Excerpt from THE POWER OF THEN, by Robert Metrick and John Ploof, performed as a work-in-progress at the Chicago Cultural Center (2007). Featuring Elisabeth Blair (lead vocalist), Wendy Goldman Rohm, Steve Jones, Carol McCurdy, Matthew Owens, Janet Schmid. Video documentation/editing by Lady Lens Productions "I am condemned to roam the earth, perpendicularly. Roaming through each day in an almost willful daze. Is that not obvious to all but the most erstwhile observers? Clearly, very clearly, there’s a hole in the core where the synapses would connect… Some men might call it an absence of inner strength. Other men may call it a fluctuation in the variable interest rate… Tax, licenses and restrictions might apply. But I am forever shocked that this hole has often been referred to as intelligence…. When I awakened this morning for the 19th time in 9 hours and forced myself out of bed at 10:07 a.m., the dimensionless white sky over Lake Michigan offered the inevitable forecast and I was quickly mesmerized into submission…a dimensionless day in a dimensionless life… one could wait 17 more days and 16 more nights for something to happen and they would pass just as ineffectually… Some men might say that feeling follows action, but if all of one’s actions are aimed at inaction… does unfeeling follow inaction? One might do well to immerse oneself in action… As I have been immersed in pummeling myself. For this inopportune habit of making all of the wrong decisions all of the time… For saying or hearing things in ways that are not meant to be said or heard… For leading a life hellbent on perpetuating diversion, Hellbent on alleviating my own suffering… all of the time… for committing heinous acts of infantilism… for practicing diversionary tactics. For singing out of tune… For living, breathing, aging… For expanding and contracting… Forever pummeling myself… For playing the outcast, the laggard, the ne’er-do-well. The misfit, the miscreant, the matriculator. For tripping the light fantastic. And always at the most inopportune moments… For asking too many questions such as, “Is this a dagger which I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppress-ed brain” from which I am pummeling myself… For scratching my head with one hand while holding my chin with the other hand… For casting my shadow upon the earth wherever and whenever I shall roam. 24/7. It’s a grueling, grinding, taxing regimen, demanding the utmost vigilance… and I am left with precious little time, space or energy for very much else, except for these few thoughts I have for you."