Thought Residencies

TRANSCRIPT: hi i'm stewart legere and this is my 8th thought. Well...thought 8.1. I cheated today and I have two. 8.1. what to do? go dancing, go to shows, see friends, go to things or get in the car and leave. go camping. visit my mom. find a lake. this feeling: when i'm in a city a need to be part of it compelled to get out, to sit in cafes, show up at events, be an active participant in the fray - not always central to the action, but a proud and present cog. conversely, when i'm in the country, or travelling far away from home, this feeling i could be happily absorbed into the green, or the blue, never to return to civilization sell it all - metaphorically (i don't have anything to sell) what is the word for that feeling? that pull in different directions? i know on some level, as a queer person, i want to be seen because i spent an unrefundable portion of my life unseen but what about that other, seemingly opposite thing? the desire to be absorbed? the undeniable suspicion i get when walking in a field, for example, that i could happily keep walking away and never look back? some days i long to be racing in the race and some days i want to be the man disappearing down the dusty dirt road and this is thought 8.2 i'm contemplating my inner voice today it always says you're right but here's what i'm thinking: that can't be true.

TRANSCRIPT: Hey my name is Jajube Mandiela, I am an actor, director and artistic director of bcurrrent performing arts. This is my thought, number 1. So… I have recurring dreams and recurring nightmares, one of the ones that's awkwardly more pleasant, in a certain sense, is one where I am performing in a dance or a play and I have forgotten the script, I've forgotten all the lines, directly correlates to my actual fear of never being able to learnall the lines when I start a new play

TRANSCRIPT: hi i'm stewart legere and this is my 12th and final thought i have a tattoo on my back, in between my shoulder blades. it's four words, stacked on top of each other: believe behave behold become it's something a mentor said to me years ago and for whatever particular reason whatever alchemy they have always had a profound resonance with me for years, before i went onstage, i'd reach my arm awkwardly around my back, touch the tattoo and think to myself "believe everything you are about to do. behave as though you do. behold the world around you. become the thing you want to become" it was all very complicated and i can't be sure it ever worked. i don't really do that anymore, because my rituals have changed, i guess but more and more i find myself thinking about the words in my day to day like: "believe people when they tell you about themselves"... "behave" is now more like "un-behave" like - notice the moments when i add shit i don't need, when i say things i don't mean, when i lie. "behold" i mostly just repeat and repeat. "behold behold behold." and "become"...remains elusive. probably as it should. i don't know. honestly, the poem is so much better without the explanation. the poem resonates. the poem endures. the poem abides. the poem is a secret. the poem is the thing. i imagine you have one, right? maybe just show it to me. don't explain it. it's better that way.

TRANSCRIPT: hi i'm stewart legere and this is my 11th, and penultimate, thought which is really just a memory about three years ago i was artist in residence at videofag the - now closed - queer performance space in kensington market, in toronto. i was sitting alone in the middle of the space in the middle of the night at a table, drinking wine writing it was valentine's day. it was the night ellen page came out earlier, i had been waiting for a guy to come meet me for a date but i wasn't waiting any more it was clear he wasn't coming i remember how quiet it was and the glow from my computer screen i remember crying and feeling very happy to be queer i remember the wine was dry i remember looking outside and seeing someone i knew from halifax jumping a fence across the street and thinking "we're 2000 kms away from home, but i'm not going to wave" it was one of those super rare moments in life where everything felt clear and everything felt balanced i felt so alive i felt so lonely and so sad but so happy very conflicted very excited i felt supported but also abandoned i was broke but content i was worried i was ready maybe like what the feeling feels like right before you bungie jump or when you eat something that's hot in some places and cold in others i remember thinking i can do this feeling equally brave and like a liar and, looking back, i was probably basically right

hi i'm stewart legere and this is my 10th thought i took the sentence "what would we do without each other" and put it into an anagram generator an anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another. people often interpret the new word or phrase to deepen their understanding of the original. often these same people believe in god or astrology or psychics or that the moon landing didn't happen but not always so for example you could take the word morning and make it gin, norm. and then say something like "sounds about right" or something like that. anyway i took the sentence "what would we do without each other" and put it into an anagram generator it spit out hundreds and hundreds of new words and phrases in myriad combinations and none of them made any sense at all. today i'm thinking about tearing things apart and building things from the pieces sometimes the new thing is vaguely familiar like how a baby can look like your great great grandfather and sometimes it's just...not and you have to learn to love it from scratch

TRANSCRIPT: hi i'm stewart legere and this is my 8th thought. Well...thought 8.1. I cheated today and I have two. 8.1. what to do? go dancing, go to shows, see friends, go to things or get in the car and leave. go camping. visit my mom. find a lake. this feeling: when i'm in a city a need to be part of it compelled to get out, to sit in cafes, show up at events, be an active participant in the fray - not always central to the action, but a proud and present cog. conversely, when i'm in the country, or travelling far away from home, this feeling i could be happily absorbed into the green, or the blue, never to return to civilization sell it all - metaphorically (i don't have anything to sell) what is the word for that feeling? that pull in different directions? i know on some level, as a queer person, i want to be seen because i spent an unrefundable portion of my life unseen but what about that other, seemingly opposite thing? the desire to be absorbed? the undeniable suspicion i get when walking in a field, for example, that i could happily keep walking away and never look back? some days i long to be racing in the race and some days i want to be the man disappearing down the dusty dirt road and this is thought 8.2 i'm contemplating my inner voice today it always says you're right but here's what i'm thinking: that can't be true.

TRANSCRIPT: hi my name is stewart legere and this is my 8th thought today i worked in a building from early morning until nightfall twelve hours i arrived when the building was full, and didn't leave until long after it emptied out so that has me thinking about life-spans and i'm reminded of my parents' marriage and how flowers open and close and about fruit flies dead friends dead friendships bad ideas best before dates electronics half lives epochs prejudices fashion drunkenness orgasms romances how long food stays hot flights (more specifically the time in between accelerating and taking off) the time in between eating and feeling full how long i think about what you say when you tell me how you feel and now i'm thinking about formulas how they can describe the birth and death of a problem and how we long for elegance in their expression and about sleep and how it is a fertalizer you know life spans

TRANSCRIPT: Hi, I'm Stewart Legere and this is my seventh thought. There is a tall curved restaurant that sits on top of a hotel in my home town. A few years ago I was walking down the street and it came into view, and I thought…hunh…that's not a rotating restaurant. I'm 33 years old. As a child I must have learned that rotating restaurants were round and this building is round so I just assumed, and never went back in, to correct the thought. It's not that I actively thought the restaurant ontop of the hotel was rotating – of course I knew it wasn't – but the germ of the thought still lived in my brain and it took an active intervention to fix it because I never went in and clarified some young small part of me still held this silly little thought to be true. I wonder how many of those are in there? Probably a lot. Probably many. I'm sure some of them are cute, like that one, and I'm sure many aren't. Where are the ones that affect the way I feel about people I have never met? What about the ones that collect and collect and influence how I see the world and my place in it? I need to go in there. I need to catch them all. This is probably going to take a while. I should get to work.

TRANSCRIPT: Hi, I'm Stewart Legere and this is my sixth thought. I have a game with my friends, list funny things to do while crying: Crying while peeling an orange, crying while playing marbles, crying while swimming. Now I am thinking about all the different things that can make you cry: Ending a relationship, death, stubbing your toe, fear and cutting onions, nostalgia, on and on. The first time I can remember seeing my dad cry I was a little kid and my cousin and I were out in the country and we wandered off and got lost in the woods for hours. It was dark. Eventually we found the road, picked a direction and walked back to what we hoped was home. Hours later we heard someone calling our names, and there was my dad, flashlight, searching and crying in the road. It was also the first time I remember hearing him swear. You scared the shit out of me. I am not going to have children and it strikes me that my child getting lost is one thing that will never make me cry.

TRANSCRIPT: Hi, I'm Stewart Legere and this is my fifth thought. An example of something I might say to myself or share with someone else so they could say it to themselves… if either of us thought we needed it, and if we thought that it was true. Hey, sit calmly inside whatever you do. Outside that is chaos but inside that is calm and inside the calm a fucking storm and inside the storm a dead silent pool inside that an awful fire, inside that a whole new sky inside that a brawl…and somewhere inside the inside the inside under a pile of garbage unsuspecting…Just what I always wanted to say, just what I always meant to say, just what I always longed to be.