Blogging in the UK

I want to propose a law banning all commercial air travel. Not because my flight today was particularly painful. Indeed, it was simplicity itself, a clockwork of efficient transportation such that I wake up groggy in Manchester and am now taking tea in Brooklyn some eight hours later. This total efficiency is what I am complaining about, as it tends to “do one’s head in”, as they might say in Manchester.

I feel very much as though I have just woken from a mysterious dream, and am trying desperately to cling to the threads of sleeping life before reality pulls me back into its stresses and habituation. Tenaciously I fight against the emails from interns, the bathroom tiles that need fixing, the untidy apartment to which I have so seamlessly returned, trying to linger in a world already going fuzzy around the edges. Something about a Mona…, a Nick… and was it Paul?

And so this document appears – writing as an aid to memory – a perhaps futile attempt to hold on to water dribbling between my fingers. So many things to “report” for posterity, though so… fuzzy. What did I do in the UK? Something about trying to catch a ping pong ball in a shot glass over and over, and finding it uproariously hilarious? A hazy recollection of busting out a backspin in Cardiff’s only tolerable drinking establishment? Walking in the mist on the Pennine way and chasing baby lambs. Endless pints, proper pints of all varieties in unending supply. Jaffa cakes. A Nick bringing me tea when I awoke and offering to cook eggs and eat them with toast cut up into what he called “soldiers”. A postmodern playground with a very bouncy teeter-totter torture device. Chess. Fantastic eating. A village made of stone and a coffee-maker that was predictably “oot uv ouda”. Endless labyrinthine conversations about the nature of: performance, games, play, feline facial expression, PHDS, Belgian beer, Irish pronunciation, and the nexus of praxis in post-practice transdisciplinarity. For some reason I utterly forgot how to speak American and for the whole time insisted in either talking with a thick Danish/German fashion-police accent, a pathetic Irish brogue, a slightly Sussex inspired poot, or the accent of a drunken Buddy Whasisname (a famous Newfoundlander).

Good Lord. What a mess.

Well, it all made sense at the time. I suppose I went to Manchester with a somewhat reactionary “don’t give me anything I don’t already understand” attitude, or perhaps more accurately a “don’t give me anything I already think I understand” attitude. Whatever it was, there was a sense on both my part and that of They Break in Pieces that to some extent we represented somewhat opposed positions on the great continuum of Knowledge, and this feature was something to be exploited and explored. In the end I became a total convert, a new member in the cult of performativity, as I cannot recall an eight-day period in my life during which I have had that much fun. Ever.

I realize I am not telling this story very well. Perhaps it is the lasting influence of Performance and Improvisation that resists linear descriptions. But, for the curious, I shall try to obey narrative for at least a paragraph: Some time on the flight over (during which I sat next to a fat Scot who enjoyed snoring in my ear and drooling on my shoulder) I had the brilliant (if rather patronizing) idea that it might be rather fun to teach performance artists Formal Logic to see how they might react. This lead me to my old proof demonstrating that the only meaningful activities in life involve the playing of games, an argument derived from Bernard Suits’ excellent book “the Grasshopper”. This seemed somehow appropriate, a mix of philosophy, logic, and games might well serve as a background for improvised response. To cut a long story short, in the end we developed a 20-minute work in which I give a lecture outlining the central argument of “The Grasshopper”, and then proceed to test its validity using the “truth tree” method of formal logic, writing the convoluted calculations on a board behind me. Nick, Mona and Paul simultaneously improvised performance, competing with me for attention, improvising games, obfuscating and occasionally immobilizing my attempts at clarity and rigor. While the piece was definitely humorous (and injecting a certain amount of laughter and playfulness into an academic conference partly about playfulness seemed well to the point), to me the work also suggested the absurdity and “performativity” of reductionist, formal “explanations” and “proof”. While I talked about play and tried to SAY something about it, TBIP ignored the idea of explanation and tried to SHOW something about it.

Well, I could say loads of more serious things about that, but that too would be somewhat self defeating as I think one of the main things we all took away from the encounter was the importance of having fun and not being afraid to show it AS important. Even though my role in the actual performance was that of the straight man, in our many hours in the practice spaces I found myself rediscovering how much fun it is to move around and use my body again. I even did lame-o “movement exercises” and thought it was really cool, such that I didn’t much care about the actual performance so much as I did about getting back into the space and learning new stretches and playing new stupid games and doing more somersaults. And did I ever teach those pathetic Welsh kids how to cut a rug after that!

Nope, this isn’t working. I’m in Brooklyn again, and the vaguely prison-like brick of Manchester has been replaced by the vaguely ghetto-like dirt of New York City. Well, at least I’m not in Wales being taught to throw a stick at someone while an overconfident Australian performance-academic (?) attempts to encourage me by whispering that the instructor is “coming from a different plane”. Ha ha. Clearly some of my negative stereotypes persist. But I do think this experience as shown me myself as a stereotype now too, that of the crusty fuss-pot who hides behind words (preferably big ones), too scared to get out and shake some serious boo-tay in anything other than a carefully crafted, socially sanctioned space. Today Brooklyn appears before me a playground, and no longer shall its trees go unclimbed, its fire-hydrants un-hopped-over, or its handrails un-slid-down. I might still hold some thin claim to the life of the intellect, but by God I shall no longer be a brain in a vat! Beware, Brooklyn, be very on guard, for I am Ben Evans, performance artist, and I HAVE A BODY!!!

And I think I have gotten a little more dramatic too.

Break us, Lydia, for good friends, and for new friends, and for very good new friends.