The soundtrack of a meditative, durational
rehearsal for a street performance I did over a four-year period,
from 1972 to 1976, in drag as a young male of color. I wore Afro,
shades, moustache, and smoked a Tiparillo. I visited certain
culture-related locales around the city: art gallery openings,
concerts, films, plays, etc., as well as took the subways and buses
and walked the streets at night in different neighborhoods. In
order to focus my attention and maintain my composure during the
performance, I focussed on a mantra: a passage from the personal
journal I have been keeping since pre-adolescence, which I
simultaneously published in the Village Voice on a monthly
basis. The dates of the passages were chosen according to a complex
permutational system. In content, I selected passages expressive of
some personal issue I was grappling with at the time. Repeating the
passage was a way of defusing and transcending the issue. In this
recording I rehearse my repetition of the mantra of the month, with
occasional Freudian slips.