This blog is born out of my heart’s desire to see new things bear fruit. A bit too broad? But, of course. (We are beginning, aren't we?) There is nothing more important to me than relationships. And to start this off on the right foot (and to clarify), my relationship with Jesus is the one that consumes me completely. Yes, I’m a Christian. But before you shut down your screen—read a little longer.
I am also a performance artist, writer, an academic, researcher, and poet—living in San Francisco—the most amazing and beautiful city in the world (in my not-so-humble opinion.) I love it because, from the first moment I came, it grabbed me up and wouldn’t let me go.
For future reference, this will never be the place for political, religious, or doctrinal debate. This is also not the space for soapboxes that alienate or demonize any person because of their religious belief, class, race, gender, or sexual orientation. If any post or comment on this blog seems to even remotely resemble any of the political-religious-superiority speech that pollutes the interwebs, let’s call it out for what it is—hate. And we’ll derail that runaway train. (Heck, if it’s still not stopping, we’ll bomb that sucker... And I digress.)
This is where intimacy as a concept and as a living thing is explored.
Yes, intimacy—that space where I encounter you and you encounter me. The place where the unknown meets the known, and the fine wavering line where vulnerability and control touch in a soft embrace—though it can also be as violent as the water slamming against the cliff-face along Highway 1. (If you haven’t driven down this winding stretch of road—it should be on the list of places you see before you die.)
In this short gap of time, I’m writing a thesis—for a degree entitled History and Theory of Contemporary Art (wordy, right?) My topic has changed over the last year, but at this point, it’s a physical thing that I can actually taste and chew on: intimacy in the relationship between performer and audience-participants of performance art.
The purpose of this blog is not only to aid my overly exhausted brain through compartmentalization (whew), but it is also for speaking my heart and letting passions run wild... before I calm down and organize and edit them for my thesis-readers. I will be discussing books, artwork, theory, and tangents of all kinds that connect to this tangled mess of intimacy. It is messy—and in the next few months, there will be blood, sweat, and tears poured out by the gallons. This blog may end up looking like my kitchen after I’ve spent all day baking (crusty and sticky with white powder dusting everything), but that’s okay. Things will still be made. Theory will be solidified and new observations will be viewed from multiple angles. This is the beauty of what we call art making. And as writers are artists (yes, I said it), this blog serves as a sketchbook of sorts where I unpack completed or incomplete ideas—serving up some hot and crispy notions or sometimes scooping them off the floor because I burnt myself taking them out of the oven.
I also love to cite things. For instance the second half of this blog’s subtitle is taken from the book Real Presences by philosopher and rhetorician George Steiner (he is just one of my loves, though I take strong issue with his tendency not to cite.)
The arts are most wonderfully rooted in substance, in the human body, in stone, in pigment, in the twanging of gut or the weight of wind on reeds. (Steiner, 1989. University of Chicago Press: Chicago).
I am rooting this writing on performance, art, food, and intimacy... in substance, with the materiality of words weighing on every discussion. Someday—in the near or far future—a solid essay or book (or dissertation!) may culminate from this experiment.
I am giving me room to breathe.
And I’m allowing myself to talk about Jesus—because if we write about what contorts our insides into knots, the least we can do is be honest about it.
So here’s to beginning. I raise my glass to all of you.
And I hope for good things. Intimate things.