tell us more

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The home page of feminist performance artist Suzy Kellems Dominik has two buttons at the bottom: “Learn more” and “Stay in touch.” Though those are functional, I read them also as autonomous texts, in the spirit of Jenny Holzer: Yes, learning never ends. Yes, stay engaged.

Her site’s “contact” feature includes the request “Tell us more.” I wondered who “us” is. I wrote a dialogue in the message box, also quoting from her short biographical statement (two quotations below within one of my fanciful quote marked responses by me as character with characterization of her):

Adam of Eve’s immaculate self-conceiving

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Mid-2007, I met a man in Peet’s Coffee, Walnut Square (Berkeley), which I’d forgotten these days until this week due to an amazing occurrence I’ll mention later here.

We had our first conversation when I saw him reading a book on Ingmar Bergman. The Dutch man, named Gerrit, called himself Geri, pronounced “Gary,” which I guess ruins my credibility here about my recounting. But there are coincidences in life.

He was an art historian getting more deeply interested in film history, visiting from Amsterdam as a UCB resident scholar. We crossed paths numerous Saturdays because I had the habit of hanging out there before doing my weekly grocery run.

Early 2009, I began to tell him about my relationship to Terese (a very long story) which was frustrating because I wanted to see her not commit to a marriage that she seemed to not really want (which would be felt by her future children, which she also seemed to not want, but her future husband did; so, she was acquiescent—actually, depressive; a bad omen). Since I had enough challenge finding time away from our department for what I loved, I couldn’t accept that a talented woman would reject the appeal of creative independence (especially since she entered college wanting creative independence).