photo credit: Bill Cottman

 Half In Shadow 

Adamas had spent his career managing chaos. He traveled from the red clay South to the milkweed Midwest because Aquanetta invited him and his life in Birmingham Alabama was killing him. He was bored with public television and Birmingham, uninterested in grandchildren, tired of X-wives, X-girlfriends and advice from doctors who wanted to manage his entire existence. A change will do me good, he thought and besides Aquanetta needed him. She was entangled in the infinity of space and formless matter supposed to have preceded the existence of the ordered universe. She was producing her own creation story on stage with improvised music, dance, spoken word and projected images happening simultaneously. This was not the flat surface of television A Being In Motion was multidimensional space.

Performance art was a new adventure for Adamas and Aquanetta was an old one he hadn’t tired of. As a television director he created order where there was none and he knew what he needed to do to keep this performance from becoming a war torn disaster. He needed to rein everything in from out there to a more controlled level of chaos and wrap it in time units like TV segments. It wasn’t the absence of war he wanted but the presence of justice: time for every face and body, space for every voice. No matter the position of the sun we’re always half in shadow. How can there be peace?

Adamas talked with Keita and Jamila who were directors of the house band about punctuating with music instead of filling the air with sound.

Only fill the space when it’s empty

Adamas told them.

And there will be plenty of empty space. You dig?

Aquanetta’s words kept passing through his brain,

It’s the same story, everybody is telling the same story.

He could let go of his need to follow a story line or to employ a literal interpretation of the impressions expressed in the performance. He could let go of his need to understand how everything fit together and simply fit everything together.

He remembered an event he produced in Birmingham in recognition of the life of Malcolm X; nothing was working like he planned, everybody had a different concept, a different message and a different truth. For some the story was Malcolm X: a minister for the Nation of Islam, for others it was a story about the prison education of Detroit Red and for still others it was the spiritual transformation of El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. It was a grassroots people powered production and such productions have the precariousness of passion and prevarication; no one knows what’s going to happen because no one is in control. The story changes constantly because stories are organisms.

Jamila integrated Aquanetta’s words with her own as a foundation for abstract vocal impressions. She invented music according to emotional expressions that bubbled up from somewhere inside. Her impressions were from somewhere deeper than she could articulate but shallow enough to release and move on. Adamas decided to loop the phrase ‘stories are ever after’ and play it at particular moments in the production to remind everybody ‘It’s all about the story.’ Once the story began it went places no one expected and it stayed there until it felt like moving on.

‘Stories are ever after and it’s all the same story,’ passed through Adamas’ brain again. While the ensemble ran through the Flag of Skin sequence Adamas realized that he, like many of his friends survived on medications. He recalled that Willie, Ray, Fala and Sherman were all adjusting their diet, monitoring their blood pressure and popping pills to cheat the grim reaper.

‘It all depends on the skin,’ he heard Sekou say, ‘it all depends on the skin you’re living in.’

Was it genetics, diet or the pressure of fighting mendacity every day? Was it life style or their battle for sanity that caused so many of them to abuse their bodies to placate their minds? He settled for an answer in one of Aquanetta’s poems.

‘…We are medicated with lies our bodies believe will cure us. We are blessed with visions our minds believe will fail. Our sorted story, practical, while dysfunctional and absurd, is to be found in grooves.’

As he watched projections of close ups displaying black, brown, pale and beige nudity, on a white wall and dancers in full-body, flesh-colored leotards he appreciated the intention behind FLAG OF SKIN more than before. He had his own stories about being an object and a phantom in people’s mind; he understood why they waved flags of skin. Adamas flashed back and forth between his own life and what was happening on stage then he realized he needed to choreograph a segue.

Like magic a bass line plucked through space from downstage left echoing a classic refrain.

‘Make my funk the p’funk, I want my funk uncut. I want the funk, I want the p’funk, I want to get funked up!’

And funked up was what they were, in the middle of rehearsal, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of Minneapolis, in the middle of the madness that surrounded them. Aquanetta’s words resounded from the video.

‘…Life, like guacamole, taste like what you put in it.’

Then a voice in his head from a recording by Umar Bin Hassan whispered to Adamas.  

‘The victory is yours if you want it.’

It was all there already he merely needed to allow it to hang together. The segue had choreographed itself.

Keita, he shouted across the stage, Make a note. At the end of this sequence play that groove! 

In that moment Adamas realized the distance between what he had and what he wanted and the potential for deluge between them hovered above his head like a pending thunderstorm.