Actor Dennis Hopper, On Art

A lot to absorb here. The words and message simple and inspirational. My take on it is that we all need to create and curate. The common thread to successful collectors is recognizing and acquiring art that they like. One only has so much wall space but we can rotate our inspiration. We can collect and rotate our images to build our own sensory volitional womb. As a maker/creator I would say that his point regarding contextualization is on point. The words can cheapen the experience...

SINSYRIASLY YOURS...

Most recent feature article of my piece "SiNSYRIASLY YOURS..."

I'll never forget seeing my first set of Domino pieces laid out on the floor of my home when I was little and watching the stacked pieces knock against each other to fall in sequence. I don't ever recall learning the rules of the game but came to learn it by observing political events.

The Viet Nam War began while I was in grammar school and the term Domino Theory crept into common usage in the vernacular. The nightly news fed us a steady stream of our images on our black and white TV of exhausted soldiers and helicopters and damaged lives. On the home front I saw the war affect us at home as my father worried about my brother getting drafted to fight in a war that he knew well from the horrors of after having survived World War 2 which included the Siege of Warsaw when the Nazis invaded.

I lived on the cusps of the new American Reality of peace and stability and the emigre life of wartime refugees. Fortunately for me the war in Viet Nam ending before I reached drafting age and the memories could subside as well as any interest in politics. At that time the current of war shifted out of Southeast Asia to where it burned more brightly in the Middle East and what became news fodder was the conflict in Israel and Egypt and Palestine. Time Magazine was filled weekly with accounts of terrorist bus bombers and a rather pervasive guerrilla warfare which we really associated with Viet Nam although its precedent was well set with the O.S.S. and the early C.I.A.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria represented what we now know as a 20+ year war and conflict we have yet to see the truly terminated. From watching images of black rubber lifeboats and people of all ages wading ashore and leaving behind large hills of orange life preservers to newly pitched refugee camps. There are  now contained millions of the dispossessed within the confines of the camps.

Here are the numbers:

SYRIA.  6.848.865

AFGHANISTAN 2,840,672

SUDAN 2,372,656

MYANMAR 1,209,086

UKRAINE 8,046.560

For comparison purposes, this from BBC 

European Refugee Movements After World War 2

By Bernard Wasserstein

By 1959 some 900,000 European refugees had been absorbed by west European countries. In addition, 461,000 had been accepted by the USA, and a further 523,000 by other countries. But many 'hard-core' refugees still remained in camps. At that point the United Nations launched an ambitious effort to resolve the refugee problem once and for all.

World Refugee Year, in 1959-1960, was designed as a 'clear the camps' drive. It achieved some significant results - at any rate in Europe. By the end of 1960, for the first time since before World War Two, all the refugee camps of Europe were closed.

But the global refugee problem was far from solved. In Africa and Asia millions of fugitives from persecution, hunger, and natural disasters continued to scramble for secure homes. Europe, hitherto mainly an exporter of refugees, henceforth became a net importer. Today the United Nations estimates that over 17 million asylum seekers, refugees and stateless people are seeking homes worldwide.

At this time I won't delve into the key players in the creation of this world picture.

THE LAST DAY OF THE "SPEAK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES"

After two nights in an exhibition space I felt emboldened enough to spend the morning street performing at the entrance to the Bieannale where the water taxis arrive. It was the most exhilirating feeling. I was lucky enough to be with Emily Stevens who witnessed and photographed the event and interactions. The response was immediate and intense and engaging. I'm writing now 2 years after the moment but remember it and the people interacted with vividly.

Those who visited were looking about for a place to deposit donations for my work which would have been incredible even though they had already paid me beyond measure with their engagement.

My purpose as an artist is to engage with others in a way that creates a paradigm shift and helps others challenge their viewpoints in a way that benefits their lives and mankind

There is an incredible power to this piece and it has given me the strength to create other pieces.
Peace.
Zen

SECOND DAY AT SELF/ VENICE ART HOUSE

THE SECOND NIGHT

By now, I’m more fully in my element. I’ve learned more and more each time I do this. This piece is for me and for others. In life we encounter things we don’t understand which can stick with us for years. When I did my piece REQUIEM FOR THE PAWNS OF WAR, the fuse had been lit forty years earlier reading TIME MAGAZINE articles covering bombers who were detonating themselves on buses and in crowds in Israel in the early seventies.

SPEAK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES, may have begun the first time I saw a woman in a Burqa or a Berber fighter in a movie or in the way a parent can control a child with a look. 

We all romanticize meeting someone with whom we lock eyes across a room and then roll off into the future. In my second night performing I connected with even more people, all strangers until we share that performance. I don’t think it really matters at this point at which side of the box we are on. This night I relax a bit more and resolve to interact a bit more particularly with the kids. Mimicry and empathy are an element of communication. With infants who lack the verbal skills to respond to us, we often see a parent or grandparent make faces or duplicate a hand gesture in a way the baby immediately responds to. The eye to eye dialogue is key and often priceless not only with infants but adults and even those with whom we dialogue who have lost speech capabilities from stroke or illness.

Some of the kids from the preceding night are here and they want to play. I’m amazed as I don’t know if I would have had the wherewithal to come eye to eye with a black robed figure with a box on his head and a sign hanging from his neck encouraging me to speak to him only with mine eyes. But they do and we do and add tilts and hand gestures which we both appreciate. 

Personally I have been at many times an introvert. The world does not at first glance appear to favor an introvert. To get by in life and to get what you want and go where you want and meet who you want , communication is vital. Even without people you have to communicate with things in order to build the things you need to live with. 

Tonight I engage with more people. Some of them are fellow artists and at the end of the night I have the opportunity to receive input and develop friendships with them. It is so much easier to make a deeper connection after you have already shared a silent nonverbal dialogue with someone. 

The box and robe is a metaphor for the body in some way only in this case the body is formless and you can’t be judged for your body in the way this society we live in is training us to do by way of media exposure in all its forms. In that way it can be empowering I suppose. If you are an introvert, It is as if one is trapped in the body and struggles to speak or find ways or things to say. One is on the inside always looking out and studying, not getting noticed, not in dialogue or observing others who are in dialogue but oftentimes not really saying anything. Speaking to an introvert can be disabling as well. How hard do you have to try to engage one who doesn’t speak or give you anything back in return. We give these problems names and these days we even medicate for them. These things I think about while I wait for someone to come up to me. 

I play. At times I take a position and inch closer and closer to someone I feel has been avoiding me. I wait till their back is to me and I shift my feet ever so slowly each time they turn away from me. It’s fun and now I feel that I’m more and more in the zone of a street performer as well as a performance artist. This gets better and better and I  find myself entertaining more and more people.

It’s been more days now and as I recall the people who have engaged me and spoken to me with their eyes, I feel incredibly connected to them all in a very beautiful way. Even the ones who hedged or avoided full contact. I’m blessed and onto something. Encouraged I plan for the Biennale itself.

I’ve visited quite a few exhibition already and seen some wonderful art. I’ve also seen some awkwardness in the explanation of the art. In the way one fills in a Blue Book for an essay exam where one attempts to spew out as much stuff as one can to try to get a passing mark when answering an exam question. There’s a point where one totally becomes a whore and tries to spew out nearly anything to get a passing mark when you are not sure what the teacher is looking for. I see this in some of the contextualization of the concept art. I find it rather funny. The public often doesn’t know better , they are here because it is something to do and will believe almost anything. I don’t know that the artist actually thinks any of the things they are writing until well after the creation of the piece and they have to explain themselves to people who don’t get whatever it is they are trying to do. there is a large divide between the art and the explanation and oftentimes the art doesn’t speak for itself and to my mind never will.

There are flags on the floor in front of some pieces that are clearly in the wrong pile for the event they are to represent. I find it embarrassing for the artist to be doing this at a world art event.

In some bizarre way I find it encourage as it teaches me anything goes and my work easily belongs here with these and perhaps even more so.

Opening night at SELF

Opening Night at SELF
VENEZIA, ITALY
SPEAK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES

Opening night was at Palazzo Z'anardi

The palace was beautiful, the coolness of the marble was welcome as the day was hot and wearing all black on a hot night can be stifling if I'm wanting to have my attention fully on all the people I'm to interact with.

Attention to details are important. Last minute preparation required making a new headdress for the show. Fortunately this version was even better than my last. I had taken some precautions by bringing extra materials with me and taken "just in case items" in the even of a mishap. Extra tape, Gaff tape, sewing materials, glue, cardboard to cut on top of, etc...  I could not foresee however that an overzealous application  of Gorilla glue I brought along would bubble out of the seams as it cured. Two hours of cutting bevels and careful measuring were saved by shaving the frothy thick glue off by shaving with a razor and painting the pasty yellow residue with a last minute application of Mascara which was the only black paint to be found. I felt like I was in an art Survivor Episode and so glad for my field improvising capabilities developed over the years and also by observing how others learn to make do in other countries.

This is such an old and beautiful city I can not but help feel spirits still hanging around their beloved Venice. The other night I would have sworn I felt one above me when I went to bed. They are welcome to me. I feel very at home here, I know I've lived here before. I felt it the instant we got off the train and looked at the buildings across the Grand Canal. My skin at the back of my neck tingled and I could feel myself thinking "you are home". You wouldn't think it by the way I get lost walking around here. GPS is nice but there's nothing like stopping to ask  a hundred times for directions and interacting with people. I think that's nice and it develops a very fine sense of knowing when someone doesn't know what they are talking about yet they still offer you directions which would take you not only on a thirty minute detour but in the exact opposite direction of where you need to go. This is another side effect of SPEAK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES.

At this point in my work I know there's very little I need to do to prepare for performing other than clear my head and be open to anyone.  I don't really want to call what I wear a costume as it's much more than that. In some way it's a metaphor for body or nothing or furniture as some people treat it that way. I have a profound appreciation for the Burqa now. I can sense that now in these robes and head dress, to some I don't exist. I have in common what the homeless feel and women and the unseen or not looked at. Being a "normal" human is really no different, We are all active inside our heads and the level of interaction we have with others can be some what determined by others and mostly by ourselves, it is our responsibility as always if we wish to be and interact with the world.

Although people will come up to me most of the night or me to them and they have what ever what they have on and their hair and makeup looks however, what I remember through the night and for days and months after is their eyes. Yet something more than that remains with me. I am connected now.


They have communicated their things to me and I have listened and communicated back in the thought world and whether I have understood or duplicated exactly what has come across or not  it stays there. I feel blessed to have seen so many shiny eyes in a night. they are so beautiful. As my Italian language skills are abysmal even with 4 years of Latin under my belt, wordless communication is beautiful, all I need is the eyes.

In the course of the evening I interacted with some children. There was a little girl there with my friend Andrea. He told me at the end of the night that she said "I looked at him and communicated to him with my brain." I loved that.

When I think of what I want to communicate to others, I suppose I could communicate things like, "I'm here for you" or "Thank you for visiting" or "You have incredible eyes" but most often  I'm thinking "We are stardust and the galaxy or universe is so big and You are it with me and perhaps if we all see that the world would be better.".

Most often what I'm getting from others is that words are not necessary in the totality of things. If I were to position myself out in space someplace and see how big the universe really is and how small our planet really is , there is nothing but awe and we are connected by that with our eyes.

Really it is amazing, if you look at a rock or a building and you think of how small that is in comparison to the sun or Ceres or Orion's Belt. It shows to me how small and insignificant daily words are, though we need them or think we do. So here we are with this small insignificant rock yet someone picks it up to throw at a building or another human.

I could say that Venice for all its history is the most incredible place in the world, the city of Masks, to do this piece but in truth I feel the same when looking into someone's eyes here as I do in some abandoned building in a run down part of St Louis. The eyes and people I interact with there and here leave me the same, blessed to have had the experience and resolved to continue this piece as it is important and I can see it has impacted others there and here and anywhere I perform it.

Tomorrow I start street performance.

Speak to Me Only with Thine Eyes

As the diversities in the world are now more exposed by enhanced media intrusion, cultures are clashing with one world wishing homogenization and the the other, retention of its cultures and values with violent means being resorted to by both.

Where do I begin and does someone else start? By removing words and by limiting physical cues such as smiles and other facial expressions it can be somewhat intimidating to approach others whether they are known to us or not.

The concept of this piece involves a small stage set converted into a headdress. All other elements are a stark black allowing for a creation of an archetype which is a conglomerate of world religions and culture whether cassock, burqa, academic or judicial robes, Saturnian High Priest, ascetic and others.

Black has come to represent intervention, portal or messenger to God, religious ritual, shielding, mourning, protection, isolation and disconnection. The chest placard: SPEAK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES, sets the boundaries for engagement within a reasonably intimate distance.

At whatever level there is an element of absorption of something from each other. Perhaps this can be a step towards questioning to what degree we interact with others and to what degree we protect or must protect ourselves and to what degree we allow our anonymity to prevail.

My intent as the artist and performer is to encourage this type of silent communication and that we will leave small silent pieces of our selves in others to help bridge this gap between our worlds.

Acknowledgement to Dylan Cooper for facilitating and photographing this project.

I don't wear red

Just finished watching a Glen Beck Jan 22 episode that dealt with Holodomor. This is an incident that has deeply affected my people.
I was raised to be unfond of communists and in fact there was time when I thought in basic idea it was theoretically equivalent to applied Christianity.... and then I became educated. Che, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler: all mass murderers, cold heartless killers using political agendas as covers for their malicious psychotic intents. The writers who espoused these philosophies, the same. Social Progressivism, Social engineering, Eugenics, whatever the cloak, the content the same.
My parents raised me not to wear red. I used the think it was odd. Now I understand and wish I could kiss their head and hands to have raised me this way-I don't wear red.

Gypsy Bacon

She lays naked and warm

Next to her purse with the things inside left to confuse the mice that come at night to visit

A swahili phrase book next to a card with

Hot rolls Dumb ass on it

 Thinking,  go ahead why don’t you take that one back to your nest and chew on that for awhile

They speak in high pitched tones

Like aliens who read from their prayer scrolls

Trying to gauge the freshness of the bacon

He bought from gypsies years ago as he sat across the fire in the desert

Fate-- he lay many nights in the cold plugged into the jacket that takes energy and makes heat in your jacket as the engine runs

After he lays many nights next to his motorcycle in the dirt at night wrapped in his Masaai robes he bought on Ebay.

He searches for the turkey bone and aluminum foil to make translators to listen to advice from the ants that crawl beneath his head so he can understand

How to get along with others as well as they do

He wonders how they manage to do their jobs for the benefit of the others

they live with while his thoughts always drift towards solo journeys

She looks over his shoulder now scribbling notes she can give to the people who buy her breakfast.

He leaves cryptic notes for help on the cafeteria tray that rides down the conveyor hoping that the kitchen staff wlll read it when they clean the dishes

He scratches the fish scales and cotton that line the roof of his mouth in the morning

Trying to taste what remains of the night air

that still lingers somewhere amongst the leaves that lay cold beneath the winter trees on the hard frozen ground

His dog barks outside tied to a tree after she does her business 

She comes in happy and panting waiting for her breakfast near her water dish

She lays then down upon her pillow

The Masaai men laugh at him when he tells the story as they sit across a fire in the night heat that keeps the lions away

Reminiscent of the time he learned from the gypsies that sold him his bacon

Sufi pants and vision

She makes peanut butter sandwiches to make our dog love her better

My dog laughs out loud at vacuum cleaner jokes

 she knows she does a better job when it comes to food.

She wears Sufi pants and dreams of large stitched canvases hung in front of museum windows with large patches of grey and charcoal and white and china red so they can be seen through windows from hillsides across from the parking lots of museums

The paintings are done in warehouses with white walls 

We sew 5 foot rolls of canvas, stitched together and gessoed 

before the paints are done on the floors and hung from the walls or ceiling in warehouses owned by the Drury’s who let him paint on the weekends in place no one has ever spoken or thought of...

The curator of the museum wants a large painting to hang on the walls

I saw it in my vision this morning after reading the Anthropologie catalogue

And I know it will happen

The Ants have thoughts too

Happy NEW YEAR!!!! You know where you go outside and listen to the fireworks and smell the night air and wonder how one arbitrary night becomes the source of a planetary event and the entire world is bound to that fact and you just go hmmmm , is that an ant on the sidewalk, what is he doing out this late at night, I though only worms come out at night??? Maybe there's a whole world out there I know absolutely nothing about, maybe there's a whole universe, all subterranean like and they have ant thoughts that sound really high pitched and you can make a little ant communicator out of some tinfoil and a turkey bone that you hold to the base of your jawbone and if you hum your thoughts they will understand...they will always understand...

The Mirror behind your head

She wears glasses so she can see her dreams better.

She’s talking to you  and You think she’s talking to you

You think she’s talking to you but she’s really talking to the mirror behind your head

She tries to tell you her dreams but she thinks she’s you

And she tells you are her and she’s you talking to the other people in the dream

So you begin to wonder if you really are necessary anymore

All you think about is how the plumber struggles to tell

You that she should stop flushing the Va J J wipes down the toilet

She goes down the stairs to talk to Ray the Plumber who’s mopping up the water from the drain that’s stopped he rips open his shirt to show you his open heart surgery scars.

She shows you the cuts she uses to tell her she

Feels herself

They walk apart he from the room sees her across the swollen river

Walking with her son’s hat in her hand

Their eyes meet, they’re not locked as they always been connected

He knows now he must come back

He couldn’t see it all he saw

Was her membership in the sexual disease association

He turns up the music so he can write

It’s the only way he can hear his words and see his thoughts

On the paper or the screen ---no one uses paper any more they use electrons

Electrons gone in an instant to go on a spin in someone else’s mind

That why they call it spin, it spins and it’s gone

Gone for a spin in someone else’s mind and on and on and on

Our Purpose - Youth for Human Rights International

If you know you rights, you will expect them and know when someone tries to take them away or lessen them...

Our Purpose
-
Youth for Human Rights International

Adjust to it...

Adjust to it...

When your mind starts to go 

I’m taking you to Africa and setting you outside my mud house

On a reed mat in the dirt and let people play invisible mind ping pong with you all day

 You listen to the water drops in the sink in a town with no potable water

And drink heat treated milk with dry biscuits

Having Zwieback dreams of your childhood 

Sitting nest to the the melamine yellow table with black geometric dot patters

Feeling the holes in the vinyl of your chair on the backs of your naked legs

 Watching Pete the Parakeet pulling strands out of your mothers hair to make a nest for his mate that he never finds

In your minds basement level small grey spiders by the windows waiting for you to feed her flies

And watch the web dance and tingle her to life

Thru the windows in the basement The Masai men hop and leave deep guttural notes as their beads bounce 

Off their dark glistening chests and the honey and red earth part as rivulets of sweat

Run down their bodies and leave long dark lines in the ashes to drip on the gourd

Like the drops in the sink that you never hear but are always there dropping

 Waiting listening for you to answer them back

The smell of bat urine descends from the nets above your head and my nose lays next to your ear smelling the damp wax and bat scent from the nights before

You lay spent beneath the scent cold beneath the damp morning sheets as

 The baboon stares hole at the sides of your head looking for the microwave beams that the government has been sending

To tell you of the red spitting cobra that fans its hood waiting at your office door 

The servants run and shriek looking for a way to make it go.

Adjust to it…..

The mouse knows you

He has small mouse names for you…

They talk about you like mice do

And know small mouse things about you…

Like how you fold your underwear and the lint in the corner of your drawer and how your notebooks smell and taste

Yes he can taste your words and your ink and he reads your words and finds comfort in them. He eats them, yes your words are like food to the mouse.

Your pages line his nest, torn to pieces like the dreams you once wrote for only you to see. Now he sleeps his tiny muzzle turned under his paws and tiny claws, dozing....resting breathing, he sighs amongst your words, comforted and dreaming tiny mouse dreams where he runs in tunnels and his dozing limbs run and jerk as he thinks of running in his dreams….

The Cowboy Way

This is my third year doing solo motorcycle adventure touring. The destination my past 2 years has been Burning Man in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. about 2200 miles coming and going, a little over 2 days each way. Less and less carried each year, you would have thought I was preparing for a nuclear disaster the first year and in fact that's where I went the first year, Trinity, New Mexico. I began the first year by shaking off the sleep by walking around gas stations and truck stops aimlessly. This year I slumped against the wall of all night McDonald's, wrapped myself in a Massai blanket and slept damn near under my bike or lay next to it, my electric jacket plugged into an accessory port.
In the middle of a field in the middle of a night, my helmet still on, the stars twinkling o'er my head on a cool summer night I finally felt myself approaching the Cowboy Way of life. Sleeping on the open range, alone and in wonder. Wondering if someone would come up and hack my arms and legs off and throw a sack of lime on me. Alone and out there, the Cowboy Way which is also the Artist's Way-ALONE, EXPOSED, your work out there intact and beautiful or getting hacked to bits by people with wine glasses in their hands who dramatize all the reasons someone has given them for not doing something themselves. Anyway you cut it it's great-the wind, the ride, the people who come up and meet you, the other loners you come across, the people who help you, the people you help, the lady you give a dollar to in Kayenta who is working the people who pass her by for money to buy an ice cream at the McDonald's when you know the ice cream machine is broken. The same lady who tells you about her life, her husband and daughter and son and you realize this could be your mother too, her beautiful skin wrinkled by the desert sun and her Navajo lineage. People get all uptight about their handout bucks--ooh don't give a panhandler money it encourages them not to work or teaches them to be a freeloader but the same person overpays for a whimshit chai latte they could have made at home for 2 dollars less and they get no improvement in their history lesson by exchange, they get no beauty, no brown eye shining at them, no wizened look cast a glance over the dry red desert and it all right there before them like a gift found in the dust of the playa lake bed all crusty looking like a St Anthony medal till you take it home and wash the dust off to find a belly dancer your wife can question you about....

Productivity and Creativity

Today someone came into my office asking why I do all the things I do-most people are content with home and their family life. To this I replied that everybody has other things they would like to do they just let someone else do their thinking for them, i.e. :

What do you want to do that for?
No one around here does stuff like that?
Oh I don't know how to do that?
Stupid-you're too stupid!
Don't ask any questions?
I don't know how to do that.
What good is it?
Why bother?
No one can ever change that?
Those people have been at it for a thousand years...

It's pretty hard to go through life without going into agreement with something, I guess why marketing exists but when it comes to out talent and creativity you have to be vigilant and on the prowl for suppressive thought, if you agree with it you will allow it.

Union County Hospital Commission

Recently completed work :
This version is more Rubensque in nature and freeflowing. Swooping someone up to safety reminds me of my life with my daughters.

The Rescuer

Thin Blue Line

Have been doing lots of work on this lately and viewpoints are beginning to shift or maybe not. Previously I spent time on the control element and now am seeing a tangent of this which is not talking about it as a result of embarassment and fear and how much that traps a person. I guess giving up your ability to communicate is a loss of control as well. Entrapment can be physical, threat of loss of environment, children, belongings and status.

Say My Name

Just finished an installation piece, called SAY MY NAME. Really incredible in so many ways.

I guess I've found my niche in that I really really love creating installation pieces. The process is both a response to a personal environmental issue and a dialogue with a viewer during the exposure to the piece and after the fact as well with me and in the internal world of the viewer. This one resulted in an uncomfortable feeling for many as it raised issues we'd all rather not talk about any more which can lay the foundation for more of the same.

The inception of this piece began to some degree during my daughter's miscarriage experience. There we were, my daughter, son-in-law and myself, in the hospital trying to assimilate and deal with a very very trying experience and not lose it. I had to remember everything. Through the whole thing we all felt that there was a no name issue. No one would say baby, or embryo or fetus or child or her or him not even it hardly. There was this amorphous, unmouthed word almost a preconcept that could form no word or thought. Even after the baby was extracted and put in a steel dish a nurse whisked it away from me as I approached to look so it can be removed to nonexistence, a tissue, a specimen to be disposed and unheard of. It was then I knew that I would come back and address this in my art.

A few weeks later I was hosting a local cable television show called ASK YOUR DOCTOR which can be viewed at askyourdoctor.tv. After we signed off the air the doctor/friend I had interviewed asked me if I noticed anything interesting about the anatomy book he had used for demonstrative purposes during the show and I shrugged and noted that the drawings were pretty good. He nodded and told me it was a banned book and was written by a known and avowed Nazi and that it had been in circulation in the States even in the 90's. I was taken back a bit and weeks later felt a bit haunted by that book and him. Here was the son of a Methodist minister, very involved with his church and with christian matters carting this book of dissected Holocaust victims and using them to explain things to unsuspecting people.

It was here that I saw some similarities in that these victims who once had names, families, lives, favorite shoes had been reduced to an image with no name no hint of the being that once inhabited that body. The breeding ground for what is probably only the first in a series of pieces dealing with SAY MY NAME had been formed.