William Pope.L, the Friendliest Black Artist in America.
And yes, even though the above picture is frightening and uninviting, he is really
really friendly. One of his mediums is performance, which I won't even get into in length describing (but I will, wait for it...),
because I am tired and it would be impossible to get into them without length, since they have
so much, umph! in them.
In the Q + A session I asked him if he saw in his own work that what he thought and felt
changed while his performances and after and if he had to reconsider his entire statement of doing the piece.
He answered that yes, the piece does change in ways and new thoughts and ideas run through his mind, but he hit on
something else that I completely forget about, but it is still a part of what I do, and that is the idea of,
internal discipline.
For example, a William Pope. L performance may be what he calls a "crawl", which as the name implies, has him
crawling on the ground in a public space, for example... New York City. Now, people may laugh at him, may kick him,
may urinate on him, may ignore him, may arrest him - it don't matter, because he sees that he needs the internal discipline of
sticking with his goal of simply, crawling. In a way, this is a good thing, since what would be the point of crawling for a few
miles and then walking upright and announcing to everyone that,
"Hey, I'm alright!, no worries and nothing to see here!"
I would at least feel decieved and lose faith in what his performance was about. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with
having something over my head telling me what I can't do, but then you just have disorganization - (which is just another type of origanization,
and then is the, "internal discipline, but I digress...). Take Jazz, (why not?),
There is an internal discipline - or, let's replace, "internal discipline" with, "basic riff". The jazz musicians will travel wildly
out of this basic riff, but they will eventually come back to it, and their wild travails will be based on this
basic, internal discipline that they have all agreed upon. Can you have play a song without it? Sure, but that's not what jazz
is.
It's just like a roadtrip. There is a destination. Things happen in between. I call them, "adventures", but I still have the internal discipline of, "Destination". You can give the point that, "Not all the wander are lost", but then the internal discipline is to wander: Destination: Wandering - it's not a point on a grid, it is the grid.
Thanks for that insight, Will.
All in all, I also had a good Boulder experience. Sometimes I don't, even when I lived there, there were days that I thought the town was ludicrious. Just little things, like seeing stereotypical college kids from CU Boulder, or a certain type of landscaping. Just weird memories associated with the town.
But this time, I saw so many people that have shaped me and that I love. I bumped into Catherine when entering the UMC, which I swear I've done before at exactly the same way, I saw Lewis and Shylo (whom I kicked accidentally once)... Lewis is having his BFA show in a few weeks and he's graduating with Honors! Go him. A beautiful person at heart. I also saw alex Beard and Kevin and Maggie and Erin and Rebecca and Harry and it was nice to be surrounded by so many people I knew and respected. Instead of coming to Boulder and feeling as if I stepped into a place I abandoned, I felt it is now a place I can visit and again learn in and also from.
And especially Melissa, who it really was the first time I ever hung out with her outside of school, us both being shy and silly. She's a very good listener as I babble about my road trip stories and I see her about to have a huge breakthrough in her life and art. She really didn't do anything spectacular except stick with me for the night - sometimes a hard task, as I go on pointless tangents and say things that only I can hear or understand. Enough to make me have to write this all down when I'm drowsy and completely over-caffienated.
