katy pinke

An excerpt from EEEE What is the Sound of this Shadow

(clip from 2019 premiere, Dixon Place, NYC)

I had nothing last night but i was carrying so many bags 

hi  

i am a yellow flower closed back up and the world is squashed like a bug between time windows oh!  

so it’s not that the walls are bending but i am. oh!  

it’s not that there’s all time there’s not time left only meat  

myth is always the unconscious representation of meat 

(but getting real now)  

i think about hades a lot  

i mean he’s around (sudden song:) 

“what does death know of love, what does death know of love, what does death know of  looooooooooovveee— 

you put me down here  

you let him come through  

you made the rules up 

he melted your cold heart 

you made the rules up  

i suffered on that night” (end song) 

the little mermaid had to give up her voice when she came to earth not allowed to speak about the things beyond it 

and even in death i wasn’t allowed to talk 

what’s that about  

but it’s relaxing, it’s relaxing to not have to talk, it’s relaxing, death  

to not even try—but what does death know of love 

no one can hear my song maybe. hi  

i am a yellow flower closed back up— 

(sudden song): 

“you can choose to not love 

you can choose to close 

or you can choose to watch 

the red ink bleed on the way from your head to your heart” (end song) NO STOP i must find other ways to talk  

I’m working against myself 

my crown chakra relationship is 

grabbing across time 

creating poetry over the span of years in images colliding, 

creating other spaces that trust in the very large body that will make sense to all of us  later 

what does death know of love 

because hades thought it was so simple: “here orpheus you don’t look, she wont talk, and somehow you’ll still be with each other.” 

that’s how death works for love 

you can’t talk to them 

anymore

you can’t see them 

but if you still want to feel love from that far away you just trust. so death knows some  stuff about love i guess. but 

Einstein didn’t just want to ride a beam of light 

he wanted to find a way to communicate that experience 

listening for the harmony cross-sensorily 

not in a sense that it’s always melodious 

it could be dissonant even 

but the larger harmony 

as in how far out do you need to zoom, to the point where the chaos begins to reveal its order 

i had that “exploded throat eurydice,” talking so much for someone who’s forgotten how  to truly SPEAK 

then i got sidetracked with immaculate conception 

my meeting place was a painting, hands, murals 

not my meeting place NO it’s not ABOUT you 

it’s not about you 

the story of a spirit repressed, poisoned, how to get it back, the violence i felt so go there to the violence, how can you speak your gut needs 

i need to speak what has happened, my way, the rearview mirror, “whore, you whore” repressed feminine principle, repressed energy  

i am a sexual yellow flower that closed back up and the world is squashed like a bug  between time windows  

in the car windshield 

how to say the VOICES of these things? 

the transitions between embodied voices is where i must GO! 

newts! lizards! no more bland recitations, freud’s hysteria 

MEANWHILE mother earth’s children have raped her on the dance floor exploding her arms into roots and branches. yeah, 

they call me the bleeding cunt of Becketts 

for me personally i can’t just pass through archetypes 

i can’t bypass my heart, the entrails, the viscera, the poisonous worms in my brain where is my blood? floating in dry powder above ground, not allowed to touch the hot  root? 

not to mention the need for physiospatial feedback 

I’m ready to touch the physiospace i want it to burn me 

i want people not to chop each other up anymore with language 

make language that opens the mind, the heart. language 

which through its moment undoes itself. perpetual erasure 

no do not erase HER that’s not what i’m saying anymore  

but the SOMETHINGness of my nothingness 

but actually i just need more love 

more more more so much more 

i need more hugs i need more true, true love….but it’s good i’m alone now how strong the pull was on my head away from itself 

split in half by the zero-echoes

even as recently as Orpheus’s last contact 

but to be in the dry simple habitual body  

which has known the safety of no contact 

protected me, helped me learn not to trust the headwall  with Orpheus the head seemed to tug on the heart, up and tilting it forward i have sometimes been all front: front of mind, front of chest pulled by the needs and the wants of them 

but the spine, the back, the ground, they don’t tug 

they are quiet, silent, solid 

they aren’t as potent 

they aren’t about that power 

they’re disengaged from it entirely 

i just remembered the earth is holding me (goes down to the ground) 

(out character voice. AS EURYDICE:)

what’s with this Eurydice thing 

putting together putting together my body, her self, 

…trying to keep her together, 

he was, 

but she wanted to fall apart 

loose pieces, looser and looser still 

there was a time in greek metaphysics when music was 

considered one of the three elements of the universe 

i want to dissolve // 

i want my myth to be destroyed 

loose //no joints // 

no more grabbing // 

we the dead no longer have to know each other 

i broke // 

someone// 

is broken // 

there aren’t // 

there are // 

there is 

//is there // 

i broke// 

someone 

is broken // 

there isn’t someone 

// there is broken 

//dishes / 

/are there dishes// 

she is wearing yellow?//

there isn’t a she 

// there isn’t yellow// 

there is wearing// 

i have friends// 

there isn’t i 

i could rely on my friends// 

if there were i// 

there isn’t// 

there’s yellow 

i saw it// 

there isn’t i // 

but saw is// 

and saw yellow 

michael arresty was the first person who ever had a crush on me, 

to my knowledge. 

when mommy told me that he had told his mom wendy 

that he loved me, 

and needed help writing a love letter, 

i didn’t understand where it came from. 

i hadn’t tried to make him love me, 

i hadn’t done anything to try to control his impression of me, 

to ensure he liked me. 

i hadn’t turned it on for him. 

i was maybe six, he was maybe five. or i was maybe seven, he was maybe five. and “He was so much younger than me!” 

it was completely off my radar. when i heard, it didn’t register in my body. 

it was a foreign object 

i’ll be back 

this is bad writing. 

I know that I could be good at writing but I think it is too painful to do it Looking at words as they show up on a page and the way my thinking happens isn’t flat  and I 

know that writing and thinking are different 

(cabbie): 

how will i do my expression? 

Fellini has guttural earth and then the remembering of stars 

i feel like i need to just get dirty right now in the heavens of the MUCK no more junk food up here (motions around head), the Nina Simone level is LOWER in  the sea with lungs 

with wings scales, claws, flippers, purple eyes with beaks stabbing out of smoke  splitting me open down the middle pumping blood 

and it’s l for you my beloved

it’s easy to hide from something but hiding from it or avoiding isomething is also kind of  a wish for that thing 

i just want to LEARN that’s all 

(in the mode of a TED-TALK presenter:) 

"Who wants to try an experiment 

Let’s try singing and sounding to, and then from, our fluids, our inner rivers inner rivers inner rivers, our organs, our inner landscapes. Let’s try unknotting the environmental destruction inside first 

the only way out of this is in, folks (chortles) 

This is really weird. I’m just experimenting with my mind and body right now and you should too. 

Break out of the matrix! (actually tries to get whoever is listening to break out of the  matrix. doesn’t quit for a second or two.)