The Week of Whale [From the Archive - March 2024]

-I sang Albert Hammond, and Johny Cash, and Billy Joel, and Kermit the Frog-

It is again, almost summer, and I have posted on here since September 2022...

Its a different fucking world now it feels like.

But today, March 30th 2023, I woke up early and taught the little creative dance for kids class, and made a little salad and some noodles for a friend and talked about life, and decorated a little lampshade by covering it in hair, walked out in the trees and talked to myself for two hours and I wondered what a blog post would look like, what it might do for my mind to dump a bunch of thoughts so I could move on.

In October, I drove to Iowa City to see Wu Tsang and Serperntwithfeet's collaboration and to be alone with myself one last time before turning 25. It was ok. I wrote a few letters and promised myself I wouldn't leave until I sent them. I also went to celebrate the ending of the Whale Show. Which I had devoted almost all of my spare time to. almost two years including summers.

cetacean (the whale) – THE UNRELIABLE BESTIARY

THE UNRELIABLE BESTIARY Deke Weaver

Then I danced in a Martha Graham recreation. I was Martha. not really. but i did wear a dress and slick my hair back and put on fake eyelashes and there was stirs of discomfort in the department because what?

I'm not a woman? ... grow up.

This piece included the most soldier-like movement I have ever forced my body into performing. The piece itself is a part of a larger choreographic hallucination of war that Martha Graham had in 1936. The larger work,

Chronicle, was a reaction to the 1936 Nazi Olympics and was made for an entirely female cast. “Steps in the Street”, the portion we performed is actually subtitled “Devastation – Homelessness – Exile”, and was meant to depict the isolation and desolation that war leaves in its wake...

I don't know about that man. . .

It felt ~ strange ~ to have the historical context of the piece repeating as we danced for a audience in central Illinois.

devastation, homelessness, exile. . . i mean it feels insane to be

I turned 25 and went up to a cabin in Michigan with Conal and Supeior and Nikki. it felt also strange and terrible, because I think being in Michigan as Brown people has always kind of always felt dangerous and terrible. And might alwyas.

And I saw some of the biggest trucks I've ever seen while getting gas and groceries. And I imagined the enormous empty truck beds full of soldiers, militias really but there was a sauna. And I kept making jokes to Nikki about transitioning. And we ate chicken and opened a bottle of wine that Hana had gifted me. And we cried in the woods as I got the zoomies and ran around a house which I am pretty sure was a Coast Guard or Naval Captains summer residence.

That was October. 2023.

I performed once more this past month for Adanya's Thesis. The process from 1st rehearsal to performing on stage was only January to

to be only in 'the live' means that one is denied history and futurity. - Jose Esteban Munoz