Searching for America. . . .

Where is America?,

You don’t have to look,  America is what is happening.

It’s time can begin whenever you choose,

even in some made up fiction of America.

Everyone has a different interpretation of America, and no-one can possibly exchange

each other’s experience.

Ernesto’s story of a life was vivid and very effective to imagine, but one impossible to live by anyone other than himself.

He ends on “We are all here singing the national anthem.”

Some of us don’t even know the words to the national anthem. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is “We are all here”. in the immediacy of the place.

We all share certain experiences,

we have similar dreams,

we have similar failures,

we occupy different thoughts in time.

‘Americana’ is an idea that was already established and impossible to achieve. but popular to  replicate and try to identify.

To hunt for it is an unattainable goal.

Paul Simon wrote a song, and people loved it because they could identify with the aimless search.

I feel estranged by the hunt. for my nationhood, for a sense of belonging. I have never known who I was or where I belonged. My closest affinity to any sense of bearings have been inside the possibility of art, the only space of ambiguity and infinite thinking that I could really exist in.

I don’t exactly know how to collaborate with America.

I agree with Xandra in that we have to ask a lot of questions about why we are looking in the first place. What are we really looking for? Were we looking in the wrong place?

What I can give is an expression of my life, and that is the only “America” I have. My history and my future abilities.

Maybe we should spend time thinking about what makes us feel strange, how to make things strange, how to perform strangeness. how can we collaborate with each other’s strangeness,

This is an amazing rare opportunity to collaborate with people who are totally different to each other. It almost doesn’t make sense and at the same time it is so perfect!!!

Personally I have much less interest in creating my own work for this project than collaborating with others and making something jointly.

Tuesdays performances were exhilarating because they were so diverse and  opened up so many possibilities: The politics of sex, interactive space of uncomfort, sentimental histories, behaviour comedy and meta narratives of city life.

These performances exposed how peoples minds and bodies worked and it made me think about the special qualities people have, and maybe how I could contribute, and how these actions change how i think about what i can do.

I enjoy these things very much.