I don't want to contribute to this!" So I stopped. But I still use tarot cards in my work sometimes.

    For a piece I did in New York, for instance, I did some impromptu audience tarot readings using those free postcards you get from the kiosks at restaurants and record stores. Then later, when I started reading an actual poem, people were like, "Fuck da poem! Do my cards next!" So that can be a skill to fall back on, I guess.




    Author and poet Nick Barrett is a once full-time scribbler and dibbler who is currently on a detour into "Bamerica." He has published poetry and fiction in The Iowa Review, The New England Review, blah, blah, but that has never mattered to him much. He has a full-length collection of poems in the bay titled Send a Radio Message. The collection, not so coincidentally, is a fusion of the personal and the political.




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