Well," Il Tempo del Postino" is history. I am hours away from winging my way back across the pond to find some normalsey in Los Angeles. Yes, that's right, I said normalsey in Los Angeles, those words have rarely been used together in the same sentence.

The wrap party is still going on downstairs at the hotel. There is one thing about Artists, they can party till all hours of the night or in this case morning. Counting the orchestra, the performers, the artists and the production people, there are hundreds of artisians who made this happen. They are all down stairs trying to make some sense of what we all have experienced. Everyone is feeling the release of accomplishment, birth really. I don't think the full significance of this event will be realized for days, perhaps years. The world of contemporary art is completely foriegn to me, but to my knowledge, and the experience of those who do know, this experiment has never been tried before. The mating of theater and performance art.

Theater is a world of compromise. The limitations of time and logistics sometimes dictate how a scene will be presented. Sometimes a better way to accomplish an effect is realized by the compomise of two designers in the context of the theater. Theater requires many artists to produce. Theater is a community of work.

To the artist there is no compromise. Each affect is specific and any compomise will affect the integrety of the idea. The arist working on canvas for example never compromises. He will mold the colors and composition in a way that only he agrees with. Ther artist toils alone. It is a singular work.

In Manchester what happened was unique. The theater people learned that sometimes the brush stokes must show, and the artists learned that sometimes there is an easier way to communicate the same idea. What was born was a bastard child that has never existed before, a synergy of theater/art. Everyone learned, everyone grew, everyone will be forever changed, and I was an invited guest to wittness it from the inside.

Tonight I watched the "bull set" performance one last time. This time the experience was with an audience that was seeing it for the first time. It was gross, it was obsene, it had no relevance to my in my world of jokes and humor. But I found myself hanging on every movement of the man with a dog on his head. It was like a bad dream that does not fade when you wake up, unlike the pleasant dream that can't be remembered. I found myself digging deeper into the symbolism to find what can't be found, sense in the senseless. Why was I watching this, and why were they doing this, it was a question that will never be answered. But the question that cannot be answered is the one that keeps repeating.

I have joked about it, and belittled it, and had great sport being the outsider, but I am not the same person that arrived a week ago. I have changed. Isn't that the goal of all art, to move the human spirit from one place to another? To question what we think is "normal", to wonder where the line of humanity is? Only when we cross the borders we think are solid do we mark a new frontier.

I will never see my performance in the same way, because I have performed my art in front of three thousand people behind a 12 inch magnifying glass. What did the audience see? That is not so important as what I felt. In some way I was more naked than the girls who stood with out clothes. They simply displayed their bodys, I displayed my artistic soul. I will never feel quite so unveiled, yet when the curtain was drawn back I was still there. There is an artist hiding inside of me. I found him this week. Before now I did not know what the "bull set" piece was called. Tonight, in the audience, watching this profanity I read the title for the first time in the program... the piece is called. "Guardian of the Veil".

As you were ( but I am not)
Jay