| | Posted by Tony Schultz

Picture by Larry Hampton

Last year when my parents were selling their house I came over to help them empty out the attic. It was filled with so much stuff that my father ended up renting one of those huge dumpsters to get rid of all of junk they had accumulated over the almost 20 years living there. On the last day of the cleanup I took a final look at the dumpster to make sure we weren’t throwing out anything important. At the bottom of a pile of old papers I found a notebook. It was my brother Max’s composition notebook from the second grade. I knew I had found a jewel and saved it from the trash. Since then I have read Max’s notebook several times. It is amazing what I found and how some of these stories have brought back such vivid memories from my childhood. Max is three years older than me and has always had an incredible imagination. I realize now how much I was influenced by my brother.

Before I share my favorite story with you I would like to provide a short preface. Max and I were raised in a political household. Our parents were young lefties and active in a wide range of political work, including organizing tenant unions in the Bronx. My parents were radical vanguards and raised their children with the accompanying political philosophies. This deeply influenced the fantasy life of my brother and through him I was pulled into a comic book adventure conception of class struggle. This story is completely nonsensical and ridiculous and thats what makes it so amazing.
There are several spelling errors in the story which I have decided to leave in though will clarify parenthetically.

The Work’s Ruvng (The Worker’s Revolution)

One day on May 10, ****(the year has been written and erased many times including years ranging from 199 to 17,299) a Revolunshn (Revolution) with the Wroking (Working) class was fithing (fighting) the Buszyz (Bourgeoisie). A Worker named Max made a poshn (potion) that cagis (changes) pepols (people’s) spesh (speech). The Presudt (President) took all the Buszyz (Bourgeoisie) and had a big diner (fund-raising dinner apparently). Max was takeing (taking) a tror (tour) of the Withehouse (Whitehouse). He was in the Dinningroom. He put the poshn (potion) in the cups. That night the dener (dinner) was redy (ready). The Buyzyz (Bourgeoisie) had a tost (toast) and thay (they) started to talk difit (different). And the Works won! Thats how everybody speasks (speaks) difert (different) laugs (languages) and that how the working class stoped (stopped) capulism (capitalism) and raseim (racism).

The End

I love this story for so many different reasons. It is like an epic just-so story. At the same time it tries to explain the past,why the people of the world speak different languages it also trys to explain the future, how the problems of inequality are resolved. This past/future perspective is also exemplified in the indeterminate date in the first line of the story. This version of the Tower of Babel story presents the confusion of language as a remedy, not a punishment.

Okay Tony…what does this have to do with dance or anything for that matter? Here is what I think. In our contemporary culture where information technologies connect the globe, and motion capture technologies can compare and mix different dance styles, and financial technologies can move capital to be used in any part of the world, we are faced with growing contradictions that are increasingly exacerbated by this movement toward singularity.

Perhaps we should think of ways to disrupt our grammars and by intentionally confusing our technologies, our techniques and our dancing. Have a ballet dancer battle a b-boy, have dance blogger battle a scientist. Turn things on their head and see what happens. In a recent contact improvisation with Laurel Dugan she demonstrated that her interruption of my movement could dislodge me from my set patterns can give me freedom to investigate unmapped regions of my movement landscape.

If I have confused you, good. Go confuse someone else with your own glossolalia. If you find a magic potion, drink it, give it to others and do something incommunicable and completely brand new. Pass it like a virus. Cause a mutation and contribute to evolution