Jessica Zoe Hutchins
Summer Landscape with Bird Trap
Summer Landscape with Bird Trap
A short note from the author: The photographs of the Tasadays were taken in the 1970s, although one couldn't surmise this from the appearance of the Tasadays themselves, who were small, naked, reddish-brown people, thin but not particularly muscular, with dirty feet and dark, uncut, snarled hair. According to the text that accompanied the photographs on page 236, the Tasadays practiced few customs or traditions. Translations of their pantomimes revealed that their customs included activities such as hanging placenta of their newborns on the branches of a nearby tree, hugging and jumping up and down when a joyous event occurred, and throwing the bodies of their dead a little ways into the jungle, never to refer to the deceased again. They didn't hunt and they hadn't developed any tools; apparently they had not yet figured out how to use their own hands as tools, for instance, to detangle the large matted clumps of hair weighing their heads down. The Tasadays seemed to be spending most of their time hunched in unfurnished, dusty caves, gripping their babies, or gripping their new-found object of worship, a middle-aged Harvard man clothed in the stylized safari gear so popular in the 70s ... . Straight outta New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, the urban centers of America and a choice few other countries, out of heated apartments and corner bodegas, out of the universities where art practice reaches pubescence, the artists arrived at The Residency, ready to be stripped to their primal creative states and really get down to what art was about. The entire summer would be dedicated to Contemplation and Production, free of such worldly worries as paying rent, obtaining dinner, free of the drudgeries of the day-job, the night-job, the temp-job; this was Maine, and we were there to create. But the new-to-you nature of Vacationland surrounding the gang of friendly creative geniuses was blustering with impressive activity: plummeting temperatures and hailstorms were followed by dazzlingly clear scorchers, which were in turn followed by sudden thundershowers that didn't let up for days. Coupled with the lack of immediate access to modern conveniences such as the common automobile and hot water, the effect on the sensitive artists was crippling. Despite all intentions, Art seemed to have little to do with anyone's agenda thus far. The pack was stymied and swiftly regressing to a state of simple creature-dom, huddling around fires and looking forward only as far as the next prepared meal, calming their frequent anxiety attacks, as artists are prone to do, with whatever booze, flirtation and jokes could be scrounged up each evening. The comforts of each artist's well-worn props (the sculptures, the catalogs, the paintings, the tools), backdrops (the studio, the neighborhood bar, the galleries), and supporting characters (friends, lovers, teachers, neighbors) had been removed, and each was left onstage alone to fend for himself in front of an audience of new peers. To deliver his or her soliloquy, monologue, or one-man stand-up comedy routine. Since soliloquies and monologues were generally ignored as either naive or arrogant (each equally tasteless) attempts at communication, joking and impromptu comedy routines seemed to be the preferred means of socializing in this crowd well schooled in sarcasm, irony and buffoonery. Upon my arrival, I became acquainted with a young woman, K., who not only thought I was funny but had the booming, infectious laugh that proved it. Once the reputation for being a funny person caught on, it became impossible to say anything that wasn't funny, or taken as funny. Or deadpan. Or so awkward it was funny. As days passed, however, jokes on the whole were getting progressively worse, or should I say, began to have less to do with wit, punch lines or mirth. The joke subject matter had degenerated from wisecracks on contemporary culture to food and weather jokes, then became jokes about previous jokes, about the way a joke had been told, jokes about the sequence of jokes, jokes about jokes that hadn't been funny when first told, but were funny now because they were so unfunny. One joke revolved around the drunken shenanigans of an office worker sucking the genitals of a co-worker's pet. Another, involving a man with a dozen long-stemmed roses and a greeting card stuck in his rectal cavity, evolved to become a charade-like pantomime of staggering around with pants pulled halfway down, revealing butt-cheeks sandwiching grass, flowers, leaves, or whatever other objects happened to be at hand that could be fit into the pants. And so it was never decided, as it should have been, by group consensus, that jokes per se just weren't funny any more. No matter the occasion, there were always a couple of die-hards keeping up the jocular tradition with occasional stabs at limericks and re-enactments of Saturday Night Live skits, never discouraged by the lack of laughter, or, worse, by the weak courtesy chuckles that inevitably follow a mediocre joke told in the company of well-meaning gregarious folk. The jokes just kept running. *** For the conclusion of "Summer Landscape with Bird Trap", please visit: http://www.c-level.cc/jessie/birdtrap.html Jessica Zoe Hutchins Los Angeles |
