in memoriam

by Rosanna Albertini

                                           

Simone Forti like Manuel Flores is to die.

That is common knowledge;

for dying is a habit

people usually have.

Jorge Luis Borges, In Praise of Darkness 1975 (my interpolation, ra)

At 4 am today, July 29, she stopped breathing. 

Last night I felt oddly awake, thinking of her incessantly. Playing solitaire, as she used to do when she couldn’t sleep, I kept my feelings quiet, alert, as if waiting to hear something.

Today I am transpierced with needles of energy, the same I felt when the important people in my life disappeared. The opposite of nothingness. They are all with me until my last breath.

My Peter husband  and I went to see her a few days ago. A beautiful color on her skin, regular respiration, she was so beautiful that I couldn’t resist drawing a quick portrait of her long death, that was longer than a month. She kept herself alive as long as possible, it was her plan. A wish she told me during one of our visits to her parents graves, in the small Brentwood cemetery. 

Time of this visit was the last present she gave us, the work of death was real yet peaceful, acceptable. The noise – of every kind – outside Simone’s room had disappeared. Confusion, irritation, fears, all gone. 

Peter and I were calm and happy. The feeling lasted a long time after. It was the same steadiness, the same contentment I discovered every time I spent time with her, for many years. She was paying attention to everything, asking for the same attention, Simone the rare, precious human specimen able to make you feel who you are. In your constant movement and change. Reality is not in us. Reality is us. 

History, news, they only have a face that we give them, remembering objects, colors, sentiments and people. Simone’s performances, her written words, her drawings and the movement of her body, often with friends working with her, keep us in the loop, in the dance of questioning and shaping relations, not even trying to give a final, straight answer. Humour and and glimpses of seduction are part of the dance. 

“Last night / I dreamed / two ravens / singing their hearts out” she recently wrote over a small drawing suggesting the singing birds. She gave me the drawing. I give her mine – who knows? – maybe her heart was singing, behind her closed eyes.

June 30, am e-mail from Simone (probably dictated):

Dear Friends, 

I did not properly thank you and I want to make up for that. It was wonderful to be so honored. I’m so sorry I did not complete my part of the project. If you’re not on this list then you should be. I think you know who you are.

I wish you a full, creative life.

With love,

Simone

For readers who never met Simone, I bring a text published in 2006, in Unbuttoned Sleeves.

PS. I’m sorry, I am the War was not written by Simone, my mistake in the emotional storm of these days. I pick another text, this time by Simone for sure, from the same collective book. I see now, better than in the past during the live performances, what a deep synergy pervades the different voices in each project. Reading resonates more than listening. The text I add here brings back the beginning of a family exile. A journey to Switzerland, by car. pp 45-46

baby/crisis/cricket/soldier/coin/city/citizen/no/grace/quarter

bebé/crisi/grillo cri cri cri/soldato/soldo/città/cittadino/no/grazie/quattro

Everybody is packed in tight. We are in the car and even my big sister looks tight, her face. Our nurse. And mother has a big belly. The border, la frontiera. The men in uniforms and guns, how do I know what a gun is, I can smell mother. Father looks happy, free, excited, the guns are blue-black father wishes the officers a happy holiday our skis are on top of the car. We’re pretending. One time back home in the street father was walking and thinking and whistling and he heard a man laugh, looked up and realized he’d been whistling “Bandiera Rossa,” the Communist anthem, he could have been picked up for that. We were rich but I had to leave my toys and I knew I’d never see my toys, the tea set, the big monkey, again. But I had my little doll. I could smell mother sweating in the cold car and she smelled like those black guns and father’s voice to those uniformed gunmen was too excited. My sister. I was where my big sister was I was there before, and I still was there, and everyone spoke German and mother could speak German too because she was a great lady. Ah, the baby. What a name, Nicoletta. As fancy and delicate as she was. I touched her, her tiny fingers. I had my African doll. And I made a fort out of our suitcases.

I am the War

by SARAH SWENSON

I am the war. I’m here to explode your bodies and poison your soil. Separate your mind from all reason, same as mine. I need to get you out of my way, my way makes right with might.  A means to an end, “the method of kings.” He stands on his pulpit. Let him stand in the middle of Baghdad, let him stand in My Lai, let him stand in Wounded Knee.  Let him keep speaking with a forked tongue, and see if the words change then.  A coward by any other name. He is the war, blind and arrogant, senseless, and stubbornly righteous. Will he hang himself?  We hope, hope….but hope fades daily, hourly.  Are we the war? Our meager thousands, stamping, shaking, marching in futility and resignation. Where do we go from here? 

Simone Forti and Batyah Schachter performing at The Church in Ocean Park, in 2010 (video, fragment) The performance was without public. Simone had asked Peter to make a video of the complete action.

Video by Peter Kirby, 2010

SIMONE FORTI, TERRENCE LUKE JOHNSON, SARAH SWENSON, DOUGLAS WADLE, Unbuttoned Sleeves, Beyond Baroque Books – Los Angeles, 2006