Please join us at 21 Grand
Sunday, May 17th @ 6:30 p.m.
Juliana Spahr & David Buuck
$5 USD
(liquids provided, BYOB encouraged)
JULIANA SPAHR was born in Buffalo; she was raised in Oakland; she went to school in Chillicothe; she retired in New York City; she died in Hawaii. Single children always read more. There were always places where the more natural, undeveloped areas surrounding the city would butt up against the outlying post-industrial sections of the city, and she'd find herself walking through these border zones, she'd silently name the plants to herself, the sages and the shuttered auto plants, the scrub brushes and the old rubber factory, the oaks and pines and the timber plant, the poison oak and ivies and vines and seasonal weeds and the plastic jewelry plant, and she'd name these things to herself and then take the pedestrian bridge across the river or turn down the dirt road that led to the parking lot behind the bar where she'd go for Thursday afternoon reading group, or back home to a heated kitchen, where she would take off her combat boots, pull on an extra pair of wool socks, and settle down on the rickety old couch with her notebook and pens.
There are many things that one can say about David Buuck and I will take this time to say some of them. When he danced as a child, he danced in agroup but he distinguished himself by gyrating his right foot up and down and around and at the same time raising his hands in the air over his head, his head bent back, shaking back and forth, a model of abandonment. He has deep emotions that he keeps in his eyes and sometimes these emotions leak out and project kindness and generosity and this might cause someone near him at those moments to say, oh how I love this guy, more than anger and jealousy, although he has those other emotions also. Many years ago, he went to many a sleepover where everyone had their own sleeping bags and they all piled them on top of one another in a sort of slippery, static-y sleeping bag bacchanal, sweating, screaming, writhing and this moment felt so good to him, oh how happy he felt at this moment, and he has never been able to recapture this feeling of contained and warm and slippery thrashing with and near others and somemore schooled in the psychoanalytic arts might begin their analysis of David Buuck’s sexualized relations with other humans with this feeling of loss.
4/29/09
