The Coincidental Hour

Tomorrow I’m heading up to Providence, RI to start installing “Chairs; Drawings and Posters by Carl Dunn”. The opening is Dec 6 at 95 Empire, and it will run through Dec 27.
Carl recently made the beautiful clock logo for the Coincidental Hour as well as the other amazing poster posted here. I’m thrilled to be working with Carl, as his style immediately resonated with me, especially in relation to the Coincidental Hour. Chaotic, but detailed; Crazy, but grounded in it’s own subjective sanity; showy and eerie.  

 

Home after 10 days on the road with The Coincidental Hour. Feels good to just chill out with some internet, neosporin and Ben Gay. But tomorrow I’ll probably already start to lust for that adrenaline fix that these past few days relentlessly offered.
I could do this until I die, which wouldn’t take long.

Hello from tour. Stuck in Detroit. Our Buffalo show postponed until tomorrow (hopefully) because Buffalo was just destroyed by snow.
Detroit show was ok. People seemed scared. One person afterwards said he had nightmares about me after seeing us last year! I sat down next to one audience member during the show last night and whispered to him that the only scary thing happening was theatre. And I believe that. The most inherently frightening thing that happens in The Coincidental Hour is the dancing, the looking directly at the audience, the makeup and the blatant theatricality.
Theatricality is frightening.
I believe audiences would prefer the “safety” of an acoustically violent metal or noise show or a raucous punk show to the mysterious internal squirming provoked by a man feverishly dancing with a rose in his mouth right in front of their face. You can be as vicious as you want behind that fourth wall, but the real devil is in the detail of the eyeliner.

Today Lucas, Alaina and I leave for tour. The Coincidental Hour and Ogg Myst.
I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve decided that people should see our show. Not enough people do. It makes me sad! It’s like we throw an Artaud-themed birthday party for the human spirit every night, and it’s heartbreaking when only a few people except the open invitation. It’s time I felt okay with being clear that I think the Coincidental Hour is good for you. Sometimes it’s bad for you just so it can be good for you!
Here are some chances to see the thing as well as some great video collages by Miles Pflanz:

11/13 – Philly — AUX Performance Space (W Cellular Chaos and Hunnie Bunnies)
11/14 – Baltimore — Red Room (W Lexie Mountain)
11/15 – Pittsburgh — At Chris St Chris St. Pierre’s place
11/17 – Detroit — Jam Handy (W Ursula Kennedy and TBA)
11/18 – Detroit — Special screening of G Lucas Crane‘s “The Crowbocop”! (No CH performance)
11/19 – Buffalo — Milkies (W Neil Louis Coletta, Jack Topht and a whole bunch of other things)
11/21 – Boston — Deep Thoughts (with Rick Weaver and Spiritual Recess)
11/22 – Providence — 95 Empire at As220 (W Bernard Herman)
11/23 – NY — Panoply Performance Lab (w Boom Bat Gesture Performance Group and Peter Mills Weiss)

Last week we performed at The Ho_se in NYC, a spirited venue that was sadly closing a few days after our show, and subseqently slated for demolition. With a little help from the audience, that demolition came early.
This was what the venue looked like after our performance:

It was a rare experience to say the least. It got Dionysian. After an audience member put a hole through a wall with a cinder block I had attached to a chain, wrecking ball style, the rest of the audience eventually started tearing down the rest of the wall, then another wall, then everything else. This was happening while others danced to the blasting beat of Baltimore Club, or ate jerky and drank on the back porch, and there was even some random crying.

It was a bit frightening to me at times (even though I initiated it). Some moments glitched my mind, as I stuttered to be okay with a microwave being beaten with a pipe, or a ceiling being pulled down in large chunks – it didn’t seem fair, or possible. With such an intense expenditure of energy, there is a sense that there must be some consequence. There is no such thing as free destruction?
There was a certain darkness to this night. The certain darkness that either consumes and compels, or frightens and repels. From the side of participation, there is a release and connection to a fearless and powerful animal, from the other side, taboo and repression are born. Both dangerous, neither free from the powers of suggestion, and they are, ultimately, currency in a type of social economy. A type of economy Bataille defines in The Accursed Share:

“The living organism, in a situation determined by the play of energy on the surface of the globe, ordinarily receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the excess energy  (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g. an organism)… it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically”

It was a great waste; it was a great way to spend a night.

Touring doesn’t get old the older I get, but it does get different. Over the past year, the most important part about touring has been old school pre-internet connection with friends. From the folks that run the venues like Nick Williams or John Berndt, to the folks who set up the shows like Jack Topht or Vanessa Cronan, and to the other acts on the bill of course, this tour is already a deep weaving of weird love.
All shows below are with Ogg Myst (Nonhorse and Alaina Stamatis)

10/25 – NY — The ho_se (w Power Animals and Matt Thurber)
11/13 – Philly — Aux (W Cellular Chaos and Hunnie Bunnies)
11/14 – Baltimore — Red Room (w Lexie Mountain)
11/15 – Pittsburgh — Chris St. Pierre’s warehouse
11/17 – Detroit — TBA
11/18 – Detroit — Screening Crowbocop at the Vanessa and Ben’s Supperclub (no coincidental hour)
11/19 – Buffalo — Milkies (w Neil Coletta)
11/21 – Boston — Deep Thoughts (w Spiritual Recess and Rick Weaver)
11/22 – Providence — 95 Empire (w Bernard Herman)
11/23 – NY — Panoply Performance Lab (with Boom Bat Gesture and Peter Mills Weiss)

I just realized that we don’t have any songs in the Coincidental Hour, they are all jingles. Like jingles for commercials, the songs are just there to make the message go down a little smoother, to hook the content in your head with some simple, repetitive deet, deet. And here is the newest Coincidental Hour jingle. I think it says much by saying nothing!
There is nothing more potent than looking into the eyes of the audience and having nothing to say, but opening your mouth anyway.

Coincidental Hour is putting together a quick and dirty tour for November. My main priority for this tour is to just play with some of the weirdest acts, especially those that would fall into what I like to call “The Avant-Vaude”, which mixes a touch of the bizarre with heightened theatricality.
We’re willing to make a loop from boston, down to baltimore, out to michigan or beyond, and then back, so if you want to play with us, or set us up a show anywhere within that wide area, let me know. We just want to see you.

Two straight weekends in the woods certainly influenced this past weekend’s performances in New England. In Boston, we performed on a steamroller, and then in Providence, we spun out of control nicely and several of us bled together.

I have a couple shows coming up soon, Boston at Whitehaus (Aug 28th) and Providence at 95 Empire (29th).
I’ve been amused by the number of people that have been titillated with concern by the idea of The Coincidental Hour at Whitehaus. Apparently, Whitehaus has become associated with some hyper-functioning political correctness. I’m not sure how true it is or not, but regardless, some folks anticipate high tension when The Coincidental Hour meets Whitehaus.
Honestly, I have no problem with political correctness. As Stewart Lee cracks, “it’s better than what he had before”. When operating at it’s best, political correctness is an important rudder that positions hate speech and ignorance in the direction of obsolescence while guiding language towards a cultural inclusivity.
But it’s a funny term, isn’t it, “politically correct”? “Correctness” implies that there is an agreed upon fact used to measure accuracy. It sounds like an effort to apply scientific method to the mutable and subjective nature of political beliefs. The whole thing lends itself to potential clumsiness, misuse and abuse.
When political correctness aims at carefully negotiating beyond attitudes and opinions that are based on ignorance or lies, by employing and promoting inclusive language, then it’s being used as a tool of progress. But when political correctness is used as a method of blatant censorship, no matter how much I might politically disagree with what is being censored, then I personally find that… incorrect.
At any rate, I’m not worried about offending people at the Whitehaus or even in the boycott-happy town of Providence, nor am I trying to offend. It will happen, and people will like it or not. I feel very strongly that the Coincidental Hour is indeed politically correct, but it just may not be correct according to the politics of some people.

[poster by Carl Dunn]

This past Friday I was taken on a haunted tour of the financial district in Manhattan, led by Bernard Herman (Barkev Gulesserian). It was a performance piece billed as “Haunted New York City”, where people can sign up for a 30 minute slot from 12am to 4am for a “one-on-one guided tour down the lonely streets of Manhattan Island’s Financial District after dark”.

Despite the fact that it has provoked a lot of curiosity from folks who heard about the event, I decided that I’m not going to say what exactly happened on the tour. I feel like it was an event that sits best as private, partly because of the intimate nature of the event, but also because the content of the event created a weird esotericism that I feel reluctant to betray.
But what I will say is that it was wonderful and so truly bizarre that it barely feels like it really happened. I’m sure experiencing it at 2am helped make it feel so dreamlike in retrospect.
I see too much performance work by scared artists. Scared to make themselves vulnerable, or scared of failure, or scared to really open their mouths and say something without irony or indifference. Reticence has become a standard gesture in the vocabulary of performance. It’s rare to find art experiences like Barkev’s “tour”, wherein a subject is explored through touching it with your hands, feeling it in your flesh, and consuming it with as many senses as possible. It was a fearless piece surrounded by dangers uncanny and actual. But it never lingered on the danger, which would have been an easy thing to do. Instead, the sense of danger and eeriness was just a backdrop out from which Barkev continuously emerged with a series of crafted interactions and tableaus of the macabre and cabalistic.