response

It has never been easy, but here it seems more difficult than anywhere else, with all these fragile, repressed male egos lurking around like paper tigers on the prowl.

There is nothing more detestable than to have your intentions grossly, grossly misunderstood, distorted, smeared.

And yet there is nothing you are more prepared to do: to fiercely defend yourself. To survive despite everything. To get back on your feet.

What you have always done. What you have always had to do. What you will go on doing.

For the sake of sanity.

To carry on being yourself, strong and vulnerable, worldly and naive, bold and bashful, pretentious and humble, affectionate and remote, miserable and happy.

True to yourself, true to life. Because life cannot be contained: grass grows through the cracks among the concrete, searching for air, sunshine, wind, rain, thunder.

No watertight compartments, no safety lids. The contents pouring out in joyful anarchy, body and soul unshielded, exposed, ready to take the next blow.

*       *       *

BE PREPARED:
To have your brain picked
to have the pickings misunderstood
to be mistreated whether your success
increases or decreases
to have detraction move with admiration – in step
to have your time wasted
your intentions distorted
the simplest relationships in your thoughts twisted
to be USED and MISUSED
to be “copy” to be copied to want to cope out
cop out pull in and away
if you are a woman (and things are not utterly changed)
they will almost never believe you really did it
(what you did do)
they will worship you they will ignore you
they will malign you they will pamper you
they will try to take what you did as their own
(a woman doesn’t understand her best discoveries after all)
they will patronize you humor you
try to sleep with you want you to transform them
with your energy
They will berate your energy
they will try to be part of your sexuality
they will deny your sexuality or your work
they will depend on you for information for generosity
they will forget whatever help you give
they will try to be heroic for you
they will not help you when they might
they will bring problems
they will ignore your problems
a few will appreciate deeply
they will be loving you
as what you do as what you are
loving how you are being they will of course
be strong in themselves and clearly they will NOT
be married to quiet tame drones they will not say
what a great mother you would be
or do you like to cook and where you might expect
understanding and appreciation you must expect NOTHING
then enjoy whatever gives-to-you
as long as it does and however
and NEVER justify yourself just do what
you feel carry it strongly yourself


--Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll (1996). Performance.
Reproduced from Carolee Schneemann, Imaging Her Erotics (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002). pp. 156-57.