Dear Editors & Readership:

My memory trace on Mark Svenvold [Spring/Summer 1999, Vol. 8, No. 2,Mailbox entry], is vague, perhaps because Mark was hunkered off tothe side somewhere, amazed and appalled in an improvinciata sort of waythat I cannot give credence to at this decade and a half's remove. I wascharmed, however, by the recent generous pith of his colorful limning ofthe memory trace he retains of me, in the aforementioned recent issueof Raven: a lurid & laughable dash of hasty spice proctored intoan oddly mournful summons of an analysis - Mark reads like a rueful witnessin bemused exile from a home that both baffles & exasperates him. Ifit is true that one cannot go home again, then Svenvold's revision'd attemptto come up against his own youthful & ghostly lit world coming-out solong ago in Seattle is a heartfelt muddle of a stand taken in rememberedrain: it still rains here, Mark, and yes, menacing-seeming strangers stillloom the interstices. If some of those strangers yet talk the talk, rapt& scary by turns, well, don't forget to bow to the squall, to the squall'sdeceptivity: we were all wet once. Some still haven't dried out. Beware.

Your witness,
Ralph LaCharity
9 August1999

Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 20:49:30 -0600

From: KJ <kbjohns1@ix.netcom.com>

To: ravenchron@speakeasy.org

Subject: Eric Christensen's 1997 essay [Vol. VII, No. 2, "Images& Ideas of the West"]

I read with great interest Christensen's ["The Mind of the West"]depiction of stereotypical Westerners and Southerners and their simple,shallow, distrustful ways.

Being a certified, gen-u-ine Southerner, born and raised in the South,in the home state of the apparently despised George Wallace no less, I believeI can shed some light on his somewhat pedantic presentation of Western ranchersand Southern farmers and the alleged powers who run said states.

Mr. Christensen first needs to understand the difference between thedesire for personal freedom and the practicality of taking advantage ofoffered federal largesse. His apparent surprise at ranchers who decry thegovernment's meddling in their activity while simultaneously accepting federalbenefits is disingenuous. He himself may be among the liberal crowd whohypocritically decry the evil suburbs and the bourgeois SUV-driving successfulcapitalist-consumerists while living therein, driving an SUV, and (gasp)living the American dream of working for one's success, living the lifeone desires, and owning products that will last and function.

While white liberal guilt may reside deep within the bowels of the staffenvironmental attorney, particularly one who grew up in a state with noblack population or substantial industry, and who works tirelessly for agovernment who insists that a 40-hour week be reported regardless of thehours actually spent, said bowels may want to reconsider the relative meritsof freedom versus an all-knowing bureaucracy whose periodic staff changesand policy standards significantly affect the lives and livelihoods of realpeople and their employees. Liberal policy wonks often fail to understandcertain basic truths such as: many homeless people want to be that way,many unemployed people are happy so long as the government gives them money,and many ranchers, farmers and other entrepreneurs rightly believe thattheir success is stymied by the random acts of stifling that bureaucratsalone can commit.

As a commercial real estate attorney, I support the jobs created by eachentrepreneur's decision to build a new site, and I additionally seek todestroy the mouse that has taken up residence in our newly built home, whichwas constructed after massive blasting to accommodate the mountain on whichit sits. Mr. Christensen probably will send out an attack unit to make uschain an owl to our gas grill as mitigation for the mouse. Nevertheless,he probably is living as he wishes and should afford the same opportunityto those of us who support the economy by gainful employment.

Karen Bean Johns

Remembrances of Days Past: Last Performance at the CabaretHegel

Dear Raven Chronicles:

Re: Jesse Minkert's "A Sweater in a Chair," RavenChronicles, Summer 1999, Vol 8., No 2

When Jesse Minkert called me "to warn" me beforereading "A Sweater in a Chair" at Red Sky [Poetry Theatre], Ibecame a little apprehensive. I remembered his storming back into the space[Cabaret Hegel] that night and shouting through the audience, it seemed,at me. Our relationship was strained, at least on my part, for a coupleof years afterward. His recent warning offered me the prospect of seeingmyself represented as the rash dilettante I often was, a performer moreinterested attracting attention than in preparing to do something interestingwith it. Of course, I had to tell him that he could paint whatever picturehe chose. The Cabaret Hegel had entered the public domain. Indeed, if youleave I-5 northbound at the Fourth Ave Exit, you drive right through theghost of its space before you get down to earth in front of the SalvationArmy store.

I was surprised at his generally favorable representation.The mid-80's were a time when I thought very little of performing withoutrehearsing or even adequately planning, and, as often as not, I nerved myselffor the improvisation by getting loaded. That last night at the CabaretHegel was no exception. I had big ideas but little in the way of a plan.My future wife, who was also there that night (our relationship incidentallyhad arrived at much the same pass as Jesse's and Joan's), told me afterwardthat it was not a strong performance: it relied too much upon gesture andnot enough upon words. I had planned on using an acetylene torch to cutthe chain-link fence with which I blocked the only exit that I did not nailshut. That proved impracticable and too dangerous even for me. Instead Iused bolt cutters to remove a man-shaped section of the fence. One of PaulaKillen's collaborators was quite freaked out but waited too long. When shebegged to be let out before I closed that exit, I refused. This was inexcusable.I'm surprised now that I was not brought up on criminal charges. But I hadsome kind of hare-brained idea of enforced audience participation. Afterall, if the state was going to destroy this venue, all the performers andaudience members ought to feel the pressure (or so I felt.)

It should be obvious why the memoir I thought of writing aboutthe Cabaret Hegel never got written. Now, both Mark Svenvold and Jesse havespun fables out of the place. This pleases me enormously. And I notice thatin neither of their fables am I the central character.

There are factual errors in each account. Yet Mark's sequenceof poems [Death of the Cabaret Hegel, Wood Works Press, 1997],being completely fabulous in the old sense of the world, requires no correction.Jesse's more factual rendition does require some correction.

Joe Keppler, whom Jesse lists as having performed there, neverdid. He attended at least one performance and I invited him to perform buthe demurred. I don't recall why or even if he told me why he didn't wantto do so. But I always supposed it had something to do with the scene.

The performance which Jesse recalls as having started it alldid not in fact start it. It all started with Bill Shively and his bandperforming something they called "More Art" in Peter Cody's studioon Western near Yesler. That inspired the first "Brainless Boys/MindlessMen" performance, which I perfected and presented a second time atthe old Jackson Street Gallery at Occidental and Jackson. This was the performanceof Jesse's memoir, regarding which there are several other corrections tonote.

The windows of the gallery were thoroughly blacked so thatthe room could be completely darkened. The single source of light in theroom was a Fresnell, a kind of stage light, mounted on an 8-foot pole andtrained upon the performer. After each poem the Fresnell went out and theperformer removed a piece of clothing in the darkness. When the light cameup, that piece of clothing was draped on a manikin at the performer's left.The performer than recited another poem. Half of the poems were originalsand half had been written by others, such as Plath, Parra, Hughs, Yeatsand Bringhurst. Peter Cody's series of prints "Mindless Men,"each of which had an identical solid black element and brightly coloredindividual features, hung all around.

As was often the case at that point in my career the piecebegan with a desire to do something outrageous and developed as I inventeda context in which I could get away with it. The outrageous act in thiscase was to recite a poem naked, which although seldom done seemed to methen almost a cliché of performance art. In developing the pieceI found myself thinking about and trying to force my audience to experiencethe inherent contradictions in the idea of art as self-revelation.

About halfway through the performance, dressed only in mybriefs, I recited Adrienne Rich's "Trying to talk with a Man."In the ensuing darkness I did indeed remove my briefs. When the lights cameup they were hanging on the manikin, although I doubt anyone noticed, becauseI held a yard square mirror in front of myself with which I directed theglare of the Fresnell back into the audience, here and there, as I recitedmy own poem, "Labyrinth." I discarded the mirror in the next darkinterval and, when the lights came up, stood naked as I recited Bringhurst's"Essay on Adam." No one so much as tittered. After this and eachsubsequent poem, I donned another piece of clothing in the darkness, untilI was dressed for the street.

The performance foreshadowed the Cabaret Hegel in many ways,but it was much more thoroughly planned and rehearsed than anything I didthere. I would like it remembered as I performed it. But it too has enteredthe public domain, to be mis-remembered, attributed to other performers(one Canadian radio program attributed it to Joe Keppler), and eventuallyforgotten. Perhaps I should be content with that. After all it would meanthat foolishness too will be forgotten. But no. I'd rather everything wereremembered. Charlie was fabulous. Ricky was fabulous. Bill and Paula andMichael and Jesse, and Markfabulous.

Stephen Thomas-October, 1999