Text for Constance: Key to a state of emergency-as performed May 2nd, 2009

 

Lately I feel as though we are in a constant state of emergency. Travel, finances, trust, safety, history.  It’ as though we’re on a constant quest to find that one particular key in the jumble that has been collected and set aside for a later date or time.  And the time is now, so we fumble to find our keys, only to find them unmarked, uncertain, or lost

 

Keys: The last bastion of  safety in a carved form that is still as common as communication. A key allows entrance into protected spaces. It is used to add human protection for places of concern. We twist them and turn them, to know that we are safe and have created safety for the space we have left. Keys are carried on belts, chains, in purses, pockets, and forgotten until needed. In a state of emergency, they can be positioned between the fingers as brass knuckles that you hope to never use. Keys represent security. They are as multi-faceted as the dips, grooves and divets that define them.

 

Keys also represent trust and responsibility. No matter where or how I’ve wandered, I realized that I accrued a collection of keys. How do you dispose of them when they are done? Businesses once worked for, friends emergency keys who later moved, exes, school restrooms-they all add up. They all add definition, and can’t be tossed away without some sense of discomfort. They deserve suspension.

 

There are keys to getting to know someone.

Keys to getting to know yourself

The first key is as simple and unmistakable as your first home.

 

My first home, we were taught in school of captain Brady

And his brave leap across a great gorge

In a state of emergency

To escape those who knew the land, having lived there for years.

Native Americans who pursued him along the river

Captain Brady hid in this river, and breathed through a reed

That I’ve never seen growing

But it’s history, right?

It’s  what we were taught

We took field trips to visit burial mounds

In Towners Woods

Above Lake Pippen

Where the Hopewells laid their bodies to rest.

There were mysteries in those woods

And talks of hauntings

rituals

Pranks

At the site where our senior and prom pictures were taken

Grins frozen in time

And a Baptist church at the base of the hills

Where they sent their kids to abstinence camp

And consequently learned about sex

And none of it made any sense

How it all worked together.

It just did. It just was.

We joked about the river that ran through our town

The same in which Captain Brady hid

And the Hopewell’s fished, hunted, traveled and rested

And the industrial waste from another place that caused it to famously burn.

All of this pales in the history in May

39 years ago today.

When a state of emergency was declared

And Rhodes, a governor, called in the National guard

To silence the response to a war that had raged for far too long

Too far away

It seemed so unfamiliar then

To protect a town from its own.

A week ago from today

The SWAT team was called into my hometown

What Ive heard is that is was to end a party in the streets

And the panic that ensued

With burning couches and drunken angry mobs

throwing stones and empty bottles

Receiving pepper spray and battalian rounds.

Seems so unfamiliar?

An absurd re-enactment

To make national news and national play.

Because this place was once

a site of protest and confusion.

On the fourth day in May, just before noon

Escalating frustration

That was disregarded until it  became a mistake

Friendly fire

Victims in transition

An example turned answer

A new definition for a known space

Divets, painfully carved curves.

Recognized as an identity

To deciding the next course

Of protection and safety.

39 years ago today, a state of emergency was declared.

Two days later, lives were lost.

And a town became notorious.

It was given a new key.

A new tone.

One that continually dangles and unlocks

Pursuit, anger, comfort and tragedy

Hauntings

Rituals

pranks

 

Those of us who grew up in this city

Take our keys seriously

And remember them well

With protection and responsibility

As guardians to the next step

Unlocking the next new thing

That keeps us in the game.

 

I’ll be here on Monday, just before noon

Searching for the key to  quell the state of emergency that colors

Our constant orange alert

And to honor those who have carved the dips, grooves and divets

That unlock the next twist we choose to turn.