David Baptiste Chirot wrote:
> My first memories of hearing about Fluxus and Happenings--I was
> about ten--in 1963. Some friends who visited a lot from New York City
> talked about it--my brother who was seven and I were fascinated--
>
> "Happenings"--"Fluxus"--sounded like the amazing things one saw
> continually as small child in small Vermont village--daily things of
> startling import and awe inspiring magic--that were always in "flux" or
> "happening all around us"--
>
my god what a great recounting of a life in flux! Reminds me of my own
childhood, and the things that happen in rural places that have no handy
context for what's "normal" (no tv then). A whole hell of a lot can seem
normal. Or at least, just the kind of thing that happens.
When the old couple made blood sausage for us, the taster was the blind lady.
Later I used gallon jars of blood from the same little slaughterhouse for a
piece--I had it in white cafeteria bowls. I watched them kill the cow, an old
Holstein, and when they split her in half, the milk ran in with the blood
across the floor, beautiful white swirls in the red.
And yes, all that damn textbased stuff. The world and its beauty and stink
evaporating in the clouds of language-- What is that impulse, some puritan
thing? the second-order real? Heaven just above the ground?
AK
