In the last two weeks I’ve been handed two very different text scores from two very different people, aru apaza and Milo Tamez, both of which include “think of where you came from / think of how you got here.”
What is a text score, you’re asking yourself, or maybe you already know. A text score is beguilingly similar to what it sounds like: it’s a text that dictates a performance. Yoko Ono wrote a bunch of nice ones including that one where the performer is instructed to go to the town square and smash a fish tank. I think about that one all the time.
I just walked to grab my copy of Grapefruit. As I walked I wondered if I’d lent it to somebody, I think I did recently, I think I lent it to Fer, maybe I didn’t, maybe I just thought about it. I should lend it to Emi next time he comes over. I have the piece bookmarked:
CENTRAL PARK POND PIECE (1956 autumn)
Go to the middle of the Central Park
Pond and drop all your jewelry
No that isn’t it. Where is it? Who marked this piece, Fer? Anyway I can’t find it, I swear there is a Yoko Ono piece where you, the performer (of course you are performing, just ask Judith Butler), take a fish tank and carry it to the town square and smash it. That is a text score.
A recipe would be a text score if you cooked on stage. “My mom would be my dad if she had balls,” says the F1 twink on TikTok. Written music has always contained text, mostly dynamic markings and tempos, later moods (“melancholy”). If you like, a text score is just traditional notation with the notes missing. Melancholy - fast - dance. That’s a text score, a pretty good one if I do say so myself. I sort of performed a score like this a lot during the pandemic. I would dance around the dining room table and sing “Some Day My Prince Will Come.”
LONGING PIECE (2020 summer)
Dance around the dining room table
Melancholy & fast
While you sing “Some Day My Prince Will Come”
Anyway we performed aru’s score in the Mercardo Abelardo L Rodriguez. aru hung some paintings and objects around one section of the market, one of many sections where there are gorgeous murals painted on the walls. I decided to take the instruction literally.
Think of how you got here:
Leave the house late, hungover from the night before drinking cocktails at Felina and eating tacos with sparkling wine at Los Guiris
Text the WhatsApp group, I’m a little late but I will be there
Get on the Metrobus Line 3, your home away from home
Get off at Juárez. The air is clear, the sky is blue, the church ahead of you looks gorgeous, you can see the mountains, the city is calm, take a video and think to yourself, I love this city
Get on the Metrobus Line 4 South Route. Make eye contact with a woman who is staring at you. Realize you needed to take the North Route and get off at Lázaro Cárdenas
Walk north on Lázaro Cárdenas. The avenue is packed, people are walking slowly, eying merchandise on the hundreds of stalls parked on the side of the street. Walk past Friki Plaza and wonder what the desayunos are like (freaky?)
Get on Metrobus Line 4 North Route. Now the WhatsApp group is buzzing, you’re already ten minutes late, you’ve been on transit for nearly an hour
Get off at Teatro Popular and cross the street. Run into Carlos and ask him where everybody is. I don’t know, he says. I’m trying to find out
Buy an Electrolit for your hangover
Everybody comes to where you and Carlos are. Join their walking tour
Talk to Isaac with the handsome face who you met four or five years ago at a Hannah party
aru texts you, come to where we are
Write us a text score in the comments.
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