Issue #22

Winter/Spring 2001

Ownership

Cover of Issue #22

From the Editors

Protect what’s yours till you’re tired and crying.
 I have given you my heart motherfucker
 I think the high heel will save me and so I covet it
 I am scarcity’s child
 a have not forever
 unfulfillable
 Ivana Trump orders 6000 bras every six months what has she got
 Protect what’s yours until you’re tired and crying.

—-Sarah Michelson

I would like to thank Sarah Michelson for her ultra–organized, utterly creative and extra-­ concise, ass–whipping, natural, editorial capabilities. Is that a run-on sentence Sarah? I am so impressed!!!!! When she asked me to co–edit a journal on ownership, I held a very myopic perspective on the theme. Having sacrificed standard material wealth to afford myself a career as a dance artist in the United States, I have been somewhat obsessed with the relatively safe financial state of my peers.

These are people who I love, in other areas of work, with whom I share commensurate career accomplishments. However we do not share the same level of nummular remuner­­ation (I do own a dictionary and thesaurus!). Through my tear-filled eyes, I couldn’t see past my own empty bank account and paltry crust of bread. So I assumed most of the articles would deal with “artist as pauper.” I have never edited anything before, and I was surprised at how the submissions received redefined and opened up my point of view. To hear larger discussions of how ownership falls into the realm of aesthetics, management and artistic invention, among other things, took me out of my trip.

Not that larger issues are lost on me; it is just that I am elderly and greatly concerned with issues like: Can I afford a gay nursing home? Can I clean houses for money at 80 and still use my respirator? Should I sell that teapot of my aunt’s, and for the love of Pete what will I spend that twenty bucks on? Cremation is expensive, so could I ask one of my successful friends to burn my body in the fireplace up at the country house?

So I was thankful to be delivered from my obsession by the diverse ways in which people wrote. As always, this community of brave heroes has helped me gain a new excitement and allowed me to return to that spiritual thought from my youth—-money can’t buy happiness.

But god damn it. It could buy me a building like that Mike Morris is getting. Or that one uptown for Donnie Parsons. Enjoy!

– Tere O’Connor

For a while, The Vavavoom room, where I often perform was on Wednesdays, as we liked to call them, Cunty Wednedays. A dear friend of mine walked in and said to me “Hi, oh your eyes look like my eyes”. This inflamed me to say “No, your eyes are like mine.” This started to build until the mistress of house blurted “Yeah, like they haven’t been putting glitter on their eyes in LA for years.”

I get held up at gunpoint they say the same thing “This is a hold up.” It’s a line from a movie, but each of the four times I’ve had a gun held to my head that is what the mug­­gers say. It’s an announcement of the trade, your unharmed body for your wallet, your ID, your keys, your bank card. Ever try accessing your account without proof of your iden­­tity? They don’t do DNA scans in banks yet. (I wonder how much that would cost)

In utopian future worlds where people live on star ships there is no money, no property, no debt. How did this evolve? Will we have to go through a phase where bar codes were inscripted on the back of our skulls and are scanned whenever we need something? When can we get computer chips in our brains? I want one.

There apparently is an angel in heaven that gives you back all the things you’ve lost. Aside from a mountain of pens, sunglasses and my virginity, what could he have?

—-Julie Atlas Muz

Editorial team

Contributing Editor

Sarah Michelson Tere O'Connor Julie Atlas Muz

Ellen Fanning Jana DeWitt

Articles

5-5

Dear Friends

In the last few days, we have all been focused on the events threatening our institution, and the very heritage of modern dance. The organization has slowed since Martha’s death...

5-5

Graham-Type By-Product

Ron Protas fired me in 1993 as principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. This didn't bother me: such Graham luminaries as Bertram Ross and Mary Hinkson were fired...

6-6

Ownership

I want to own. I want to share a home and cultural research space that cannot be sold without my permission. After 18 years of using my rent to subsidize...

7-7

Georgie Boy

My brother had me convinced that he made up the word fuck. At that point he was one of only four people I had heard use the word so I...

9-9

Prove to Me

In a single blizzard more snowflakes fall than all the money produced in the history of the world. In a single fall more leaves fall than all the money produced...

11-11

Under Us

And it’s out there, in that no man’s land where the city’s still alive, that some of the most exciting work I’ve seen lately is still happening: Boaz Barkan making...

12-12

Own This

Like Al Gore, I am my own man, and one who feels the need to make a declaration about it. And like Hillary Clinton, I am ready to come out...

13-13

People of Paris

People of Paris, I am so ashamed. I stole a piece of bread from a café table…the people had left it behind…and I was so desperate…I took it without thinking…for...

14-14

Report from Dotcomland

I know that readers of this publication may know me as a magazine editor and writer who has often covered dance, but nowadays "media executive" is a more accurate description...

15-15

Quote

I would like to open my big mouth and speak about self-image, stereotyping and photographers’ rights to use a performer’s likeness and character over and over again with or without...