take the i out of this eye

(1988)

Performed at Gallery 101, Ottawa.

Performance materials: text, x-rays, super 8 loops, upside down candles, dictaphone, live painting and movement.

The text for the performance is based on a series of interviews done in 1986-1987 with Kaj Kangas, Sharon Gannon, Sue Ann Harkey, Sylvère Lotringer, Jonathan Prince, Lisa McLelland, John Hunting.

The piece was inspired by Larry Law’s pamphlet “Revolutionary Self-Theory” (Freedom Press).

Plagiarizing/recycling/arranging by cm.

Sound by Sue Ann Harkey and cm.

take the I out of this eye

take the eye out of this I

we live in a society dominated by the skills of reason

where words are supposed to be linear measure

where the emphasis is on how consciousness always makes sense of itself and of its experiences

and where we make sense of ourselves by telling stories about ourselves

I approached god and the devil and asked if I could be the king of the world

the idea of synchronicity had extended to such a reach that I heard a glove go down on the floor

and god in the ways that he shows himself alive expressed that he was there

what is mysticis?

it is derived from mystery and mystery is anything which eludes thought

anything which eludes grasp

which is hidden and eludes your desires to pin it down

something like murder

if you really delve in it deep enough

you’ll find that all topics fall under that

once you get to the first level of abstraction

you are dealing with pure logic which is totally independent from the substance you started from

it is not a question of disciples but of discipline

I don’t have to be able to hear the words that you are saying

in order to understand you what the person says

and what I sense they really are are not always integrated they speak of

a gap between an idea and the realization of that idea

truth isn’t written in stone truth is found at every moment

it’s an intuitive art

it’s a balancing act

the answer is that there is no answer and that’s the answer and it’s really true

we are ignorant about the nature of our minds

and as far as the Buddhists are concerned it is that ignorance that causes suffering

I do think that we have vast knowledge

if we could turn ourselves inside out

we could read it all

I am very concerned with being present to my culture

if the culture is fucked up

I want to have theories that are as fucked up

so that they at least are connected

the minute you put the microphone down on the table it triggered off

ultrasound which is one of the mechanisms that I live by

there was a lock in my mind that I did not know how to contact with my body

ultrasound is a high pitched whining voice that occurs in the left and right ear

depending on the intention of my next act

every idea every thought every action

has its birth in some kind of need which is greater than the individual’s

I am not trying to give off an impression of myself

rather I am trying to respond to something that I find intrinsic in the needs of people

it is only at the level of the body that we have authentic contact with another person

because it is in your potentiality to give me pleasure and also to inflict pain

that I confront your othernesss

your otherness being that which lies beyond my synthetic powers to understand

people are really afraid to think that all creative energy is sexual energy

somehow through non-verbal but direct exchange of energy and movement

there is an understanding that can be shared where two people can meet in an neutral ground which is not me not you but the two of us getting together

people don’t ask each other questions enough

here we all are and if you really want to ask you can really find out

I do think that we have vast knowledge

if only we could read it

that’s all

we’ve got to learn to read it

to read our own cellular messages

read our own dna

I’ve been to a psychiatrist and they thought I was insane

but they think everyone’s insane if you go there and you think you’re jesus christ

I think there is a hereditary strand of dna

where certain ideas of insanity will eventually be found to be situated because

I think the spirit in a lifetime makes a blueprint of itself

and this will match and meet with the receptor dna and this is the jump

between spirit and matter

going from hell to heaven

from being tense to being released is a matter of accepting yourself

to go from what was imaginary

to something more grounded and ordinary

I had to become aware of the actual physicality of the body

aware of the mechanisms of the body

how the bones provide structure and line and

how the organs support the bones and create shape in the body

it took me eight years to come to this very simple realization

that when you drop your weight into the ground you are talking

about abandon

about submission

about giving up your control

that is the way of connecting with the body

to what the body actually is

when you are connected and in action

it gives you a sense of support and of balance

you have to be in balance in order to abandon

the release state is characterized by an increase in range and an ease of movement

by a playfulness in the perception of phenomena

I see this release state as heaven

in our culture we are taught that heaven is something above us

ruled over by some male entity that always existed

and this male god existed before the universe which always existed

this is nonsensical

here we are trying to make up explanations for something we should just accept as mystery

we have been trying to evade this kind of ready-made signification

and to keep things alive

we are seduced by abstraction

because it is like paranoia

it protects

you can crouch in it and feel very safe

but what it brings out is only in your mind

you have to find other ways that allow you to breathe

a straightjacket provides good protection but it is also a deadly thing

behind all this optimism energetic culture

there is something very strange going on

I quickly realized that I was living in a consumer unreality

in which death was being used to deaden people

what I want is not wanting is our concept of freedom

more than just the redistribution of things to be possessed

crush those steps that are not true

a question assumes an answer

but you don’t need questions to have answers

I wanted people to say things that I could not say myself

she talks about the things no one wants to talk about

we live in a society dominated by the skills of reason

separated as I am speaking speaking right now has separated things

and I am speaking in separated things

there are definitions

to each is owned

and there are no definitions to be found but no lack of the act of defining

I don’t want to deny the linear qualities of language

and I don’t want to discredit any of those skills

skills of reason

skills of seeing things in specifics

the so called left brain skills or the so called male abilities

these are essential as essential as intuitive skills

and the two are really more intermeshed than separated

but we live in a society which is dominated by the skills of reason

you got a stone wall there

why don’t you take it down a little bit

we are working with an understanding of consciousness

and of man which makes reason essential

existentialists tried to show the extent to which reason fails us and

how in the face of our failure we are thrown back on ourselves

but they also failed

when you specialize you somehow lose responsibility

you lose your ability to respond

you are not responsible for your body because you are not a doctor

there is something very inefficient about that

it is in the connection that you find the freedom

you can move all you want but if the connection is not there

then you don’t have the natural grace

without this support you’re under working and overworking in a way that’s effortful

as opposed to naturally efficient and naturally allowing

we are all in contact dance for all our lives

24 hours a day with the planet

with contact I have to put my desires in the back seat because

what I want isn’t as important as what’s happening

the idea of mysticism is to get us back in touch not with what we want but with ourselves

the sound is an information that makes my awareness believe that it exists

and I try to understand god not using my body

but using the essence of my consciousness which accepts that ultrasound to be real

while the body is open to experience it does not organize it

so the best way to describe eating sex or creativity is in terms of pleasure

and enjoyment

and not in terms of sense

the key feature of sensibility is that it is passive with respect to what it undergoes

people are important but they don’t matter

you just have to be secure about what you know you feel is true

it’s not a question of right and wrong

by practicing the violin you actually learn more about painting

as you do things from day to day you’re not dead but practicing

you’ve been practicing living and that is what it’s all about

so when you walk down the street

if you’re consciously aware that you want to become more

more connected

more knowing

more efficient

then you will make every little activity somehow part of your purpose

there is no way to explain any given event and its occurrence

it is occurring that is the important thing

we’re almost denying its occurrence by insisting so strongly in trying to explain it

so we’re disregarding the actual occurrence of the event

when I see a field I synthesize it

I unify it

I see it in relation to what it isn’t

it is not a mass of unintelligible stuff

I can make sense of it

but that does not explain how things excite us

how things have power for us

then I began to think that these signals

because they were so great in range were not symbols of man’s own intent

if something has no definition you can say that it does not exist

my ideal is to create something which doesn’t exist

to create nothing

but there are colors on different people’s back doing different things

there’s a different world

I love the world I live in just like Reagan loves the world he lives in

I think that you have to learn to disturb people in a productive way

and not just scare them

we are scared enough

they stayed sitting and didn’t use anything else but words

and they relied heavily on Marxist theory that they had read and could quote from the book

there are parallels

there are links especially if you’ve bothered to make them

if I understand you and I can say who you are and what you mean

then I’ve missed you alterity your otherness

the part of you outside of my synthetic powers to organize

language defines and by definition the mystery eludes definition

we live in a quick society where we tend to use everything for its symbolic purpose and meaning

we try to make this symbolic definition very narrow

we try to make it mean only one thing for convenience

I believe that god is a good notion and I live in his ocean

I took the Nietzschean position which was to look at my life at the time

and decide that there were more premises of death than life in it

I wish someone would kidnap me

I don’t make distinctions between waking reality and dream reality

they are very similar

it’s just that in wake reality things are more fixed

and that’s the result of an act of attention

an act of tension

how we make sense of things is really something foreign to us

it is a knowledge that is appropriated

in other words the language I speak is never mine

if people would think more about the good and their intent in the good

then it would improve their concentration

Artaud in his flesh felt that his mind was made up of concepts that did not belong to anyone else

words belong to those who use them only till someone else steals them back

and the urge to steal satisfies

every time I say freedom is psycho-kinetic skill

I get another subtle insight into what that actually means

so when people talk

it is how the words get shaped as they get out of the mouth which gives me a sense of tension

a sense of the reality of that person

most of the thinkers we have spend their time commenting on the margin of Marx at best

so it is time for people that are futuristic

the present is only present for the present

the ultrasound can give no information except that it can make itself exist

and make my awareness believe that is exists

we are all alone an all alone means all one

alone means all one

it’s all self-theory

I learn by walking in circles and finding the strings

the idea is to still your mind so that you can be with yourself

the discipline is in how to stop the thoughts

it is not a question of disciples but of discipline

we have lost perspective and if that’s how we reflect on the world

it only talks about how we reflect on ourselves

to work with the body is the first step towards connecting to the ground

so that you can be free

it’s like having an anchor to enter the vast potential of our minds

the ground supports you

you don’t support the ground

there is something inherently violent about creating

because we are breaking rules and breaking things within ourselves

that puts into question how we look at destruction

why is this breaking down or why is changing yourself associated with a negative thing

we also get angry at ourselves

we don’t allow people to change

it’s a need for control

we have a judgment about the unknown as being dangerous

but the unknown is the source from which creativity arises

rather than a monster that is going to rip your head off and throw your head into the asylum

the surprising thing that I find about western philosophy

is the extent to which they’ve made reason to be the essence of man and consciousness

where do ideas come from

the idea is that all ideas come from the society

so are we any more than the sights and sounds of our culture

so while we talk about consciousness and about experience

its accuracy is also limited to a description of intelligibility

the exciting way to look at words is to start to break them down

and see how they could mean something else than just one narrow meaning

documentation is a by-product

an object which is a remnant of what happened in a live performance

and this is unpossesable

documentation has the quality of mobility

improvisation means not being afraid

inviting anything and everything but not haphazardly

there’s always a sense of order

all topics fall under all topics

it’s about seeing the relationship among all things

instead of just seeing them as being separate

these messages come and go at random

it probably depends on the rate of concentration on the amount of intensity

I don’t know if I am good or I try to be good it’s an important difference

I always question myself as to whether I’m performing or not

being released is seen in the diminution and in the equalization of breathing

people tell us what the world is like

and then we learn to see it that way

and we learn to keep it that way

I like philosophy as a form of aesthetic creation

but at the same time I expect philosophy to have some sort of impact

I say we should forget the existence of money

and forget the existence of lust

and forget the existence of sin and let there be perfection

let’s not forget there is no perfection

truth isn’t written in stone

truth is found at every moment

it’s an intuitive art

it’s a balancing act

the answer is that there is no answer and it’s really true

Hegel tried to build something that would resist any sort of shock

like an ultimate pyramid of science

but the ground supports you

you don’t support the ground

until I know how to stop moving I will retaliate

fire with fire

word with word

use language to produce changes

to connect things together and not to fall back upon itself as it often does

we live in a society that is dominated by the skills of reason

in other words

we live in a society which is not dominated by the skills of freedom

there’s a message in me that’s constant and that is we have to keep talking

that’s the only way that we can go beyond words

and we haven’t said it all.