Animals
Rosie
Rosie (1990-2006)
Pigs
This is a pig I met in New Hampshire. Actually there were a bunch and they were charging us with glee but there was fence and it was electrified so then there was another sound. Also on the recording (TK) you will hear the sound of me when I encountered the electrified fence. I learned that pigs are at least as smart as dogs and meeting these guys contributed to my desire to no longer eat bacon. Look into those eyes. You're eating him.
Ernie
Ernie was a street cat in San Diego. Pretty & young and wasn't going
to make it because he had white stuff pouring out of his eyes. I
didn't mean to take him in - I was just helping him, getting him fixed
or something but the vets wanted to get rid of the upper
respitory infection and check for feline leukemia and somewhere
in there I named him Ernie and he became mine. We lived together for
about 4 years. We mourned Rosie together. But he always needed to go
out and stay out for long stretches and freely kill other creatures. I
was okay with that but it was not happening in New York. When spring
came this year he began to cry and wouldn't not stop. He wanted out.
On the way back to New York from San Diego in 2008, we stopped in El Paso and stayed w the
Byrds. Lee Byrd said are you sure Ernie doesn't want to stay. Their
house looked like mine in San Diego. I felt he probably did want to
stay and I wanted him with me in New York so we kept driving. In June
we flew to El Paso for Ernie to spend the summer and now it looks like
he is going to stay and Lee says he is out fighting and killing and is
much loved in their house. It's a strange letting go for me but I know
that Ernie is in his climate.
Chickens
Talking with ChickensI made a film a few years ago that opens with me talking with some rabbits in Ireland. It sounds pretty similar to this one about which I’m told it sounds like I’m trying to have sex with the chickens. I’m not. If one spent a lot of time with animals and I have only spent a lot of time with two animals, a dog and cat, one might begin to speak in a particular way with each animal. What’s going on here I think is my awe. I don’t have a language for awe except a kind of encouragement. I want them to keep being chickens. I myself have nothing to do, no way to talk to them and my helplessness about continuing to be Eileen somehow turns into this useless encouragement. It makes me wonder about language – what good is it finally if in the face of one’s own awe one descends to this hapless tool that seals me into a laughable seduction in the name of meeting them. With chickens there’s a moment when they gather around, very quickly, chickens feel like attention itself but it morphs rapidly into a hungry kind of chickenness, punching at the ground to extract its goods.