"I Believe in Spontaneous Bewitchments"

I was feebly trying to extract dead leaves from the grasp of the newly-lush front lawn this evening, when Samba, the absurdly-smiling dog from next door suddenly appeared, as did Gilberto Rodriguez, my poetic next-door-neighbor. Gil was in a hurry, though: "It's Second Saturday! We're doing a stripped-down version of our show. Come see it at "The Book Collector" (24th & J) at eight!"

A stripped-down version of a poetry reading? What would that be like? At first I thought of stock cars, then demolition derbies. Realizing that poets, even more than most people, probably talk too much, and that a stripped-down show might actually be pretty good (skip the Nietzsche, and get to the punch line), I decided to go.

Gil had been trying to explain what he did for several months, but since I'm not a literary type, I found his explanations hard to follow. Usually, I casually listen from over the fence to their backyard rehearsals, all the while going about other tasks, like rooting out sewer lines, or rolling squeeky dog toys past Cloudy, my irritable rabbit (the rabbit prefers an ordered yard, and it's fun to watch how a barking dog, chasing a stupid toy, can spoil her serenity.) From the aural evidence, the rehearsals next door feature lots of drumming, lots of gongs, and too much laughter for a sober Saturday afternoon.

Gil and Sheri's group is called Unheimlich (apparently meaning Uncanny, starring Sheri Adee, Rob Lozano, and Gilberto Rodriguez), performing the works of Baudelaire, Henri Michaux, Alexander Blok, and particularly the French poet Artaud, whose work is apparently difficult to produce, because Artaud appeared, most of the time, to be largely out-of-his-mind. For example, Artaud apparently was obsessed with the image of Tibetan monks flogging the dolphin in unison, and tried hard to make the audience obsessed with the image as well. Artaud behaved strangely, and his audiences rarely stayed completely through to the end of his bizarre readings.
Unheimlich approaches Artaud's writing with lots of physical, fairly low-brow, but nevertheless sophisticated comedy. Which works! Nice show! Apparently the show was stripped down because of a lack of space in the book store: thus we missed seeing Unheimlich's interpretation of Artaud's work regarding the corrupt Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, for which Sheri apparently constructed a large lingam to help illustrate.

I just bet Sheri constructed that lingam-thingum on a sober Saturday afternoon too. Probably with lots of laughter, drumming and banging of gongs, while I was busy next door scrubbing floors, or organizing dead batteries. Mysterious place, next door. Why does Samba the dog smile so much? I just don't know! I'll just have make a point of visiting my neighbors more often on weekends, it seems! And checking out Unheimlich again (maybe when they take the show to San Francisco)!