In 2006 I had the Worst Margarita in Modern History
Grand Magasin is a great performance art troupe helmed by François Hiffler and Pascale Murtin. They combine lyrical absurdist reflections on daily life mixed with dance and gestures and manipulations of objects. Last night, at the Menagerie de Verre, they presented their latest piece, Ma Vie. With just a table and two chairs, a small sound console, three yellow balls of varying size and slideshow, they choreographed random statements from their life to make a kind of visual poem about memory and racontage. The text was something like this:
In 1967 I lost my keys in the sand. In 1973 I closed the door. In 1997 I opened an oyster. In 2000 I looked at a magazine in a dentist’s office. In 2004 I was stuck in a small elevator…
Each took turns announcing these statements, sometimes working with the objects as props, sometimes contradicting each other or mimicking each other. The accumulation of daily facts, mundane observations, and the distortion and contradiciton of these facts and observations made a remarkable piece that spoke about the random daily process of memory and the constant process of editing and rewriting what we choose to remember. Life, when it’s written down as an accumulation of events that we don’t necessarily control, becomes a lyrical absurdist poem.
Then, after I went with my Texan buddy to the Hard Rock Cafe to do Thanksgiving, which we did by headbanging to Metallica and drooling over John Frusciante, though I have to say the HRC makes the WORST Margarita in modern history.
