Great God Pan

Garden Grove Creative Community as performed by the New Energy Encounter Group
March 15, 2007 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

For this evening the Encounter group consited of Erik Bluhm, Paul Gellman, Alice Könitz, Ruby Neri, Bonnie Perkinson, Amy Cooper, Lawrence Rengert, and Tom Watson.


Through imagery derived from English folk ballads, master/disciple initiation talks, and contemporary observations, the denizens of the Garden Grove Creative Community examine issues of inspiration, purpose, and group dynamics. When Michael (Alice Könitz) feels unmotivated within the cloistered learning center he is attending, he sets out on his own, seeking answers. Eventually he stumbles upon a rival community, led by the sage Bonnie Bleu (Bonnie Perkinson), where he “relearns” the most important lesson of all, that breathing itself is the primary creative force. “When what has been esoteric becomes exoteric, you will have arrived,” explains his new spiritual guide. Returning to the Garden Grove, Michael reveals his new knowledge, unveiling his potent energies to his old friends, with catastrophic yet ultimately cleansing results.

GARDEN GROVE CREATIVE COMMUNITY

Curtain goes up. Band is there, playing immediately “Let’s Make a Campfire” while Alice and Ruby come in from one side of the stage, carrying boxes and set them up into a sort of pyramid that forms a forest scene. Alice starts a fire and Ruby helps stoke it. Bonnie is sitting on the other side of the stage in a small throne. Band stops the song. Paul carries his guitar over to the group.

Paul: Hey, what’s up?

Lawrence: Hey.

Ruby: Welcome home.

P: So, how long have you guys been at GGCC?

L: Oh just a couple of days now.

R: It’s totally relaxing

L: Yeah. It’s amazing. I looked inside the energy ashram, and it’s completely translucent. You can see into the forest right from where you’re sitting.

P: I know. It’s better than Hawaii. Have you attended any of the seminars so far?

R: I went to one on sewing conductive threads and LEDs.

L: Yeah, I wanted to go to the one on bridge building but it was filled up... They supposedly give you the simple secret through which everything becomes bridged or something.

Michael (Alice): I’m not really big on seminars. To me the trees seem much more important.

R: If you love trees so much why don’t you marry one?

A: Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll do it as an independent study course.

P: Crazy Man Michael, you really should check out this workshop on phosphorescence and leaf sounds. My favorite one though was on flocking. You can take anything in and have it flocked. I brought in a shrub skeleton, flocked it, and got an… well they don’t really give grades but… like an A hug or some gesture of encouragement. They said the entry fee includes all the steps for naturally dying the felt AND etching the free-form circuit boards.

L: Yeah, perfect. Aren’t you interested in systems?

M: I have an anti system.

R: What does that mean?

L: Ruthie Friedman says you’re painting yourself into a hole.

M: Great! I WANT to go there. Let’s go. This afternoon.

R: Go where?

M: All the way. Like to the ultimate inner destination. The fire in the hole.

L: “There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”

P: Michael from Mountains, you really have to maximize your creative potential. It’s a business model, I know, but it’s the truth.

M: Whatever.

R: (to others) Did he just say “whatever?”

M: Uh… yeah!

R: Whatever.

(Michael turns around and pokes the ground with a stick from the fire)

P: (to the girls) We should have a sing-a-long later tonight. You know campfire songs, spirtituals, space shanteys. People call me the Human Juke Box.

L: Do you know “Sad Eyes?”

P: Ooooh, I’m a big Leo Sayer fan. Don’t know it but I’m sure I could figure it out.

(P strums a few chords and sings, “Looks like it’s over….”)

P: No problem! Got it! I’ve always thought leading sing-songs is very rabbinical. Don’t you think so?

L: Yeah, totally. (long pause) We can have graham crackers and s’mores.

P: Oooooh. I LOVE them when they get burnt. Blackened marshmallows are absolutely to die for.

R: ewwww.

P: ewwwww?

R: ewwww.

L: Hey you guys, we should probably gather some more wood for the campfire before it gets too dark.

P: I know, it’s gonna be freezing balls tonight.

R: Yeah you’re right.

M: I’ll stay here and get the kindling going.

(Ruby and Lawrence exit stage right. Paul goes over to band)

M: (Picks ups some newspaper, crumples it, picks up another and idly looks at it, then reads aloud) “Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.” (pauses for a minute as Tom makes a sound on the organ. Then M crumples it and throws it on the fire).

Next song. "Wandering Theme." Michael wanders past projections of sunrises and sunsets.

Then screen goes blank. Erik, Amy, and Tom put down instruments, stand behind Bonnie. Michael approaches her.

Erik: Ahhh, the keeper of the garden! How come you’re not shopping classes at the Grove?

Tom: Yeah, Michael. Aren’t you supposed to be at the CREATIVE center? (tauntingly)

Amy: Aren’t there a lot of hotties?

Bonnie: Don’t pay attention to them, Michael. You’ve made it. Welcome. You’ve arrived.

M: Made it where?

B: Shhhhh. Shake it off, Michael, shake it off. Just imagine yourself standing in a green pool of energy. Just watch. Just inhale. Just breathe. Imagine yourself raising this pool, so it’s above your head, slowly. There’s wind up there, right? Wind is the rush of inspiration. The wind is throughout you. Move out of your nineteenth century Piscean materialism, into twentieth century Aquarian space energy, where YOUR individual progress is directly related to group evolution. Finally when what has been esoteric becomes exoteric, then you will have arrived. The invisible becomes visible and then radiates out from within. Just watch. Just breathe. "Its all in the breath."

E: "Its all in the breath"

T: It’s all in the breath.

Amy: (sings out in song) "Its all in the breath"

The video starts and the song starts with the band playing “It’s All in the Breath.” Entire cast sings along. The video is of people's faces, close up, mouthing to the song, over and over again. There are tribal masks superimposed over them at times).
Bonnie does slow energy exercises as it goes.

Song stops and Bonnie addresses M again.

B: Every breath is rebirth, inspiration, for integration, for growth, and for creation and re-creation.

M: But breathing does not express ANYTHING.

B: Exactly. After all you’re only a figment of your figment. So revolution is unnecessary. Rebellion is enough.

M: Your sorcerer’s words are to taunt me.

B: Michael. Whenever you see a pattern of mind, or a judgment coming at you, immediately exhale-- as if you were pushing the judgment out with the exhalation. Exhale deeply, and pull your stomach in. When you throw out the air, feel, visualize, that the whole judgment is being thrown out too !!

M: Hmmmmm.

B: Start thinking from here. (points to her upper belly, Amy and L and E do too) Your solar plexus fire center. Then nothing can stop you. Remember that big fire in Malibu last month? It burned right down to the beach. Not even the celebrities were safe. Suzanne Sommers didn’t even have time to call her personal assistant and save anything.

There were charred clothes everywhere, Givenchy, Fiorucci. There were personalized towels lying all over the rocks. Her plastic kayaks melted right on the beach. They fused with the sand. Like a primeval re-creation. Soupy, sandy muck. The universe began again like it always does. A new breeze has come.

Lights go off on Bonnie and group. Michael leaves and runs (sorta jogs in place) in circles on his way back to GGCC. Lawrence beats his kettle drum and the band shakes all sorts of percussion instruments and shouts “hoo! hoo!). Michael runs past projection of a flower closing in slow motion.

He is muttering to himself about breath and Bonnie (from her darkened area keeps saying things like "You'll show them" and "Be alert" and "Let it happen!” Michael keeps saying I know I know I know. Michael returns to Garden Grove, Ruby, Lawrence, and Paul are sitting around the fire.

R: Hey everybody, Michael’s back.

L: It’s Mr. miss the sing-a-long.

P: You missed the gravel landscaping lecture. They gave out primitive rakes and we made our own Zen gardens.

M: I’ve got better things to do.

(Michael blows red glitter from his cupped hands into the fire.

Everybody stands back and holds up their hands at the flames.

Giant candle flame shows on screen. The silkscreened boxes are turned around so that flames are forward as Michael takes center stage and speaks.)

M: “Despair, impatience, horror at myself, in time delivered me—even while I was trying sometimes to find once again the bewildering path of ecstasy, sometimes to be done with it, to go resolutely to bed, to sleep. Suddenly I stood up and I was completely taken. As I had earlier become a tree, but the tree was still myself—and what I became differed no less than one of the “objects” which I had just possessed—so I became a flame. But I say “flame” only by comparison. When I had become the tree, I had in mind, clearly and distinctly, an idea of a woody plant. The upper part of my body—above the solar plexus—had disappeared, or at least no longer gave rise to the sensations which could be isolated. Only my legs—which kept me standing upright, connected what I had become to the floor—kept a link to what I had been: the rest was an inflamed gushing forth, overpowering, even free of its own convulsion.

I was thrown into this fire, nothing remained of me but this fire. In its entirety, the fire itself was a streaming outside of me.. The flame is not aware of itself, it is absorbed in its own unknown; in this unknown it annihilates itself. Without this thirst for non-knowledge, it would cease right away. The flame is God, but ruined in the negation of itself.” (from G. Battaille roughly)

Band plays song “Forest Fire” as flames dance on screen.

END

Conceived and written by Erik Bluhm and Paul Gellman, 2007

Cast (l to r): Lawrence Rengert, Erik Bluhm, Amy Cooper, Alice Könitz, Bonnie Perkinson, Ruby Neri, Paul Gellman, Tom Watson (not shown).

Photos: Heather Cantrell
Live photos: Chantal Doyle

As for the songs....
"Let's Build a Campfire There" by Ariel Pink
"It's All in the Breath" by Fire, Water, Air
"Wandering Theme" by West Coast New Energy Family Band
"Forest Fire" by the Trees

As principals of the New Energy Encounter Group, Erik Bluhm and Paul Gellman have presented a number of meditation demonstrations and shape workshops uniquely suited to modern day man, many of which are accompanied by decorative garments and specially composed music themes, the most recent being “Circular performance demonstration with French percussionists and actors” in conjunction with filmmaker Marie Jager at the Orange County Biennial. Past collaborations have involved architect/curator Francois Perrin, Los Super Elegantes, Little Wings, and New York’s elusive Space Folk.

The members of the Garden Grove Creative Community are accomplished sculptors, actors, models, and visual artists. Some of their creations will be displayed next year in France in an exhibition entitled “Cooperate with the energy and with anything that happens,” curated by Hedi el Kholti.