Of Hope, Go-go Dancing, Olympic Gamesing, Politics & Other Fun Stuff
I think the heading kinda' says it all, non?!
Short on reading time? Then listen along instead, as I do the reading for you.
A few things in recent weeks have made me feel hopeful again. Which is surprising because I didn’t think I was feeling exactly hope-less, but it’s clear my reserves of hope had been pretty low. Blame it on endless weeks of rain and chilly weather here in the Netherlands. Blame it on a world in crisis. And then that bloke with his bloodied ear - although that wasn’t so much what troubled me - it was the way we as a planet responded to it: a sortof global shrug of the shoulders of Yup, that’s where we’re at these days. Another shooting in America? What a surprise.
But then things started shifting. Positive Olympic news began trickling in. Our close friend Judith Bollen’s smart, gorgeous and super-talented daughter Catherine Clot got selected for the French Olympic hockey team. And another close friend Garry Stewart’s husband Poe has been training a myriad of national breaking teams for the Olympics. For those who don’t know - break dancing, aka breaking, is the only new sport being added to the 2024 Olympics. (If you’d like to learn more, you could do worse than to read this New York Times article.)
Which reminded me of a time way back when, full of hope + fun + silliness, with my friend and Merce Cunningham dancer Matthew Mohr, we came up with a double act to take to the clubs: Inga und Schwinga from Lillehammer - the Swede-ish Olympic Go-go Dance Team, who were on a mission to get go-go dancing accepted as an Olympic sport. At the time, it seemed about as crazy and ‘that will never happen’ as seeing break dancing become a global ‘sport.’ But seeing what has now occurred for breaking, I’m wondering if Inga und Ich shouldn’t have tried just that little bit harder?!
Our efforts were hardly Olympian, but once we had our idea we had to run with it. We had to write the show, choreograph the dancing, rehearse it, enlist a fashion designer friend - Jerald Loud (sadly deceased, since then) to make our outfits, print out scoring cards (to give to the audience in advance), and then pile everything into a taxi to take us to our show venue, as guests of Shasta Cola (fellow of Matthew’s, also Merce Cunningham dancer Glen Rumsey’s) Tuesday night gig at Barracuda in NYC.
This was another time - around ten years before ‘smart’ phones intruded into every social space we have - when ‘public privacy’ was also a thing. It was just us on stage, with the audience. Plus whichever friend I’d hurled my video camera at before running onstage, who recorded this - non-professionally! - for posterity. It was a different kind of joy back then I reckon. And yes, I miss it - because we got to laugh, (and my goddess did we laugh), amongst ourselves, in public-private. We didn’t shred each other to pieces on social media, and polarise ourselves into increasingly tinier and tinier splinter groups, waiting to pounce on the next person to commit some kind of gender, race or sexuality infringement.
(Talking of which, now I absolutely have to mention two of my most favourite drag names I’ve ever encountered - a black, New York queen called Rachel Slur, and an Asian New Yorker who once joined our ragtag group of Wigstock attendees all wearing beauty queen sashes proclaiming “MISS… Something or Other.” Case in point, I was MISS OUTBACK, but anyway, this Asian queen came in pigtails, towing a toy wooden dachsund the entire day, proudly proclaiming: MISS YOUTH IN ASIA.)
If you click on the Inga und Schwinga image (further above), the video will probably be slower than you’re used to - it takes a while - but that’s part of the joy of it. But if you’d prefer to skip ahead through our warm-ups, to us performing ‘the compulsories’ from the go-go dancing competition, jump to 05:25.
But for those who are REALLY EXPENDING OLYMPIAN EFFORTS (!), I wish Poe and Catherine and all the many Olympic Gamers and their support team people and family and friends a simply amazing time in Paris in the next few weeks. Because quite beside all the politics and money and crooked dealings that are part and parcel of these kinds of global spectacles, at their essence I love things like the Olympics because they’re potent reminders of just how truly extraordinary we all can actually be - in our own totally individual ways - if we drill down far enough inside, and then work relentlessly towards a goal, striving to be even better than the best we’ve ever imagined of ourselves. What’s not to love about that, eh?!
So before we leave Paris, and since a lot of attention will be focussed on the River Seine in the coming days, here’s a bit of a story for you. A bit of a ‘mini-publishing’ event for me, but a much bigger thing in terms of ‘world stories.’ To start from the beginning… many years ago - 1988 to be precise - while living between Sydney and New York, I managed to land about a months’ work in a brilliant and amazing new shop in Sydney called Remo, on the corner of Crown and Oxford Streets. It was a department store unlike any you’d ever visited before, that featured the coolest, designey-est things from all over the world. The store went on to be a success for many, many years, and I have remained friends with Remo Giuffre and his partner Melanie, since then.
These days, Remo has a new venture called Remorandom - a twice a year print publication and companion online presence and community - featuring ‘snack-sized servings of uncommon knowledge.’ And it’s absolutely brilliant - I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s everything you never knew you needed to know, until suddenly, you knew it!
Remo loves a crowd, and loves to also ‘crowd source’ his ideas for Remorandom, so… I pitched him an idea. “Do you know THIS story?” He loved it so much it was up online within about 24 hours, and will be coming out in print in October in Remorandom #3. It’s all about L’Inconnue de la Seine - the ‘Unknown Woman of the Seine’ - the most kissed woman in history, and the origins of CPR, mouth to mouth resuscitation, and contemporary life saving. I’m highly honoured to receive both a story idea credit, and a co-writer credit, along with both a sub-heading, and a special tag in the back of the print edition. Thanks Remo - it’s a pleasure to collaborate again after all these years!
It’s a story I have quite some familiarity with because, years ago, I put a lot of effort into writing it as a film story set in three different centuries, in three different countries: Paris, France in the 1880s, Norway in the late 1950s, and contemporary Sydney, Australia. I even contacted Tore Laerdal (the two year-old who almost drowned, in the L’Inconnue story), who by then was the global CEO of Laerdal Medical, based in Stavanger Norway, who agreed to meet with me, so off we went to visit Norway. However, I was trying to write this as a highly complex, international feature film, before I’d even made a short film - so although companies were ‘intrigued’ at my story, I couldn’t manage to get a producer to actually sign on board. As a result of Remo’s interest, I’ve pulled my story back out of the bottom drawer where it was gathering dust, and have recrafted it as a ten page, creative nonfiction short story that I have to admit - I’m really happy with! Finally it’s not a treatment wanting to be a script, or a film script wanting to be an actual film - it’s just a stand-alone story, completely complete in itself.
At present, I’m in the process of submitting Breath of Life to prospective literary journals and am hopeful of it being picked up somewhere - which means that until that occurs, I can’t share the entire story publicly. But if you are interested in reading it in the meantime, by all means drop me a short email and I’ll be happy to share a pdf version with you.
And lastly - I’m keeping this post short because after my last opus: Notes From Energetic Spaces - Where Our Lives & Our Choices Intersect, I think y’all deserve a short post - how great is it that Kamala Harris is running, non?! I’m not going to enter into any conversations about her virtues over other democratic candidates. I’m not going to get bogged down in any minutae beyond saying I just LOVE that finally there is someone hopeful that who knows, might just stand a chance of toppling the orange menace off of his pedestal. I can’t even look at him or hear one utterance from his mouth because he is just so mean to everyone who is not ‘on his side’, and we just do not need any more meanness in this world.
We are desperately in need of kindness, and I see that in the woman who is now (pretty much) in the running to be the next president of the United States of America. Her presence gives me hope. I hope it gives you some as well.
Wishing you, as always, love and light,
Matthew.
Oh! And one more thing! For those of you in the Netherlands or nearby, there’s also this, happening on Saturday 31st August. Hope to see you there!
