THE PRESSING TEXT

Below is a collection of texts which were part of THE PRESSING performance and research 2016-2022. All texts are by Dani Brown.

LIVE PERFORMANCE TEXT

HEAVY BAG

This is a heavy bag

It’s like really really heavy

It was full of ancient history that with time, like this constant wind, has eroded the weight down; to myths, even just anecdotes of myths.

But once you get all these anecdotes together, you get the picture of former legends, it’s heavy.

I told you, it’s heavy

And it’s not the history itself which is so heavy, but the missing part, the void, the vacuum.

The heaviest of heavies

There are a few atrocities mixed in there for good measure, 1 or 2. 

But what are you going to do?

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna doooo?

Go tell it on the mountain?

A soap box?

Get a megaphone.

A microphone.

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna do? To audience

Get hysterical! 

Hysterics, hysterical hysterics 

The hysterics of hystatricality 

Write a poem?

A manifesto?

A song…?

What are ya gonna do? 

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna dooooo?

A hysterical manifesto on a mountain, atop a soapbox with a megaphone, in a microphone.

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna…..

Oooo, a boycott, or maybe a girlcott

No sex for you!

No sex for you!

and... shit!

No sex no babies

I really like babies

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna do?

Seriously, what are you gonna…

A hysterical manifesto on a mountain, atop a soapbox, with a megaphone, in a microphone on a podcast, on primetime television. 

Does anyone still watch television? 

What are you gonna..

What about a performance? in Berlin?

We could channel spirits, we could channel CUNT with a capital C!

Huh! What about an NFT in the metaverse, the final frontier!

No sex for you, no sex for you

And you, we’re in the metaverse , no sex for anybody, 

we could have avatar sex, but that's no fucking fun! 

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna do?

What are ya gonna?

AIRPORT STORY

There was a girl, who was traveling for work and she had to transfer planes in some city you know like Paris, or Amsterdam or maybe Brussels, I don't remember. 

Anyways by chance she met this friend of hers… Well to say friend doesn't really do the relationship justice, they were very close… Ok, let's just say that the love existing between them didn't exactly fit under any kind of conventional title of relationship, like “homies”, “bae”, “lovers”, “wifey” yeah and friends with benefits just sounds cheap compared to what they had. Anyways, They were really excited when they saw each other, meeting by chance in this random airport and everything around them just sort of fell away. But that’s how it was when they met. Everything here got really sparkly and delicious, crisp and everything outside of here just faded, like some vortex of strange magic would engulf them, except… sometimes this vortex would roll outward, and that's what happened there in the airport. And the next thing you know there was this marching band, stomping into the terminal from all sides and they were wearing deep purple, satin, sequined leotards with matching thigh high marching boots and they had a choir with them wearing matching outfits, except they also had these huge purple plumes of feathers on the heads. And there were horses, these big black stallions ridden by an army of women who all looked like Angela Bassett in Jean cutoffs and gold lame bikini tops, and they all had these huge swords strapped to their backs. And this band, and choir and the army on horses all pounded into the terminal at once like, and then like… (inhale) had this suspended moment, and the girls grabbed onto eachother tightly and were dumb-founded with wonder, and then the band and choir started in with a rendition of some Rihanna song, while the Angela Bassett ladies chargend through the terminal swiftly slaying the tourists from distant lands. The bloody bodies exploded into fires, and their ashes raining down this heady mix of dark belgian chocolate and 24kt. gold and jewels, mostly diamonds. And the girls, covered in chocolate and jewels just embraced and kissed each other deeply until one of the Angelas rode by and grabbed both of the girls and threw them onto the back of her horse and they rode off into the…. well they rode off into the terminal and caught their flights to wherever they were going. 

PINEAPPLE POEM

Or, a fallen queen,  or just a pineapple

when the agave flowers, it dies.


A beast birthed into the hot shiny new world , a world surely better than

Oh you wanna come in here?

It crawls down inside us all with bladed teeth 

And with a flick of your hair you go down on yr man all doe eyed, and glistening 

I scream, you scream, we all scream for


Last months menstruation 

At the pool

A pineapple? (upstage)

You and I, fine as red wine, and the spirit comessssssss

Oh you wanna come in here?

Or what is it you say?

Speak fair lad for skies have clearly beckoned you here 


Maybe i'm just a retired showgirl

Fuck a duck, a duck a fuck

Know your comrades girl (march left n right)

Know it 

Know that shit girl

Giiirrrrrrrllllllllllllllll

Know it, know that shit girl

And the bladed teeth and all of us at the pool


Shit! Shit, and a sugar layer cake! 

Don't bite your lip child, don’t bite ya lip!

God might not take any pleasure in you, but don't bite ya lip!


Shade

This is not a hello

Oh these legs, are for sale

Which is to say, you can come out now


I'm trying to ask you man can you deal with a waterfall? 

Can you swim through the precipice and see what you see and not steal it all away just for you? 

Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys, 

Composed walk of the sublime

At the pool

Maybe i'm just a

Fuck a duck

And it crawls down inside us all 

Know it, know that shit girl

CUNT MONOLOGUE

hi, hi, (clear throat)

Maybe you weren’t expecting me? In all fairness I don’t actually make so many public appearances.. and if I do, if I am seen, well there is usually some scandal involved, and I never get to make a statement in my defense. 

Don’t ask me why, somebody is making the rules and it ain't me. 


The funny thing is, well just look around you… You, and you, and you and everyone you see here, and everyone you know, and everyone you don't know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, loved or you admire, yes everyone, came from me. 

And people pray to god… Crazy right? 


Anyways

I was wondering if I would say something today… What would I say? 

Do you know that feeling when so much time has passed, and in all that time you thought a million times about what you would do or say and when you finally get the chance you just clam up (laugh)? Sorry. Or instead of doing what you prepared you end up just doing creepy stuff with your hands, or you just freeze, like a stone because in that moment all you can do is throb with all that time and emotion and you feel it all welling up and you just crumble a little under the weight of it all… You know that feeling? 

Maybe I wouldn’t say anything. Maybe I would just blubber about with the joy of my freedom, the fresh air, the friendly attention. Maybe I would total freak the fuck out and scream obscenities, act like a real fucking cunt, you know! 

Maybe I wouldn’t use verbal articulations at all, but rather sound out my sentiment with prehistoric frequencies. 


Anyways here I am, I got all iced out for you.  Bling bling honey bunny, to sparkle is my natural state. The gleam of potential life, always on my lips, the hot silver of desire and primordial dreams shining through. Always here, now, ancient and becoming rolled into one technicolor dream taco.. Yeah.. 


Sometimes I tell myself that I'm always kept under lock and key because I'm like some sacred relic, but I'm no relic, I'm juicy, literally full of life. And this obsession with controlling me, with telling me what I can and can not do… well… I'm a little tired of that to be honest. Like really tired. I am uncanny, a bit extra.. I can accept that. I get it, I drive most of you crazy. But maybe… maybe there's a way you could all just be comfortable with me, with all my strange and delicious creative magic, my intoxicating excitement, all my dark and quiet mystery. What would it mean to humanity if you were just cool with me? Who would we be? What would this world be? I mean let's face it, you need me.

BACKGROUND TEXT

FEBRUARY 7TH, 2017, ST. CROIX 

Lemme cross the road and get some bananas.

Big Woman w  missing teeth smiles and chuckles.

she says, "girl what you're going ta do with them legs? Make a million dollars?"

Between the frequency of her voice and the dips and valleys of her patois my heart opens, voodoo. 

I get a free banana instead of million dollars, story of my life, just like almost everybody else.

it's been scientifically proven that island post offices have managed to slow time. I wait, perched on a stone wall, a maimed bird from another continent. A momentary refugee elated w the momentary refuge.

and the hot air feels me up like a velvet dirty old panda bear 

and I let it come and press my money between my legs. 

this isn't a metaphor. 

I just want to cover up my red panties where my skirt falls short, sitting, waiting at the side of the road. 

I sweat honey.

DOMINATRIX

On one of the warmer days, the late afternoon turned into a storm… a girl sat in her window and stared at the sudden downpour, the drain in the courtyard was overflowing, she thought it was beautiful, this fast clear gel over everything. She was still on crutches from her recent knee surgery. She planned to sit at cafe terrace but due to the rain her plan was thwarted. So instead, she managed to put on the crystal encrusted, complicated lingerie she bought online. She sent a photo to a friend, who replied, “angels must be crying black diamonds”.

That’s when she decided to have her first dominatrix experience. 

You see she was crippled and couldn’t clean the house... and she really did like a clean house. 

Anyways, she had always swiped left on submissive profiles.. but there she was on crutches, and the flat was filthy. The pretty Brittish airbnb guest had a small siezure when she made the effort to warn him that she’d have a naked slave cleaning the house on his hands and knees. 

In his defense the girl had just woken him up with the news. He quickly regained his composure when she explained that it was a slave in the s+m kind of way, ”OH, well then alright..” and he went back to sleep. 

She told the slave to wear nothing but white gym socks and a gold chain. She wanted him to look as macho as possible. The vacuum cleaner was coincidentally broken so that one would literally have to clean on all 4’s. Her own little ritual for womankind, “get on your knees bitch”. 

He had a long ponytail and was really into humiliation which was a big challenge for the girl (the world is this shitty unfair place right, so she kinda made it her thing to be kind with everyone, she thought, “I can afford it”). 

The other challenge of being a dom is one has to be extremely precise, she told her sub in a text before he arrived that he wouldn’t be allowed to look her in the eyes. After she buzzed him in he would find her door on the 3rd floor open. He should enter and immediately take out the trash, come back, wash his hands, prepare and serve her tea, remove his clothes and go wait in the corner, facing the wall for further instructions. 

In the shadowy cool quiet after the summer storm she read the Bluets by Maggie Nelson, while he waited. 

blue blue blue…

The shiny wet leaves on the mature maple tree outside her window giggled at the perfectly still naked man in white gym socks.

Then her tinder ordered slave cleaned the fuck outta that flat all while the girl read and sipped tea, a thing she almost never managed to make time to do.

After the house was cleaned she sat on the edge of the bed while the slave kneeled at her feet. He cut her cuticles and painted her nails with the gold and black sparkly nail polish she found at a Walmart on an island far far away. 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

You see she had to punish him because he scratched her thumb nail with the cuticle scissors. She told him to stare at her foot, each blood red and pussy pink fiber of the hand woven Moroccan carpet stood up straight bracing itself for what was to come. 

Oh the things made by women’s fingers. 

She slapped him across the face. 

He loved it. 

He left, and it rained again.

HER BOYFRIEND

She would tell you that she’s embracing the fact that she doesn't have to be intellectually or even emotionally concerned with her boyfriend. I mean.. he did tell her in a letter that he doesn't particularly care for her. A medium sized annoyance.. Once on the phone you discussed those rare cases when a german man is really hot and you said, “yeah sometimes that happens”, she could have said, “yeah your boyfriend is gorgeous”, but she didn't because she took pleasure in her constructed state of non “concern” with him. She would tell you that you are one of the most beautiful creatures she’s ever met.. and she manages to see beauty in so many, even cranky east German bus drivers. She would tell you that her love for you is flipped over in a tight origami beast, waiting.

I AM

I am absurd

I am juicy

Jiggly

I am the closest friend, the 1st cousin, the sister, the daughter of water

A swirling infinity crashing up against the boundaries of this body

I am spilling over, and continuing on and on and on

A shape shifter

I am a whole mood

I am ridiculous

I am extra

I am an abyss

I'm a mess

I am quiet

I am loud

I am wet and wild

I am infinitely wise

I need my space

I am bloody

I am angry

I am self-sufficient

I am spirit

I give way to spirit

I am not always in the best of spirits

I take my pleasure in a chanel dressing room in a  20,000euro dress

I am incorrigible

I am brave

I am old

Very very old

I used to be on speaking terms with god

Luke, I am your mother

Uh no, no, Luke, I am your maker

I am..

The end 

I become the beginning

The stuff of legends

Scraped down to an anecdote

I am slippery

I am confusing

Complex

I am cunt

I will Fuck you up