Theater, music and art

It's actually been a pretty busy string of days since my last post about pot roast night. I'll be brief because I just want to catch up but I don't have the energy to really go deep into stuff, although there are a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head.

Last Tuesday was the highly anticipated launch party for Emily Dawn's online artist collective, Whimsy. It was held in a beautiful Soho apartment large enough to hold about 60 people who attended. I ran into David on the street - we met at Kacey's bachelorette party - because we were both having trouble looking for the address. I met this guy named Robert, and of course the first question he asked me was "What do you do?" After my hackles went back down, I explained to him that that was not the question he wanted to lead with in a crowd like this, and I gave him some pointers on better questions to ask ("What are you passionate about?" How do you want to change the world?" etc.) We talked a bit about polyamory and I left him to fend for himself. He later found me and said my advice was really helpful in meeting people at the party, so I'm glad I was able to keep him from being labeled a toolbag.

There were several performances of music, drama, comedy and a pair of acro yoga practitioners (a flyer and a base) that reminded me of the contortionists in the movie Henry & June (1990), which always reminds me of Papacookie and the other artist collectives that I've been exposed to. You can see Illona in the yellow shirt and Becker behind her, and Joan seated in a white scarf in this video.



Wednesday Piper came over and we had soup dumplings and fried duck at John's Shanghai on 46th Street. We got to talking about horror movies, so we took a detour from our AFI marathon to watch Obsession (1976), a kind of disturbing Brian De Palma remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Friday night I met up with Liz for a late supper in Koreatown before we headed down to the Kraine for the New York Neofuturists performance of "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind," a Shotz-like performance of short plays where they try to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. It was an interesting concept and some of the plays were really well done ("Smoke and Mirrors" was a beautiful slow movement of lights being bounced off mirrors through smoke, and another one used smart phones with synchronized videos of each performer in an intricately choreographed display of small screens used together as a single unit.)

Saturday I saw Noah with Illona and we had lunch at Schnipper's. I discovered she is also one of those people who understands touch communications as I do, so it was nice making that connection. I made my eggplant dip and Puck came over so we could go to Rijard and Miriam's place for their performance party. There were vocal/instrumental performances by Emilie Lesbros (voice, guitar), Sean Ali (voice, bass) and Flin van Hemmen (voice, drums), and the end of the night all three combined for an improvisation. I enjoyed Emilie the most - she does amazing things with her voice, and is able to sing and chirp and click at the same time with absolute precision and control - I've never heard anything quite like it. She's going on a European tour for a few months, so I hope she has lots of success.

Sunday I did my laundry and then headed down to the LES to have an early supper with Puck's family before they drove us to Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a documentary shoot about our relationship, part of a series of couples talking about their relationships for an upcoming web site launch. Puck and I sat in front of cameras for an hour talking about our six years together. We drew questions from a pile of index cards to ask each other, such as "When do you feel closest to me?", "What things about me annoy you?" and "What are you afraid to talk with me about?" and our favorite, "Do you want to have children with me?" We both laughed at that one! Some of the tough questions were in red, and we told them to put those in as well. Eventually they had to stop us before we got through the entire deck because we'd run out of our allotted time. The filmmakers said that of the scores of couples they've interviewed for the project, we were the only ones who took up the whole hour, because many people didn't want to open up in front of the cameras, so they would either skip questions or answer them very succinctly. Apparently, there are lot of couples who don't like to be introspective as much as Puck and I do.

To take a little extra time together to debrief, we took the subway together down to Atlantic Avenue so they could get on the LIRR and I took the N track back up to get home. The whole experience was really quite affirming for both of us, and I think we each learned a little something new about each other's perspectives on past events. I think it will help us to be better frubbles with each other in the future.

Kristina and I ventured out in some nasty weather tonight for Shotz, where the theme was "Girls Just Wanna Have Shotz!" a feminist theme. Each play had to pass the Bechdel Test, something had to be destroyed, and the line was, "You don't get to tell me what to do!" The guest company was the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Brooklyn, and the started the show by singing the Shotz theme by LMFAO in three-part harmony, which was hilarious! Then they did a skit where they played polygamous wives, which included going into the audience and slapping nametags that said #HARLOT on people (Kristina and I both got one) and singing a medley of pop songs. I think my favorite play was "Yurtle the Turtle" where a despondent woman calls the phone operator and tells her about a childhood trauma, which causes the operator to call her own childhood classmate and apologize for past hurts.