Flowering Inconsistencies
a performance series in Brooklyn, USA

Wanting to play music for oneself is one thing. A thing that for whatever reasons we rarely question, and I'm not going to address those questions. People want a forum for creating, they want people to come and consume their performance, which is their product. Even during the special hours, after work. What a world.

I was busy in the aforementioned cycle of self-elevation and I sort of stumbled into the position in which I now find myself. I asked for the privilege to share my music in another person's space, and suggested I could bring some friends along. The people from the space were most easygoing and amenable. I was grateful and asked two other acts to join me, one on the strength of an earlier performance (they were asked to recreate said performance) and the other on faith in his humanity and sonic voice (which I had never heard in the solo configuration, in which he presented). I did not the know the humanity of the first group intimately, and I did not know the sound of the second. I did not know exactly what I would play, but had a sense of my own self. This turned out to be a beautiful mix [and this is not to say that the humanity & musicality of anyone is less than amazing].

Something very special happened in that first iteration of F.I. I found a connection and a faith through my performance that I think I had never found before. A peace, a throwing out of the constant, awful questions that performance, in its mundane form, necessitates. The replication of this higher feeling of performance by/for my peers (and myself) is now my goal with this series.

Dispelling this nagging question of relevance, quality, and context is the point. Performing in New York City without the fortification of friends and colleagues is a psychologically dangerous activity. I have faith in people that they know what they're doing, and my aim is to place them in a room with pie and beer and kale and open (creative) receivers so that they can present what they're doing AS IF they actually have faith in what they're doing, whether they do or not. This is only natural but it comes out like this so rarely. I suspect that's even true at "bigger" levels. The aim of the curator should be to allow artists to present from the gut/soul/heart/brain with the least mediation, the greatest transparency. I used to think that opening up my own home for this purpose was the best, but it hasn't worked out that way.

If you know a person but do not know their work, then you are an ideal audience member for this series. If you are a positing person (rather than a negating or a largely passive person) and you would like to surround yourself with other such people, this is a good place for you. If you feel that you aren't getting your turn to posit, please speak to Dave and he will attempt to rectify the situation. We should all be positing, ideally at the same time, and through the contexts of each other's position. It's exhausting to do all the time, but heck, we're only talking about one Wednesday a month here.

And we're not talking about any kind of colonization here either, no expansion, no franchise. This is just about us talking to us, which for some reason is a hard point to get across.

Love,

Dave