Jen Tynes
The Black Mariah
Fred Ott's sneeze
wasn't meant to be seen by the Buffalo dancers or the women at home. In their
dreams compact muscles, bleached togs, crevassing. Cocks fight, cats fight,
gentlemen "demonstrate." The ring, the skin of ghost dancers
disappears into Mariah, leaving only some white plates of costume. Music
"goes with it" and our accents draw tension, fire. What do you note
about this motion picture?
Monkeyshines 1 & 2
Gender means something
in space, where we blow our lights out, wave arms beneath themselves. The
filmstrip or series of photographs is pin-headed, lace curtains –
"confession" lets time in. My skirts divided. My cloche exploded like
a lily. Interim: I am hearing your "self" through a sieve of
crackling air. It's the tic of the pocketwatch of "the inventor."
Spectacle or Story
Compared to the
French, who illustrate the family: fancy-dancers. Blood-sport. Men pretending
to be blacksmiths, boxers, shaving each other. A man in the background holds a
gun, or reattaches fighting kittens to their gloves. As if wired to each other,
Annie Oakley and her targets. Women watch women aiming for men. After a long
day of "inventing," the gentlemen go salooning, and what's there
spurs what shows. "Slips" as in petticoats, films fall between, and
protect the songs we are singing.
A Tar Shack on a Train
Track
What do you notice
when the picture's in motion that you didn't notice before? I count them. In
terms of shooting birds. As I count them, the third Buffalo dancer locks eyes
with the machine. Gentlemen's contrivance. Hard noon all the time.
"Here" turns away by necessity: can we visualize? Will "our
people" gather in light? Do we inadvertently record the miscellaneous over
and over again?