Noah Mickens

Actionism

Marketing Executive by day, Noise Maven by night

Radon, 2Gyrlz, 36 Invisibles, Cicuri Curajul, Nequaquam Vacuum, Clan of the Bleeding Eye

experimental music, performance art, noise, butoh, fencing, suits, Tres Flores

William Vollman, Umberto Eco, William S. Burroughs, Neal Gaiman, Hunter S. Thompson, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Elliot, Richard Brautigan, Frank Miller, Hubert Selby Jr.

Prospero's Books, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Gummo, The Limey, Demon Warp, Once Upon A Time in the West, Hour of the Wolf, Return of the Five Deadly Venoms, The Lovers on the Bridge, anything with zombies

Degenerate Art Ensemble, Soriah, Xiu Xiu, Wu Tang Clan, Gravediggaz, Prince, TFUL-282, The Dead Science, Sun City Girls, Naked City, Sikhara, Sardonik Grin, Neutral Milk Hotel, Anticon, Dahlia, Latyrx, Butthole Surfers, The Lawn, The Birthday Party, etc.

I don't suppose I have any. Twin Peaks? The Simpsons?

I don't "hang out" - I get shit done.
I don't "decide" - I do shit now.
I don't "prepare" - I put shit out.

After all, there is so very, very much to do. For myself, I have selected a manageable sample of these tasks focused upon my own strengths and inclinations: playing unusual music (principally with post-asiatic scrap mob Nequaquam Vacuum, but also with post-classical trance trio Autism, post-rock all-stars The Steve MacKay Ensemble, post-improvisational orchestra The Moe!kestra!, post-butoh performance company P.A.N., and many other projects most readily definied by their furtherance of an existing genre of music); organizing shows in Portland and abroad via 2Gyrlz Performative Arts (we do the EnterActive Language Festival and 2Gyrlz Quarterly), the international Radon collective (we're mostly a record label and organizer of tours), and my own 36 Invisibles concert series (formerly at The Jasmine Tree, now relocated to Holocene); and serving as the ringmaster/master of ceremonies/producer for shows from nightmare cabaret Societas Insomnia to the annual semi-pornographic Boobie Auction.

When I'm not doing any of these things, I like to fence, and talk, and listen, and dance, and write, and stuff bottles full of unexpected things, and smoke very much the sorts of things you would expect.

Before this, I was a broke-ass single father of two; and before that, I was a harried family man with a lucrative day job; and before that, I was a speed-crazed criminal who sang for a rock band; and before that, I was a confused young man who liked to fence and go to college and work at the Rennaissance Faire; and before that, I was a 250-pound class clown who wrote short stories and destroyed lots of property; and before that, I was a young anarchist punk rock kid who spent some time homeless and some more time institutionalized and some more time fighting in the street for hopeless political causes; and before that I was a psychotic little boy who wet his bed.

"Being in love unloved is not unlike rowing in a glass-bottomed boat, which allows you to see both the shimmering green light of the pond and the muck at the bottom; unimpeded in your love by her virtues and vices (since she is indifferent to you), you proceed across the surface of your beloved, leaving behind you the shortest-lived ripples imaginable; and flowers and pine-boughs dance upon the breezy bank. You are alone. - How much more difficult it is, unloving, to have her in love with you. The boat weighs on you and exposes to her gaze your private depths, until there is nothing for you to do but work in concert with the next available storm to capsize her. When, on the other hand, you love her and she loves you, in your desperation to reach each other you will forget who is in the boat and who is in the water, and one or the other of you will break through into the green light and SEE EVERYTHING with rapturous drowning eyes before tumbling slowly down into the muck."