Wednesday, August 3 and Thursday, August 4 – “Private Domain” by Paul Taylor
On Wednesday, I spent the morning at Common Cup (not my favorite atmosphere or coffee, but the people who work there are all super, super kind and it seems to be a really great thing for the community to have) and the afternoon at Ellipsis Coffeehouse (one of my favorites thus far; a really lovely space and perfect music) before performing in a drag show at Berlin Nightclub (!!! SO FUN). Today, I went to Other Brother Coffeehouse (not a ton of working room, but good coffee) and Cupitol (far fancier than I was prepared for, but I like it a lot).
Paul Taylor. Where to begin. “Private Domain” is, to say the least, comprehensive. He goes in to so much detail about his life and his travels; he repeats himself quite a bit as well. But he’s so funny–this is one of the only books where I’ve found myself consistently smiling and laughing at the way it was written; Taylor is hilarious.
As far as technical matters go, the two weird things Taylor does in this book are (1) leaving out “I” as a subject of sentences (so they start with the word “Am”) and (2) switching into present tense whenever he feels like it (which, honestly, a lot of choreographers have done so far. I definitely want to track that more closely).
Taylor talks a lot about the notion of multiple selves, the most prominent of which is “thin and elderly George H. Tacet, Ph.D.” who remains with Taylor throughout his life, and whom Taylor credits as being a costume designer and things like that when he doesn’t want to credit himself. In the book, Taylor has a lot of imaginary conversations with Tacet, to the point that I honestly had to go back and make sure I was correct in remembering Tacet as an imaginary friend and not a real person. It’s very odd.
In addition (and maybe in relation to that), Taylor discusses the notion of isolation a lot. This is interesting because he has a roommate for most of his life, and has a company that he often describes as being a “family,” but isolation and solitude are recurring themes nonetheless.
Taylor is also one of the few choreographers thus far who doesn’t delve deeply into sex/sexuality/relationships. He touches on them, but briefly and gently, such that I still have a lot of questions and a lot of curiosity about them. This is especially bizarre considering the detail with which he explains other aspects of his life.
Finally, and the most exciting to me, is the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Pertinent to my quarter-life crisis, I’ve been paying closer attention to social issues and policy relationships in the books, and the NEA has been brought up in quite a few of them thus far. Taylor also recounts being caught in the middle of revolts and tension-filled countries, and applying for the CIA three times (he figured since he was traveling anyway he was in a prime position to be a spy). I’m not entirely sure what I would write about (maybe tracking the “success” of NEA initiatives as recounted by the choreographers themselves?), but the NEA as an organization that has been written about over and over again by these choreographers is exciting to me.