Antin's Stream of Consciousness

I am really intrigued by David Antin's oral performances after reading "What am I doing here." It reminds me so much of conversations my best friend and I used to have over a couple of beers as undergrads back in Wisconsin. We would start talking about what ever was on our minds and by the end of the night we would have our minds wrapped around the actual meaning behind our "being here" as far as life was concerned, as well as exactly what everyone else's problems seem to be. While I'll be the first to admit the beer probably had a lot to do with the seeming clarity of our thoughts, I must also admit there is something to be said for stream of conscienceness whether it be oral or written.

In this piece Antin discusses his art saying, "i kept looking around for a place into which i could put what i do and i asked myself why do i do it in such a place anyway why do i persist in doing it in a place next to old friends" Antin acknowledges the roots of his artistic discourse as having emerged from conversation in a comfortable atmosphere with people who are open to his ideas and suggestions--friends. When Antin performs he is basically just having a conversation with friends. What Antin is actually doing in this conversation is defining his "self". He states, "the only way that i can conceive of myself as a personality is by an act of memory by an act of interrogation of my memory which is also talking the self itself is emergent in discourse in some kind of discourse it is probably available but it comes up under dialogue and the dialogue is conducted with it and then the self emerges even though the self may not have been there until you called upon it you were always under something...." Wow, the ideas this stirs! He is alluding to a sort of dialogue with self, yet we know that a dialogue implies a conversation between two parties. He says in his search to classify his art he realized it wasn't literature, essays, but simply "talking". And here we are reading his "talking" off of the page.

It occurs to me that we read a character's talking in fiction and non-fiction all the time, but this is a more fluid, emotional talking--not a conversation but a reflection. As Antin says it is talking that reveals self. Journal or diary entries seem to fit in to this sort of dialogue with self. Often the writing in a journal is introspective and informal in structure; however, a journal lacks the second party with which the alluded dialogue needs to interact. Letters, on the other hand, provide the audience needed for a dialogue. The words we write in a letter, just as the words Antin speaks when "talking" are all produced with the audience in mind, therefore creating a dialogue between our self and another party.

The transcription of Antin's "What am I doing Here?" could easily be edited into a letter format. With the correct spacing I believe a letter can be transformed into the oral dialogue or talking similar to Antin's art. In an attempt to prove this I will "transform" a paragraph of a letter I wrote to a friend earlier today into a transcription of self dialogue or "talking" such as represented in Antin's "What am I doing Here?"

as written in letter
"I'm not trying to sugar coat it. Life isn't easy-you obviously know that, but it can and is better than what you are doing now. So just do something please before it's too late. And don't forget that a few months ago it came really damn close to being too late--for your own sake make damn sure it doesn't happen again."

transcribed talking
i'm not trying to sugar coat it life isn't easy you obviously know that but it can be and is better than what you're doing now so do something please before it's too late don't forget a fews months ago it came damn close to being too late for your own sake make damn sure it doesn't happen again

I'm not sure if this proves my point, but I do find it interesting to think of a letter of an essay or dialogue with the self. After all what is a letters purpose but to describe the self to another--be it the self's location, feelings, opinions, or experiences in general. A letter is an attempt to make the self transmittable and accessible to another over a span of time and/or distance. A letter is a stream of consciousness defining the self of one person to another. A letter literally answers the question "what am I doing here" on numerous levels. So is it just me or is there a connection between Antin's "talking" and letters?