One of my most favorite gifts of all time was when my mom gave me a Royal typewriter for my birthday when I was about eighteen years old. I had started using hers when I was about thirteen. I became a pretty good typist because I enjoyed writing. While living with Mary Jo in Seattle, I wrote a lot of dialogue and scenes for plays. I loved Warhol’s Chelsea Girls and was influenced by that. I dreamed of having a beatnik type coffeehouse where poetry could be read and plays could be performed.

A few years later, I had bought a sound Super-8 camera. I took a lot of the old dialogue I had written previously and put it together and filmed it with my new camera. Mary essentially played the character, Mary, and I played the character, Sylvan. The characters were based on us and our living together to some extent but not entirely accurate. I guess I could have named the characters differently but, for some reason, that just seemed like too much of a bother. The play begins with the words, “I think I’ll slit my wrists.”

Many years later, I posted “Ennui” on youtube. The owner of the “Catherine Slip” gallery contacted me in 2009 and asked if Ennui could be a part of a show he was putting together called “Sick Love.” He said:

“Your piece was actually the thing that inspired me for the whole show – it’s somewhat of the centerpiece of the exhibition. I love the naive quality of the film making, the poetic nature of dialogue, and the content that really pushes boundaries. I think it’s brilliant, really!”

Catherine Slip gallery in New York showing of “Ennui” 2009.