NOTES FROM THE FLARF FESTIVAL

It’s admittedly gauche to post notes for an event that I put together with Jordan Davis. But there were some 30-40 people who gave their all for this event, many who’d flown across the country to make it happen, and as Anne Boyer writes: “... to not name everyone and describe everything is a crime ...”

Jordan & I intentionally broke up the three nights into distinct kinds of experience: (1) film and music; (2) readings and performance; and (3) theater. Although this is hindsight, it felt like we bracketed the night of individual readings with two nights emphasizing the collaborative and improvisatory nature of the flarflist--and of the collective--itself.

Although a few people came to at least two of the nights, each night generally drew from a fairly different audience. Not surprisingly, the Friday night marathon seemed to draw the most poets I recognized. I saw many more unfamiliar faces Thursday and Saturday for the films, music, and theater. About 200 different people, more or less, attended over the course of three nights.

Some general impressions before the specifics: Competition, frowned upon by many poets, is clearly a strength when it’s generative as opposed to dismissive. Think Style Wars versus blog wars.

Almost without exception, every performer pushed whatever it was they were doing beyond what would otherwise have seemed a reasonable limit. What poetry would look like if the Kuchar Brothers, instead of the Blooms and Perloffs of the world, were the gatekeepers. (Imagine live video feed of the lit crit section of your favorite bookstore being buried beneath six tons of yelping pigeon diarrhea.)

Thursday, April 20
The theater, on 52nd Street between 10th and 11th Aves, was, as Drew commented, “so far west it’s like we’re felching the sun.” Note to poetry programmers: None of the announcements I had sent out (early, repeatedly) to magazines and newspapers had been picked up--so far as I know, the festival wasn’t so much as listed anywhere in print. I expected maybe five people to show.

But by the time we were ready to begin, the theater--which seats 80+--was nearly full. Who were these people? What were they expecting to see or hear? I asked a few unfamiliar faces how they’d found out about the festival. “The blogs.” Which blogs, I don’t know. Apparently we made boingboing earlier that day.

Jordan got up on stage and went into Charles Grodin mode. “You realize this is a fake festival, right? This isn’t a real literary movement. This is just a bunch shit we’ve pulled off from the Internet. What are you doing here?!?” He kept at it so long I was beginning to believe him.

We opened with a radio play, “Reality My Ass,” by Sharon Mesmer and Edwin Torres. Short and punchy, literally so as it devolved into Sharon and Edwin making “puh!” sounds. It went over well. One down.

After that I cued up “Mirror World,” the film that I had worked on a bit with Abigail Child. Abby had collaged together scenes from Mehboob Khan’s lushly melodramatic early color film Aan with language I had culled from maybe half a dozen other Bollywood films inserted as subtitles. It brought down the house: someone yelled from the audience, asking Abby if they could high-five her. Another person asked if it was “really flarf?”

The next film, Brandon Downing’s 22 minute extravaganza, “The Diabolical Haunting”--which included everything from an extended scene from Yaadon ki Baaraat to slowed down commercials, to Miles Champion's introduction to Clark Coolidge played over black & white footage of an old man on his deathbed--blew everyone away. I don’t know how many different films Brandon had collaged into this piece, but I do know he worked for two months to get everything perfect. It was worth the effort.

Next up, Rodney Koeneke performed his neo-benshi, reciting the script he’d written for a scene from Guru Dutt's Pyaasa. New York first got a taste of neo-benshi, which seems to have originated in the bay area, last year when Stephanie Young and David Larsen performed theirs, to “Aliens II” and “Troy” respectively, at their book parties. Rodney was dressed in a kurta and his timing was impeccable. I couldn’t imagine anyone, or anything, following Brandon’s film. I was proven wrong. Rodney brought the house down before we broke for intermission.

I was still worried about everything. Was someone manning the book table? Would I fuck up the lights or sound during the next half? Drew had almost no time to rehearse with the poets--maybe half an hour or forty minutes earlier that day. Some of the musicians hadn’t even shown up for the rehearsal.

Again, my fears were baseless. The Orchestra's strength is, duh, improvisation. And, because flarf’s strength is also largely improvisatory in nature, the performance surpassed the three or four other times I’ve seen Drew do this.

Katie Degentesh led off with two very strong pieces--mother and father related--from “The Anger Scale.” I don’t remember the exact order of the other readers, but Rodney, Rod Smith, Kasey Mohammad, and Anne all got up at Drew's direction, took the mic, and one after the other, found a space in the crazy music through which to hit verbal points of entry.

Most, it seemed, saved their most caustic, obnoxious material for this night, and it worked spectacularly. If John Zorn's Naked City needed lyrics, Katie, Rodney, Rod, Kasey, and Anne could’ve written them. Improvised them, even, as I believe Anne read from raw search data and it sounded like Rod was skimming through his more recent poems, hitting lines that felt like they were literally coming up out of the music. I don’t think anyone in the audience had ever seen or heard anything like it. I certainly hadn’t.

Friday, April 21
Kasey, Anne and Rodney met me at my office at 5:15, and we took the train down to Chennai Garden, where we were met by Brandon for dinner. We made it to the theater about 7:00 or so and set up.

Another packed house, some familiar faces, lots of new ones. Jordan got up and went into an explanation of flarf, which I apparently interrupted in an obnoxious voice: “Tell it to fucking Perloff!” and the evening began. Each reader had chosen “theme music” for their introduction--ranging from AC/DC to Elvis to obscure belly dancing music to R.D. Burman's “Dunya Mein.”

Stan Apps was up first. He held a red Elmo doll over his head and read one of the most beautiful, horrifying things I’ve ever heard. Partially cribbed from Marx, but with the word “monster” substituted for “man.” It was brilliant.

Jim Behrle hopped onto stage in a pair of bunny ears, began reading something called “Legitimate Dangers,” and was quickly joined by Alex Young ... on bagpipes. It was a brilliant moment. What could be more wrong than accompanying your poetry reading with bagpipes? They brought the house down.

Anne Boyer got up and read “Why My Boyfriend Should Win the Nobel Prize,” and a few other delightful pieces, some of which I’d cut and pasted into the program in the “About the Flarflist” section: “Science has a horse and is the strongest girl in the world. When it dies, it will be buried with all kinds of rituals.” This theme, more or less, was echoed in a number of readings--burials, razings, leveling. It felt like space was being cleared.

Jordan was next, racing through the kinds of search terms that lead people to his Million Poems site. My favorite of all--and Jordan read the poem he had written in response--being “Turtles Generate Poems.”

Katie read more poems from The Anger Scale. If the book had been out in time for the festival, I doubt there would have been a copy left on the book table after what I think was the most inspired reading of those poems she’s ever given.

Drew was up next, and when he opened his copy of Petroleum Hat and said he was going to read “Chicks Dig War,” the audience lost it. Again, it was the most inspired reading of that poem--and I think I may have seen him read it twice before--that he’s yet given. A great moment.

Nada Gordon came on stage to belly dancing music and, after a bit of shimmying, launched into the single most over-the-top performance I’ve ever seen her give. A totally improvised sound poetry reading of her poem “Nugatory Wax Milk Goats.”

Mitch Highfill was supposed to be next, but due to a glitch in the sound, Rodney’s song came up, so he took the stage instead. As others have commented, his reading of “Pizza Kitty,” from Musee Mechanique--which is just out from BlazeVOX--was great. Apparently I’m not alone in this thought: The YouTube video of Rodney reading this has already had 700 views in the first 24 hours online.

After the intermission, Mitch came up and gave the single greatest reading I’ve ever seen him give. It was a flarf manifesto, using every flarf term he could cram in there, from “asspants” to “squid.” Between every second or third word he made this incredible “PPPBBTHHH!” noise, turning the manifesto into a kind of Four Horseman performance.

This was followed by Michael Magee reading another manifesto of sorts, which I think will probably become the flarf anthem: “Mainstream Poetry.” He read it in a tux. It was utterly fucking brilliant.

Then Sharon got up and read what I think was the “purest” flarf of the whole three nights: “ANNOYING DIABETIC BITCH.” She later told me that she was worried about reading it. Pfft. It was generally acknowledged to be the high point. Personally, I couldn’t fucking breathe I was laughing so hard.

Kasey read his already-classic “The Swans Come Hither,” but the clear hit from his set was a poem he said was based “on the Fibonacci series.” He wasn’t lying. He’d Googled “the Fibonacci series,” and the poem was cobbled together from the results. It was perfect. He also read “Chicks Don’t Actually Dig War,” a nice nod to Drew’s poem, and to how activity on the list proceeds.

Mel Nichols read a series of hilarious short pieces, some based on spam she’d received: “Hi Melisssa!” She also read, in a beautifully flat tone, the lyrics to the theme song for the Mary Tyler Moore Show. It rocked.

Tim Peterson got up and launched immediately into “Tarzan Workshop.” Wow. I mean, wow. And then, Sharon, Kasey, Rod Smith, Michael Magee and I performed his short play, “Smokey BBQ Doritos.” Apparently, during my monolog (“thesechips are sucky sucky sucky sucky sucky sucky sucky,” etc.) I smashed a bag of Doritos into my crotch with such force that they ultimately exploded. The injury, fortunately, appears to have been minor.

Rod was next, with an insanely hilarious reading of “What’s Happening to My Bottom” and a couple of other recent pieces. I was in tears. And dreading having to follow everyone else.

I read the poetry phone piece, a short poem (“That a Hamster Could be President”) and ended the night singing “Bruce,” a simple mash-up of Springsteen lyrics and Bruce Andrews-like phrases. Bruce was in the audience, and I really wanted to gauge his reaction, but I couldn’t see anything from the stage.

After the reading we all met up at Bar Nine to watch Jim Behrle in “Can’t Get a Date.” It was hilarious. And, as Ange as said, sweeter than one might have imagined, especially given the amount of time and attention given to Jim’s toe fungus. He had a great crowd and, although it made it hard to hear some of the dialog, the energy was incredible.

Saturday April 22
It was raining horribly, and we were all convinced that the third night would be our undoing. It was also the night when most of what was going to happen was largely out of our hands. We’d given the plays, as many as we could, to professional actors and directors to take over. What would they think? How would they interpret this stuff?

Stan Apps and Mollie Dash gave a great reading of Stan’s “Optimist Meets Pessimist,” which I learned later was written entirely, or at least largely, from search term results. Stan was a great pessimist, waving off everything Mollie said with some odd, poetic downer-chunk.

Tim Peterson, Mitch Highfill, Rob Lathan, and Rodney Koeneke then did an amazing staged version of Rodney’s thrillingly purple “Road to Inner Houston,” which felt like a Beckett play with dialog by Kenward Elmslie. A high point of the evening, largely due to the incredible language of Rodney’s play and Tim’s utterly masterful direction.

Next, Angie Martin and Nada performed “The Extremely Hot Twins of Peshawar,” which felt to me like the most pure “flarf” play of the night. What could be more inappropriate than staging two women in full Pakistani dress, alternately playing help-line people and sex phone operators? Add to that Nada’s prosthetic leg, which she let clatter to the stage midway through the performance.

After the intermission we returned with Theresa Buchheister’s staging of Sharon Mesmer’s “The Fortune Tellers.” The actors were all super-beautiful people, the kind you usually see on TV or, I imagine, in NYC clubs. It was the first play of the evening entirely done by theater professionals, and it rocked.

Next was Monica Lynch’s staging of Kasey’s “Muller,” a play that runs largely on the phrase “That is sooooo fucking cool.” We had no idea what they’d do with it. Jason Alan Griffin, who played LIGHT, had a worklight clamped to his crotch and the other actors sucked from the cord as though smoking hash. The two-act brought the house down.

Finally, Barbara Vann, Billy Weimer, and Charles J. Roby utterly nailed my own play, “PPL in a Depot,” which was directed by Stellios Manolakakis, who had last year staged a play he’d written about the last year of Frank O’Hara’s life. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe again. Not at the lines but at the performances. After the house lights went up, I rushed out to hug each of the actors.

Okay, I’m pretty sure I’ve more than blown my wad in the “talking about my generation” department. To say I’m exhausted after these three nights is an understatement. I’m also coming down with something. But I got out lucky: Kasey and Anne, after arriving back at our place at 3:00 a.m. after a party at Katie’s, had to be in a car off to La Guardia at 5:30 a.m. I can’t even imagine how they feel. But I am so glad that they came.