why, how, charcoal and torch..

there seems to be a centralized version of The Truth..

or The Fact..

lurking there, among people's minds, and expressed through such "why?s as the one thrown at you, in your train journey..

i'm thinking, this train you were ridding is an achievement of an advanced species..all the technology employed to make it real is a distillation of "know How"..

and yet passengers, strangers, all belonging to the [intelligent] species called humanity which created that train, along with rockets and cpus.. is massively addicted and restrained (no pun intended) to this universal Why, shining like a gilded plate offered to you to place your smudged head on..

behaviour, behaviour, behaviour..

what one must/must not do is echoed and reproduced unquestioned, and all other "variations" imply absurdity (i.e. handsome young man with charcoal on his face in a public transport apparatus..)

so this it it then:

public ignorance and brainwashing are serving our performing personae through confusion and (apparent)absurdity..

what a lovely vehicle your charcoaled face is..like an olympic torch it sustains and transports the action from the albert place to manchester and surbiton..

to trains, trainstations, spaceships and disease-curing supermachines,

made by a kind still chained to its universal Why's..

we elude, flourish and survive in the tension (pun intended) our non-comforfmity evokes, as it is thrown in raw, honest, smack-bang against the predictable questions and predictable answers of humans boxed in trains and suits..

i will sleep better tonight,
knowing there is black marks of action written on your chest..


Vago

(tension/intervention/restraint): a reflection in words

"What happened to you?"

"I rubbed charcoal on my face."

"Why?"

"Because it was there."

Within 40 minutes of completing my component of the group action (t/i/r) last Saturday, I had boarded a train at Euston heading to Manchester. I did not have a chance to clean the charcoal from my face - my action continued.

The interaction above took place on the train with a stranger and has stayed with me as thought.

It is not the over-arching, overly-repeated 'why?' that hangs with me, but rather my personal response - 'because it was there'. I rubbed the charcoal on my face because that is what occurred in that moment. There were other elements to my/our action(s) that were undoubtedly preconceived to a certain degree - but not the charcoal.

I was profoundly affected by the interactions I had with the other individuals present that evening, we all just let the moment unfold. There seemed to be no 'why?', 'How?' Definitely, but no 'why?'

How did I rub the charcoal on my face? This is the question that now sits in my mind and on my tongue.

Through rubbing my face against Kiki's face, wringing my hands with the charcoal powder from the floor and with intent - what intent? The intent to have a charcoal blackened face. How I rubbed the charcoal on my face is important to me. Is it important to you?

In focusing on How a moment is rather than Why seems to be what is happening in these group events. This focusing on How appears to have an organic continuation, bleeding out of the specified time and place, out into the wider social sphere, through individuals 'post' actions.

How was your body being? How, are you, now?

I am sitting at my office desk, at work in Surbiton - I have the image I am performing(?) written beneath my shirt, on my chest in black marker pen.

a snippet from our last action..

Tension, intervention and restraint/November 2010 from Dance Singularity on Vimeo on Vimeo.