I LOVE LISTENING TO MUSIC 

AND IMAGINING THINGS HAPPENING

NOTES ON EXPOSITION

Dearest,

Much has changed since the time of The Sirens.

The Bitch is back. She died of love and made a comeback. Inneggiamo, la Signora non è morta.

But you will not find the Diva Explicit here.

Nor will you find her Loutish Lover.

The whole scale
Of cosmic dimensions are falling
Out of my mouth
In the description of a kiss
Of the interimlovers1

They are taking a long and well-deserved break after an exciting season.

You may, however; hear the echoes of the lovers’ spats, you may hear their terms of endearment peeling off the walls of your dressing room, you may hear gossip about them thrown around, you may hear the fine crunch of crumbs they left in the canteen, the faint whisper of their names written in permanent marker on the insides of archived costumes, you may hear the pitter patter of their footsteps in the corridors, on the stage, in the wings, the rustle of their respective signatures on attendance sheets, a discrete, nervous dry heave in the bathroom, the descent of ash flicked off a cigarette enjoyed in secret, quiet like a snowflake and yet not entirely silent, the scratch of a handwritten note on a vocal score, you may hear their breath pulsating, taken and given.

You may register an interval. The space in which figures from a bygone world are standing by, suspended in time, while someone else rehearses their parts.

You are cordially invited to the rehearsals.

Go.

They are waiting for you.

THE SCENE

THE SCENE 

THE SCENE 

THE SCENE 

FIGURE 1

Beginning of act 2 of La Traviata. I can’t help giggling while they kiss. Nothing more to be done. The light effectively blinds me for 20 minutes. Conducive to witnessing this kind of love.

FIGURE 2

Basement 2 flooded:

This art is in fact hyperbolic in itself. The power of time and space with the onslaught of actualities does not interfere with the tectonics and concision of the opera. To a large extent, the opera even relativises the majesty of nature and its elements with its hermetic structure. This is why this genre exercises the merging of the inner and the outer (...)2

FIGURE 3

Two soloists in safety harnesses walk onto a flying boat with a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne… Finish the joke. Or follow the cork. Pop.

FIGURE 4

Nie všetky kamene sú trollovia, ale všetci trollovia ovládajú umenie správať sa ako kameň (Not all rocks are trolls, but all trolls have mastered the art of acting like rocks)3… How politely they sit next to me, waiting for their entrance. Waiting. Waiting.

BIO

Richard L. Kramár (legal name: Richie Lux Kramár) (*1995, Bratislava) is a poet, director, dramaturg, kabarettier, and librettist. He studied Directing and Dramaturgy of Alternative and Puppet Theatre at DAMU in Prague and Theatre Practices at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Dramatic Arts at JAMU in Brno.

Between 2014 and 2016, he co-founded and co-led (with Terézia Klasová) the independent cultural space Divadlo na ôsmom poschodí in Bratislava. Theatre projects he has contributed to have been selected for the příští vlna/next wave festival three times (2016, 2022, 2023). He is also a co-founder of several art collectives and conceptual clusters.

Kramár has published four poetry collections: Štuchanie do medúz (Spolek přátel Psího vína, 2017); Úchopový inštinkt (BRAK, 2021); BORDERLINE (with Kino Peklo, Adolescent, 2022); and Sukces saisóny – atto i. & atto ii. (Adolescent, 2025).

He has dabbled in bartending, social work, writing for various media, ushering, extracurricular education, cooking and tutoring and failed at everything retail-related. During the 2022/23 season, he worked as a full-time prompter at the State Opera in Prague, where he continues to collaborate as an external collaborator today. Since 2024, he has been part of the editor-in-chief duo (with Terézia Klasová) of Psí víno, a digital curatorial platform for contemporary poetry, where he focuses primarily on translating English-language queer poetry and doing editorial work.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Prompter

The Baron of the Back Door, the Master of the Mysteries, the Belle Below Decks, the Neurotic Navigator, the Delightful Dilettante, the Babysitter of the Beginning, the Latent Lover, the Commander of Complaints, the Minder of the Mistake, the Triumphant Trans*terpreter, the Marvelous Monster, Yours Ever, Truly

You 

The new arrival, in it for the story, a bit sceptical but ready to be swept off their feet

The Mystery 

At the very least, opera is a very distinctive refuge or asylum for an otherwise inhospitable human existence. Opera transcends a schema or code that has not yet been fully deciphered, let alone verbally analysed. It thus contains a high, virtually toxic dose of mystery (...)4

The Mistake 

The prompter’s raison d'être, if she is bad, he can't see it, she can do no wrong5

The Score 

You have it in front of you

INTRODUCTION

My doctoral artistic research (THE MONSTER SINGS) aims to arrive at a series of performative practices focused in and around voice that holds the potential to expand and liberate the perception and experience of trans* embodiment and the embodiment of the object (in continuous productive entanglement).

This research is designed to be shaped and led by three performative experiments: a solo, a duet, and an ensemble. The movement from the solo to the duet and from the duet to the ensemble is not conceptualised as a movement ‘up’, but simply as a movement towards and through a different embodied constellation with different constraints and challenges. The movement from one experimental landscape to another is facilitated by reflection, translation, and distillation of the processes that occurred in the experiment(s) already conducted, to assert a balance (not without tension) between productivity and creative (self)sabotage, between stabilising and unsettling.

In this exposition, I propose to uncover the process of reflection, translation, and distillation of the first performative experiment (solo), focusing on the elements of the experiment that are conducive to the art of failure and its resonant spaces. The presentation of these elements will be complicated by the questioning absence of the documentation of the performative experiment (the DIY zine Immortale Amor), which was the first (largely resistant, fluid, and evasive) avenue for making the performative experiment visible.

PROLOGUE

Meet me in front of the opera. I’ll show you my secrets.

Deal.

-

Where are you?

In front of the opera.

In front of the front or in front of the back?

Front of the front.

Stay there. I’ll come get you.

-

Consider that the entry point to the secrets. Always through the back door.

If there isn’t one?

Enter as if you’re entering through the back door.

Meaning?

Who enters through the back door?

People who have back door business. People who should not be seen at the main entrance.

That’s a part of it. But more pragmatically.

People who know where the back door is.

And now you know.

-

Let’s go. Below decks.

Phrase. Add to word list. ‘on a level of a ship below the main deck’

Yes.

-

Example: Our cabin was below decks.

Stop at the concierge. Take your key. Down the stairs. Turn left. Down the corridor. Sharp left. Sharp right. Down the corridor. Sharp left. Sharp right. Cross the stage. Pass the lift. Sharp left. Pass the staircase. Door on the right. Unlock the door. Turn on the light. Sigh deeply. Take your score. Exit. Turn left. Pass the staircase. Sharp right. Pass the lift. Cross the stage. Walk. Turn right by the staircase. Walk. Turn right at the watercooler. Enter the wing. Soften your walk. Turn right at the stage manager’s station. Fix your posture. Check if you have your chair. Check if you have your music stand. Check if you have your light. Put down your score. Sigh deeply. Fall in love again.

-

Example: The six men had made the two-week journey in a cramped shipping container below decks.

Yes. If it fits it sits. You must fit and you must sit. The light gets in your eyes. Your eyes itch and water, your vision blurs and fills with luminous spectres. The list of objects and persons getting in your way is vast, practically infinite. You lean over and across, on and toward, to and against, in and with. You reach. You grasp. You stay the course. You hope. You listen. Some days you cannot hear the music. Some days you cannot hear the voices. Some days all you hear is noise. You stay after the captain has left the ship. Part of the ship. Part of the crew.6

Do you ever get bored?

Immensely. But you can think of it as a noble boredom. A rehearsal. No, better: a flirtation with greater things.

Like?

Not drowning.

-

Example: Visitors are not permitted to go below decks.

Yes and no. Unaccompanied. Uninvited. Uninitiated. Not permitted. Various entanglements. Permitted. To varying degrees of depth. Always annoying though.

Annoying people deserve rights.

They do, my love, but try holding on to that sentiment in a place like this.

-

Example: People were trapped below decks as water flooded into the ship.

Yes. You are held. As an era comes to a halt. Another scandal explodes. The temperature drops below fourteen degrees. All the plagues materialise, all elements come to give you a kiss. Fire. Water. Tender suffocating dust. You romanticise crisis. You romanticise survival. You are held by…

Delusion.

Convince yourself. Or better yet, convince yourself it could be different. Made different.

-

Example: They found four feet of water below decks.

Yes. Walk to the stage after a summer rehearsal in unprecedented privacy. Listen to the sound of the rain echoing through her body. Filling the stage with an aura a hum a whimsy so stupid and wet and articulated for you and you alone. Record. Move around in her bowels. Walk along her limbs. Notice a small but distinct leakage at the doors. Think: How delightful. Pay no mind. Walk slower. Lower. Notice a newfound crispness, freshness in the wet sounds. Cognitive dissonance. Walk slower. Lower. There is a stream of water flowing happily through Basement 2.

Why do all my dreams extend just around the riverbend?7

We are brothers, you and me.

-

Okay, now you try.

You haven’t exactly told me what it is that you do.

Navigate.

-

What happens if I fuck up?

If you fuck up, you fuck up. A thread in the colour of failure binds us to the heavens.

Meaning?

Follow me.

A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase 'I love you' is like 'the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.' Just as the Argo's parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase 'I love you', its meaning must be renewed by each use, as 'the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.'8

The back-swell now smooth in the rudder-chains, 

Black snout of a porpoise 

          where Lycabs had been, 

Fish-scales on the oarsmen. 

          And I worship. 

I have seen what I have seen. 

          When they brought the boy I said: 

'He has a god in him, 

          though I do not know which god.'

And they kicked me into the fore-stays. 

I have seen what I have seen: 

          Medon's face like the face of a dory, 

Arms shrunk into fins. And you, Pentheus, 

Had as well listen to Tiresias, and to Cadmus, 

or your luck will go out of you. 

Fish-scales over groin muscles, 

lynx-purr amid sea...9

Isla Luz

(Island of Light)

45.48'61°S, 73.95'31°W

To swim is to take the place water has earned 

and it won't be moved so easily – I am undeserving volume.

Between light and me is present water, water yet to come.

The only thing for it is to swim and from the swimming somehow learn.

A human in water – I am pushing rope, I am counting air.

Boats giggle into their chests at me. I am threading eyelets.

On the water the hours lengthen like strings of saliva. They are huge and quiet.

Fish are like knives. Undertow is a bunting of knives. I don't get far.

And then there's this thing about light: that it's an island,

it's a place, an event, you can swim to it, it's something you attend.

It's a word that hasn't been used yet in a lie.

It's a guest at the dinner table, not joking but smiling, reserved but not shy.

The heart that knows it never will, but thinks it might.

To find on the sea a patch that is not sea, and call it Light.10

PERFORMATIVE EXPERIMENT (SOLO) –LOVE'S LABOUR'S REGAINED

The governing method for the performative experiment (solo) was adapted from Georges Banu’s concept of personal theatre. The ‘theatre piece’ central to the performative experiment was therefore conducted privately and imaginatively; in it, I was positioned as the actor(s)/singer(s), the audience, the director, the dramaturg, the technical staff, the stage object(s), the theatre space, and all other imaginable components of a staging. The piece can be understood as a perpetual rehearsal as well as a durational piece in the act of reprise set inside a body set inside opera (a physical opera house, concrete operatic pieces – both on paper and specifically staged, the operatic canon and disciplines, etc.).

This personal theatre did not strive to manifest publicly through observable actions or to be accessible to an ‘external’ viewing of any kind. The personal theatre persisted and proliferated itself as a processual dialogue, a leading and being led, between the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ (with the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ being accentuated as other-focused and prompted to maintain and expand the difference between the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ on a dialogical principle). This ‘I’ and ‘I’ can be understood as the eponymic ‘monster’ and ‘monster’ of the research.

Positioning the personal theatre in the realm of the imaginative and private did not stem from a value judgment within the duality of idea vs realisation, but rather from a desire to make the solo ‘as solo as possible’ while maintaining a certain degree of ‘secrecy’. Secrecy served as a tool of resistance to the demand to perform (in the context of theatrical/operatic conventions as well as the established conventions of performing otherness ‘properly’ as a trans* subject); to assert ownership over the ‘body’ of my personal theatre and distance myself from the idea of presenting concrete results in and around this body.

The concept of this performative experiment was therefore shaped by an integral failure: a failure to appear for the viewing pleasure of an audience. And on its flaming tail, other potential failures came into view: the failure to assert boundaries in time and space (where and when the performative experiment begins and ends), the failure to take shape, take space and create movement (in the realm of the imaginative and private), and the failure to become distinguishable from ‘real life’.

ACT I.

Can you read music?

No.

Don’t worry. I’ll keep your secret. And you’ll keep mine. I can’t read music either.

What?

I promised you secrets, schatzi, you will be getting secrets.

I think I’m going to throw up.

That’s perfectly understandable. You are in awe.

-

It’s quite simple. Look. There is the pianist. She…

Plays the piano.

There is the conductor. He…

Conducts.

There are the soloists. They…

Sing solos.

There is the chorus. They…

Sing together.

There is the stage manager. He…

Manages the stage.

There is the technician. He…

Does technical stuff?

You are the prompter. You… It’s in the name.

Prompt.

Yes. Move to act.

-

To find the beginning you must softly snatch a singing body. However unprepared, lost, confused, or irritated the body, the beginning is firmly lodged inside it. It may be small, unmoored, slippery, or false, but it lives there rent-free. You may be lucky to see one which is expansive, secure, and dry like the uncanny five-fingered palm of a small monkey.

Each body locates its beginning differently, prepares differently for its resonant moment. Some bodies advertise cruising the beginning, they make public their dangerous flirtations. Some bodies are discrete, or at least aim at discretion, elegance, a demure disposition. Some bodies require lengthy foreplay, some bodies want their bodice ripped off or to rip it off themselves. Some bodies show signs of mastery. Some bodies show signs of resistance. Wear and tear can be observed. Fatigue. Hope. Even love. Some bodies begin through bliss, some are used to suffering. Some bodies are regular, consistent to the point of dullness and run on reliable timetables, some bodies are sensitive to all kinds of changes in temperature. There are easy beginnings as well as hard. Earned, accidental, precious, trivial. You must learn to locate them all. Gently palpate them. Through the back door.

You are not alone at the back door. You are not alone in the wing. You are not the only one who attempts to enter an intimate dialogue with the beginning in the singing body. There are others who voice impulses. Others with the capacity to move. Bring confidence upon the tentacles and algae of the soul. Keep them in the landscape of your voice. Keep them warm in your embrace.

Some will take the frontal approach. Directorial, demanding, perhaps even colonial in nature. They will ask to be given the beginning or claim that it was theirs to begin with. They will say they own it, that the bodies are just a hold, a box, a chest, a temporary residence for the beginning. The cold unjust sea that swallowed a royal treasure. They will coax the beginning out. To be heard. Sounded. Classified. Counted. Assigned value. They will expect your help. They will expect you to push from the back while they pull from the front. They will presume you to be their conscript. Resist.

This is none of your business. You take nothing. You create no value. You are the other. The shadow. The mirror. The monstrous double. You crawl inside the singing body unseen and unheard and caress the beginning. So you might know it, love it, support it. Grow its twin inside your own body. It is always necessary to look for new arms. You may need to add weight to your bones, adjust the tension of your muscles, recurve your spine, reconsider the coordinates of all your resonant cavities. You will manage to sit silent double to any singing body. And when you open your mouth, it will sing that body’s beginning. Just so. Just in time. Move to act.

This is the scenario ‘as written’. You are not ‘as written’. The singing bodies are not ‘as written’ either. Your voice may become a dedicated monstrous double of another’s, but it is your body, your strength, your capacity for transformation that sounds it and swallows it when need be. You may become so diligent in rendering yourself premium back door material – invisible, well blended and uniquely slippery, that you start believing your own bullshit. But you are not going anywhere. You are present. You are very present.

You will understand this best when you fall in love in the wing. Inevitably. Of course, you have advised yourself against ever doing so. At this point you pride yourself on being able to slip from one body to another with ease. Quick-change between voices. Shape-shift like a pro. The growing pains were significant. Various attributes of the singing bodies resisted your understanding or got stuck in your own body in the wrong position for too long. You felt misshapen, overstimulated, overgrown and underfed. You salivated and threw up, shook and silently pleaded. And one day something clicked. The way you would let yourself be led was clear to you. The way you would make mistakes was clear to you. The way you would allow yourself to lead was clear to you. You swallowed the music whole, spit out the bones and slithered on. Enter the fucking dragon slayer.

You will understand this best when you fall in love in the wing. Inevitably. Of course, you have advised yourself against ever doing so. The quality of taking in this person’s voice is different. You have favoured others before. Every single transformation has a different colour, different texture, different mouthfeel. But they all pass, and the joy is in passing. Moving through. Not stopping. This one, this in-love one, contains an urge to hold. To possess even. Sing into my mouth, you think hungrily. You are concerned at how concrete you become in these moments. How biased. You take their song home. Their song. You think it is silly and limited to conceptualise a song as something that might belong to someone. Bad luck, baby. You take their song home. And you sing it in private in your voice so distinctly different from theirs. It tastes like a stolen kiss.

You curse this love for returning you to your face. You try loving them as everyone, but ultimately you can only love them as you. This reveals to you a conflict within your ethos. An error in your judgement. The monstrous is never vague. Transformation is not a stand-in for death of the self. It is the opposite. It is life itself. Stupid. And expansive. Note to self: I’ll have to top someone, won’t I? Lord, give me strength. Note to self (later): It is a concrete answer to a secret desire. Note to self (even later): To hold a position means to be held by it. You fall further. You want more. You leave the house that feeds you. They speak to you: It won’t be the same without you mouthing all the words into the void. They leave.

This is the scenario as a love-story. It does not end here, but it ends here for now. You may elect to cry, but don’t fail to notice: There is a third in all this. When the job is not performed. When you are not in service. When the loved one disappears in the blink of the mind’s eye.

Who prompts the prompter, schatzi? Chi è the other’s other? The monster’s monster.

-

Before long, you are carrying your own twins. You reach into your own body through your own back door and caress your own beginning. A voice you thought dead and buried meets you in your mouth. For the most part the mouth remains closed. But there is work being done behind these closed doors. You remember [redacted] being advised to stay out of group voice lessons, even as an observer, while on vocal rest, because there is work being done behind these closed doors. You remember that when you need your blood to flow for the phlebotomist, you have to sing in your head, just about under your breath, because there is work being done behind these closed doors.

Go to those who have delicate lust,
Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted,
Go like a blight upon the dulness of the world;
Go with your edge against this,
Strengthen the subtle cords,
Bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles of the soul.
Go in a friendly manner,
Go with an open speech.
Be eager to find new evils and new good,
Be against all forms of oppression.
Go to those who are thickened with middle age,
To those who have lost their interest.11

‘Il n’y a pas lieu de craindre ou d’espérer, mais de chercher de nouvelles armes’12

[Verse 1]

Home

Is where I want to be

Pick me up, and turn me 'round

I feel numb

Born with a weak heart

I guess I must be having fun

The less we say about it, the better

We'll make it up as we go along

Feet on the ground, head in the sky

It's okay, I know nothing's wrong, nothing

[Chorus]

Hi-yeah

I got plenty of time

Hi-yeah

You've got light in your eyes

And you're standing here beside me

I love the passing of time

Never for money, always for love

Cover up, say goodnight

Say goodnight

[Verse 2]

Home

Is where I want to be

But I guess I'm already there

I come home

She lifted up her wings

I guess that this must be the place

I can't tell one from another

Did I find you or you find me?

There was a time, before we were born

If someone asks, this is where I'll be, where I'll be

[Chorus]

Hi-yeah

We drift in and out

Hi-yeah

Sing into my mouth

Out of all those kinds of people

You got a face with a view

I'm just an animal looking for a home and

Share the same space for a minute or two

[Outro]

And you'll love me 'til my heart stops

Love me 'til I'm dead

Eyes that light up, eyes look through you

Cover up the blank spots, hit me on the head, I go

Ooo-o-o-ooh!13

IMMORTALE AMOR – ROMANCING ILLEGIBILITY

Since the infancy of the performative experiment (solo), language figured in it as experience. The boundary between the artistic practice and its reflection was rarely palpable and rarely conceptually relevant. Language was precisely what led me to arrive with full conviction at the concept of my personal theatre as the foundation of the performative experiment – at once materialising and resounding the first glimpses of the rehearsals of what would become my personal theatre.

Therefore, when it came to deciding how the performative experiment would become visible, language was a straightforward choice. Not only because it is indispensable in the process of shaping the performative experiment but also because it is helpful for both keeping and strategically revealing the key ‘secrets’ of the research, maintaining the private and imaginative nature of my personal theatre and simultaneously providing a route for following (not viewing, knowingly touching, or entering) its body.

The use of language in Immortale Amor tends towards subversion, promiscuity of genre and form, and ongoing transformations of its function. It embraces the anecdotal, the apocryphal, the unofficial, and the untrustworthy. Immortale Amor walks the walk and talks the talk of figures from various flavours of ‘backstages’. It keeps its treasures in its ass.

The ‘ideal’ reading should be similar to hearing the prompter during an opera performance. A flaw, but not a mistake. Voiced deliberately but heard incidentally. The voice that should remain discrete and ‘internal’ revolting in tiny increments. Always approaching the subject from the side. To complement the innate primary failure of the performative experiment, Immortale Amor adopts its instructive failure – the failure to be read ‘correctly’. The unavailability of a clear path for a singular reading free of errata, dead ends, or odd entanglements.

The relationship of this exposition to Immortale Amor is one of both homage and deliberate omission. To become resonant, it is hidden and secreted (primarily: simple past tense and past participle of secret, secondarily: simple past tense and past participle of secrete). This exposition serves (among other things) as a shelf for an invisible book – an inviting structure that gathers telling trinkets and dust, gestures of repose and bemused confusion, a space for desire to peek into the larger library of unwritten books, a wide margin (for error and other delicacies).

ACT II.

Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.

Where did that come from?

It’s a pretty story…

Thank you. It’s pretty because it’s true.

I have questions.

Good.

You are a bitter, angry malcontent.

Not a question. Yes. I am. By birth.

And you spin this charming mythopoetic yarn about love and service and new life…

It’s the opera, what do you expect?

Gossip!

-

Complain.

Huh?

Complain.

I see you. You don’t seem like someone who can keep their mouth shut.

Fair.

And you are a dilettante.

Fair.

And you are sixty kilos of pure bitch.

What are you hinting at?

Something happened. Not ‘as written’. And definitely not as a love story.

-

The instruction you get for the first performance you serve: Be quiet, unless something happens. Something. This something is a mistake. Basically: Don’t speak unless spoken to. And the one who speaks to you, beckons you, calls you forth into its loving embrace is the mistake. Or the promise of one.

If there are no mistakes, no promises, you are of symbolic value. Plainly and to the point: Someone has to sit there. You are someone. A person in the shape of a hole. Void made person with a friendly disposition. Someone quite literally in their corner. A profession of care if you care, but largely just a profession of presence. Showing up. Regularity. Consistency. Lists make them calm, and you are an item on that list.

You hold things. Phones, shoes, water bottles, props, secrets, space. You hold yourself still. While you are petted on the head, hugged, gossiped to, questioned. Somewhere between captivity and commitment.

Your ass is firmly seated in the dark while your eyes peer into the light. A creature of the threshold. Some voices live in the dark and some voices live in the light. You live in between. Someone has to sit there.

‘A strange thing happened today. I went on and I didn’t know my words. This never happens.’

‘Could you hear me?!’

‘I never listen to you.’

Then there are requests: Just sit back and enjoy. Then there are requests: Watch me in the recitative. Then there are requests: Be loud during my aria. Then there are requests: No secrets. No secrets. No secrets stands for: Give me everything you got. Every word. Every syllable. Every accent. Every indication of rhythm. For I am filled to the brim with the promise of a mistake. And just like that your jaw unlocks, your tongue is free and you spill forth.

This is another form of holding. The mistake of ‘No secrets’ is latent, felt but not necessarily heard, hinted at, feared. But it doesn’t often make an entrance in sound. It’s a ghost. A haunt of a mistake.

When she comes, she comes with light, radiant. She rips through the fabric of closed form like an angel of the annunciation. And she gives the truest of all statements. The most aggressive statement in any language: I am.

A manifest mistake requires not holding but catching. This catch is to be done, above all, discretely. The falling body must hear the saving catch, but the audience must not. You must be heard always. You must never be heard. With a single voice.

There is pleasure in a perfect catch, in perfect balance, in virtuosity, in curiously balanced and folded tension in a paradox. But what joy it is to speak, to sing. What joy it is to be heard.

The mistake is intoxicating. Bold. Radical. Sharp. Laughing in the face of all that is demure, mindful, rehearsed, valuable, classy, allegedly immortal and sublime. In head-to-toe leopard print she is a vision. She is a goddess. She smells of now. She tastes of now. Her touch pulls the present moment violently onto the stage.

Your sounding voice is bound to the mistake. It gives thanks to the mistake. It worships it. It becomes shaped by it. Your desire to remain silent, to not give evidence, to shut the door, pays tribute to perfection. In your closed mouth a golden hall hung with crystal and upholstered with velvet glistens with deceptive warmth. When you open it, you speak ruin. With one single voice.

Hör mich nur atmen

Doch das beweist nichts

Inmitten meiner Kreise

Doch deren Mitte bin ich nicht

Regungslos

Wartend

Wartend

Wenn du kommst, kommst du mit Licht

Du kommst strahlend

Zehrst meinen Schatten auf

Zählst meine Kerben

Und schlägst mich auf

Öffnest mein Versteck

Und liest mich laut

Damit auch ich

Mich

Hören kann

Wenn du gehst, fragst du

Wer von uns beiden glaubst du

Ist der Geliebte? Wer von uns

Ist der Geliebte?

Ist der Geliebte?14

I WAS WITH YOU, THAT'S ALL I REMEMBER

The performative experiment (solo) concludes, or rather folds into its documentation, like a song passed on by oral tradition folds into notation. The folds are deliberate, perhaps even well-meaning and not completely humourless, but often unflattering. Much is lost, much escapes, the time for lovingly counting errata slowly approaches.

Georges Banu sits in his armchair and looks at his puppets, prompting his mind to act out innumerable plays with them. Plays he missed, plays he wished he had seen, plays that were never staged and never will be staged. Without touching. Without moving to act. But nevertheless, in intimate conspiratorial partnership. He is content.

The monster sits on its paws, purring and howling softly to the sound of some 121 songs spanning approximately seven hours, the landscape shifting around it. It listens. Its second listens. The emergence of thirdness is imminent. It is in no hurry. It is content.

The researcher gently fishes out his trusty Metropolitan Opera pencil (brought back from New York by his friend, who asked him in advance what colour ‘diamond’ he would prefer on his Met pencil, he said [he doesn’t remember], she asked what colour ‘diamond’ he preferred if [insert colour] was not available, he said blue, the blue ‘diamond’ eventually fell off, but the gesture holds) and ostentatiously scratches his head. He writes:

Alone is a place, where no voice lives. A solo is not made by oneness or sameness. The voice (albeit 'solo') always materialises against, through, or by, something or someone. It is always directed somewhere – not towards a goal, simply somewhere ‘else’. There is no resonance without touch (from the inside and the outside). No resonance without the idea of an elsewhere.

The trans* voice is not ‘special’ in its resistance to straightforward taxonomy. No voice (however seemingly conventional, palatable, expected, disciplined, or outwardly tame) can be heard in one single way, reliably fall into a single category, evoke a single interpretation.

There is no ‘harmony’ between the body and the voice, just as there is no ‘discord’. There are ideas of harmony. Ideas of discord. Codes. Rules. Sanctioned instances of breaking them. A wilderness of unsanctioned instances.

Trans* embodiment and the lived experience that comes with it act like a contrast agent, highlighting the multiplicities present in the voice (as such). Highlighting the tensions with its presence, absence, placement, volume, quality, etc. With its inherent mutability.

The voice of objects, and other allegedly ‘voiceless’ entities, acts similarly. There are those who are deemed to not ‘have’ a voice, and in instances when they voice, their voice is not considered to be ‘theirs’ (not ‘belonging’ to them, somehow ‘borrowed’ or – worse case – ‘rented’), pointing like a weathervane to the judgement passed on who has the right to be heard as an agent.

The tension around trans* voices and voiced objects makes visible that which is present in every ‘conventional’ voice. Every voice is monstrous. Always in transition. Never alone.

ACT III.

I heard you say the opera paid for your tits, is that true?

It’s a joke, of course it’s true.

-

What are you then, prompter?

Huh?

What are you?

I don’t quite understand.

Are you the hopeful sailor? Tragic lover? Vengeful jester?

I’m wrong.

-

Everyone thinks their problem is unique. So did you. But your lens is good. And so are your eyes. You must merely adjust the scope. Shift your perspective.

You imagined there is a body made of one. A beginning made of one. A voice made of one. Your paradise lost.

Look again. You will see that each singing body is being (re)built before your very eyes. Made. Endlessly reconstructed and refurbished. Always transforming. Man-made, intentionally complicated and sculpted by touch like yours.

This stage is full of monsters. This house is full of monsters. This city. This district. This country. This continent. This whole world.

All going trans*. Through it.

The monster is one who lives in transition. One whose face, body and behaviours cannot yet be considered true in a predetermined regime of knowledge and power.

To transition is to come to a machinic arrangement with the hormone of some other living code – the code may be a language, a music, a gesture, a plant, an animal or another living creature.15

What is wrong with you, Pedro, are you going through it? You're going through some kind of psychological change in your life? 16

AIN'T LOVE LIKE A KICK IN THE HEAD?

The researcher makes a list. A plan for a heist. A roadmap through a series of holes:

1. The voice is significantly more than just its tenor. The audible aspect of voice is just a small, conspicuous, easily registered, recorded, categorised, and marketed slice of voice.

2. Follow the ‘private’ and/or ‘secret’ voice. That which is not heard, not meant to be heard, forbidden from being heard, stolen, lost, or hidden. But that still carries attributes and powers of voicing.

3. Befriend the prompter. They must be heard always as well as never. They must lead without appearing to be leading.

4. Bow into the act of listening as leading and surrendering to being led. Fold yourself into the act of listening as an integral part of voicing. Give in to aural pleasures.

5. Do it to me with your mouth. Do it in my ear.

EPILOGUE

I think I get it now. I am you. You are me. We are everyone.

Coffee?

And cake, please.

-

Ten minutes until the start of the show.

What are you doing later?

You.

I’m listening…

Richard L. Kramár, 2025

BIBLIOGRAPHY