Glenn Beck Domestic

Check Better Living Thru Rage, a poets theater piece written/performed by Nicky Tiso, Eric Moen, Paige Clifton-Steele, and Gabe Riggs. Over at Tiso's blog, Grand Hotel Abyss. The piece is written as connected "scenes," one scene written by each author, edited as whole afterwards by the group.

Tiso's piece attempts to meet Thom Donovan's challenge as Thom mentions on his blog this week, that of working as "Glenn Beck" or more specifically with his affects, Beck the entity, as persona, as pre-coded, pre-packaged script that anyone, say, who fits a majority demographic, could perform. So, Tiso's part of the script is Beck's re-arranged, the words detached from the entity with whom we are familiar. At Thom's urging, Tiso posted the (handheld) video of the performa, with the Beck piece coming in at minute 13. From Tiso, as written over at his blog:

this Glenn Beck segment was inspired by poet Thom Donovan’s Harriet blog post “Three Proposals,” where he proposes activities that might “re-present Beck as a series of affects in order that the Mind (consciousness, cognition) may become less reactive, more prepared for action and reflection.” This segment begins 13 minutes in, although I of course recommend watching all of them!

Any case, was great to see this, very glad somebody took up & recorded Donovan's initial challenge, which I blogged about several months ago after I dropped out on some initial talk about collaborative possibilities with Thom and David Buuck.

ps: in July Tiso got his hands on a review copy of Occultations and wrote a rather beautiful review/mini-essay of it, then surprised me with its contents via sending me a link as published in Tarpaulin Sky. He'd told me he wanted to write on the book, but I was quite touched by such a gesture, and frankly rather blown away by the follow-thru. Tho, knowing his poetry and poetics, I wasn't surprised by the depth and quality of the writing. Again, my many thanks for his attentiveness to the book, for a review that reads beautifully, even if too kindly...