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...Being a True Account of a Writing at the Kootenay School of Reading, March 19 1998: Nico Vassilakis & Maxine Gadd. [NB: a hallmark of other events I've attended at KSW has been the total respect during the reading/performance.] Who is it saying that and is it what they are saying I am hearing? There were about 12 people present. Two of the twelve were readers or reading writers, Nico & Maxine, others were writers too, Gerry, Judith & Rob for three. Most probably. What's that? Most probably were writers, listening writers that night. Did they hear what I heard? Rob introduced Nico: the memory loop's gone on those words. Nice is the flavour of the memory stain: it was an intro it has to be nice. Nasty would be a nice change: rile & ruffle it up a bit. We're supposed to be subversive, not perverse. Necessarily. Nico read from a text made of early grade grammar rules: no words in my memory cells, the stain is a pale watercolour. I happen to like watercolour. A man with a grey-white pony tail pulled masochistically back, lighting his cigarettes, trying to look like Clint Eastwood, giving cash to the beautifully ugly young man, seems to be dripping wet from Narcissus' pool: a goddamned camera. Is that a performance? Is he in cahoots with Nico, some kind of counterpoint? I'd say No: Nico's shifting from foot to mouth - getthefuckoutahere - did he say that or me? Secret selves were everywhere nowhere to be seen. I heard two, though, around the corner of the Or Gallery, aggressive stage whispers. Nico reads through distractions & all: others seemed able to focus. Interlude. The man whose personality is leading him around hails Nico, "Do you drink, Poet?" The young man has left. Listeners now talk, perform perforce. I look around the listening, talking groups of people & wonder which one is Ernest Slyman. Those others are still all hid. Five, ten, fifteen... The performance audience crasher really cashes in on Maxine's turn. Leans forward, click; stands against the wall, click; lights a cig. Now he's clicking some of the watcher-listeners. Swigging water, lighting up, now walking to the back where the young man's returned. Maxine is apologising for a promised new work not yet finished, shrugs, says she'll read some sections though. The inner voice's ragings about the asshole begin to subside: the poems sound good, "Subway" was in the title, "what was it called?" I ask myself, "Just listen," a less patient me hollers. I shift in my seat, hope no-one heard that. The young man impatiently indicates that words are not his fix. Maxine's eyes are closed, she's reciting: something shamanistic, almost. The two pools of froth at the corners of her mouth are beginning to get bigger & the visual field now grows louder. I look away to the portraits of French Revolutionaries & Reactionaries on the wall, try to tell them apart, close my eyes, fight to keep her words uppermost in my head. Maxine's words are losing out: must find someone to record it when RFRF broadcasts it. Sounded so powerful. I was here, how could I have missed so much...Clapping. Over. The guy is trying to smile at me, I talk to Gerry; he grabs my shoulder, thrusts out a hand, twice, says, "Hi, didn't we meet at the Blaser Conference?" Shit, why isn't Lyn here? I sneak behind the shield of my profession, "Then we have to talk ..." I advise back in L.A. he locate a good neuropsychologist, look into meds for executive function...the young man's back with a trophy in his palm...I get outside. On the street between Main & Manitoba, Diogenes' deconstructed godchildren, the Performance Sidewalk, do a remarkable, hallucinatory version of a downtown skidrow: piss, puke, mimes, pimps, twelve year old hookers. The city's collapsed vein teeming. "World hang over. Clang ode & we bleed language of it." [Deanna Ferguson - "A Treatise on Reason"] Pete. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%