a creative atelier
a creative atelier
What time is it?
Gets time from audience member
Pulls out American flag and wafts it over a chess board
Holds arms open and moves them into the center as the next is spoken.
We are moving toward this evening’s chosen center like a vise. This side this side this side this side this side this side to a middle of claustrophobia stretched tight like head of a drum. Then that way and now this way . Bodies, minds, existence, prose and bee-bop rebounding off its skin.
LEFT is the past, RIGHT is future. Let’s go.
Right: 900 AD: Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Mayan calendar begins
Left: 2012: Mayan calendar ends
Right: 1293 Kamakura earthquake
Left: 2012 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant
1513/1521 Fountain of Youth
2011 Afghanistan
1781 Articles of Confederation
2011 Tuscon
2009 Fort Hood
2007 Omaha
2007 Virginia Tech
1804 Lewis and Clark
2009 Barack Obama
1838 The Trail of Tears
2009 Wall Street Bailout
1848 Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto
2008 Writ of Habeas Corpus Enemy Combatants
1857 Blake: Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
2003 Space Shuttle Columbia explodes
1859 Darwin Origin of the Species
2006 Nickel Mines Amish School
2005: Red Lake High School
1999:Columbine High School
1991: Luby's Cafeteria
2002 George W. Bush: The Axis of Evil
Industrial Revolution
2001 9/11
1876 Little Big Horn
2001 The PATRIOT ACT
1890 Wounded Knee
2001 The War Powers Resolution
1895 HG Wells The Time Machine
1998 International Space Station
1903 Panama Canal
1996 The Doctrine of Rapid Dominance: Shock and Awe
1907 Picasso and Cubism
1995 Oklahoma City
1994 Rwanda
1993 Waco
1914 World War I
2000 Hanging chads
1917 Bolshevik Revolution
1991US / Soviet START treaty
1990 Kuwait
1916 DADA
2005 ADHD
1916 Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
2000 iPod
1918 Influenza epidemic
2008 Swine flu epidemic
1925 Scopes Monkey Trial
1989 Savings & Loan bailout
1924-40 International School of Surrealism
1990 WorldWideWeb
1927 Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight
1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explodes
1927 Sacco and Venzetti in the electric chair
1990 Cold war ends
1927 Fritz Lang: Metropolis
1989 Panama
1988 Afghanistan
1929 Stock Market Crash
1990 Prozac
1933 FBI
1985 We are the world, We are the children
1936 Spanish Civil War
1983 Ronald Reagan: The Evil Empire
1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
1983 Star Wars: Strategic Defense Initiative
1980 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
1939 The Manhattan project
1983 Viagra
1941 WWII
1983 Grenada
1943 Sartre: Being and Nothingness
1979 Iran Hostage Crisis
1944 CIA
1978 Punk rock
1943 LSD
1977 Apple
1945 Nuclear Fission
1973 Watergate
1945 Nuclear Fusion
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
Fat boy
1969 UNIX
Fat man
1969 LINUX, ADA, FORTRAN: missile guidance and control systems
1945 The UN
1968 Martin Luther King, Jr.
1947 Harry Truman: The Evil Empire
1968 Robert Kennedy
1947 It’s a Wonderful Life
1967 Israel
1949 Abstract expressionism
1964 Civil Rights Act
1949 Radio Free Europe
1972 Laos
1949 First Soviet A-bomb
1970 Cambodia
1949 Frontal lobotomy
South Viet Nam
1965 North Viet Nam
1949 NATO
1963 John F Kennedy
1950 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the electric chair
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
1950 Cold War
1961 Bay of Pigs
1953 The Detroit three
1960 The pill
1950 The 38th Parallel
1957 Kerouac: On the Road
1950 North Korea
1957 Ritalin
1950 South Korea
1950 Domino Theory
1957 HOWL for Carl Solomon
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war . . .
Copyright © 2021 Tere Harrison - All Rights Reser