The Garden of Forked Tongues

….to detect something meaningful about reality.

Imagine for a moment that your dreams are views into parallel universes. Perhaps this is why we don’t always appear to be ourselves in our dreams and why sometimes the environments have outlandish characteristics. I recently dreamt that I noticed a new nightclub on my way to the subway after work, late one afternoon. It was at Sixth Avenue near 25th street.  It had been opened in a defunct MET supermarket.
The interior was a former movie theater. Two distinct locations in the same place and the same time. There was a waitress passing crab Rangoon hors d’oeuvres. I took one and ate it at the bar near the door. It was dark inside, but for the light from the late afternoon, summer sun reflecting off the western facing buildings opposite the open doors.  I proceeded to walk down an aisle of movie theater seats, and sit to watch some trailers being projected for the patrons. There were a series of previews for old Indian films, and I didn’t recognize them, but started to catch on, when I saw the same logo appearing at the beginning of each new piece. I may have sat down or I may have been standing or both. I was greeted by my friend Sarita, whom I haven’t seen in several years. She happens to be Indian. She said, “It’s a good thing that we’re in New York, because no one else would be interested in these films.” The funny thing is, she’s not in New York – she lives in New Mexico and I knew she was referring to New Mexicans when she said “no one else.” When the next trailer started, we decided to leave. We’d taken off our shoes at some unnoticed point in time and needed to put them back on. I was inclined to do it where we were, but when she started to walk out, shoes in hand, I found mine – the same black shoes I am wearing tonight, which I have taken to the cobbler numerous times to have patched. In the dream, the shoes are far more worn, the tongue of the right shoe, has completely fallen out. I gather the pieces, thinking that I will need to take these to the cobbler, perhaps again, perhaps for the first time, and I head out to look for my friend. I head toward the door, where the yellowing sun still streams in. But I don’t see her and I guess that she is outside. When I arrive, the landscape has changed. It is still Sixth Avenue and 25th Street in New York City, and it is still nearly sundown, but the Avenue is much wider and the buildings are different than when I entered the nightclub, and the golden glow of the setting sun makes it seem as though we are in southern California or perhaps New Mexico. Sarita is no where to be seen. I sit on a bench and put on two pairs of socks, one set of ankle socks and a pair of yellow dress socks with holes throughout. I see my supervisor walking up the Avenue, as if toward the office, but she uncharacteristically smokes a cigarette, and walks with or perhaps has her arm around a lesbian prostitute. My friend Alison, rides a bike up the opposite side of the avenue, to a parking lot which is backed up against her garden apartment. As she heads toward the gate, I call out her name, but she is too far away to hear me. In fact, she lives in Boston.

Across the street from an abandon movie theater in Los Angeles.

I recently came across this photo of Persephone and Boulette, at the edge of the Garden…

Great art needs great patrons. Any amount will help to support making The Garden of Forked Tongues a memorable future experience. If ever you wanted to support a worthy cause, now is the time. Please donate:

Fractured Atlas, our Fiscal Sponsor is a 501(c)(3) public charity; all donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Time is only a measurement. It radiates into space. Generally, the space is all of space, but it could theoretically be contained to, say, the size of a bubble, for instance. So if you are in this bubble traveling through time, maybe the chunk of earth that you are standing on and some of the air around you goes with you.  Someone has to clean up the mess from all of the people from the future leaving little bits of the present all over the past – these chucks of earth and clouds of air and bits of flotsam are referred to, not ignorantly, as Presents.

I am proud to introduce our cast of characters:

Charles Albert: a.k.a. The 1st Husband, a professional businessman, disenchanted with the world. He finds himself, accidentally joining a group of  inter-dimensional tourists who have arrived in his home as part of their travels.

The Compère/Barbara Jones: Charles’ co-worker: The Compere is a Master of Ceremonies who guides the audience through the production. She begins by leading the group in a mass hypnosis, in order to better feel the effects of inter-dimensional travel. She is also Charles Albert’s co-worker who is exemplary in her job performance.)

Persephone: an intergalactic Tour Guide and mysterious woman: she works for the Many Worlds Charter Company, leading groups of inter-dimensional travelers on tours of space/time, until she meets Charles Albert.

Agatha Albert/ Megatha : Charles’ wife, an attorney.

Charlie Albert: a doppelganger of Charles Albert, an ordinary businessman who lives a lackluster life of little consequence until he accidentally joins a inter-dimensional tour group, which teaches him that his life is far more important than he had realized.

Chuck Albert: a doppelganger of Charles and Charlie Albert, he is an ordinary businessman who lives a lackluster life until he joins the tour group from another dimension and realizes that he is a minor celebrity in the future.

Cosmas Papahartafilakatakopoulos: a 6th-dimensional meta-insurance agent, he is an ominous presence, employed to protect the past and present from being altered by visitors from the future. He is macho, yet sensitive.

Honora: a 6th-dimension meta-insurance agent: she is employed to protect the past and present from the future.

Ba’al: a wealthy alien creature from a distant galaxy, who collects companions and specimen for its traveling intergalactic zoo.

Boulette (Harry Meatbahl): a mysterious creature from another dimension.

House Guests and Tourists: The lowliest life forms in any universe.

I’ve recently come across the posts of Rob Bryanton.  Rob is a Canadian author, composer, and sound designer, who is interested in the nature of reality. He  created the following animation for his website, which promotes his book of the same name. It explains a lot about the idea of multiple dimensions and parallel universes. His idea varies from the leading theory that there are eleven dimension, because he considers time a direction or quality of the other dimensions and not a dimension in and of itself. My theory would be that time, which is generally considered the 4th dimension, is actually the first dimension, but I’m just an armchair physicist.

Many people, when asked, what is a tesseract, will refer to the 1962 Madeleine L’Engle book A Wrinkle in Time. She uses the term to describe a fold in space used by galactic travellers. I first remember seeing a tesseract as a child, watching Carl Sagan explain the difference between a two dimensional, three dimensional and four dimensional world. I did not until recently revisit the concept and was intrigued by the ramifications of such a shape. I decided that I needed to try to build one.

The Garden of Forked Tongues,  an ongoing experiment presented as a live / mixed media performance piece. has been presented in excerpts and iterations by the Operating Theater at locations such as: Little Theater at Dixon Place, Catch Series #26 & #34 and at Teatro IATI.

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The Garden of Forked Tongues is made possible: by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space program, which was created with lead support from the September 11th Fund;  Project space donated by Capstone Equities, and from contributions by patrons of the Operating Theater, like you.

This project began as a way of investigating reality through metaphor. As an artist, I am creating a living / recorded performance piece that examines the nature of reality. Of particular interest to me are the ideas of parallel universes, free will, purpose and truth. This blog is meant to be a repository for thoughts and ideas related to the subject… Who am I? Why am I here? What is going to happen to me tomorrow?

I am not a scientist or an expert. I am merely a curious enthusiast. The more that I know, the more I am confused. (This is natural. I don’t confuse nature with goodness; nature has it’s own agenda.) But I do believe that within the paradox of our existence is a niche which provides us purpose. We are on a rung of a double helix ladder to infinity. What a strange and wonderful place to be in.