Another Day, Another Dolor

Michael Andre sits at a table in Gallery-in-a-Field in Brandon, Vermont. The sounds of his opera Orfreo, with music by Elodie Lauten, come to a close. He reads a few Scenarios from the Richard Kostelanetz anthology and an article on Ray Johnson, the hero of his opera. Then, without invitation, Doctor David McPherson, the Canadian psychiatrist and radio personality, formally introduces Andre to the rest of the audience. Andre reads in the libretto to his new opera, How I Blew Up the World. McPherson interrupts and Andre takes a fork from his pocket and puts it on the table. Andre reads a few poems, and then, using as text a Douglas Messerli anthology, Andre reads a long story about drugs, Plato’s retreat and a confrontation in Bellevue between a poet and a psychiatrist, in which the poet triumphs by jabbing the psychiatrist with a fork. McPherson then diagnoses the poet's reading as excessively morbid. Finally Andre lunges at McPherson with The Fork.

1 October 2005