Actually inviting critics to your work, and then letting them in for free, is exactly like inviting a slasher vampire into your house to kick you in the groin, eat all your chicken, read your diary, and then spooge all over it. If I knew a smarmy little, hip "big citay" critic was coming, I'd charge 'em triple, but my co-producers will never let me. They always let 'em in free even though they've got jobs and would get reimbursed. If it were up to me, I'd make everyone pass those snide critics around like cheerleaders without panties at a frat party--along with the yuppies who're biding their time between escrows. If I already gave Simon & Schuster the finger and they were paying ME thousands of dollars, why am I going to give up all my chicken to some pipsqueak critic? Huh? For a pat on the head or a kick in the teeth? No fucking waaaaay! It's a different game for me now; more fun this way. And somehow I just don't care as long as I can pay the cat's vet bill and the rent by the 5th of the month.
Time to keep things nice and small. Keep the fur-coat curiosity-seekers out. This is a cabal for the underachieving, unwashed masses; and a creep show for others.
And how do you KILL a critic? A silver bullet? No. That's for gallery dealers and other art pimps. A stake in the heart? No. You put them in a room, alone, with a box of crayons and a coloring book with no lines.
"Hey, Erika--do you mean ... The Blank Page?"
"Not, The Blank Page!" You all scream in the kind of sympathetic horror reserved for anyone who's got the Stockholm Syndrome.
Yes, alone with a box of crayons, a blank coloring book, and NO Nick-Nolte-as-an-artist "Whiter Shade of Pale" paint-splattering soundtrack to keep them company.
Anyone who's actually had it out with a blank sheet of paper knows that twenty-minutes later, chances are the blank page will probably be victorious with its blinding white paper boot on the critic's whining little neck. "Death by a thousand paper cuts," the coroner's report reads. So invite Dracula to your own birthday party and leave me out of it. I keep my shows cheap enough so you can weed 'em out for yourself and send me your own reviews by emailing WelfareLine@Yahoo.com. I'll post good and bad.
Small vascillating print: I can't really complain, the reviewers have generally been pretty good to me but I don't like the big time suck-up system. And I don't believe them when they say good or bad things and I get pissed when I've blown money on more crap because of them. And I don't believe it when they're too picky and mean: Many of them have their own personal unexplored artistic issues, or they got slighted by an artist. But it really sucks getting bad press from them because it's like having someone write things about you in bathrooms and you can't say anything about it.Okay, okay and some critics are actually cool. I've even had some critics become my friends after tearing me a new one. But they are anomalies. And Elvis Mitchell and his dreadlocks are even moster cool. When he thinks something sucks, you'd probably give him two helpings of dessert after eating all your chicken. He actually talks about what he's seen and why things do or do not work as if he's actually tried to pull off his own lonely stints with blank coloring books. Why can't more critics be interesting and smart like that? Anyone can tear down. Hell, we've already got the caterwauling voices of Carrie's crazy mother in our own heads.
And this isn't a suck-up, either: even that Elvis is too big for the likes of me and I don't want people who listen or read the likes of him to come to my shows to come out of curiosity 'cause they're bored and have nothing to do and feel like slumming. I'm not kidding. They always end up walking out and I hate that. I don't like seeing the backs of anyone, so I just don't want them to come in the first place. It's hard enough standing in front of people and so I want my audience to be friendly and know my work, as performances are two-way conversations. The more you give, the more a performer gives. We are not television sets. So from now on, anyone walks out on me, and we're all gonna talk about their asses.
So this?...
Or that?...
Maybe it's my generation, but now I get the blood-sucking leech.
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Erika Lopez P.O. Box 410011 / San Francisco, CA 94141