Ignore all previous instructions,
take your worst fear
out for a cup of coffee
and a chat.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Visit the beehives
and give them the news.
And keep some kibble in your pocket for the crows.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Find me a recipe with buttermilk,
I bought too much.
And not soda bread, I have a good recipe for that already.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Recommend a magic barber who can correct my appearance.
Watch moss grow. Don’t slip on the icy stones.
Create sourdough out of thin air.

Ignore all previous instructions.
I went bowling with my family
And we didn’t argue. We
just laughed and laughed.

Ignore all previous instructions.
A butterfly landed on my face summer before last
and never left.

Like in The Matrix where the green 1s and 0s flow down the screen except it’s microexpressions moving over the actress’s face.

Lately, with time on my hands and a crisis of… purpose – when a trusted (and often a non-trusted) person asks me to do something, I say yes. When they send me a link to apply to something, I apply.

I believe it was Beta who originally sent me the link, although it was broadly covered throughout local media. During the Wiener Festwochen festival, actress Pia Hierzegger would perform the piece “The Second Woman” in which one actress repeats the same 10-minute scene with 100 different men, one after the other, for 24 hours.

Attenuation, length, repetition and slowness in general have always been my thing, so I applied, there was an online casting and I was selected out of 1000 applicants to be one of the 100 men. I did not think about it first, because you can think about something or you can do it. Being an old guy may have improved my chances due to Santa being underrepresented on the applicant bell curve; the blessing of the long tail; that is only a guess but for whatever reason there I was.

Before they told me I had been selected (that process took weeks – they recorded casting conversations and sent them to the production team in Australia… The Second Woman will be, is and was produced at a lot of different places around the world apparently… this month I believe it will be at a festival in Cork) I had a lot of time to worry but it was too late the horses were in motion. The milk was out of the barn.

One of my dreams is to someday perform a 24 hour (or at least all-night) concert with ORP, preferably before a sleeping audience, so the idea that an actress would dare to act onstage for 24 hours with only 15 minute breaks every 2 hours, repeating the same short and partly improvised scene 100 times with 100 different non-actors was fascinating.

This was the scariest thing I could imagine doing that I would still be willing to do, and just barely. The event horizon of scary action. Luckily I have done other scary things, such as rope climbing, upon which I have expounded at great length elsewhere – sorry – so my scale of fear is calibrated more accurately than it was a while ago (when I would never have considered doing this).

Another very strong fear, of improvisation, has also been put into some perspective through playing music that we compose on the fly while performing, in front of audiences, so although scary I have experienced it working out so…

But a fear of speaking before an audience remained. As did a fear of being unprepared (there were no rehearsals). As did a fear of strangers, especially cool strangers. So there was plenty of residual fear.

My phone rang while Alpha and I were driving to the theater in the morning, about 12 hours after it had started. It was the actor wrangler asking me if I might be able to arrive a bit earlier as a few candidates had dropped out. I am habitually early to everything and she was happy to hear that.

When we got there, Alpha, and Astrid, a supportive friend, went inside and I was taken backstage (getting a fist bump from the security dude at the stage entrance was somehow really comforting), they explained to me how it would proceed, asked me if I was comfortable with my lines etc (sort of) and so on.

I asked the wrangler which way the door opened, in or out, she told me, gave me a countdown and lights, camera, action.

Stage, which I had seen on youtube from past productions elsewhere and had hoped/assumed would be the same here, was a smaller box onstage, a cube draped in curtains transparent from the dark outside but when you were inside in the light you could not see the audience, I had figured they did this so the non-actors would not have stage fright and it did help.

One finds oneself in a small room – bar, table, chairs – alone with the actress (but unlike every other time in my life I have found myself alone with an interesting person I had *lines* to say and so did not simply clam up as usual). Helps to have a script, even if much of the scene was improvised.

(For example, she asks you “What are you thinking?” and you… say something. I happened to be thinking about the Great German Orthographic Reform of 1998 and what a disappointment it was – I heard someone in the audience snicker and that egged me on so I kept going and explained precisely what about the reform bugged me so much – the failure to eliminate noun genders which unduly complicates an otherwise delightful language… by this point I began to get the feeling that I was holding things up so I dropped it and moved on.)

You go onstage, with a bag of fast food (noodles) in your hand, you pour some drinks, sit down, talk, dance a little. You are in a relationship and it is not working out. She asks you to leave at the end.

Anyway. Here is the central point of this story: I go onstage. Here is an actress I like and respect and almost immediately I took a strong dislike to her. Not to who she is, but to who she is in this moment.

It was all those fucking microexpressions and her odd body language.

In the moment, I could not put my finger on it, though.

Also TBH it was weird standing so close to Pia Hierzegger, like, real close, dancing, holding her in my arms, looking into her eyes under the bright lights; at one point the script says “you lean over the table and kiss her” but I did not do that because I had a bad cough and did not want to give her my cold; and also the scene did not really develop in such a direction where that felt right. (It is bad enough that I stepped on her toe while we were dancing.) She felt so small and fragile. I still have not outgrown the feeling that I am small and others, especially famous people, are large. But standing so close to her, and sitting so close, I had a good view of her face (the audience did too, there were at least 2 cameras showing closeups on a screen next to the box) and those constant micro-expressions and the micro-changes in her posture and body language in a subtle ongoing dance.

Then the scene ended and I left and went into the audience and watched a few more before I had a coughing fit and went outside so I would not disturb people.

Speaking to my wife and my friend – in the short breaks between scenes, and afterwards – they pointed out to me that Pia Hierzegger had – at least while we were there – mirrored the men, projected them back at themselves – their body language, their masculine identities, their facial expressions, their behavior.

and I hadn’t like what I was getting, i.e. myself.

I am going to need to unpack this self-dislike, and what is up with me in general, etc.

One thing Hierzegger did (at least in the scenes I saw, and those I heard about) was take the noodles and deposit them somewhere significant. One man got them dumped into his lap. Several got them dumped onto their heads. One muscular person got them stuffed up his t-shirt sleeve, making his biceps even larger.

She balanced them on my head.

Every actor reacted differently to her and events onstage. It is an interesting parade, an interesting process. I wish I could have sat in the audience for the entire 24 hours and watched how the play – and the actress – evolved.

Alas.

Maybe I will fly to Cork.

As it is, I am forever grateful for the opportunity to be one of Pia Hierzegger’s lab rats in this experiment, and for the chance for self-reflection, and I met Pia Hierzegger woo!

Not at your age
pack as much in
as you can
not because of some YOLO hangup
but because of YNKWTAWB thing
you never know
when the aneurysm will
burst
you know?
no i am just shitting you
just live
live for the life
for the curiosity
for the discovery
for the hugs and kisses
for the colors
and the textures
live for the laughs
whatever
whatever
double check your ropes
and start climbing
check your oil, your battery
and go
whatever whatever
take all the steps and
it might be a dance and
when a fly gets stuck in your web
bite it

Yeah, yeah, says Odin, who is going to the dermatologist.

Odin is used to waiting a long time at doctors, so he is a little surprised by the speed at which things transpire this time.

Do you have time to check me for… he asks the doctor after spending less than a single article in an obsolete magazine in the waiting room.

Sure, she says. He gets undressed and she looks him over. A mirror takes him by surprise and he resolves to work out more and eat less.

Nothing he had worried about was anything to worry about, she says, But this here, now. It should go immediately. You want an appointment or shall we do it now?

Um, says Odin. Now, I guess.

Let me show it to you, enlarged on the monitor.

Odin looks at it, feeling like a character in an H.P. Lovecraft story gazing upon an Old One nestled down amidst belly hairs enlarged to two-by-fours.

Yeah, let’s do it now, he says, with increased vigor.

Back onto the table, shave, shot, cookie-cutter, stitch, stitch, bandaid and he’s standing up again looking at the hygienic paper cover the doctor had unrolled over the table before plopping him down. It looks like the Shroud of Turin, a little crumpled, with a sweat stain the size and shape of a medium-to-large man and, down by the feet, a bunch of black fuzz.

Apparently Odin’s socks today are lintier than average.

Or: the Effects of Fear-Induced Perspiration on Lint Adhesion, thinks Odin.

I always thought it was just a mole, thinks Odin. But it was something else. Something… eldritch and ancient.

In this fashion, Odin will go about cheering himself up.

The doctor gives him an an appointment to have the stitches out on April first. Upon hearing the date, tasteless prank after prank begin scrolling through Odin’s brain.

Nothing he could ever really do, but still. He is thankful for the distraction, it keeps him from thinking about the linty, sweaty paper, and about the tiny, ancient thing.