VirusHead

Toward the end of our trip (and as a follow-up to Michael’s terrific party – I didn’t even mention the food he served! Yummmm), we were invited by a Sante Fe couple to their house for dessert and conversation.

David Stout is an interactive video-sound artist. His works explore real-time cross-syntheses of sound and image. He works at Sante Fe College in the Moving Image Arts Department, an innovative program that that integrates film, video and digital production with critical studies and writing. His oeuvre includes electro-acoustic scores for stage and screen, live cinema, video-dance, data-base narrative, noise performance and multi-screen telematic video events that extend the roles of performer, audience and environment.

He was preparing for an upcoming show, and had pulled out some amazing prints that had been generated by his real-time technology of combined mathematics, image, and sound.

David, Michael and John huddled and talked about all that kind of stuff. I talked with him a bit, too, and I really appreciate the kind of art/science/sound thing he’s doing. He’s a very soft-spoken and witty sort of person, and I enjoyed his company.

“Fear-based” Media Ad – (Hint for the literal-minded…. this is satire, a commentary on fear-based ad manipulation that actually functions as an ad for the installation. Ummm… it wouldn’t fly in Georgia…)

I spent more of my time with his wife, Julie West. She is one fun chick, I can tell you (Yes, I can say that. I’m a feminist and I love this woman, so bah!). If we lived in the same town, we’d be hanging out together all the time. She has produced, written, and directed several documentary and educational videos, and is currently the studio manager and photo editor of Rainbow, a stock photography agency. She had just designed David’s latest art book, too. And this girl’s got the rockin-est hips I’ve ever seen. We’re about the same age, and her presence rejuvenated me.

Their daughter talked with me about ballet, and we also compared our iPods (she has the blue one). Their very lovely son took it upon himself to play with Ben (although I told him that he didn’t have to), and they did the video game/movies thing. (Ben spent more of the vacation than I would have liked sitting in front of one screen or another).

We stayed out far too late, but it was worth it. I can’t believe I didn’t take any pictures (wah).

There are lots of smart, creative people in Atlanta. I know a few of them, but I’ve been living here for more than 16 years now, and I meet more interesting people in a week when we go somewhere else than I meet in a handful of years here.

Normally, I tend to think that there may just be more intelligent, educated people in other places than the South – but I’m really trying not to project my own circumstances into a generalized regional prejudice. Maybe it’s just that people socialize a little more elsewhere, or that they more easily talk to strangers in public places. I get a sense sometimes that the brightest people in Atlanta are almost in a situation of being in hiding. It’s not as though there are many public spaces that are conducive to conversation, either. There are universities, and there is an art scene, and there are always lot of events going on, but somehow “I do not catch the spark” (cf. “Prince of Darkness,” Indigo Girls). I’ve been in a kind of limbo since I finished the Ph.D., and I’m sure that’s part of the problem, but it really does seem very anti-intellectual here.

Here I’ve often gotten the feeling that it was really all about “networking” (in the negative sense). I prefer to meet people, talk with them, listen to something new, get to know them. And in a “networking” situation, I’m not sure that I really have much to offer other than myself. I don’t have the desirable “connections,” just a working mind and a relatively kind heart.

One thing I really noticed – again – about my experience of the southwest is the way your surroundings seem to open you up. There, I’m inhaling lavender and sage and feeling the sky all around me. Here, I always feel a little bit like I’m walking in a drainage ditch. There are a lot of trees and flowers, but there is something inhospitable…. something hard to define or describe, but I find it oppressive. Maybe it’s just the clay? The humidity? When we got back, I immediately felt a cloying sort of stupor coming over me again. I’m not going to try to ignore it anymore, I’m going to fight it.

Life can be too fun, and I feel like I might be missing the heart of the whole thing.

Monday night I saw Amy Ray of Indigo Girls’ fame at Wahoo! Grill in Decatur.

We were having the rare dinner out, as Ben (5) was otherwise engaged. About midway through our meal, I noticed her walk in with three friends. It turns out that she had been a student of my hubby’s at Emory (!), but he didn’t want me to go over because I had already left to get the cellphone from the car, and the food had arrived. He wanted me to eat with him before the food got cold.

This bugged me because I had been interrupted from acting upon my original impulse – an impulse that only lasts a few seconds – to try to have a word. If I don’t act then – in the moment – then I think about it. If I think about it, I don’t do it (of course, sometimes it’s better for me not to do it). In this case, I had decided not to do it, but then I found myself walking over just to say a quick “thanks” on the way out. It was a strange night in a number of ways – I felt unsettled – and I thought that it would really improve things for me if I rallied the courage to do this. Yeah, it was selfish. Yes, it was rude and inappropriate behavior on my part. I worked one summer on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and so I know that you’re supposed to “be cool” around famous people – all the more so if you are actually an admirer of their work.

However, I also knew that I’d probably never again have the chance to thank her, especially for two songs that made a big difference to me in graduate school – Galileo and Virginia Woolf. I loved many of their songs, but these were my faves.

I haven’t really kept up with their music lately, but I’m thinking about going to a conference here in September that will include Emily Saliers (the other Indigo Girl – she’ll be with her professor Dad) as well as my favorite Christian, Anne LaMotte. I’ll probably pick up a few CDs in the next week – including Amy’s solo albums.

The Woolf song inspired my major interdisciplinary paper of the first year at Emory (a comparative analysis of J. Hillis Miller and Paul Ricoeur on Woolf), but more fundamentally, their music got me through some of the most difficult parts of my graduate school existence – no money, my advisor’s stroke, the dissolution of my program, etc.

I sang. With the help of the Indigo Girls, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, the occasional Blondie or Pat Benatar, and soundtracks like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, I was able to keep myself together no matter what went down.

From a distance Amy looked like someone I might have gone to school with – slightly gangly, she looked a bit younger than me. Actually, we are almost exactly the same age. We’ll both be 42 this month (Amy – 12th, Me – 15th).

I wish I would have managed to remember to thank her for her activism as well as for the music, but a strange thing happened and I couldn’t think of that or anything else. It wasn’t really a matter of being starstruck. I’ve had “brushes with greatness” before, and terrific conversations with people I have admired a great deal.

She was actually very gracious to me – especially considering that I had barged into what looked like an interesting conversation.

But here’s the strange thing: When she turned her head to look at me, she looked right at me, dead on, right into my eyes, and an image of her eyes burned through my retina right into my brain, where it remains. So struck was I by her piercing gaze – a kind gaze, but an incredibly direct one – that I felt stunned. Have you ever accidentally walked into a farm’s electric fence? Gotten a shock that knocked you back a few feet? It was like that.

I barely remember anything either of us said. It was a short conversation.

Her charisma depends on a face-to-face encounter, where the space between two people is defined.

I sometimes have a powerful gaze myself – but this was pure lightning.

* * * * *
They did a remake of Jesus Christ Superstar! Perfect – Amy Ray plays Jesus. I’ve got to get a copy of that!!!!

* * * * *

You Should Be In the Indigo Girls

You’re all about expressing yourself through music. Lyrics are your poetry – Sylvia Plath meets guitar

Pink’s new song “Dear Mr. President” features backup vocals from Indigo Girls. We need more and more songs like this.

Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let’s pretend we’re just two people and
You’re not better than me
I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep
What do you feel when you look in the mirror
Are you proud

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why

Dear Mr. President
Were you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
How can you say
No child is left behind
We’re not dumb and we’re not blind
They’re all sitting in your cells
While you pay the road to hell

What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You’ve come a long way from whiskey and cocaine

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye

Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don’t know nothing bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

How do you sleep at night
How do you walk with your head held high
Dear Mr. President
You’d never take a walk with me
Would you