Hidden treasures discovered while digging through Frank Moore's huge archives.

Author: mikeelabash (page 2 of 28)

NONI DOES EXIST!

Frank wrote this poem about Noni Howard for the event, Voices From The Underground, which featured contributors to his zine, THE CHEROTIC (r)EVOLUTIONARY:

Voices From The Underground

Friday, June 27, 1997 7:30 p.m. at Modern Times at 968 Valencia Street in San Francisco, California.

THE CHEROTIC (r)EVOLUTIONARY, a zine of all possibilities, presents VOICES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, an evening of readings and music by a wide range of agents of cultural subversion … featuring Dorothy Jesse Beagle, Barbara Golden, Noni Howard, Jack & Adelle Foley, K. Atchley, Frank Moore … plus special surprise guests. If that is not enough, everyone will get an autographed xeroxed piece of art by LaBash!

NONI DOES EXIST!

By FRANK MOORE,
June 23, 1997

Everybody here has secret identities
of superheros terrorists criminals artists.
Everybody here is in disguise.
Everybody here is intimate friends of the well-known.
Everybody here has a secret cave of great influence.
But nobody ever expects/suspects.
We are that good!

But there is a legion, a myth, an old wife’s tale…
Noni.
If you travel deep into the underground,
you will come to the cross roads between pleasure and torture.
Here you’ll find Noni,
the taboo queen.
Gravel voice of hard drink
that can fray your skin off
layer by layer
with beautiful sandpaper words
which give you orgasms of pleasure
while making you bleed.
They say she is a nightmare creature
that can rip your balls off to your cries of delight,
rip them so gently.

They say she has unspeakable secrets 
and slaves of both sexes and even satan
herself bows down to Noni!

And they say this wild creature Noni comes out
of her dungeon cave into normalcy to walk among us
in disguise.

I never listen to what they say.
But I believe,
hope,
that Noni does exist…
nightmare risk taboo queen.
I’m searching for her…you, Noni!


Then Noni wrote this poem in 2001 for Frank:

FRANK DOES EXIST
For Frank Moore

dressed in the colours of the earth
your mind swells my imagination/

Prophet, Poet, Producer
of the blossoming flowers
of our eternal youth

you are there
to celebrate every
awakening.

such joy that we live for !

to see every moment
bend, twist, explode
into EONS of light

your thought makes
it all happen.

You are the thought
and the happening
at once.

you

are there

already.

Noni Howard
3/23/01
For Frank Moore

CONVERSATIONS

We digitized some old tapes of interviews that Frank did for the show “Conversations” on luver.com and added them to The Shaman’s Den Archives page: https://eroplay.com/underground/shamansden.html

Dr. Robert Zeiger
An interview by Frank Moore of Dr. Robert Zeiger, the first non-Chinese acupuncturist in the United States. Recorded February 11, 1999.
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/dr-robert-zeiger-02-11-1999

Alan Reade
This interview inspired the poem “Art is a Bitch”. Recorded March 10, 1999.
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/alan-reade-03-10-1999

Joe Williams aka Radman
Worked closely with Stephen Dunifer and Free Radio Berkeley in the manufacture and propagation of low power FM transmitters. Recorded March 15, 1999.
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/joe-williams-radman-03-15-1999

Russ Kick
Publisher of Psychotropedia: A Guide to Publications on the Periphery, 1998. Recorded March 29, 1999.
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/russ-kick-03-29-1999

The Rise and Fall of KPFA
with Bill Mandel and Joe Williams aka Radman. Recorded May 26, 1999.
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/rise-and-fall-of-kpfa-05-26-1999

Kiilu Nyasha
Kiilu Nyasha is a revolutionary journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party. Recorded August 9, 1999.
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/kiilu-nyasha-08-09-1999

Kat Sunlove
Kat Sunlove, activist, publisher of Spectator magazine, (and more!) interviewed by Frank Moore. Recorded October 1999.
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/kat-sunlove-10-12-1999

Conversation Between Two Muckrakers
Paul Krassner Interviewed by Frank Moore
Recorded April 30, 1994, Berkeley, California
Transcript: https://www.eroplay.com/krassner.html
Listen on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/paul-krassner-04-30-1994

Frank and Dr. Robert Zeiger, February 11, 1999.
Frank and Russ Kick, March 29, 1999.
Bill Mandel in our living room, 1999.
Frank and Kiilu Nyasha, August 9, 1999.
Frank and Paul Krassner, April 30, 1994.

Our History in Flier Binders

We have finished scanning all of the posters and fliers in our “fliers binders” and added them to the website! They can be found in The Shaman’s Cave section of eroplay.com.

Here are the links to each binder:

FLIERS etc to end of 1991:
https://eroplay.com/Cave/poster-binders/fliers-to-end-of-1991.pdf

FLIERS 1992-2006:
https://eroplay.com/Cave/poster-binders/fliers-1992-2006.pdf

FLIERS 2007-:
https://eroplay.com/Cave/poster-binders/fliers-2007-.pdf

There is a lot of history in these binders!

Frank was part of many different subcultures … and we documented everything!

Here are some of those subcultures that appear in these binders:

  • The Art World … through his painting, performance art and writings in art journals
  • The Bay Area punk music scene … From The Outrageous Beauty Revue to The Cherotic All-Stars … plus Frank ran an all-ages music club in Berkeley
  • The Bay Area Poetry scene
  • Internet radio, live video, Pirate Radio and podcasts … before there were podcasts there was luver.com … Frank was also one of the first artists to use streaming video on the internet. We have tons of audio cassette tapes and CDs of shows from DJs all over the world, including Pirate Radio shows from around the US.
  • Public Access Television … Frank’s show, “Unlimited Possibilities”, still airs on Berkeley’s public access TV channel four times each week!
  • The Non-GMO Project … Frank was involved at the start of the Non-GMO Project through one of his students at our local grocery store. Mikee designed the first Non-GMO Project website.

Be a part of uncovering these hidden gems! Donations are welcome: https://inter-relations.com/donate.html

Here is a tiny selection of fliers:

Karen Finley Letter

We never got the gig ….


July 8, 87

Dear New Langton Arts,

          Frank Moore asked me to write a recommendation for him to you in helping in his selection at N.L.A. It is my pleasure to do so.

I deeply recommend Frank Moore’s work. Why?

  1. He breaks the current, popular acceptances of time length for performance art.
  2. Through his encounters, makes the audience, participants realize that touching nonsexually is still taboo in our cool, knowing 1987.
  3. Puts humour in place of pity for acknowledging his handicap. And that our handicap (The audience’s) is our preconceived notion to the limits of his world.
  4. His spirit and positiveness of not being a victim to his condition is a precious philosophy to make art by.

After seeing Frank at Franklin Furnace I felt uncomfortable, ill at ease, & oh no, no touchee feelie for me – Wow, I can’t give a complement like that to many artists!

I hope you find a way to present Frank Moore’s work.

Best, Karen Finley

Nudity, A Tool of Shamanism

By Frank Moore, Saturday, August 21, 1999. Published by Lucid Moon #36, August 1999.


For most of my life, I was searching for a method to work with people in an intense, direct way. Ever since college days, I had been writing nonsense scripts dealing with nudity and non-sexual eroticism. Also during my college days, I read such books as Toward a Poor Theatre and The Theatre and its Double. But it was not until I and my communal family took a very intense film-making course in Santa Fe in 1972 that I was able to put my weird ideas into performance.

We made films of rolling nude down a hill, smearing bodies with baby food, nursing by a sexy woman. But when the film course was over, I did not have money to make films. I could not see putting my energy into getting money to make films, could not see putting up with the compromises and outside control involved in an artistic context requiring big bucks. For me, the act of breaking a taboo is what is magical, what effects change…not someone seeing it in a film.

This not having money, this not wanting to be controlled and limited by money, was what sealed me into a performance life.

So I started looking for a way to work with people. I wanted to see people nude, and touch them, and to create an intensity between us.

I had been painting oils for years, painting with a brush strapped to my forehead, painting nudes from magazine photos. One day, a rich woman asked me to paint a nude of her. My wife set me and my paints up in the fancy living room as the woman undressed. On that day I realized how art can give people permission to do what normally is forbidden. It gives a frame that switches realities from the narrow normal reality to the freeing altered reality of controlled folly. If you go up to a stranger on the street and ask him to show his body to you, you will be lucky if he just walks away and does not hit you. But if you sincerely (and sincerity is a key) ask him to model for a painting or be in a video that involves nudity, there is a high chance he will do it because you are offering him a key to a new, different, and temporary reality. When I go up to a person on a street and ask him to be in some project which may contain some nudity and physical play, the nudity and physical play as an idea in this context is a great tool to get under the polite chatter surface to the more meaningful stuff — which is, after all, the aim of the piece.

People always say they like the work because it is strong, but I should get over my obsession with sex and nudity, and get on to more important issues; I should not get “stuck” in one vision. What they do not realize is what they like about the work, the strength, comes from being committed to a single vision, no matter what the current trends and fashions are. I cannot imagine more important issues than sex and freedom symbolized by nudity. But these are not my ultimate focus. Sex and nudity are powerful digging tools to reach the intimate community. By limiting the tools of art, art itself is limited. And a part of my job both as an artist and as a shaman is to fight such limitations.

I have debated with myself about stopping resisting the label SEXUAL. By insisting what I am doing is not sexual, I am opening myself up to people questioning my honesty and integrity. If I accept the sexual label, people would just have to decide whether or not they like sex in art — decide whether it is art or not. That would be the depth of the questioning. They may feel uncomfortable seeing sex as art — but that uncomfortableness would be just from breaking the taboo of sex — which would not be that big of a deal. What I am doing is taking nudity and acts that are usually considered sexual and giving them a new, non-sexual context. That creates a tension, a conflict, an examining, a leap into something new. That is what I am after. This leap into newness is why people who are normally comfortable with casual nudity and casual sex sometimes get very uncomfortable with the nudity and erotic play in my work. By taking “sexual” acts and sincerely putting them into a different context, it creates another reality, another way of relating. It also creates conflict with the normal reality — and that conflict may change, in an underground sort of way, the normal reality. I think art — or at least this kind of art — should create conflict and change. And I like relating with people in the “unnormal” way in this different reality. This is why I do performance.

And besides…I like nudity and erotic play! So let’s take off our clothes and play!

“The Outrageous Road Show”, George Orwell Memorial Art Space, Los Angeles, 1984. Photo by Linda Mac.

From the book, “Frankly Speaking: A Collection of Essays, Writings & Rants” by Frank Moore, published by Inter-Relations in 2014.


DREAM PERFORMANCE

A LECTURE BY FRANK MOORE

GIVEN TO TONY LABAT’S PERFORMANCE CLASS
SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE
TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 1986

Copyright 1986


DREAM PERFORMANCE

I am here, of course, to talk about myself and my art. Like most artists, I love to talk about myself. But I am also here to encourage at least some of you to focus your art careers on doing live avant-garde performance. I have selfish reasons for this.

I think performance is being ruined by trying to package it as entertainment, off-beat cabaret. Some performance is entertaining. Some performance is cabaret. That is great. But when you try to package performance into a neat cabaret format, as I think is the trend, to make performance acceptable and profitable, it becomes a hip form of nightclub watching or groovy T.V. watching. If you limit performance in time and space for acceptability, it stops being performance.

I like doing cabaret and video. They are great mediums in themselves. But when I am doing cabaret or video, I am always aware of the limitations built into the format. When someone watches a video, he knows that he will remain passively watching from the outside: the video will not literally pop out into his reality, or physically drag him into the T.V. When someone goes to a cabaret, he knows there are certain limits involved such as each act must end for another to begin. But in performance, anything is possible. A performance can last for a minute or it can last for days. Performance can start in one space but then move to another. Performance can be storytelling, it can be a guy threatening you with a baseball bat, it can be a guy hanging by his skin, or throwing food, or anything. In performance all things are possible. And that is what gives you an extra edge to create dreams. I have talked to artists like Paul McCarthy, Linda Burnham, Eleanor Anton, Sharon Grace, and Steve Parr about what seems like the decline of truly avant-garde live performance. Many of the old guard like Paul, Chris Burdon, Alan Kaprow, and Linda Burnham have stopped doing live performance. Moreover, many young artists, like you, who would have focused on hard-core live art, are being seduced away by video and cabaret packaging. I have a selfish motive for wanting more daring live performers … I have realized my own work has been limited by the general lack of an avant-garde live performance community that is focused on subversion, on magic, on altering reality … and that is not afraid of combining our individual arts together.

So I am focusing on trying to encourage this kind of performance. I am holding auditions for The Edge, my performance group that is aimed at going over the edge, pushing and breaking limits through live pieces … pieces that cannot be done in cabarets or on videos because cabarets and videos have built-in limits that the audience can hold onto. Starting in the summer at U.C.B., we are holding at U.C.B. a bi-monthly “Performance Lab” where artists can come and basically jam with one another. If you are interested in The Edge, see me afterwards.

Performance, like any avant-garde art, is the way society dreams; it is the way society expands its freedom explores the forbidden in safety, to loosen up. Society needs its dream art, just as an individual needs to dream or go insane. Our moral majority society bent on going backwards into the violent blank rigidity of a censored mind, needs taboo-breaking dreams to get back to freedom. Performance is perfectly suited for this dream role. I have always wanted to bring dreams into reality.

I always have been lucky. I have a body that is ideal for a performance artist. And I have always wanted to be a performer. When I was a kid, my younger brother used to get mad when people looked at me when he pushed me to the movies or to the teen club. He cried. But I liked people looking at me. That is what I mean by I am lucky. I am lucky I am an exhibitionist in this body. One time, I was working out on the jungle gym outside of our house … a kid came by and asked if I was a monster. I just roared like a monster. It was fun.

In the mid-60’s, I was a radical in high school and college. But until the second year of college, I was pretty much isolated. So I read everything I could get my hands on. I started reading French Surrealist novels and plays. I tried my hand at stream of bullshit bad poetry. Definitely not like Howl or Naked Lunch or Bob Dylan. I read about the hippies in S.F. … with Happenings with nude bodies in body paint and lightshows like they showed in Playboy. [Years later, the people who put on those Happenings interviewed me.] But all I had was my fantasies. What if somebody really could do what happened in The Magus or Steppenwolf … or live like Huxley’s Island! I wished I could be a hip artist living in S.F. in a commune.

I read L. Halprin’s book about his wife, Ann … how she scored dances and other Happenings. It sounded great. But I didn’t think I could get people to let me direct them. I hung out with an arty-poetry-political tiny group … I wrote. I sang on my bed to the radio and imagined I was the lead singer of the band, The Blue Unicorn. Except for some anti-war demos, my next performance was trying to get the OK at U.C. at San Bernardino to produce my all-nude play on campus. To my surprise, the college said yes. But I couldn’t get actors. I wasn’t really into sex itself in my art [I didn’t see it as art at the time], I just wanted to see nude bodies on stage … not sneak it in a love scene … and see them do things like paint their bodies with baby food … I learned it can be hard to get people for weird things.

I dropped out of college and went to Santa Fe to be a hippy … counseled in crisis centers … grooved out … read old books on the occult and wrote poetry and underground cultural columns as The Unicorn. I lived with an older woman, Louise, a hippy son-mother relationship, who encouraged me to see my paintings as art. But I saw them as playing around. I still do.

Louise also started making me see my body as a tool. She said I could get away with things that others couldn’t.

I may as well start talking about this now. I can stare at people, laugh at them, touch their asses on the street … because they don’t think I understand. I can park myself next to them and observe them close-up without them realizing or changing. That is being so visible that it creates invisibility. I used that one when I had my mom leave me for an hour or two on a sidewalk so I could watch people.

But Louise pointed out other advantages of my body. People project onto me certain mystical powers … like seeing through their fronts to their real selves … seeing the past and the future … and what they should do. They are reacting to some symbol of deformed medicine man. They use me as a medium for getting through to other dimensions. It had little to do with me at this time. Because of the slowness of my communication board, they were forced to slow down. They could project whatever they wanted, misread me when it fit them. I was an object as a symbol. And because they gave me power as a symbol, they were afraid of me … according to Louise. At this point, I didn’t fully believe this. But I always have known I didn’t want to be in a normal body.

Years later, when I was going to S.F.A.I., Doug Hall told me by body gave me a tool that other artists spend years to create.

In 1972, I just had finished taking a very intensive film making course in Santa Fe. I had  no money to make real films. So I started looking for a way to work with people. I wanted to see people nude, and touch them, and to create an intensity between us.

Painting was the first attempt. I used to sell papers on a corner to find people to paint. But once the person was posed, the situation was still, not moving.

So I did what I called Nonfilms … for which I asked people I met when I was selling newspapers to act out intense erotic scenes with me. These were the closest in my pieces to sexual rather than erotic. Because of these scenes, the people started talking about their lives during these sessions and said it helped their other relationships. Not one person minded that there was no film.

But I was not satisfied with these Nonfilms because they were brief relationships that did not go anywhere. What I wanted to do was create intimacy – that is, a situation in which anything is permissible, where people feel that secure. I didn’t want to connect this intimacy with romance or sex because that would set limits. But that “anything is permissible” did mean a wide open erotic freedom.

So I started looking for some other way to work with people. I tried to cast a play, but I couldn’t find enough people. I started thinking of an intimate theatre where the line between audience and actors would be erased. I wrote a paper, The Conman’s Human Theatre, about how if that line was erased, it would place much more responsibility on the actors. They would have to dare to trick the audience into the intense magical state.

I divided my work … the word “work” is weird … it is like playing … into two parts. The first part is played in “real life” … for instance, I go up to a person on the street and ask him to be in some project which may contain some nudity and physical play. The nudity and physical play as an idea in this context is a great tool to get under the polite chatter surface to the more meaningful things, and often more intimate, more personal stuff … which is after all the aim of the piece. I can see this kind of piece lasting anywhere from a few seconds to several hours.

The second part is a piece in a controlled space such as my studio in which there is a form going on, giving the person a reason to be there with me.

This kind of theatre … I called it theatre because I hadn’t heard of performance art … this kind of theatre was different than normal theatre. In this kind, there is no real script. Even if you have a script, it really is a prop. The real course of action is shaped by the performer so the flow of the piece will go forward and deeper.

What is important is what happens between the performer … that’s me … and my audience, how I change them and how they change me, that magical state in which we interact with each other. I, as the performer, must create around the people, by playing for and to them, by letting the performance take me over and guide me … even when it looks like the other people are doing all of the action. The ultimate goal in my performance is to create a reality, not an illusion, of the performance which I and the audience are in … even if I have to use illusions to get to this reality.

This raised when I was writing the paper the question of manipulation. Almost anytime you perform to an audience, you manipulate the audience. Let’s get beyond the negative connotation of the word “manipulate.” People go to the theatre, movies, concerts, dance companies, etc. to have their emotions manipulated. They come into the performance area with a willingness to be manipulated by the artists within certain limits. But in my performances, the ones which are not divided from the rest of life by a theatre or a stage, there is no way to tell the person he is entering a performance. “What the hell are you talking about!?!?” and even when I have a formal structure, a theatre space, and a set time ending … what is really going on is not what is said to be happening. Also it is a reality that is hopefully being created … people will be affected, infected and effected by this reality.

My piece, Gestures, is a good example of this. The gestures are decoys for their minds. What really sucks them into a new reality of intimacy is the slowness and the gentleness of the rituals.

I knew this was radically different from normal theatre.

It was rooted in the primitive and mystical ceremonies of initiation which I had read about years before. The goal was to call the magic state from the people. The shamans knew how to do this … they drew their audience into a feeling of unity. I wanted to do that. Their audience knew they were participating in real events. I put this to a test in my 48-hours pieces in which I created an altered reality around the one-person audience.

I was tired of going to movies and plays which said being happy and having fun is impossible … or at least very hard. I wanted to do a Magus or a Steppenwolf, and to pull that off, I had to trust myself, my motives, and the rightness of my performances. This is idealistic performance … there is a strong case against this kind of performance ultimately working. But I have made my choice … like for me, if I admit idealistic performance is doomed, I would sit in my recliner and watch I Love Lucy!

Anyway, once the self-trust is in place, the next issue was vulnerability. Like the performer I have to be vulnerable … even in pieces where it appears I am totally in control and have complete power. Without this self-trust and vulnerability, what I am trying to do would fall flat.

This is the difference between theatre and performance art. In regular theatre, you can climb up onto the altar of the stage [even when the stage is a rug or other defined area], and you don’t have to interact with your audience, you are cut off from them. You don’t relate to them directly … which is the main goal of my performances. In theatre, what also blocks the magic that I am after is the system of rules of aesthetics.

The theatre paints pictures of “realities”, both inner and outer realities. The audience just watches from the outside, watching a moving picture created by actors. The audience suspends disbelief, sits, and watches with their minds. The actors act. Everybody is comfortable and safe. Everyone has defined roles … and when the audience left the theatre, they knew it had been just pretend. Actors just have to put on a good show.

As for the audience, I am rarely satisfied in theatre … including rock, cabaret, video, and dance … because of this.

As a performer, I have to be able within myself to do anything that I feel necessary to create the magic of the performance without stopping to check my motives. This is the self-trust. This self-trust creates vulnerability.      

The performer has to take responsibility for his audience. This runs from their physical well-being while they are in the performance … to not taking them out on a limb and leaving them there. A moral grey area is left after the performance, and they go back to the normal world, and they freak out because of the conflict between the two realities. In my mind, the freak out is an opening of doors … which is the aim of the performance. But what the person does when the doors are opened is his responsibility.

In the performance, I have to involve myself with the audience, person-to-person. I have to follow whatever feeling I have in the moment, doing whatever it takes to draw the audience deeper. This is what I mean by vulnerability. It does have a certain ruthless quality to it.

In Santa Fe in 1972, I was reading Environmental Theatre. I took the exercises in that book, changed the focus to intimacy, and called it the workshop which was focused on developing intimacy, using eroticism and nudity. The workshop slowly developed from a drop-in group to a committed group of 30 in the late 70’s. We started our public performances by doing long ritualistic plays. Over the years, the group branched out to do many different kinds of live and video pieces, including The Outrageous Beauty Revue which was by far my most popular work … in terms of how many people saw it.

But in performance, unlike theatre, the success of a piece should not be judged by how many people see it, but by how far it went beyond the taboos, by its magic power for change. By this standard, my best work with the group was our performances within the workshop and a series of 48-hour dream performances in the late 70’s.

Since 1983, I have been doing a performance series at U.C. Berkeley which has given me a lab where I can develop pieces by doing them over and over during the three years, without the pressures of making money or entertaining. These pieces are what got me the N.E.A. Fellowship, and they are the ones I am doing on my southern California tour. The freedom that Tom Oden, the director of the studio, gave me from entertaining and money focus is why the pieces could develop. The sole purpose of the series was to go beyond limits and taboos … to blow people’s minds into a surreal state. Sometimes it works. Sometimes they entertained the people … and sometimes the pieces both worked and entertained … amazing as that seems.

Performance art, the art of performance, is rooted in the private games of babies where every move and gesture has its own meaning to the baby … it is rooted in the creative and the destructive games that a little kid does when he is all alone … games that adults still do, but will not admit doing, even to themselves.

It is rooted in the rituals of magic and religion where people came together to bring a different reality into their reality. It is rooted in the surreal, the private, the madness. It is rooted in direct involvement.

The main purpose for a performance is change, is to create a frame in this reality, a magical frame where something that usually does not happen, happens.

A good example of this is the performance I recently did at U.C. Irvine. I got more and more freaked out being on a campus which was consciously designed to discourage human contact and a sense of community … where students are identified by for which big company they will be working. I started to think no one would show up for the performance, not to mention participate, in this stronghold of the enemy. So in my mind, I started adapting “Random Gestures” so that if no one became involved, at least it would look like something was happening. To my surprise, there were students waiting outside the performance room when we arrived.

The windowless room became a dark cave with a light strobing. I lay on a table-altar surrounded by neatly dressed yuppies and young republicans. Gestures were randomly read out. Anyone could get on the table with me and do the gestures and return to their seats when they did not want to do the gesture. At first, nobody did anything at all. But after fifteen minutes, a few timidly started doing the gestures in their seats. Slowly, one by one, people got on the table … especially after Robin broke the ice. It was a trip seeing these ultra-yuppies touching one another in intimate ways. They drank it up. The guy whom I got to play music asked in the middle of the piece if he could stop playing music and join the table. Two male roommates found themselves doing things together like rubbing noses … and liking it. We had to push more tables together to make room for all the people. At one point, about 12 bodies piled onto me and slowly rocked … because they couldn’t quite let themselves rock on one another.

After the piece, Robin invited everyone to her house for chili. It gave me a good chance to hear in detail what people thought about the piece, but also to watch the effects of the piece on the people. When they first came out, they were still relating to one another, being high, being physical, being vulnerable. It took several hours for this noticeable change to wear off. It was like waking up from a dream … or coming down from a trip.

If the magic of performance can work in Irvine, it can work anywhere. People want to go beyond their outer limits.

In beyond outer limits, we will go back to the magical roots to get the strong vulnerability needed to make our performances powerful and human. No matter if your medium is dance, acting, singing, art, or simply loving, you can touch people more deeply if you are that magical, risk-taking kid. That is what is beyond outer limits.

I think this vulnerability is the root cause of why people [actors] are so uncomfortable with my work … not nudity or eroplay or sex. Nudity and eroticism are just scapegoats for this uncomfortableness with vulnerability. Vulnerability is the goal of my art. It is why I do my art.

In L.A., at Babels, the magic was among the performers in the cave. We were magical surrogates for the audience. We linked ourselves to the audience by emotion and by the various material. I was the strange shaman, the baseline who sets the tone and the depth. Linda, the rocker, was the primal human emotional urge-force. Shelly was the sensual psychic force, the occult hidden world. Uwe was the soft but practical, the tree trunk. Linda Mac was the bridge between the two worlds. The rich magic was a combination of these four aspects, called up by the physical chant of rocking, and focused by the cave space. For the audience, it was like a spiritual 3-D movie. They could sit safe and watch magic happening around them.

In S.F., the rocking was still a physical chant calling up magic realm, but it was less complex and cosmic, less primal, more playful. The first night, the audience sat themselves into a bunch with a space between themselves and us. That space never faded. So that night was like a surreal flat movie. The next night, body-painted Linda led each person into the room and positioned him. As a result, they became more intimately involved and risked more of themselves. They were a part of the ritual. They were straight, middle class. A lot of them in their 60s, not an art crowd. But they responded to the magic and the eroplay. They said it was an awake dream.

And it was fun to be beyond outer limits!

This is an invitation to you to come and play with me … beyond outer limits.

My Sexual Fantasies

By Frank Moore, September 29, 1997.
Published in The Affiliate, Canada, January/February 1998.


I do have sexual fantasies. And like a lot of people, I never reveal them because frankly they would get me into a lot of shit. But since you asked…and if you don’t tell…

I have a dream that one day people who are now called in the current p.c. lingo “sex workers” will be seen (especially by themselves) as sexual healers, sexual teachers, and sexual artists. No more mutual use/abuse of each other (just a whore/john) as objects to avoid unwanted reality with illusions of power and of “just doing it for the money”.

In my dream, teenagers of both genders would come to the sexual healers/teachers to learn the art of using sex wisely in their lives, their relationships, and in their creative and spiritual quests. People in relationship would come together to the sexual teachers to deepen what they have and do with each other. The sexual healers would work with both the abused and the abusers…and the would-be abusers…releasing sexual repression, restoring trust and vulnerability, and teaching more humane ways of relating. The sexual healers would go into hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, etc. to give aid and comfort, to lay on of hands (and of bodies). Lonely people would come to the sexual healers not only for human body contact, but to find out how to change their lives to have/give what they need and want.

I have a dream that those who practice this sexual work would finally utterly reject the system of guilt, shame, sin, submission, dominance, and power instead of smugly playing with it. This system has its roots in The Dark Ages when it was the twisted version of the power system known as The Church. This twisted version was designed to keep the pleasure underground within the unseen control of The Church….

Mmmm……I said too much, revealed too much, about my sexual fantasies. I am probably in hot water, in deep shit. But I can’t help it. I’m a dreamer. And I have a dream. And I see some signs that my dream is coming into reality…maybe not in my lifetime…but who knows!

And besides, I’m a dreamer. I can dream.


From the book, “Frankly Speaking: A Collection of Essays, Writings & Rants” by Frank Moore, published by Inter-Relations in 2014.


SCORE REVIEW 6

ON FRANK MOORE’S PERFORMANCE AT THE LAB, JULY 23, 1988

By Crag Hill

This was a night for statement. An artist had been locked out. Because he was too old-fashioned? But why were ninety percent of the people passing by Frank Moore’s performance outside The Lab reacting as if they have never seen any of this before? Who is the audience? Other artists? Art hobbyists? An initiated elite? He was too old-fashioned for whom? Too avant-garde for whom? Too famous for whom? The fact was the performance of Frank Moore’s group (and others whom I will mention shortly) shredded the boundaries of what one does in public, what one does on the street. They were dressed in tights and sweat-clothes with holes cut in them for easy access while skin-drumming. Who does this business-as-usual? There was touch, sound, and sight (for all you addicts of visual stimulus, the performers were painted and/or wore painted clothing), but it was not an everyday touch or sound or sight; it was an intimate touch, an ecstatic sound (a harmonic pitch almost sexual, but something even more satisfying), a welcome sight. The overall effect of Moore’s group was a breaking down of separation, a drawing together. Those who were courageous enough to be present, to stay present, became equal with everyone else, not one, yet closer. Who cares if it’s “art”? It was genuine. At its best it far transcended aesthetic pretensions and all that flapdoodle. I might call it spiritual if that word weren’t so smudged. It activated parts of personal humanity that usually lie dormant, ignored, discouraged, and repressed. Frank Moore’s performance might have been cancelled by this venue, but that was only yet another obstacle for Moore to leap. If you know anything about him, as a victim of cerebral palsy, you are amazed at his leaps. If you’re not, let this quote from the Village Voice serve as an introduction: “In performance, Moore takes advantage of his disadvantage, becoming an unlikely guide into the pleasures of the body, taking audiences places they would probably never go without the example of his vulnerability and trust….that Moore would be the one urging us to stay connected with our physical selves is both ironic and poetic….”

Also appearing on the bill (on the street) were The Outpatients, Jack and Adelle Foley, and Jesse Beagle. The Outpatients protested with a picket march, chanting “All we are saying is give brains a chance,” and a rollcall of lobotomies with an extra emphasis on “art-scene lobotomy.” They topped off their appearance with an energetic version of “Mennonite Surf Party,” which included a searing Rock-and-Roll riff on classical guitar by Tom Hamill.

Jack Foley, appropriately, read his poem “Nightmare,” which is dedicated to the man who tackled him as he read his poetry in a San Francisco gallery. He too knows the thoughtless knocks, the censorship, of an often selfish art world. He also read a chorus or two with Adelle Foley, keeping the street charged with energy.

Jesse Beagle also contributed appropriately to the demonstration/performance. She sang a couple of songs with the spirit, the spunk, of protest, and read a trenchant commentary on Frank Moore’s Café Milano (Berkeley) performance. In effect, she berated the café-goers for their passivity; they only became interested in Moore’s performance when they heard the moaning sounds, and, taking two stairs at a time, only then did they try to peek.

All in all, these people responded strongly, cohesively, to the lockout of Moore. Frank Moore came to do what he had been invited to do (before The Lab cancelled for spurious reasons—they were rude to boot), but on this occasion, on Divisadero, it seemed to have an extra charge. The Lab missed out, but fortunately many people on the street did not.

SCORE REVIEW is a forum for ideas on books, performance, elections, and what not. It appears when it has something to appear with—contributions are welcome and needed. Oakland, California.


Photos from the performance outside The Lab.

The original newsletter


And of course, as everybody knows who has ever played at games, the ones that are the most fun – to lose as well as win – are the ones that are the hardest, with the most complicated, even dangerous, tasks to accomplish. And so it is that artists are generally not content, either in the Orient or in the Occident, with doing merely simple things – and much soon becomes simple for an artist that for the rest of us would be difficult. The artist seeks the challenge, the difficult thing to do; for his basic approach to life is not of work but of play.”

Joseph Campbell, MYTHS TO LIVE BY, page 126.

Imagine The Possibilities!

A presidential campaign speech written January 21, 2008.


Campaign event in San Francisco, California, June 2008.

Let’s first get personal. For about 40 years, I have lived tribally/communally. Now the 6 of us live together in two houses [one of which we built] on a street in Berkeley with 4 cats. Linda and I have been together for over 35 years. Michael has been with us for 20 years…as have Corey and Alexi. Erika joined us 6 years ago. We live as a tribal body. This tells you that I will expand concepts such as a family and family values. My relationships have always been what I am about. So we put our personal relationships and one another first. This opens up possibilities and expands our ability to use opportunities.

I have always been dumb to what is impossible. So I just figure how to do the “impossible”. I have been doing this all my life! I am 61. I was born with cerebral palsy. I communicate using a laser-pointer and a board of letters, numbers and commonly-used words. But I am a host of a popular public access TALK show. Go figure it! So now I am setting my sights, as president, on eliminating poverty, hunger, war, etc. Impossible, eh?

When I was born, doctors told my parents that I had no intelligence, that I had no future, that I would be best put into an institution and forgotten. This was a powerful expectation with all the force of western science and medicine, as well as social influences, behind it. It would have been easy for my parents to be swept up into this expectation. Then that expectation would have created my reality. I would have long ago died without any other possibilities.

Instead, my parents rejected this expectation for the possibility they saw in my eyes, for what for them should have been true. This rejection of the cultural expectation of reality could not be a one‑time choice. They had to passionately live their choice every day, every minute, or the cultural expectation would have sucked them and me into it. It fought them at every new possibility they opened to me. Their passionate commitment to how they thought things should be attracted people to me who kept opening new possibilities for me. Of course, these were in the minority. But I focused on them, making them how people should be, how I wanted to be. So I expected people and myself to be like that. So people were for the most part that way…at least I saw them that way. This opened up to me what is called luck. It also gave me the ability to trust and the ability to use opportunities.

So the struggle for freedom, and against the powers-that-be has been my life. And it has been a continuous struggle, struggling with schools to let me in, etc. I have always been a radical. But that became obvious when I was 18 and invented my head pointer with which I type and communicate…I started writing political columns for the high school paper…as well as putting out an underground paper. I was in the first special class placed on a regular high school campus so that the disabled students could be in regular classes and be a part of campus life. I was involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements. This was 1965…before it was popular to be against the Vietnam War. In the school paper I got into a debate with a GI in Vietnam. I was sat down and told that, because of my political philosophy and activities, I was hurting the chances of the disabled students who would come after me. I replied that the goal was to get the rights for the disabled [and for all people] to be complete and equal…and that included the right to be political. I would not surrender that, or any other, right.

So I started doing political columns for underground newspapers, joined Students for a Democratic Society and The Peace and Freedom Party. I did political pranks…such as rolling in my wheelchair into the Marines Recruiting Office to join, offering to push the BUTTON with my head pointer. But after the Kent State killings, I switched from straight politics to art, performance, and community building as my tools for effecting social change. In the early ’90s I and five other performance artists were targeted by Sen. Jesse Helms in what is commonly seen as the first battle of the cultural wars. This placed me in a great position to fight for our freedoms!

I follow where opportunities lead, without limiting goals or pictures of what things should look like or where they should lead to. We here have many different projects going on at once…in addition to the “day job”. I’m always writing, painting, making movies, playing in my band The Cherotic All-Stars, performing, doing a weekly cable/internet talk/variety show. That has always been the case. In the mid-’70s in Santa Fe I started a workshop which combined intimacy and theater. This turned into a communal performance group which moved to N.Y.C. A few years later, we moved to Berkeley, where I combined the workshop with relationship counseling, creating an extremely successful practice. But this too morphed into a communal performance group of 30 people. Among our productions was The Outrageous Beauty Revue which ran for over three years at the San Francisco punk club The Mabuhay.

The ’90s found me touring the U.S. and Canada doing performances and lecturing. My writings started being published. I was also busy making films. By 1991 we were publishing the popular zine The Cherotic [r]Evolutionary. When the internet became available, we were among the first to have streaming audio and video on our https://www.eroplay.com. A live weekly show, The Shaman’s Den, which I was doing on one of the first internet radio stations quickly dragged us into starting our own internet station, http://www.luver.com, which quickly evolved into a powerful 24/7 uncensored channel for change. We have expanded onto public access cable television, cell phones, etc. And now I am running for president!

Campaign booth at the Green Apple Festival, San Francisco, California 2008.

OK, let us get to the meat!

We invaded Iraq on lies or blunders…take your pick. Almost everyone…with a few notable and impeachable exceptions…now agree that we should not have invaded Iraq. I would bring our troops home now. If someone tells you that s/he will stay in a failed marriage to avoid admitting mistakes, hoping things will somehow improve…you would rightfully question that person’s judgment.

I will change this country’s self-image from that of THE SUPER POWER/ WORLD LEADER to that of a member of the global community. I will cut our military budget by at least half.

While going into Afghanistan had more of a logic to it than our invasion of Iraq, I would withdraw our troops from there and work through the U.N. Our interests aren’t served by having our troops there.

We need to stop supporting dictators. On the nuclear issue, we need to get rid of double standards. We need to treat all nations with the same expectations, be it Pakistan, Israel, France, the U.S., Iran, etc. In other words, my policies would be even-handed. I will join the rest of the world in pressuring Israel to live up to treaties, and to dismantle its nuclear arms. I will use the “special relationship” between Israel and the U.S. to motivate Israel to do this.

I will work for the global shutting down of all nuclear reactors and dismantling of all nuclear [and biological and chemical] weapons. I will start this in the U.S. All countries should be expected to live under the same rules…not one set for the “super powers” and another for the “developing” nations like Iran. I will push for a global development of clean, safe energy sources as alternatives to nuclear power.

Anything/everything could be a “potential threat”…except the things that are in fact threats now. Seeing things as “potential threats” is a sign of insanity. It blocks the effective dealing with real and present threats. It creates the fog of fear. Iran is not a threat to the U.S. now or in the short-term future. So there is time and opportunity to revert Iran from the nuclear path by giving Iran other options. Frankly nuclear used for energy and nuclear used for weapons are both dangerous.

We have been robbed during the recent years of many of our rights and freedoms. I will have repealing parties in the White House, scrapping all the rules and policies in every department and agency which infringe on our rights, freedoms, privacy, health and welfare. We will have similar parties in both houses of Congress to repeal bad laws such as the so-called Patriot Act. We will return to the common English language in which “torture” means torture. I will declassify documents which were classified to hide questionable actions rather than to protect the real national interests. I will push the Justice Department to investigate the war on The Left by the F.B.I. since the ’60s.

The Department of Homeland Fear…I mean Security…has been a disaster, a con job on a massive scale. I will junk it. Terrorism is a criminal matter. It should be dealt with as such, not as a war. We shouldn’t abandon our principles, freedoms, rights, The Constitution and The Bill of Rights to live in fear. The F.B.I. is supposed to investigate crime…not to keep the people in line. The C.I.A. is supposed to gather information outside this country, and not to manipulate events. Whenever there is an attempt to fudge the limits of power for convenience of “safety”, we the people get screwed.

I would end the so-called war on drugs. The use of drugs should be legalized and taxed. Pot and spirits should be sold over the counter to adults only. Tobacco and other addictive drugs should be sold by prescription only. Free drug rehab programs should be readily available. So the D.E.A. can be greatly reduced.

Prisons should be only for violent or otherwise dangerous criminals. Prisons should be a part of the health and education system and should include drug rehab programs. This should also be true for the new creative in-community programs for non-violent criminals for paying back, rehab, and education sentencing. These programs will be more effective and much less expensive and harmful to the community on every level than the current human warehouse system. Flexibility of sentencing should be returned to judges. I will ban the death penalty.

Basically the law enforcement agencies should be the servants of the people, protecting our rights, freedoms, and welfare instead of the servants of the rich, the corporations, the status quo, and the powers-that-be. I would de-militarize the police departments.

I’ll do away with welfare, medicare and social security. Instead, every American will receive a minimum income of $1,000 a month. This amount will be tied to the cost of living and will not be taxable.

We will have universal prenatal-to-the-grave health care and universal free education with equal access.

The universal health care would include all medicine, medical equipment and supplies, long-term care, personal attendants, etc. There will be no pre-authorization ritual. So your doctor will be free to prescribe whatever you need. There may be a review of treatment afterward if there are any questions. Everybody will have the same care as the President now has. Preventative medicine will be stressed and the so-called alternative medicine will be included. You will notice that health insurance companies are not in this picture!

I’ll do away with all tax deductions for over $12,000 income. Instead, there will be a flat tax of 10% on annual income of less than one million dollars for an individual and less than five million dollars for a corporation. But the flat tax will jump to 75% on annual income exceeding these limits.

Now my policies are pro-business. The universal education system will provide business with a superior, flexible work force. The minimum income and the universal health care will remove the business’s burden of providing health insurance and pensions to workers. In reality, this relief will be much more than any tax cut could give. Moreover the minimum income will make the starting and maintaining of a small business much easier. This is also true for small family farms. The minimum income will encourage independent invention and artistic pursuit, on which true progress depends.

The guaranteed minimum income of $1,000 a month adjusted to the cost of living is meant to be a safety net rather than a replacement for work. I think most want to work…in an expanded concept of work. But to get a true feeling of what it would be like if you had to live on your minimum income, you have to crank in that you wouldn’t pay for health care, education, mass transit, etc. It all adds up. The combined minimum income couple…or a single parent with a child…would be $2,000 a month. This should provide a realistic basic living. This allows the single parent the option of being home doing the important work of raising a child. But free childcare provided by the universal free education system would open a whole host of new possibilities to the single parent.

The minimum income would encourage people to form the cooperative communal family [of all kinds] groupings who pool their incomes together…using their minimum incomes as a base to create more nourishing homes, to start and maintain small businesses. These communal groupings will be much more financially stable, emotionally nourishing, and environmentally friendly than today’s common isolating model of living.

It is all about caring and choice. If a senior wants to stay in her own home, the $1,000 a month will make that possible as will the home attendants provided by the healthcare system. This is also true if she wants to live with her family or in communal housing. This will actually be much cheaper than the scary mess we have now. The warehouse nursing home will be a thing of the past. Seniors will be an important, active element of every part of our society. We need everyone actively involved. We simply cannot afford on any level to warehouse portions of our population. It is a waste of potential!

Some people have expressed concerns that the guaranteed minimum income would drain people’s productivity. They ask why people would work. What they are really asking is why people would work without the whip of fear of hunger and poverty. They never ask this about the rich or the corporations, only about the working class and the poor. In reality most people want to work, want to contribute, want to improve their lives. Hunger, poverty, and fear drain productivity. If we are to survive, we need to end hunger, poverty, and fear.

The guaranteed minimum income will tend to keep wages in general higher and working conditions safer and more worker-friendly. This was also true for welfare and was the true root of the capitalist opposition to welfare.

The guaranteed minimum income will be very different from welfare. Everyone will get it. So there will be no stigma attached to getting it. There will be no red tape, no entrapping rules, no case workers drained of their humanity, and the rest of the demeaning rituals of enforced head-bowing associated with getting public assistance. The guaranteed minimum income will be something you get as a citizen, something you can depend on.

Campaign vehicle at the How Berkeley Can You Be Parade, Berkeley, California, 2008.

I get S.S.I., Medi-Cal, and money for a home attendant. People say they don’t mind the truly unfortunates who obviously can’t work getting welfare…but all of those lazy bums getting rich on welfare who could get a job…you know the line of thinking. Well, I am what they are picturing as the truly unfortunate. But in reality I can and do do many things. I can’t get a job, not because of my body, but because I would lose my S.S.I., Medi-Cal, and my money for a home attendant. This is an example of how the system is set up to not work and how the people get blamed for it not working. It is hard and scary living on so-called welfare. This is not true for me….at least not as much. I’m a punk, have built a support network of friends, doctors, etc. When I get a threatening letter [they are always threatening] informing me I must go to this certain doctor within two weeks to get a brain cat-scan [for which I would need to get knocked out] to prove I still have cerebral palsy or lose all my benefits, I with Linda can get on the phone and politely but firmly guide the over-worked case manager to turn the pages of my file to find the last yearly visit to check that a miracle hadn’t occurred. But most people in that position are much more vulnerable than I am. They are on their own, without a support network, etc. I don’t know how they survive. I know Nancy, a college student with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair, needing assistance with feeding, drinking, going to the bathroom, etc. She is determined to live independently. But her S.S.I. check is barely livable small. Her attendant hours [at minimum wage] are less than half of what she really needs. So she has to wait for a drink of water. She wears a catheter although it causes infection [hence will probably shorten her life]. To add insult to injury, there is a threat that her needed supplies will be unclassified as medical equipment and will no longer be funded. Because most doctors and hospitals do not accept Medi-Cal patients [because of red tape, low payment, and insane rules], she has to travel hours to the county hospital to wait more hours to be seen. But she keeps on doing what she has to do in order to stay in the game of life rather than being stuck in an institution…which would cost us much more than keeping her out with us. Out here, we can hear her poetry, see her perform. Most people on public assistance do contribute to society. They raise families, do art and music, push for change, etc.

The truth is the system is designed for failure, for easy scapegoats and decoys. As I am writing this, I see the governor of California is again threatening to cut S.S.I., Medi-Cal, home attendants, etc. Well, the web work of the guaranteed minimum income, a livable wage, the universal health care and the life-long education systems will be designed to work. And because everybody will be covered by this web work, this web work will be much harder to screw up!

I will cut the military budget by at least half and use half of the savings to pay down the national debt. I will shrink the federal bureaucracy and again use half of the savings for this pay down.

Basically the problem is not a lack of money, but what we have spent our money on…war, pork, waste, etc. It has been a standard trick to distract us with supposed waste, fraud, etc. in the social programs while milking us out of billions in military waste, corporate welfare, etc.

Again, the minimum income of $1,000 a month for every citizen will give people money to spend, save, invest, or pool with others to create more effective financial communities which will open up a wide range of opportunities for the average person…to start small businesses, to stay on the family farm, to do art, to raise kids, etc. Free health care [which will include long-term care, home attendants, medicine, etc.], free life time education [including child care], free mass transit, etc. will in effect put more real money in the pocket of the average person. But more importantly the fear of the future will fade, releasing what is now hoarded away for old age, for when your health fails you, for your kid’s education…releasing the knot in your belly of knowing that no matter how much you manage to save [if any], it will not be enough.

So write in Frank Moore for President and Susan Block for Vice President on election day! For more information, go to frankmooreforpresident08.com and www.eroplay.com.


From the book, “Frankly Speaking: A Collection of Essays, Writings & Rants” by Frank Moore, published by Inter-Relations in 2014.