Adam Fieled (editor, Philadelphia, USA): from PICC (A Poet in Center City) "#34"
Not all of the Highwire Free School shows were big ones. We would do series of modest shows between the larger shows. The Bats were an all-girl band we wanted to book, so we did. John and I did a bunch of schmooze routines with them, at Tritone and elsewhere, and John and I were both in love with Tobi Simon, an old friend of Trish’s and mine who played keyboards (and also painted). Tobi was tiny, an elf, with exquisite bone-structure in her face, chestnut hair, and bright blue eyes. Of the Bats, she was the most natural as a Free School person. I would later ascertain that by this time, Tobi was living a day-to-day life not unlike Christopher’s. The paintings she was producing, a median blend of French Neo-Classical influence picked up at PAFA and queer girl East Coast-ism, were so powerfully formal and thematically expressive at the same time that I became amazed she could leave her flat at all without barfing. The irony was that the Bats were not unsuccessful— they were in the Philly press semi-constantly, with Tobi prominently featured, cheekbones and all. The scenesters who knew her as a rock star had no idea she even painted. And while she wasn’t just what I would call a bisexual tart, her intense, full-lipped, fine-featured magnetism was registered by all. By this time, we had a new system going at the Highwire, by which the factory room and the main space would be used simultaneously. The night the Bats played, we had poets reading on a raised dais in the factory room. The factory room had high ceilings, but was darker, danker, and more private than the main space— a perfect place to smoke up or hook up. The poets were Temple kids, and one stuck out for us immediately, especially to John; a buxom, olive-skinned Latino named Lena. If I sensed that I would beat John to Tobi, he would certainly beat me to Lena, who liked his looseness over my rigor. Christopher and I were attempting to perfect a new way of combining poetry with visual imagery; he projected images on a screen behind me as I read that night. Frankly, we were both bored with dry poetry readings (no matter how attractive the participants), and this was our way of extending their range. This was, as was admittedly another yawn for both of us, another layaway plan gambit— the idea that eventually other artists would show up, on the East Coast or wherever, and be influenced to try what we’d tried, to experiment in the ways that we were experimenting. Nobody in art can really condone the Layaway Plan patrol we’re all intermittently part of, but it’s a fact of cultural life. Deal with it. Headed towards 2005, John’s characteristic looseness was the keynote mood. Even if it meant that Christopher and I had to up the ante to six drinks per night out.
© Adam Fieled 2012-2023
