The Story of Water

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A performance after Godard, where “straying is the subject”.

 

Performance for two dancers according to a sound score with spoken word.

 

Words:  (from Lady Sings the Blues an autobiography by Billy Holiday)

 

Dancer 1 -  from 15 seconds into the soundtrack -

1.  Without me thinking anything about it, he took me by the hand and I went along.  When we got to the house, a woman let us in.  I asked for my mother and they said she would be along soon.  I think they told me she had called them on the telephone and said she would be late.  It got later and later and I began to get sleepy.  Mr. Dick saw me dozing and took me into a back bedroom to lie down.  I was almost asleep when Mr. Dick crawled up on me and started trying to do what my cousin Henry used to try.  I started to kick and scream like crazy.  When I did, the woman of the house came in and tried to hold my head and arms down on the bed so he could get at me.  I gave both of them a hard time, kicking and scratching and screaming.  Suddenly, when I was catching my breath, I heard some more hollering and shouting.  The next thing I knew, my mother and a policeman broke the door down.  I’ll never forget that night.  Even if you’re a whore, you don’t want to be raped.  A bitch can turn twenty-five hundred tricks a day and she still don’t want nobody to rape her.  It’s the worst thing that can happen to a woman.  And here it was happening to me when I was ten.

 

Dancer 2 –  from 7:50 seconds into the soundtrack -

2.  During my years at Café Society I got taken up by some of the people the joint was named after.  They tried, anyway.  I met a lot of nice people.  But I met a lot of drags too.  I became a celebrity, and when that happens, watch out.

 

I found out the main difference between uptown [Harlem] and downtown [57th Street] was people are more for real up there.  They got to be, I guess.  Uptown a whore was a whore; a pimp was a pimp; a thief was a thief; a faggot was a faggot; a dike was a dike; a mother-hugger was a mother-hugger.  

 

Downtown it was different­–more complicated.  A whore was sometimes a socialite; a pimp could be a man about town; a thief could be an executive; a faggot could be a play-boy; a dike might be called a deb; a mother-hugger was somebody who wasn’t adjusted and had problems.

 

I always had trouble keeping this double talk straight.  And sometimes when I messed up, the fur and feathers would fly so you’d think nobody around there ever called a spade a spade before.

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Performed at The House of St. Barnabas London - June 18, 2016

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