Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 11:03:41 -0800
Subject: No Time To RE:


Ok, ready to discuss Picabia.  My current favorite painting of his is
entitled _The Clown_. 1937-38.  Oil on canvas, 92X73 cm. (Cat. 683).  
This is no 'chameleon' entertainer.  What actor more explicitly states
who she is?  

If you'll pardon the apparent weakness of what follows, pretending that
more of the battle has been won than is immediately apparent, how can an
audience endure this in a performer?  How can an audience learn to? 
Part of me wants to say it make no difference.  

Another part wants to believe that it's important to distribute
ourselves in limitless space occasionally; this to interrupt both our
reception of what is distributed as well as the sectioning off of
identity.

For me, this is the same thread Artaud puts into my hands.  It is a
matter of acting less in line with recognized abilities and expertise,
than in uninhibited response to the seductions of 'hope and terror.'

At the same time, says Bataille, "On this path, it is vain to become
restless and seek to attract those who have idle whims, such as passing
the time, laughing, or becoming individually bizarre."

How can Picabia's clown know that in spite of cakes of make-up, in spite
of her wanderlust, attractive glitter, glitz, and adventurous risk, that
it is she who 'stands firm enough to make civilization appear
uncertain?'

"It is necessary", continues Bataille, "to go forward without looking
back and without taking into account those who do not have the strength
to forget immediate reality" (_VE_ 179).

How do you tell if someone has forgotten immediate reality or not?  Is
it the audience who has not that I feel tripping me up?  What do you do
when you feel this?  Do you rely upon some abstraction of the eyes until
evidence of a more proper audience suggests itself?  How do they do
that?

Because she attracts attention does not mean she counts on or even
settles for attracting idle attention.

Whose attention do/might you attract that is not idle?  How?

By what daily method do you obliterate doubt?

Attracted, I assert that my interest is not idle; yet, as if granting
too full a legislation of time and preoccupation, neither do I act.  Do
you?

Even Sundays seem too full of the duties of 'shipboard' activities. 
Where can the potential actor begin to excise his pre-occupations?


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