You May Call Me
a Big Mermaid
From Your Stomach
from and for Gloria Anzaldúa
collaboration with Gordon H. Williams
You May Call Me a Big Mermaid From Your Stomach (2018-in progress) is a project started with an interview between Gloria Anzaldúa and Andrea Lunsford. I wrote the text from and for Gloria Anzaldúa -starting with an interview and moving through series of translations- of scatterings and weavings to response Anzaldúa's words. This text became material for reading performances and lyric of music by Gordon H. Williams.
Performing View of the Music/ Zimihc Theater/ 2020
Duration- 21’30” Instrumentation- Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass, Percussion (snare drum- sticks and brushes, bass drum, three drums (high, medium, low), ocean drum, suspended cymbal- yarn mallets and bow, woodblock, anvil/brake drum, water- two metal or glass bowls and a pitcher and Group Percussion (two glass bowls- one halfway full with water, one glass cup with 20-30 grains of rice, one hardcover book- large, two ceramic fragments, two fizzing tablets)
Music score by Gordon H. Williams
I removed all the notes from the musical sheets for the reading performance
Performing view/ reading with a text projection witch reacts on sound/ HKU Loods/ 2019
Installation view of the text/ ink on papers, text video projection/ 96×126cm/ 2018
Performing view/ text video projection, two overlapping reading sounds with gestures/ HKU Loods/ 2018
You asked me where I want to live.
I want to swim with so many arms.
I want to stand with so many legs.
I am a small, shy monster who lives on the line drawn in the middle of the ocean.
You can call me a fish.
As a fish, I bear the weight.
Half of my body flows by the water in this direction.
Half of my body flows by the water in that direction.
Where does the river run?
I was pulled in two different directions.
I live on the threshold of very low pain.
Pain gets dull but not customary.
I want to have a voice.
And I want to be in the future.
I went to the person who weaves the story.
She knows the cold.
The cold is white.
I repeated. Whites are cold.
My distant ancestors lived in a crack between the land and the land.
Pain was customary but never got dull.
They were chatty and did not have words, so they asked me to read a book.
I need training to find the sounds that has been pressed.
If I can find the voice, I would read the dictionary I agree with.
I dreamed with all kinds of languages and ate dirt.
I fought all the lives from my lives I had in me.
Because I was angry, and because it was forbidden to eat fruit.
You May Call Me a Big Mermaid From Your Stomach
You showed me the first victim of the land.
The poor thing is becoming rare because the body was shattered when it fell on the ground.
They did not see how the poor thing came here from there.
I tried to hunt pieces.
The changes are for catching.
Will it come back if I collect it again?
How far can I run away without losing everything.
I started weaving to protect the pieces.
I'll cover you if I make a blanket.
You will look like one.
At night, my stomach was torn and others poured out.
They were the first to open the door for me.
Speaking to all witnesses living in me is forbidden.
I do not have a voice, so others from my stomach interrogated the witnesses.
They talked about what they saw and what they experienced through word’s roots.
They said unfair.
How can you make all kinds of random things in a person's life make sense?
You and you are the result of imagination from the same place.
It took a year to understand their one term of root.
I came to live in the future because I understood them.
I forgot where I came from.
You may call me a big mermaid from your stomach.