994: ACT! pose with fingers as though cigarette (puff puff)
994: ACT! pose with fingers as though cigarette (puff puff)
Transcript
I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.
If I could change careers as an artist, I’d likely want to become an actor — something about all those voices and the power of speaking in relationship to my feelings and those of others — to have all those characters bouncing around in my body. I’d relish the absorptive pleasure of remembering lines and immersing myself into the worlds they create. I’d work at a precision of movement on stage and meticulous facial expressions to carry whole scenes.
My worry as an actor, however, would be the risk of sublimating my true self beneath layers of characters — that I’d lose a sense of me. That is, I would struggle to manage the barrier between my real life and the stage. I fear my personality and emotional responses would become an amalgam of my favorite characters. I realize this is a projection of the fear of losing myself in the performance of being human.
Today’s poem shows that, beneath the underpinnings of the art of performance is a real person who strives to define themselves while also achieving expressive feats that become, in the words of Jorge Luis Borges, “the shapes of [our] dreams . . . everything and nothing."
ACT! pose with fingers as though cigarette (puff puff)
by India Lena González
once more unto the breach once more mama has a bad habit of snickering every time i say the word theatre. (thee-ate-her). jimmy assigns me marriage to james. james goes belly up trying to love me. i stare at him deadly. jimmy believes this is quite sensual of us (we never even touched). i am told to perform the role of erykah badu head wrap & the creation of incense. opening shot & my hips are too small. the little black girl inside me dies a little (o mama). the next class they tell me i have tuberculosis, so die already. i ask them politely to supply the gun shot. next class they tell me i am wild-haired virgin in the bronx who offers myself up to first ding-a-ling to call me savage in limbo. other schoolgirls are such clementines, stelllaaaa, juliet with a sky of flesh-cut stars. i am clov with post- apocalyptic limp. clov who is black dust. clov nursing his teeny tiny light. clov trying to make an exit in jungle hat, but god bless us, there’s simply nowhere left. i scrape baby hairs back. pencil in faux moustache for devoted effect. twin tells me i’m not busty enough to be an opera singer, a good one at least (insert high note). i let james fling me down on tables during rehearsal. classmates really love this concussion of mine. & this stye in my eye is a testament of nostalgia (Dr. E believes such swelling is a sign of severe loneliness). twin reminds me that women with a light dusting of acne have always been her favorite. director asks if i have ever felt like a let-you-down. & sure jimmy, sure i have. haven’t we all? on stage i’m trying to simulate some internal pink some veiny placenta truth. i’m left thinking of baby tigers at the national zoo. how pale & soft their tongues are. & do these stripes on display also cry? i’ve never seen it.
“ACT! pose with fingers as though cigarette (puff puff)” by India Lena González from FOX WOMAN GET OUT © 2023 India Lena González. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of BOA Editions.