Text of the Artwork “Aquarius”
(January 20-February 18)
AQUARIUS
We, Children of Heavenly Winds,
seem like airheads to some.
To others, too aloof, not of this Earth.
Beware the Life of the Mind.
We are Seekers of Change.
Investigators of the Strange.
Waking Dreamers Alert to Dream Logic.
Cultivators of the Inchoate and Unexpected.
We roll in rebellion.
Thrive on surprise.
Invent individualism.
Electrify eccentricity.
Content when we can walk our own path.
Step alongside us— or get out of the way.
Restless when we feel fenced.
Don’t try to tie us down— or we’ll wriggle away.
Freedom is our love language.
Definition defies our self-realization.
Limitless, we live in possibility.
Infinity shapes our arithmetic.
Our essential self is easily suffocated.
Sometimes we find ourselves
on a path in a dark wood, blinded,
whistling from the old playbook.
We stumble until we see our own way ahead.
Follow us to find the rainbow’s end.
Get lost with us in myriad glittering chambers.
Chill out in our Ice Cream Castles in the Sky.
Lick or be licked by the sweetness we sow.
We scare you by summoning the unseen,
sprinkling pixie dust, reeling in the unreal.
We tell you — There is no road to turn on—
There is only your path to travel down.
Our strongest feelings arise from abstractions.
Everything we examine becomes an activist cause.
Everything looks like it is asking to be improved.
We appoint ourselves to chair the Progress committee.
We grow a “third eye”.
We see beyond the beyond.
While we lose our car keys,
focused on these timeless clouds passing by.
Sometimes we forget ourselves, forget to remember
to look up from our scrawling along the desktop
long enough to see the future so clearly
etched in waves of undulating light upon the horizon.
We don’t wait — we act — we act on impulse
We head out — head long — head into the wind
not waiting to see whether or not others are following,
we forge our footsteps from purest imaginings.
We can terrify the crowd, the people around us
who see us leap but do not see us land
because we don’t— we never touch down
once we have taken off in a flight of fancy.
Yet, when we fear our own power, second guess ourselves,
our heads lowered, then we miss our moment, our mark,
our hearts pump full of lead, the wax tacking feather to wing
melts, until we fall from Grace, from our Higher Self, Heaven.
When we slip out of a day dream into a sleep walk
—one eye cracked open and the other closed shut—
overwhelmed witness to all the glimmering gold— then
a squinting darkness descends on us like a dusky mask.
Our optic power warps —short sight fouls our long view
We lose our sense of depth— landscapes drain of color.
We are extremists. With us, it’s all or nothing.
Either we see the whole truth or stumble half-blind.
And yet. When eyes are wide, like toddlers,
we reveal what is to be, what is coming soon
—predicting storms or trends or revolutions—
We surf the zeitgeist seconds before it crests and crashes.
We are soothsayers, truthtellers and prophets.
We are charlatans, fortune tellers and snake oil sellers.
We are mavericks, rebels, and movement makers.
We are inventors, entrepreneurs and streetcorner hustlers.
We politick ahead of the crowd. We claim Moses as ours.
Sir Thomas More — author of Utopia — is ours of course.
And John Hancock fomented revolt and founded a New Country
— like Subhas Chandra Bose in India way before Gandhi ever fasted.
Who else? Doctrine-defying Galileo found the Earth rounded the Sun. He
placed findings over feelings and launched the Scientific Method.
He is credited as founding modern physics and astronomy.
The Church labeled him heretic, banned his books, and arrested him.
And then Darwin further balanced our place in the World —
not only did the whole Universe not revolve around us
— but we came from monkeys and unicellular amoebae.
Hard to bear for most, his Theory of Evolution is still on trial.
So, we are usually so far ahead of the curve
that we envision untested solutions others fail to see.
Anyone we try to convince of our new direction
may not be able catch up and amass resentments.
Our ideas break molds containing habitual reasoning— ritual thinking.
Outside the box is where we thrive— roaming our natural habitat.
We may sometimes make others feel uneasy or inadequate —
prowling edges —brushing off concerns— mocking worries.
As our star rises — we become targets of criticism —
envied by others who feel shame for being late to the party
missing the point of what we meant— a conundrum solved so simply
its sum becomes common wisdom— like the riddle of the Theban Sphinx.
The greater the wonder we inspire in our admirers,
the more jealousy we face from those left wondering how,
still plodding through the proof well after X was solved.
Having no patience with stragglers doesn’t help our case.
We are timeless and we operate in the eternal return.
We have no real fixed sense of time. We always appear late
because we are always ahead of time but never on time.
We orbit around and around each moment at synaptic speed.
We were never really here nor there. We are everywhere
and nowhere at once— a spirit that floats in and out the flesh.
We join a friend at a corner café for a catchup and a panini
and then disappear for two years into a Negev kibbutz.
Our desire to help others is so strong
that the knowledge we are helping
may be enough for us, our true reward,
allowing us to overcome unpleasant rivalries.
We are ambitious but money and prestige do not motivate us.
Dwelling in the realm ideas— we see dollars as worthless
promises to pay and fame as fickle unearned interest.
We are not materialistic— unless building a better mousetrap.
We measure success by our own mystical metrics.
This is the reason others cannot control us.
This is the reason that we infuriate others.
They don’t understand why we won’t just follow rules.
We are true individualists
— in both good and bad senses of that attribute.
We don’t really care if others like us or not — love us or not
— as long as we are actively authoring change and innovation.
In our style of dress — we go through phases
but we are mostly functional— get the job done.
Our focus is the project— not the uniform.
We may appear ordinary— or outrageous.
We are very friendly to all. Yet no one feels very special.
We treat everyone equally well. We have hundreds of contacts.
We allow very few friends or lovers into our inner circle.
We are secretive and guard our privacy but abhor secrets and limits.
We belong to the world. We are its perpetual children.
We can be so consumed with helping and making change
— so focused on nurturing ideas and movements—
that we forget about our own friends, family, and lovers.
We think about relationships rationally.
Feelings must submit to reason or be ignored.
Our sympathies lie with the ideas.
We ask others to explain why they feel that way.
In this way, we can appear to be cold and distant.
We show more care and concern about Big Ideas publicly,
while failing to show the same care and concern one-on-one.
We can lecture about the nature of love but miss out on loving.
Our close friends and family may feel neglected.
We mean well. But we can be mean.
We want to be good. Righteous even.
We mistake the Common Good for personal goodness.
Ours is the sign of genius and visionary and raving lunatic.
We are often misunderstood in our lifetimes —
but always proven right in time— at least with regard to our ideas.
We have a very special destiny that is often wasted or lost.
When we resist making the road by walking,
all Hell breaks loose inside us and all around.
And when we follow our beacon on the horizon,
Heaven opens up to us and everything aligns.
About the Artist
DA Denckla is an artist, curator, and professor of Creative Writing at Los Angeles Film School. His work champions lost causes, forgotten legacies, and quixotic proto-romanticism. His work plays with text, sound, and image. Founder, curator, and editor @PraxinoscopeX . Poems forthcoming: Hot Pink (2022); Iowa Review (2022); Mudfish (2023). A grown-up D.C. emo-punk, peacenik, treehugger. He has haltingly returned to a Life in the Ars Poetica after a painfully flawed multi-decade campaign to achieve professional “suckcess” —having hoped, co-dependently, to please his Hebrew ancestors. Now, he studies Torah instead. And, he lives with his partner and their many plants in a railroad flat carved into a Victorian-era hospital in Los Angeles, CA, where he waits patiently for the End of the World while watching the sun set over electric skyscrapers. Insta: @derekdenckla
Curator’s Note
This poem was originally performed live for Praxinoscope: Signs of the Zodiac at 1642 Bar, Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles California on June 12, 2022.
PeformX Documents No. 2 containing printed documentation of texts drawn from this performance will be available for purchase September 2022.
Note: PerformX Documents are Free for Subscribers!
Production Notes
This podcast and performance series is hosted by Derek Denckla.
Sound was produced by John Dawson, Magnetic South Studios, ind him @magneticsouthrecordings and listen to his other projects at magneticsouth.bandcamp.com.
Our theme music “Alien Desert” was composed by Cato Gilmour @cato_gilmour.
Still images are the work of Derek Denckla, except where otherwise noted.
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