CHAPTER TEE

June 26th, 2009

Holyoke, Massachusetts

“Vegan cupcake?” calls James Bickford to a passing car. The driver stops, his window opens, an arm extends. James moves close with a tray of green cakes. A selection process, a taste test, and the gratified driver inquires, “Say, what’s going on here?” Canal-side, twenty neighbors sit at folding tables, chatting over paper plates and plastic cups filled with free food and drink. Behind them, eight more tables groan under the platters of goodies provided by all.

It’s Bring Your Own Restaurant (BYOR), the open-to-anyone gatherings Bickford invented a few months ago. If the police are aware of these pop-up potlucks—which take place on public roadsides—they’ve decided not to get entangled. Social Democrat James Bickford—also known as Pronoblem—is good at attracting media attention.

Eric Blitz and I have just arrived from Manhattan: I’d left the bookstore I run in Amherst, at Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, just past two, picked up Eric and his equipment on 28th Street before five, and gotten back to Paper City Studios at seven—in time for dinner at BYOR. By eight, we’re up on the third floor in Rebecca Migdal’s Gonzo Comix loft, finishing with the set-up of Eric’s percussion.

It’s time again for Final Fridays, the community open mic Rebecca and I launched last January. A dozen poets and musicians will offer their work to neighbors and one another. The evening is structured around Ur Sonata, presented in three twenty-minute segments—interspersed with open mic guests. Anyone may join with Ur Sonata. Over the past months, ten performers have added themselves to the shifting ensemble we call Urchestra.

Our group is leaderless, with no direction for the improvisers. The only constraint is, each time, we declaim the entire Ur Sonata. This isn’t about sounding good for listeners, but rather the direct experience of each artist in collaborative interaction with other artists and participating audiences.

Consider: encountering this thirty-page nonsense poem, we feel compelled to respond, since it’s strange. If we reject, this is a missed chance. When we look at a Schwitters collage, on the wall of a museum, we can’t hammer on our own stuff. In contrast, Ur Sonata invites us to become its next development. So, the most fruitful response is to declaim it our own way.

Performing Ur Sonata means joining Schwitters in his mystic zone.

The BYOR diners have drifted up to Rebecca’s studio for Final Friday. The open mic’s first Ur Sonata movement is ready to go. At the last minute, John Landino, Eric Blitz and I sneak down a side hallway to share a joint, in honor of Valerie Caris Blitz.

Valerie can’t be here this time, though she accompanied Eric from Manhattan for our March show, when she participated by creating an action-painting to our sound-art. She came also in May, bringing a roll of twenty huge, rapidly-completed, abstract paintings. We’d pinned these up, completely covering a wall of Rebecca’s studio, and then—as a thunderstorm raged outside the window-wall overlooking Holyoke Canal—in front of Valerie’s paintings, we’d played Ur Sonata.

Valerie is an important member: she presented Ur Sonata in 1984 Berlin with performance artist Wolfgang Müller’s group Die Tödliche Doris (“The Deadly Doris”). But Valerie’s been in hospital for weeks. She’d finally had enough of how her AIDS cocktail made her feel, and she went off her meds. A few days after our May Ur Sonata, a mouth infection turned to pneumonia. She’s in St. Vincent’s—the AIDS hospital on Twelfth Street—unconscious.

We’ve had a few puffs, Landino has offered an invocation to Valerie, and we’re moving down the hall toward Rebecca’s studio.

The landlord is in our way. “Were you smoking weed? The cops could shut my building down!”

I’m stoned, thinking of Valerie possibly on her deathbed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

I never realized how huge he is. He leans, growls, “You didn’t think; you smoked. You had to smoke your ma-ri-jua-na. In my building.”

I expect he will back away. He does not. He gets close to our faces, repeating, “You want-ed to smoke your MA-RI-JUA-NA.”

Eric has slipped off. Landino tries, “Hey, brother—”

“I’m talking to Andy.”

“I’m sorry. I apologize. We won’t do it again. Please. We’ve got a house.”

He steps aside.

As we move toward the studio, filled with friends and neighbors, Landino murmurs, “I think I just lost my mojo.”