Revisiting an article written for Body, Space and Technology in 2012–13, in conversation with the authors’ life circumstances of that period, poetic text and imagery emerge in the aftermath of loss. The resulting performance script/score is composed in three episodes which are interlaced with reproductions of photos as watercolor paintings.
Ten years ago, I lay on an IKEA couch with our two dogs and tried to write my body back into existence after an experience that is called a ‘missed’ miscarriage. The room was small and the walls, which had been textured at some point prior to our residence in the house, were painted pea green. There was a shelf of books, and doors with glass panes that made translucent the boundaries between the room and the garden, between the room and the rest of the house, between the room as a moment in time and everything that had transpired before and would transpire, endlessly, after. Attached to the room was a half bath, where I found myself a few times trapped, my internal organs having not yet adjusted to the cascade of spontaneous changes. My body didn’t know how to pee properly anymore. The basset hounds flanking me – one in a crescent against my belly, one in the curl of my bent legs – were warm and itchy, breathing the slow, deep breaths of resting animals. It was me, the dogs, and the writing.
The writing I was completing at this time ten years ago was an article for Body, Space and Technology, composed in the Fall of 2012 and published in the Winter of 2013, entitled ‘Going Home: Mike Kelley, Mobile Rhetoric, and Detroit’ (Anderson and Haley, 2013). The environmental circumstances captured in the excerpted italicized passage above were some of the most potent, the most present and have, subsequently, been the most abidingly persistent aspects of these moments in my proliferating remembered imagination of this period. Yet, of course, I wrote about none of this in the article that emerged from this place. Instead, the BST article worked exclusively through questions about the life, the thinking and the untimely passing of the artist Mike Kelley. In the ten years of aftermath of writing that piece, however, I’ve revisited the ideas and words in that essay again and again with a desire not only to adjust what I originally wrote about Kelley, but also a desire to invite my lived experience back into that writing, where perhaps it should have been from the outset. I was writing about Kelley’s sense of body and sense of place, and his use of art as a technology of paradox in representation, at a time when my own sense of body and sense of place had escaped me and I was using writing as a technology to find my own way back home.
I gave myself the assignment to create a performance text for BST during this ten-year anniversary, wherein I would, as I note above, invite my lived experience back into the writing. I anticipated that I would correct what I wrote. I would argue with my (former) self. I would question. I would endeavour to excavate what was lost from the beginning and what had been, somehow, simultaneously both lost and found in the interim.
What emerged from the experiment are three poems – or perhaps just words organized into a kind of poetic structure that follows the pattern of speech that I used to compose and record them in the first instance. But these poems fail to meet the criteria of the assignment I set for myself, in the sense that the lived experience here has not been sewn back into the writing from ten years ago at all. They fail so completely, I feared, that they should not be sent along at all. Yet, they’ve persisted over these weeks between proposal and submission. And they’ve insisted to me (privately), that they still somehow belong to that original article. That they came from him (it). And I think I realize now why. No – this lived experience isn’t sewn back into the original. And there is, in point of fact, no critique of the original embedded here. Not because a critique isn’t possible. But because this is not the aftermath that the original prompts. The pieces here are all about the children. The children that were born after we lost that first one. And the pieces, whether shaped by the circumstances of that original loss, or shaped by our absorption in the sadness around the loss of Kelley, who we did not know, but who meant something to us in ways we’ve never fully been able to understand, make clear how much our experience of parenting has been knitted tightly together with all of our deepest fears that these children won’t survive. Or that we won’t survive. That everything is so god-awfully, blindingly contingent. And yet that, within that awfulness, and that blindness, and that contingency, the most beautiful and the most perverse qualities of our lives – the art of our lives, if that doesn’t seem too embarrassing to write – are necessarily intertwined with those fears that we will not make it. That we cannot make it. That we are of this world but not made for this world.
So the writing is a house. There isn’t a way back home. But the writing is a house where some of these artifacts can breathe. And the images. Richard made these images. I asked him how he arrived at drawings of photographs that he then painted with watercolours, since this has not been his practice.
Richard:
I (originally) thought just photographing the photographs would do something.
Mary:
What did you think it would do?
Richard:
I just thought it would create a further distance. A photograph is a representation of experience. And I thought it would expand that space in between the experience and the representation of it further. Or distort it. But still look like it. But it didn’t do that.
Mary:
Why do you think it didn’t do that?
Richard:
I have no idea.
Mary:
Why does this approach (with the drawing and the watercolours) work?
Richard:
This one’s more physically altered. More faded. Like a photograph that’s been stuck in the rain.
So here are our memories and our photographs that have been stuck in the rain.
Hands in a Box of Treasures.
Image: Richard Haley.
Forensic Accountsitting on the green couch eating yogurt with granolafeeding bites to Olivercareful not to include any raisins in his bitesI call to Emilia to ask how it’s going with the work I asked her to do -the quiet meditative practice of inviting one’s inner wisdom to reveal itselfto answer the question of why one might chooseto get off at a bus stop they had been toldwas not theirsof why one might choose to, as they put it,‘spank’ their brother and then explain to their motherthat they did it because they had read about it in an old book
(even though the moment in this particular book was discussed extensively with mother,
who was clear that while things like this used to happen, that it is not customary for this to happen anymore, that it is understood that parents are not permitted to hit their children ever for any reason – and that is a conversation one has had with mother many, many times on many occasions – just like the conversations about the location of the bus stop)
have these conversations been forgotten?did one think that mother had forgotten them?but mother is a water elephant, child.part of the herd Hasan saw at Victoria Falls,on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe,passing along the cliff’s edgewhere the water rushes and disappearsinto three hundred fifty-five feet of gravitythe devil’s pool,a natural infinity pool,on the edge of a sheer drop.And this herd,this elephant herd, passes splashing across this devil’s pool,only steps from that sheer drop.With complete clarity of purpose.With some sense,some internal compass composed ofmuscle and bone and electricity and synapses.Synapse,also called neuronal junction,the site of transmission of electric nerve impulsesbetween two nerve cells (neurons)or between a neuron and a gland or muscle cell (effector).The handwritten notes Emilia has taken whilewatching her math class video: Everyone can do well in math.When you learn something your synapses fireSome parts of your brain light up when you are estimatingBeing good at math doesn’t mean you are fast at itto deeply understand thing and relate to themWhen you make a mistak (sic) your brain grows.Some internal compass composed ofmuscle and bone and electricity and synapses.Slow down, Emilia.Slow down.Give that dotted half note in Greensleeves its three beats.Give it its time.Give it its space.The song isn’t allowed – isn’t free, isn’t permitted, isn’t able -to be the song if those dotted halves don’t gettheir three full beats....We only have this window of time.This little window of time.And it’s closing.It’s closing.Like the sunset sounding chord progressions in Grand Central Station,the next song in your lesson book.Like the sunset seeming passagein the last linesof the last storyin our Complete Tales ofWinnie-the-Pooh,baby blue cover missing,pages lived right through,stories toldon toldon toldin years twoand threeand four,sitting for hours- hours, reader –in the fat, bunchy, cocoonof the blue velveteen chair.Adjacent to the fireplace.Facing the windows.Ten foot ceilings.She can’t possibly be listening,I think.She can’t possibly be listeningto these hours and hoursof stories on end.But it turns out she really is.She really does.And she tells back to me,independently, unprovoked, unsolicited,what has happened and what it meansin ways I never could have thought to think:
So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.
And so you see it’s not only a sunset seeming passage. It’s the final image in the book. The joined silhouette of the boy and the bear,
as seen from behind, legs lifted, bent into an effervescent asymmetrical pas de chat (step of the cat), suspended in flight above the silhouette of the grassy earth, mid-skip, towards the endlessness of the pink horizon. Sheer drop. Water rushes and disappears into three hundred fifty five feet of gravity. This is the sunset they face. With the silhouette of a bird above, just out of reach, just over the beyond, on the edge of the picture, where the pink fades to white.
And she retreats to her room to give it all some more thought.To try the stream of consciousness version of inviting her inner wisdom.Because if the meditative version isn’t bearing fruit, maybe it can be scratched out,brain on pen on paper on brain on paper.And as she retreats I come across a picture from last night.Last night, I think it was.Or the night before.Oliver, like a wild, relaxed, perplexed lion, is laying in the green grass.With a green top.And navy blue terrycloth shorts.He is anychild.He could be any child from any time.Jane and Michael.Scout and Jem.The boy.And the way the camera has captured him, it appears that he is not laying in the grass,not laying on the ground, not drawn into the weightedness of bodies in reality,but rather hovering inches, centimetres above the grass.Like a spaceship.This is an effect of the camera, which in the after-sunset and without a flash, was reaching toward the image to try to grasp at any light left,to apprehend and thereby to produce light in its effort.So the grass and Oliver, himself, are far brighter than they are to my eyes,than they are to the view of the camera.But the camera goes to a setting it calls NIGHT.And the camera determines that it will perform a function it calls Auto (3s).And the camera displays a message for me that says:Hold still.And I hold still and the camera collects the light:one.two.three.And Oliver is christened a cherub.And the grass, divine, the Sistine Chapel.I see the image because – I don’t know why.And I see the image because – I don’t know why.But I see the image and I remember that I had intended to send it to Richard.And I send it to Richard.And it is 12:10.And at that very moment I hear the distinct, unmistakable sound of choking.Oliver?!
A lion’s roar is so loud because it’s vocal folds form a square shape. This shape essentially stabilizes the vocal cords, enabling them to better respond to the passing air.
And the whole of my body is propelled in the air out of the couch and up onto each foot,grabbing the ground with force toward that sound.Oliver?!Oliver?!And Oliver is in the white room.
And his mouth is wide open as if a snake with jaw unhinged and his tongue protruding and he is grasping with his hands into his mouth toward his throat attempting to extract an object I can’t entirely see.
And I can still hear his crackling breath, I think.
I can hear the sound of air being drawn, being sucked into his body, against the resistance of some obstruction.
And everything is happening so slow and so fast:
Oliver?!Reach for the head.Oliver?!Reach into the mouth.Oliver?!Extract the object.Tiny plastic object.Baby blue.A piece of a piece of a toy.A trolley.
A word which he pronounces with extra articulation around the tr- and extra roundness in the shape of the mouth and extra enunciation of the l’s all for the love of Peppa.
Peppa and George.Oliver?!Oliver?!Oliver?!Is there anything else in there?Is there anything else?No!No!No!He shakes his head.And he cries.His tongue is dark.Is dark blue, I think.I am looking at the night sky of his tongue,of his mouth,
I am the camera reaching toward the image trying to grasp any light left.
Hold still:
one.two.three.And Oliver is christened a cherub.The message from yesterday.The message Richard left on my phone when Emilia and I were buying her dance clothes.The message he sent before I sent the picture today: Your son took off all of his clothes. Need help. He is dumping salt on the floor and sticking toys in his butt cheeks. Won’t stop or put on clothes.
And we are back at a park in a neighbourhood where we don’t live anymore. Five years ago. Circa Emilia’s birthday. Mom visiting and watching as all of the children in the park chip through the gravel with their pounding feet and hurtle themselves down the slide. My mother, in her darkness, says:
It’s a wonder any of them survive.
For god’s sake, Mom. For god’s sake.But -her wonder -her wonderment -she’s not wrong, is she?
Oliver in a Bear Suit.
Image: Richard Haley.
Intermezzo
[an aside]
[an ellipsis]
blue light
spiegel im spiegel
(lit. ‘mirror(s) in the mirror’)
there is a thing I dowhen I leave the houseaway from the childrenor prepare to drive the carwith the children in itwhich is tovisualize the space they are inshowered in blue lightthis is becausea woman at Emilia’s preschoollet me knowthat this was a trick I could doto protect usCatholic womanwho worked at a kind of a clinicwhere they supported pregnant womenhoping they wouldn’t choose abortionand this is pre-RoeorI should saybefore Roe was taken awayand Roe are salmon eggsand there is ababy Roebecause, of course,the decision did not come in timethe court decisiondetermining the fateof the unborn childthe fate of the childhaving been determinedby the absenceof the court decisionblue lightI have to imagine it just rightI have to see it in every cornerI have to believe it covers every square inchof cubic volumeof the space surroundingthe houseor the caror whereverthey arebut the blue light may bewhy we are seeingprecocious pubertyin Ebecause it interferes withthe body’s release of melatonina hormonethat makes us feel drowsyand interruptsother aspectsof paediatric endocrinologyso what I amasking isdo they sellmelatoninat Walgreens?blue lightand this is vintagefrom the time when Emilia and I did a lot of drivingto danceand violinand music togetherand swimmingand parksand snacksand shoppingand the car was intwo accidents in less than six monthsso the blue lightwas a protectionthe woman saidfor the time when Emilia is in a carseatin the backseatand spiegel im spiegel comes on the radioand she saysbeing fourthat it soundsa little bit sweetand a little bit sadall at the same timespiegel im spiegelmirror(s) in the mirrorand we haven’t had a car accident sincebut I have to imagine the blue lightjust rightI have to see it in every cornerI have to believe it covers every square inchof cubic volumeof the space surroundingthe houseor the caror whereverthey are
[an aside]
[an ellipsis]
blue light
she has the wingspanto play my full-sized violin nowand I don’t knowwhere to place the padin my undergarmentsin such a waythat I won’t bleed throughwhile I am waiting on the stageto give the arts achievement awardtie the blue wool blazeraround my waistwhile I stand at the podiumsomething very Gen Xyou just deal with things by yourself and get on with itand I am taking my old birth controlthat expired 15 months agoone at a timeand sometimes four at a timeand last night I took twoor was it threebecause it felt more orderlyto complete the rowin the blister packageso what I amasking isdo they sellmelatoninat Walgreens?
Emilia in the Leaves.
Image: Richard Haley.
The Bonekey soundsignition turns overseatbelt slides[cough cough]internal combustion engine humtires rolling carbeast over pavementJim sat acrossthe conference tablefrom meandtold me I wasan HSPelectric window rolling downhe then explainedelectric window rolling downthat this is an acronymwindshield wiperwindshield wiperthat meanshighlysensitivepersonhe also told meI should read moreLacanthe clouds todayare sleepydepress clutch to shiftsoftlike my puffy eyesswooshswooshswooshthey’re like astorybook version ofpuffy eyesa real version ofswooshswooshpuffy eyesaredarkshiftand hollowa dark and hollow eyedecelerationa 45 year old eyedecelerationwhich catches the shadowsshiftshiftshiftpoolsacceleratepools of shadowsshiftthat restacceleratein the spacebeneath your eyereminding ofthe bonebeneathbone whichten ortwenty orthirty years ago was notso apparentbecause the tissuearound the eye socketwas more suppleresilientrobustdeceleratepillowedacceleratesoftlikethe morning cloudsswooshbut the bone nowthe outline of the boneis more prominentandcar growlpeople are made to feelthey have to spend more timeand moneyusing productsto concealthat spacea spacefor which they use a product that’s actually calledconcealershiftshiftshiftconceals other things, toodepending on how old you arethe conditionof your skinyour feelings abouthow flathow mattethe surface of your faceshould appearshiftshifta flata mattesurfaceupon whichnew textures and colorscan also be appliedclutchclutchclutchclutchbutI love my boneaccelerateI love thatsunkendarkpoolappearanceI love itbecauseat leastI knowit’s thereI know it’s really thereunlikeother thingsin the architecturesof my imaginationwhich I have builtI have builtlike,as, Jim suggests,the highly sensitive personthat I aman HSPwhich he saysfills the plays of Tennessee Williamsoh, I sayof courseof courseand I begin to speak for himin the southern dialectwhich was the dialect ofaccelerateseventy five percentof the people I came fromshiftshiftacceleratethese giantsshiftof my childhoodaccelerateJim doesn’t seem to pick up on howexquisitemy dialect ishavingbeen craftedfrom so many years of listeninglisteningto the dreamy questionsandangry tiradesof a generation of people stuckbetweenprofoundlife obligationsshiftshiftshiftshiftshiftshiftcircumstantialmitigationsthat triptoOberammergauthat Nanahad plannedand Papasittingpainfullysilentlyin his singlecomfortable chairin his bedroomlistening tobaseballon the radiomaking it clearshe would never goshe would never goand I would never gowith hershiftthe fatewhich meantfar less to meat the timeacceleratethan it did to hershiftacceleratePapathe onlymember of the grandparent royaltythat was not raisedwith a southern drawlbut which hedevisedin his much later yearswhen all of the rest of them were goneas if to reclaim the soft sweet curling spaceof their languageshiftshiftshifttoaccelerateappropriate itfor his ownquaintpurposeswhy am I so sad?decelerateis the sadnessdeceleratebeneathwhat was oncethe angeris ittruly aboutcaresuch a deep careaccelerateshiftaccelerateaccelerateshiftacceleratefor the precious things I loveoris itabout fearthat the thing I thought I hadI didn’t haveit was in my mindit wasmade upthisdeepeningthisnewversion of connectionbecauseeach agedemandsdeceleratethat the parenthumorchestrateshiftanelaboratenewconnectionbased on these needswhich become apparent to usonly afterthey’ve already manifestedyou’realwaysso lateto arriveat the partyshiftshiftshiftshiftshiftdeceleratebrakeparking brake cranknowI don’t knowwhat’s leftI feel like we’vebroken upand she’sjustlingeringlike amoonthat mightsoon be loosedfrom the gravitational forcefield of its planetoreven strangerit already has been loosedbut it’sobligedto do the dancefor a bit longerbutyou can see it tippingyou can see it tippingits rotation isasymmetricalandthe symmetryof the mother planetis tippinga bittooand the moonhas no ideawhere it’s goingit’s onlyouter spacein the darkdark poolsdark poolsbut bonelesswithout even the hintof the traceor the undercurrentof calciummineralizedand it’s all happeningnowshe brushed her own hairshe twisted it into a kind ofloopkind of ahalfbunthat’s wrappedaroundand under and throughshe did itherselfshe didn’twaitdutifullywith a brush andthe elasticsandand give me instructionson how to style itshedecided to do itherselfandshe’sbeautifuland she’sstrongand she’scapableshe’sall those thingsand I wantnothing morethan to somehowhold hereveryatomin my bodywants tohold hereven justin myconsciousnessI need to knowthat she’simmediatelyadjacent[to me]eight years agowas the halloween that I waswashing my hands andglimpsing myself in the mirrorandin the reflection I saw theshower curtain shakingas Emilia liked to dohaving not yetlearned to walkshe would climbinto standing posenext to thebathtub andshake shake shake the curtainshake shakeshake the curtainit must havehad a nice feelingand soundas an extension of her own littletoddling bodybut somehowin thisiteration of the exercisein thefraction of a momentbetweenmy seeing the reflectionof the motionand myturning around she hadfallen downfallen right downon her faceso profoundlyI can feel the sound of thesmackin my trunkI canfeel the sound of thesmackof herfaceof hereyeon thetilefloorsmallsquarepasteltilessmackon the floorshe didn’t know how to fallyetshe didn’t know how to put her handsdown in front of heroranywherebeside herto stop the falltolessen the impactand so on halloweena snowing halloweenshe was dressed in thepinkskeletonpajamaswith alargeblackeyeso spooky, indeedfive years agofivefive years agoshe had her firstpiece of chicken on the boneshe called itchicken on the bonebone chickenlittle fingersgraspingteethsearchingbitingswallowingchickenon the bonewas somethingone of the other childrenhad hadfor lunchthat she wanted, toothe confidencethe clarityof eatinga chickenon the boneonestepfurtherawayfromwhatever it iswe had builttogetherover hereshe would nowbuildsomethingnewin-dependentlycar door openscar door shuts
In the Grass in the Dunes at Oval Beach.
Image: Richard Haley.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.
Author Information
Mary Elizabeth Anderson is Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance, Wayne State University. Her articles have appeared in Teaching Artist Journal; Research in Drama Education; Journal of Dance Education; International Journal of Education & the Arts; Arts Education Policy Review; Canadian Journal of Practice-based Research in Theatre; and Theatre, Dance & Performance Training. Her monograph, Meeting Places: Locating Desert Consciousness in Performance, was published by Rodopi in 2014. Recent work has appeared in Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis (eds. Conrad Alexandrowicz and David Fancy, Routledge).
Richard Haley is Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Art & Art History, Wayne State University. He exhibits and curates regularly. With Felecia Chizuko Carlisle, he developed TIME/FRAME/MATTER, which brings artists together to create works in real-time, to experiment with the live broadcast as a medium, and to discuss ideas about the transmission of material and objects through virtual space. With Anderson, Haley has co-authored articles for Performance Matters; Adjacent; Theatre Topics; About Performance; and Body, Space & Technology and the volume American Dramaturgies for the 21st Century (Sorbonne Université Presses).
Anderson, Mary Elizabeth, and RichardHaley2013Going home: Mike Kelley, mobile rhetoric, and Detroit. , 12. DOI: 10.16995/bst.54