RAT Re: June

["erik ehn" <shadowtackle@worldnet.att.net>]

Dear all-in-all:

     Wonderful watching the agenda evolve - beautifully anarchic:
respectuful and contentious in equal measure. We'll never get to excellence
without honesty, and it's good to see ideas exchanged so freely.  Some more.
A lot of repeats, but I find I trip away from basics, caught up in the
day-to-day, and have to come back to the ABCs again and again..

     A purpose for these meetings: to have a close conversation with a few
like-minded people, who come together over geographic distance to share work
and ways of working. From that focus, the conversation is opens to fill all
available space. "Like-minded": what do our minds like? We have no
consistent esthetic purpose, but we seem to be facing a center (from an
expansive circumference) characterized by an interest in conscious
experiment with form (pushing past the assumption that psychology is most
"real," that plays are scripts; moving away from a tradition that rewards
content - issues, propositions, or moral advice... the commodification of
wisdom). We experiment also with the means of production and distribution,
with an eye to empowering the artist, enfranchising the audience, and
honoring impulse. Conversation in the past hasn't been so much a sharing of
opinions or even much strategizing; more a witness to lived experience,
demonstrations of technique, and invitations to collaboration. Rat meets
have been defined by the core invitation, the sweet opening of that
invitation, and the hospitality (the mechanisms by which food and shelter
come forward).

     The wish is always that the way we meet and where we meet defines what
the meeting is about. So youth or diversity are not topics, but
organizational mandates. I believe we are diverse and in love with the
young; are the young and people of color invited, specifically versus
generally? More importantly, are the young and people of color making the
invitations? We lose time in talking about how to make these things happen.
This reinforces our victimhood. What may we actually do through acts of
faith and demonstrations of community? Not information, not planning, but
action.

     For me, this amazing, ratty crew that refuses (with rat smarts) to
organize or (with rat belly) do disband, has always been informed by
anarchist traditions, specifically the IWW and the Catholic Worker -
serious/foolish, well-thought out and radically enacted utopian efforts
towards a far-reaching change of society's heart.  I'm interested in how
contemporary communities with compatible roots (punk, hip-hop) celebrate
esthetic fracture, critique the market without wholly rejecting it, and
maintain a sense of community that identifies and continually redifines a
sense of place. So I lobby for invitations to go out to these people, for
beds and bread and earnest words to be set out for these people. These
invitations aren't mine to make for June. I'm inclined regardless to
edge-nibble (rat theft, rat appropriation).

     About the recommendations for the ritual event... scares me; I haven't
had much practice in making or receiving this kind of work, and as a
writer-guy it's probably not where I want to land. However - I can't judge
it without seeing it, and if I know I can go to school on yet another way
out of the dominant dramaturgy, with another historical footing and other,
challenging criteria for excellence. I respect and am drawn to Alfred's long
struggles in this field. Second time with that word "excellence." I want our
work to BE, and I want work on our rag-tag, night-running circuit to be
good.  Careful, practical continual conversation will establish an
ecological environment in which we can call each other on our half-way work,
frustrated or reactionary work, insincere or self agrandizing work...

"Lets say they [our good immediate ancestors] were comunists
But the poetry was a disaster
Second hand surrealism
Third hand decadence...
Adjective poetry...
Arbitrary poetry
Poetry copied from books
Poetry based on the revolution of words
- But in fact
Poetry ust spring from the revolution of ideas"

-Nicanor Parra

Hospitality is our revolutionary idea. How are we setting the table this
time? What's the community our work comes from? What's the community our
work goes to? And what will we be when we meet in June? The meeting is our
manifesto.


peace,


ehn





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