Summer 2009, School of The Museum of Fine Arts Pre College Program
It’s a kind of talent show, but with artists everything is homely and there’s a kind of scotch tape patch work dead serious but pretty dumb feel in the air. There are maybe 60 of us in the room, a large space with high ceilings, industrial carpet and white walls where student work is often displayed. There is everything from expressionist spoken word to the acoustic covers of 3OH!3 to “Fiddle Disobedience,” a one night only duo to R. Kelly’s “Ignition Remix.” There is no definitive fashion, the only constant is that no one is wearing anything considered normal, many things are bought from secondhand stores. The group is congenial and extravagant.
Frank has wild eyes, a wholesome goofy smile and unruly unshampooed hair. He meanders onto the impromptu stage, nerves non-existent, a beautiful lack of consciousness.
“I’m going to do a scene from a movie, uh, you might know it.” He is drawl, blatant but sincere. “It’s called Blood Diamond.” His clothes are worn and smeared with paint, they hang loosely off his thin build as he moves two chairs to one end of the stage, lining them up to make a bench.
I have never seen Blood Diamond.
He clears his throat, and moves to the left side of the stage, turns faces the chairs and begins the interrogation abruptly in a low African accent; “Where is the diamond?” He crosses the stage and lies on the bench, clutching his side as if he is in pain. “I don’t know!” In the same accent, looking back at where he just stood. He gets up and crosses back and asks again “Where is the diamond!?” His face scrunches up as he yells at the empty chairs, voice slow and grating. He stays perfectly in character and continues this back and fourth for a solid minute and a half, escalating the feud between his two selves, which causes him to need to begin to switch from character to character faster and faster. Just as he looks as if he is about to crescendos into some sort of twisted emotional peak, his whole body sinks and he looks, instead, at the audience, and asks dejectedly, if he can start over.
After this turbulent scene, I am not sure what to expect. I look on with the rest of the group, incredulous as Frank proceeds to repeat the entire scene, exactly as he had before. After about two minutes of the threatening banter between the two men, he comes back around to the peak of the conflict; “WHERE IS THE DIAMOND? WHERE IS IT? ARGAHHH!” Frank’s whole body simply explodes with anger as he lets fly a deranged scream. In the midst of his overflowing, turbulent fit, arms flailing, his hands find their way to the bottom of his shirt and he rips it off in awesome fury which he carries with him as he brings his hands right back around yanks his pants down, resulting in his brazen near-nudity; he is left, mentally, somewhere between the two characters, screaming, facing the audience in the middle of the stage, in very tight, small red underpants with white trimming. I didn’t think he wore underwear, so I’m pretty sure he planned it.
I have still not seen Blood Diamond.
When it comes to life... I think it’s more about quality than quantity.
-Frank, after expressing his desire to die at 30
Frank performing, photo by Luna Goldberg
26 February 2010, Proctor Academy Wise Center at night
The disco ball above me has one green square, the rest are varying shades of silver, some red. I have no idea what I’m listening to but it’s slow, quiet and unassuming. The floor has some sand on it prickling into the soft undersides of my arms, my shirt sticks to my lower back with sweat, my pulse is slowing down. I feel where my the backs of my ankles touch the floor, and the bottoms of my feet are starting to hurt, the space between my shoulder blades that doesn’t hit the floor. My stomach pangs.
I haven’t been this comfortable lying down in a month, relaxed and wide eyed and free feeling and maybe a part of something. When the night is over, and the lights are bright again the feeling will be gone.
But I’m here tonight.
All of the heat in the room is within two feet of the ground, bodies splayed out in front of the pseudo-stage. There are at least 20 of us. We are rays, streaks panning out from a single source of connectivity.
And the heavy green double doors behind us are open, letting in cold air that flows sharp over the tip of my nose and into my mouth.
I stare up at the ceiling of the Wise Center, and my mind slows down; losing track and letting go of everything and nothing in particular. Eventually the music shifts back and we dance again.
Everything is moving through me, the low lights and careless movements and feeling whatever is there to be felt. The music is fast, but I keep up with the beat like I’ve got to. I’m hot and sick, and I stopped caring. I stopped meditating. And this is so easy to follow if you just let yourself pay attention, so I let myself pay attention, and even though I don’t think these people like me or worse, that they don’t care either way, it’s nice to pretend I’m a part of it at least for the night. Tomorrow I’ll be too nervous to talk to them again, anyway.
