unmakings

performance idea

Piano in center of the room, with piano bench. Hopefully its this piano I found on craiglist (boys i need your help!). http://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/zip/2223448617.html

There is my laptop atop the piano. T-shirt, suspended at height of body (sitting at bench) suspended by millions of strings radiating out from shirt. Shirt is white; strings are many different colors (based on what I have). OR t-shirt is camo and the strings are pale pink? Just an idea. The strings wrap around rafters, stick into the walls. There are strings at finger height with little nooses to put my fingers in—these strings have a pulley system that attaches to bells that tinkle when I move my fingers up and down. Or maybe instead of the noose strings they are gloves from my grandma and I just slip the gloves on and each finger still has a string/ bell pulley. There is a projector projecting onto the back wall. It has either my gmail account up and zoe is trying to chat me, or leanne rymes ‘you light up my life’ on youtube or maybe one of the videos I’ve made while here. Or maybe all 3 going at once. The room is dimly lit except for projector light and maybe one light on the piano. People begin to arrive. I am not in the room. Then, I open the back door and come in sort of sneakily and quietly but sort of as if the audience isn’t there. I’m wearing a bra and my fave jeans and I have fake eyelashes and a mustache on. Otherwise I look like me ( I look good). I might be wearing the neon beanie or the sheer pink bonnet from the bbarn and i painted a small kiss onto the cheek. I have to really navigate to get to the piano because of all the strings—bending, crawling, and lifting legs and arms to part them to make a path. I get to the piano/computer. I maneuver to slip on the suspended shirt over my bra. Its sort of like choreography/kinda ridiculous and difficult but I act like I do it a lot. I see that zoe is chatting me. She has been writing things like ‘hi, babby MAMA’ the things that we write to each other. I write back. Ask if she wants to vid chat. All thru typing that the audience sees. We video chat, she is wearing a mustache and fake eyelashes too. We don’t acknowledge this. She acts like she doesn’t know it’s a performance and she is being broadcasted, she acts like its just a normal chat sesh. She has to actually know though because how could I get her to do this on a Friday night? I ask her if she wants to play a song. She gets out her flute. We play a duet together. Possibly ‘fina’ or ‘pega’ (songs we wrote recently that have overlapping lyrics that really require two people, cannot be performed alone) or a chopin song (one of the ones i have known since i was little by heart). When the song is over, we wave goodbye and sort of say I miss u. and then I get out of the shirt, out of the hand things, and quietly leave the room through the labyrinth of strings.