1978-present
At 42 Grand Street between Thompson and West Broadway
Artist – dance, performance, music, drawings, photographs, poetry
Trees on my block, less street traffic, more galleries.
Crime.
BEFORE 9/11
This is SoHo 2000
home of the SoHo Grand Hotel
built by Hartz Mountain
on a church site
with money made from selling birdseed
encouraging guests to bring their dogs
enticing the newly solvent
and those entertaining big plans
for high livin’
in the near future
in film
or music
or real estate.
Retail rowhouses form a strip mall
a hooting indoor and outdoor version
of money changers at the mouth of the temple
all manner of capitalists
hawking their wares
over-priced and design heavy
as twittering tourists
quibble over size
and fabric
and how much distance
can be travelled
in the guise of the next trend to overtake the populace.
Through the open windows
filter
sounds of a street carnival
people out for fun and city life
the evening air newly cool
after a rare warm
late spring day of alternating clouds and sunshine
occasionally someone hollers a name
curses and whoops
one voice or another throwing itself out front
to lead the aural agitation,
lend a musical dynamic
to the lower roars
of street and outdoor restaurant life
Something reeks here
besides the stench of Holland Tunnel traffic.
It becomes difficult to tell the difference
between the dull and ignorant
with whom we must remain on good terms
and the loud and aggressive
whose vexations must be avoided.
What happens when they are all
dull,
ignorant,
loud AND aggressive
do we run away
or stay and start explaining
and maybe even listen
giving them the chance to lead us astray.
Insttead I listen to cars whoosh by
down Thompson Street
summer harbinger noises
confirm; I’ll be
doing city
as best as one can.
All my 40+ years of work has been created in this studio/home in SoHo, but much of my work was performed in the East Village at PS122, The Mudd Club, CBGB’s, 8BC, The Pyramid, etc. Music was created and performed at the Knitting Factory on Leonard Street. I am fortunate to have my music and dance archives at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as well as an oral history of my career. I can’t imagine living in any other neighborhood, as this is home to me. The photo is an interior of my studio.