Written December 17, 2012

What do you tell a child 
that you've been protecting from the grim and the wild?
All'f a sudden those little white lies don't seem so mild.

So a status quo solution to politicize, rationalize, disenfranchise, proselytize?
Or bury myself in coping mechanisms like cynicism?
Or Is it any better to close my ears and my eyes?

I go to work.  I go to work.  I go to work.  I go to work.

These emotions have no words to quell 
the urge to purge the infotainment news outlets have to sell.
Time won't stop for me to take another look, 
yet another tragedy becomes a footnote in this book.

We go to work.  We go to work.  We go to work. We go to work.

The problem lingers with pointed fingers, taking no responsibility.
In this panicked but strangely familiar daze, I look for humility.  

Time to work.  Time to work.  Time to work.  Time to work.  

For 3 Voices, Video, Americana, and American Sign Language interpreter
Premiered with (and written for) Gelsey Bell and Kjersti Kveli on April 12, 2015 at Wild Project through Avant Media
ASL interpreter: Jackie Thorne

1. Introduction
Audio 1: excerpt of 1906 Edison cylinder of "Keep On the Sunny Side" sung by Byron G. Harlan
Audio 2: Hillary Rodham Clinton/Elizabeth Warren/Sarah Palin mash-up
Live Singers: simultaneous national anthems in retrograde form

2. "Solo Silly Walks"
Where's the accountability?
freeze. (Jackie interprets)
Where's the nuance?
freeze. (Jackie interprets)
Whose narrative are you peddling?
freeze. (Jackie interprets)

3. Salesmen, auctioneer/bidders
|: LIP SERVICE! :|
|: PIGEON HOLES! :|
|: HOLLYWOOD TROPES! :|
|: OLD ANECDOTES! :|
|: VIRAL SOUNDBITES! :|
WE'LL TURN YOUR CULTURE AND CAUSE INTO A TREND!!!
(echoes)

Jackie on screen: Every industry has it's bullshit; it just has a different smell.

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU GIVE FOR ADAPTABILITY? SUSTAINABILITY?

500,000 shares on Facebook!
1,000,000,000 bitcoins!
Page clicks! Exposure!
Over-qualified interns willing to work for free!
GET OUT!!!!!

Jackie on screen: "Only connect..."

4. Guernica
Each "replacement" text sung or recited in same pitches and rhythms as tunes and rhymes taught in childhood. Each singer chooses their own order of the selections.
Audio: Edison cylinders, Take Me Out to the Ball Game and Keep on the Sunny Side..

"I pledge allegiance..."
Thigh wedge a sea pence
clue the stag
of the chew-plighted skates of the Guernica
men stew the twee truck-lick
store rich Mitt brands
stunned flay run
trundle pod
bindi chisel bowl, gift trigger-y, 
zen must-fish tour mall.

"Oh Beautiful, for spacious skies..."
O sue in full, floor racist ties
Thor timbre, slaves 'bove gain
or fur pull count in travesties
a love of truth in vain.
Oh Guernica, oh Guernica
Trog met this face gone three
Men drown guy-hood, stiffed other goods,
from plea to binding plea.
   
"O Say can you see by the dawn's early light?..."
GO-o slay ten fruit trees fly the fawns' pearly plight
cutthroat cowardly glee paled scat the sly fights gas teaming.
Loose paws swipe band trite scars grew the sterile mist night...
pour the strand arts he botched, learn, show pal auntie screaming.
Send the pockets thread bare, the toms thirsting with hair,
shave goof cue the blight flat hour swag trust til bare;
No sway thus trap char-fangled canner sweat knave,
tour the band of the tea, and the gnome of the grave. 

"We the people of the United States..."
Flee the steeple of the two sighted mates, gin border through storm a core turf-flecked moon fun, fess gamble-ish cuss this...

"Four score and seven years ago..."
More gore and 'leven beers to go, power bothers not chore-thong incontinent, education bereaved thin pin your flea...


"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."
Squee! mold these youths for thee shelf Polident, 

"Yankee Doodle went to town..."
Lanky strudel lent two gowns
sliding on a phony
duck together in this vat
land mauled with jack and no knee.

Jackie on screen: "Only connect..."

5. Loose Lips
Visual: slow scrolling WWII propaganda poster, "Loose Lips Might Sink Ships"

Maybe my biggest battle is with buzzwords--words and phrases in a verbal mine field that immediately signal someone to tune in or tune OUT and completely dismiss me. Give me a label!
Maybe I get too dystopian.
Maybe I'll be a corny motivational speaker.
Maybe I'll endorse a candidate.
Maybe I'll get too spiritual.
Maybe I'll get too intellectual.
Maybe I'll ask too many questions.
Maybe I'll sound like not just any feminist, but a man-hating feminist.
Maybe I'm pissed at feminists who know about Susan B. Anthony and NOT Ida B. Wells.
Maybe I'll go there about income inequality, about police brutality, about RACE.
Maybe I'll go there about the hypocrisy of this nation with a history of slavery and genocide and a prison industrial complex.
Maybe I'm browbeating. 
Maybe I'll state opinion as fact.
Maybe I'm not listening hard enough either.
Maybe I sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Maybe I'll be completely abstract and apolitical, since I shouldn't make anyone uncomfortable.
Maybe I'll talk about gatekeepers and resources and the low rung for the content-makers.
Maybe I'm trying too hard to please too many people who wouldn't give me the time of day.
Maybe I say status quo is too much work. WHO DOES IT SERVE, ANYWAY?
Maybe I just like the sound of my own voice.

K-- (M's puppeteer) Or maybe I'm a mouthpiece for somebody else's agenda! blah blah blah filler filler

G--And now a word from our sponsors!

K--You need this. You don't know it yet, but once it seems like others need this, you might wonder if it's something you need too. (K runs to back of line)

G-- Do we deserve the government we allow??

Jackie on screen: "The master's tools won't dismantle the master's house." (Audre Lorde)

6. Princess Fonz walk

|: Lost in someone else's binary :|

7. Interviews
(Short interview-style footage on experiences of internalized misogyny and "intent")

8. Swan Lake walk
Jackie on screen: "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. ...Live in fragments no longer." (E. M. Foster)


End

Premiered September 5, 2014 at the Resonant Bodies Festival
For solo voice and tape


Baby skunk haiku

keep a journal man
those neurons may not fire
the same way again 


some people like it
some people will not like it
whoopsies! und! tadaaaaa!


they may be cute now
they'll grow up big and stinky
baby skunks for you


there's a pill for that.
but what if I don't want it?
there's a pill for that. 


no time and no place
where people aren't full of shit.
slippery scenesters!


hand me a lemon,
I might stick it in the fridge,
eat it tomorrow. 


my biography
has a few pages in it
it might be fiction 


© Megan Schubert 2014