Sex! Palestine! America! Responsibility?

“Are you trying to be some, like, non-Israeli Good Guy Sex Angel?”
“Maybe” She laughed.

This episode contains a narrative... and a narrative about that narrative! Thanks so much to Philadelphia art series NIGHT KITCHEN and its December 5th, 2015 show entitled BYO {[BE-YOUR-OWN]} MUSE, at which this episode was performed. Thusly, this episode problematizes the concept of the Muse in terms of activism and coping mechanisms: the function of romanticism and the uses of Others — “Don’t find yourself in Others—using them for yourself.”

This meta-meta-meta episode features the words of Edward Said, the emotion of guilt, the sensation of lust, amends?, and the wildest sex muse romance mirror of an American Jew I ever met this summer in Palestine.

This episode asks: What are muses? (crushes?) What is sex? (symbol?) What is Palestine? (…. NOT YOUR STORY, AMERICAN ACTIVIST<— I tell myself) How do our dreams — fantasies of the feminine, “freedom” via homogeneity and exclusion, privilege-laden 19-century-style travel-adventure-safaris — interact with realities? And do they create space for empathy, or domination?—“Can you even be an activist without romanticizing your cause?”

Also: Amazing audience reactions! (gasps! vocal equivalents of head slaps!) Poetical similarities between Zionists and Anti-Zionists; one of our American characters confusing Israel and adolescence, Palestine and America; solidarity sex…. and oppressors believing they’re oppressed.

I hear someone stormed out of this performance around the time I started talking about Jews. Success!

This episode is probably primarily geared towards AMERICAN ACTIVISTS and our conservative/liberal alter egos. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH US, us? (hello to all us Americans shaking our heads in shame forever)

Thanks so much to Jenna Spitz, NIGHT KITCHEN, Beaumont Wherehouse, Emily Bate, Never Forget Radio and our other secret editor who is nameless, faceless and shapeless.

Photo by Jenna Spitz