Writing Vectors for VASTNESSESS

by Valerie Oliveiro | March 1-9, 2024 | Red Eye Theater

In conjunction with VASTNESSESS, four artists (Emily Gastineau, Rachel Jendrzejewski, Marcela Michelle, and aegor ray) were asked to contribute writing vectors on themes present in the work. These writings were shared across digital and physical space leading up to the premiere. All the writings are collected here.

Rachel Jendrzejewski

(on deep pattern)

picking at the skin around the fingernails 

the pace at which you move through a day

what have you eaten?

do you need everyone to know?

is it indicating something happening now or 

is it a remnant?

bumping the doorframe with your shoulder

how the cat bumps your leg

lets her tail wrap around lingers for a second

“am I worth it?”

overbite underbite 

how you demonstrate your power
how you feel about

how you demonstrate your power

shoulders back shoulders forward

muscle memory depth perception

hands with or without five fingers

wrists with or without hands

talking to the organs inside your body

wings

lungs as a site of grief

what beliefs do you have about yourself?

teeth brushing as in the doing of it

teeth brushing as in the method of the doing

and what do you do when your needs conflict

with someone else’s

hypervigilance

how does that bird know how to build its nest?

if music comes in here what does that touch

inside your body

does your answer change if you know the music?

does your answer change if you know the moves? 

it’s okay you’re safe here

anticipation as protection as distraction as

true love as excuse as knowing

who taught you how to be so precise? 

how an elbow bends

what is your relationship to certainty?

how the spine rotates

what do you know with certainty? 

how you hold your body as you pee

what do you feel with certainty?

why do we smile as we do certain moves?

are you able to recognize the work that I’m doing

if I don’t point it out to you

the radio playing as you’re in the car scanner

waiting room gas pump on hold buying floss

no really

it’s all in how you use your voice

do you know how to project?

do you know how to sound certain?

do you know how to be soft open receptive?

do you unconsciously move your body

when the music has a beat

what is the wingspan of your living space?

what beliefs do other people have about you?

muscle memory depth perception

do you take your teeth for granted?

your ears your skin your eyes

do you think they know what you’re talking about?

not they you

do you believe beliefs can change?

do you wish something would change sooner?

how do you hold your legs as you are scanned?

how do birds find their nests again?

do you feel seen?

visual landmarks like trees buildings

position of the sun star patterns

clothing tattoos haircuts eye contact 

Earth's magnetic field

quantum entanglement

sense of smell

electrons separated by vast distances yet

affecting each other’s behavior

stardust

how do you feel watching me dance for you?

how do you feel in a large crowd of people?

how do you feel dining alone?

what if I commit to coming here every single day?

do you wish you could access a different degree of certainty

hugging style

how a knee bends

what keeps you coming back?

how a pelvis tilts

how do you find your way again?

how you move your body as you sleep

your posture while you eat

what would it take to get your attention?

to hold it

why does that song stick so easily?

aegor ray

(on grief)

wavelet by wavelet a circle becomes an arc

hilarious uprooting, a sovereignty made monstrous

skin after skin after skin after skin

littoral belief system

i am the animal made by winter

i have become hierarchical in my movements

you are a curvature of imagination

simply put: we have both imagined each other

here and over again in our opalescent lifetimes

skin after skin after skin after skin after skin

heat so salient after a night of disorders

head slumping under an arm of blue light

i figure myself

white poppies winking in the flat rain

that boy really fucking deserves it

that boy is a language

in the mirror i fist myself atop

my hotbed of onion skins

they imprint wings into my backside

doubt doubt doubt doubt doubt

a rash of messages unbreaks the day

there is nothing beautiful in your leaving

no guilt sparrow lived on a parallel spine

in one hand grab i hesitate

in the other my throat is a battery

these are the only celestial bodies i ascend

all others crepe paper ribbons streamers scars

consider the end of the universe

maybe the birds alone will make it

your face will be an avocado pit suspended over a glass of water

hollow bones dip beaks into waves as if grief was anything besides

movement

snap fingers, everything prismatic

i've been sitting here for so long it got dark out

skin after skin after skin after skin

consider the oracle -

gather the water and fuck me,

my hierarchical glass guts

imagined in the flat rain.

consider your curvature -

opalescent blue boy skin

signifying a hotbed of language

and slumping poppies.

consider the fist, the scar,

the battery throat -

you are a loamy bird and I

am an onion peel.

consider the hierarchy -

disorder the salient heat.

you deserve the rash, the

churning mirage, skin after -

consider a grapefruit

consider a festoon of orchids

consider the beast that evacuates my heart-mind

arranges the days into cellophane wrappers

now you see it; cheap and flushed with heat

Marcela Michelle

(on queer versatility)

Here, when you are starting out in the holy queer trinity of nightlife performance - burlesque, cabaret, drag - you are your own Choreographer, Director, Costume Designer, Seamstress, Hair and Makeup, Manager, Sound Designer, Props Department, Marketing, and often more. If you are good, or lucky, or both, you'll find yourself in a troupe or house where girls with certain skills take on certain roles for the group, but in the beginning at least, you are everything.

When I clean house I am a tornado. It all looks messier than when I began, until the last moments when suddenly all is right. This is not unlike how I make work. An octopus, eight lovin arms. I cannot think straight, only gay, which means everything everywhere always already. There is a terrible force behind the queer neurodivergent blowing us toward all things at once because they already are at once. Is it a constant state of adaptation, or an embodiment of simultaneity, or both sometimes, or both always, or -

I remember making dinner and ironing my cloths and doing my homework and learning the choreo and practicing my lines in the shower and staying up all night reading and making the coffee and getting them dressed and heading to school for pre-school practice and going to school and the queer child is already versatile because the queer child is already so many things they are told they are not. We are made so keenly attuned to all that we are and can be by sheer virtue of the inevitable crack in the self-denial we are forced into.

For the queer artist, to be versatile is to be viable. Versatility means I can do it. It means an unsure yes, it means learning as you go, picking up skill after skill like keys on your pocket loop, old lashes in your makeup box. Versatility is malleability, or adaptability, or collective oneness, or splitting of the self, or simultaneous embodiment, or an awareness of the temporality of the, or a spherical approach to the, or an ironic pursuit in that the act of trying to pin it down takes you farther from. The opposite of an ouroboros but in 4d the outside of the sea urchin the inside too.

Unfortunately I am a Top. Before that I was a Bottom. I don't know that I've ever been Verse. The Verse, much like the Bisexual, is either a myth or the top prize, depending on who you ask. I feel embarrassment for this transgression against my commitment to versatility. A part of my need to cultivate versatility stems from a feeling of inadequacy propagated in my youth as a result of my queerness. It's nice, though, to sometimes have one fixed identity amidst so much fluidity. After all, what versatility is there in a perfect adherence to being versatile? Add justification to my ever expanding list of skills.

Queerness often breeds a confidence beside an insecurity. Abundance close to scarcity. So many plastic flowers. We lose something in what we gain. Freedom for family, faith for fulfillment. We know we know and we know we don't know. She is my sister my mother my teacher my lover my daughter my keeper she is not/me. She is Versatile. She believes 10,000 things. I am trying to do more, be more, things.

In a world where fixed identity is often rewarded the term Queer Versatility becomes redundant. I certainly can't separate the two from each other within myself, or extrapolate them forward as individual. Queerness has always demanded Versatility, and Versatility Queerness. To be willing to serve another function. To be capable of turning the trick and flipping the script and sticking the lick and selling the kick. To survive in many states at once. To be prepared for something else, always. To know that anything, truly, is possible. That even You are possible.