quarta-feira, 30 de janeiro de 2013

"Repetition" and "Teeth", by Phil Kaye

From some of his performances and his TEDxTalk, as seen on YouTube:


1.

My mother taught me this trick: if you repeat something over and over again, it loses its meaning.

For example: “Homework, homework, homework homework homework, —“, see? Nothing. Our lives, she said, are the same way. You watch the sunset too often and it just becomes 6 pm. You make the same mistake over and over and you’ll stop calling it a mistake. If you just “wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up”, one day you’ll forget why.  I should’ve known: nothing is forever.

My parents left each other when I was 7 years old. Before their last argument they’ve sent me off to the neighbor’s house, like some astronaut jetticing from the shuttle. When I came back, there was no gravity at our home. I imagined it as an accident: when I left, they whispered “I love you” so many times over, that they forgot what it meant. “Family, family, family, family…”

My mother taught me this trick, that if you repeat something over and over again, it loses its meaning. This became my favorite game. It made the sting of words evaporate: “separation, separation, separation—“, see? Nothing! “Apart, apart, apart, apart—“, see? Nothing!

I’m an injured handyman now. I work with words, all day— shut up! I know the irony. When I was young, I was taught that the trick to dominating language was breaking it down, convincing it was worthless. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you—“, see? Nothing!

Soon after my parents’ divorce, I developed a stutter. Fate is a cruel and efficient tutor. There is no escape in stutter. You can feel the meaning of every word drag itself up your throat. “S-s-separation”. Stutter is a cage made of mirrors. Every “what you said?”, every “just, take your time”; every “c’mon, kid, spit it out!” is a glaring reflection of a existence  that you cannot escape. Every awful moment trips over its own announcement again, and again, and again, until it just hangs there in the center of the room, as if what you were to say had no gravity at all.

Mom, dad: I’m not wasteful with my words anymore. Even now, after hundreds of hours practicing away my stutter, I can still feel the claw of meaning at the bottom of my throat. Listen to me. I heard that even in space you can hear the scratch of a “I-, I-, I-, I… love you.”

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2.

“Ojīchama” is what I call my Japanese grandfather. In 1945 his Tokyo home was burned to the ground. “Granpy” is what I call my American grandpa. In 1945 he was serving in the USS Shangri-la, sending off American bomber pilots to burn down Japanese houses. Our jaws have not yet healed.

1906, Poland: Granpy’s father is hiding in an oven. He doesn’t know the irony of that yet. He’s heard men singing on the streets below— hyenas, my family calls them. After celebration drinks and songs, the outside townspeople come into the Jewish ghetto for a celebration beating: molar fireworks and eyelid explosions. Even when Granpy’s father grows up, the sound of sudden song breaks his body into a sweat. Fear of joy is the darkest of captivities.

1975, Tokyo: my father, the long haired student with a penchant for sexual innuendo, meets Keiko Hori, a well dressed banker which forgets the choruses to her favorite songs. 12 years later they give birth to a lengthy light bulb.

1999, California: my mother speaks to me in Japanese. Most days I don’t have the strength to ask her to translate the big words. “They’ve burned that house down, Mother. Don’t you remember?”

1771, Prague: in the heart of the city, there’s a Jewish cemetery: the only plot of land where Granpy’s ancestors were allowed to be buried. When they ran out of room, they had no choice but to stack dead bodies, one on top of another. Now there are hills made from graves piled 12 deep; individual tombstones, jutting out crooked like valiant teeth, emerging from a jaw left to rot.

1985, my parent’s wedding: the two families sit together, smiling wider than they need to. You must be so happy…

1999: I sit with Granpy’s cousin, 91 years old and dressed in full uniform. I beg with him to until the knots in his brow. He says: “Hate is a strong word. But it’s the only strength that I have left. How am I to forgive the men that severed the trunk of my family tree, and used it as timber to warm the faces of their own children?”

2010: Granpy and I sit together to watch his favorite — baseball. In the infertile glow of the television I see his face wet. Granpy sits on his wheelchair, teeth gasping out of his gums like valiant tombstones emerging from a cemetery left to rot. The teeth sit staring at me, and I can read them: Louie Burgman, killed at Auschwitz. Sarah Liz, killed at Dachau. William Kaye, killed at the coast of Okinawa.

“I will never forget what is happened to our family, Granpy”, and he looks at me with the surprised innocence of a child struck for the first time.

“Phillip, forgetting is the only gift I wish to give you. I have given away my only son, trying to bury my hate in a cemetery which is already overflowing. There are nights I’m kept awake by the birthday songs of children I chose not to let live… they all look like you. A plague on both your houses. They have made worms’ meat of me.”
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