Friday, August 28, 2009

saturday's performance

Oh, we here are hurting, are recovering from weeks of multiple shows! Just this past week, we did three SHAMAN’S DEN shows and Friday at the new performance space Flux 53 in Oakland for the Los Angeles band Magick Orchids I was a guest vocalist. Btw, Flux 53 is a great theater [actually two performance spaces]… But bring your own P. A.!

Then Saturday was another REALITY PLAYINGS. It is building, digging in to the meat. Actually the performance started for some of the audience members before they got to the Temescal. Of course this is always true, but is usually hidden. But THE TRAVELING CLUBHOUSE contacted me a couple of weeks ago about bringing one of their groups to the performance as a part of a day long guided tour of challenging adventures. Moreover they asked me to give them a pre- performance ritual to prepare them. I told them to randomly pair up the people before going to dinner. The people in the pairs would feed each other. I thought this might be the last I would hear from them. But if they did do this ritual, it would open everything up. And by God they did it, and it did open everything up for everybody. It is amazing we are attracting people like THE TRAVELING CLUBHOUSE who value being stretched even if it is uncomfortable. And they were not alone. We had a room full of people who came to go deep and have developed abilities that allow them to risk. It feels like we are only beginning to tap into a deep vein of potentials! Of course we have only been doing this for over forty years. Moreover the six of us create a personal base which allows us to call upon our intimacy together… And Erika being there adds something. Tomek and Kene-J have developed trance quivering flesh music which allows us to slip into unknown freedom which can feel scary. And people like Unrulee and Michael the street mayor of Berkeley who have come to my performances for years add a calm to the mixture, not to mention a knowing humor! And now people are coming who have an understanding of what is occurring under the surface level because of their own personal work, such as gal*in_dog [the POW POW guy] who is a performance artist and teacher. We are creating a powerful nexus of expanding erotic zones of an underground community building subversion!

Stay tuned! Better yet, come to the next performance!

JEN:

Erika was already there unloading with the boyz when we rolled in. We all set up the space and it looked great, warm and inviting. There was one guy there already and he came in and sat down. Then very quickly a whole bunch of people came in. Most of them were from the Traveling Clubhouse, an urban adventure group that went to challenging community events. They had chosen Frank's performance weeks ago and had emailed him saying that they needed a challenge to do as well. He challenged them to pair up randomly and feed each other at a cafe before coming. Well, here they were and Frank asked how the challenge went. They said that it was difficult. Feeding each other is intimate and they did not feel comfortable feeding another person who they weren't already intimate with. Charlie, one of the organizers, didn't want to feed anyone but her husband. Two of the guys were paired up and had to feed each other. Frank started asking everyone what they did, and what they did for fun. There were physics guys and a chemistry guy in the group. Frank talked with one of the physics guys about what time and space are. The guy said that the best answer he heard was that time and space were what kept everything from happening all at once. Frank talked about particles existing everywhere at once. Later Frank asked if light was a particle or a wave. The physics guy said that it was neither, it was something new. Frank asked what and the guy said that it could be called anything just to call it something. They really don't know what it is. The conversation got into quantum physics and Frank said that this performance was quantum physics, and that made the guy think. He eventually said yes, that you could describe it that way. You could feel it opening things up, melting physics and science with life by talking this way about it.

There were a lot of people in the room. It wasn't clear who was with this traveling group. Frank kept asking people what they did. People did all kinds of things like teach, play music, read, party. Basically, live. Frank asked one guy who played music if he would join the band. Tomek and Kene-J were already playing amazing trancy music in the background. One of the organizers from Pow-Pow was there, the performance festival that Frank is going to be in in October. He was loving it. He talked to Frank about being on the Shaman's Den and having his character interviewed. He gave a hint to this character and growled into the microphone. He had a cow bell with him and was playing along with the band as well. There was a couple of girls, a poet and a writer. Frank asked the writer to undress me and put jewelry on me. She said yes and then did that. Then the physics guy was asked to undress Erika and do the same, so he did. Frank asked another girl what she would like to do and she said everybody get up and dance. While we all did that, the guy from Pow Pow undressed Linda and put jewelry on her too,

We were all grooving to the band, everyone jumping and gyrating away. There was an older woman who came in and sat next to Frank talking to him. After the performance he said that she was a teacher who said that Frank was an angel who opened up everything. She gave her contact information to Linda. Everyone was still dancing away, and at first it was like people stuck to who they knew. Eventually though, a big circle formed and we were all dancing together, kicking and batting around the little pillows, playing with each other. People would get into the center of the circle and dance and then we were all dancing together and the circle disappeared. It was great! Frank Linda and Mikee went to the bathroom and then the dancing ended soon after they got back. I was dripping with sweat.

Frank began talking to more of the people again. There was a philosophy teacher who talked about his book he wrote. Frank asked where was the mind, the soul and the personality. The guy said that he didn't know but that the mind wasn't confined to the brain. Frank talked about how the skin is actually the connecting organ between us, not a division. First physics, now philosophy. When Frank talked to Charlie and her partner about why they started the Traveling Clubhouse, they said they wanted to challenge people. Frank asked why she risked that, and risked bringing everyone here. She said that she didn't see it as a risk because it was something everyone should do. She also said that people could feel anyway they wanted to about it, she just felt responsible for giving them the opportunity to experience. Frank said that was his philosophy too. The Pow Pow guy said that Frank was communicating to us from a different dimension and that there was more being communicated than we could perceive. He felt that this was very important and he felt very good to be here.

It was really amazing how people were open to experiencing this, even if they felt uncomfortable or afraid because they didn't know what was going to happen. Didn't know if they would even find out, but they stayed and they experienced it knowing that they would be thinking about it for weeks afterwards. Frank had Linda read the warning sign. These people wanted to be challenged. At the beginning of the night Frank asked them how much they wanted to be challenged and Charlie's partner said 'somewhat challenged', but Frank pointed out that those two words didn't go together. The physics guy said that he was willing to be challenged 8 out of 10, 10 being the most challenged. Frank kept asking him if we were at 8 yet. It was a fun night!

Frank asked Charlie and her partner if they would direct him in something. They first wanted to build a human pyramid, but Frank said he didn't offer up anyone but himself, saving us all. So they said that Frank should come up with a limerick which is a type of poem. Frank did one and then asked them to repeat it, but they stalled because Frank can't talk so his limerick was a series of noises. They didn't get how to repeat it. Tomek helped out and repeated it almost exactly as Frank had done it. Then they got it but it was still difficult for them. Charlie's partner started and then Charlie tried, but Frank said she should do it again with humour! While they were working on it, the rest of the group was ready to leave. Frank asked Charlie's husband to come up with one more thing they wanted to do and he said have someone tell a storey, so Frank had each of them talk about their experience tonight. What they said has all blurred together, but really they loved it. They all said it was challenging and they didn't know what to expect, or what was happening, but they really enjoyed it. Charlie ended up staying, and so did her husband. Then Frank had the poet woman read randomly from his book of writings while Linda Erika and I went around 'getting' people. We got every single person in the room, ending with Frank, as the woman read several poems and then the long Combine Plot which talked about the censorship of art in society. It wrapped the evening up and everyone was blown away.

As we packed up, a couple of people hung around to talk to Frank. Unrulee was there, had come late, and thanked Frank. There was also a young traveler from Long Island who stuck around. And the philosophy teacher asked Frank that none of the video of him be shown on the web. They talked about that, how Frank always does what's moral and that has always protected him. The video wouldn't be on the web anyway, just photos. The video would be played on Frank's Unlimited Possibilities tv show on BTV. The guy wasn't worried about the tv show, but he figured that photos on the web weren't that bad, wouldn't get him fired from his job. Thing was, he knew what Frank did before he came and he came anyway. He brought a mask to wear, but he took it off because it didn't feel right to wear it. And after he realized everything was being videoed, he still stayed!

We ate popcorn and took the set down, packed everything up and got it back into the car. Then we were riding back home and talking about the night. Linda said there was this incredible wellspring of experience we had that people could tap into and how that felt very important. People were looking for this. There was this need for experience like this, where you consciously don't know what's going to happen. All you can do is follow and enjoy and be. Of course it feels uncomfortable and challenging because this is not the way our society is in general. But despite all that, people love it, they crave it. All the people tonight were open to whatever. Some came and went but most stayed. It was amazing. This performance series is really incredible, and it just shows how amazing our life is.

DA BOYZ:

We were at the space! Hustle time! We loaded in, Erika was walking up as we got out of the car, and she started loading in with us ... she set up the sandwich boards, and we were soon all there setting up, always fun ... We were ready, just in time ... one guy had arrived, Linda welcomed him in, and he came in and sat down ... and then in filed the Traveling Clubhouse! There must have been at least 10-12 people all at once that came in, some wearing funny hats, and sat down on the mats ... and the performance started!

Frank started talking to everyone, asking what people did, heard about how Charlie and Nicole had found this performance to bring the Traveling Clubhouse to, and why they chose it ... it was free, and it looked very interesting to them, and wanted something that would be challenging ... they had seen it somewhere online on a search for free things to do on that date ... and they talked about why they had set up the Traveling Clubhouse ... after experiencing a similar mystery tour of NYC, organized by a local arts collective. Frank asked them how challenging? Nicole said "somewhat challenging" ... Frank asked her if those two words went together? She had to admit that they didn't ... she said she wanted it to be challenging! Another guy said he wanted 8 out of 10. He was a physics grad student ... and there was another one there too ... and a chemist ... Frank asked the first physicist if time exists? And then what about matter and space? He had a hard time answering ... he said the best answer he had heard was that time and space exist so that everything doesn't happen all at once! Their conversation continued over the course of the performance ... Frank pointed out that particles exist outside of time ... and later he brought up light ... what was that? A particle or a wave? The physicist said that it was really neither ... he also said that the way that they looked at it was that a particle really was not defined unless you tried to observe it ... they exist everywhere at once, until you observe them. Frank related this to the performance ... he said that he has always thought of the performances as quantum physics ... the physicist said something like, "Yes, it could be defined as that." !!
There were a lot of other people coming in, some leaving right away, others sitting down and staying for some time ... Frank talked with a bubbly young woman who said she wrote creative non-fiction. There was another woman who came, who was a writer as well, of poetry, but she didn't have any of hers with her, and couldn't recite from memory ... Later, Frank had her read from his writings ... which was amazing. Frank asked the nonfiction writer if she would undress Jen, and put on some of the costume jewelry that was laid out nicely on a mat ... She did it ... A little bit later, Frank asked the physicist to undress Erika and put jewelry on her too, which he enjoyed! Frank kept asking him if he was reaching 8??! Later, when most of the Traveling clubhouse was going to leave, and Frank asked them what they thought, the physicist said that he liked it ... he said it was not unlike most normal human interaction ...

There was so much that went on, so much that connected to so much else ... one of the curators of the POW POW performance festival came too, and Frank talked to him about what he does, and asked for a hint of the "character" Frank would be interviewing when he and his partner come on the shaman's den. He gave a low guttural growl ... that was the hint! Later, Frank had him undress Linda and put costume jewelry on her too ...

Throughout the night, Frank would ask people what they thought of it so far ... it was really neat to hear, in the moment, as opposed to at the end, what people were experiencing ... and a common theme was a sense of being uncomfortable, of not knowing where it was going, but liking this, liking this challenge. Even the music made Charlie uncomfortable. Oftentimes, we don't hear people's experience until the end of the performance, and this is when many have left. But this time, you got a sense of what the experience was like throughout the performance, which was really interesting! It showed how powerful an experience these performances are ... in many different ways, and how quickly they affect people.

A really funny point was when Frank asked the two creators of the Clubhouse to direct him in something ... they asked him to come up with a limerick, and Frank vocalized his limerick, and then asked them to repeat what he came up with ... they had a hard time! How about Tomek, could he repeat it? He got it! Then Frank did another line ... the two girls were still having a hard time. Tomek got part of it, but had to take a second crack at it to get the whole thing! Finally, the girls attempted to repeat Frank ... but then he asked them to do it with the humor. It was really challenging for them! Frank was earning his 8, really 10!

Closer to the end, Frank asked Guillermo, the POW POW guy, to talk about his experience of the performance. He loved it. He said that it felt to him as if Frank were communicating with everyone from another dimension ... and that the way he spoke, and what he said was bringing everyone into that other dimension ...

Earlier, Frank asked the nonfiction writer's friend what she wanted to do ... She said she wanted everyone to get up and dance. So Frank said, ok, let's dance. Everyone got up and danced to the music that Tomek, Kene-J and another guy, who had come to the performance, were playing, which was amazing! Frank took a piss break, and then was undressed for the rest of the performance. The dancing was fun ... an impromptu game started up with the word pillows that we bring ... people were tossing them to each other, and using them like hackey sacks ... forming a circle.

In the "second half", there was a really interesting conversation with a philosophy professor and author, about what constitutes reality ... what is mind, soul, self? Frank said that he has never been able to pin down where is the mind. Frank had asked him what was his philosophy? He was saying that he doesn't think that the mind ends at the skin ... They talked together about how the mind and the world interpenetrate each other ... that the self is really a combination of these, a relationship ... Frank said that the skin is the connecting, rather than the dividing organ ... It was really an amazing conversation ...

The "last" part of the performance, Frank invited the poet to come up and read randomly from his book of writings while Linda, Jen and Erika "got" the audience. But before this, the Traveling Clubhouse announced that they would have to leave, and Frank asked them to come up with one last thing to do before they left ... Charlie's husband suggested that someone tell a story, and Frank asked each of them to tell the story of their experience that night at the performance. Charlie's husband started ... he really liked the performance ... we can't remember what he said, but it felt like he got and appreciated the reality-altering nature of the performance, and how it challenged all of them to go beyond their expectations. Almost all of them said this in some way or another. Charlie said that it was the most challenging thing that the Traveling Clubhouse has ever done. Frank said that was good! Or he would have to amp it up more! Nicole said that part of what affected her experience was the feeling of responsibility for bringing a group of people to the performance, and she was curious what it would be like for her to come by herself. Frank invited her back. Charlie later said that she didn't feel that ... she felt like she was opening up possibilities for people by organizing these tours, but that they could do what they wanted with the experience. She was not responsible for that ... Frank said that this was his philosophy too. Even though most of the Clubhouse left, Charlie and her husband stayed until the end.

The reading of Frank's writings was amazing. The poet turned out to be the woman that Erika had met and invited to the performance, and it felt like she really sunk into Frank's writings, really felt them ... it was a really good reading. Meanwhile, the people that remained were, one at a time, "got" by Linda, Jen and Erika. Jen later said that it felt like people were really open to being "got" ...

After the performance ended, the philosopher tried to get Frank to not put any photos of him up on the web ... he said that where he worked, they were unfairly trying to push people out, and would use anything to discredit him, and try to push him out of his position ... He talked to Frank a long time. He obviously liked the performance and liked Frank, and he knew he had no real grounds for asking Frank to do that. He knew what he was in for, he knew that the camera was running, he knew about Frank for years and what he does, and still he came and stayed the whole night. Frank told him that he always does what is morally right, and the guy knew this was true. Frank wouldn't edit or delete anything from the performance, and it would play in its entirety on BTV too! But the professor didn't seem to worry about that! Frank also gave him some really good advice about his situation. Frank said that he always takes responsibility for everything he does, and does what he wants to do, and that this protects him. It wasn't clear if the philosopher really got this. Frank said later that the philosopher needed to be logical!

Breaking down the set, talking and eating popcorn was fun as always ... we were blown away by the performance ... this write-up seems to really only capture a fraction of the experience. We tried the cell phone thing on the drive home, but it was hard to hear Linda ... we did get that Frank was saying that there were a lot of levels to the performance ... the philosophy level, the physics level, the hip hop level... ! That's right, Kene-J did a set too! Amazing ... It was really incredible how much gets packed into these performances. Linda also said that it felt like there was this deep well to draw from for these performances, and how important that well was ...

We were also saying on the ride home and later that it was so amazing how there are always, in every performance, these moments, sometimes a lot of them, of being blown away by things that people say, or simply what is happening in the performance. Corey said that it was often, behind the camera, a sensation of a historical moment. Something that one could look back on and really see how important what we do is, in a broad historical context ... and there were so many of them ... month after month, year after year ... archives full of these moments. And what made it especially poignant, videoing, was that it was often this combination of the music and the words and what was happening, that just gave you a jolt of this feeling of "historic".

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution (Frank)

I was thinking of the the likes of Emma Goldman... But i blanked on her name

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution (Annie Sprinkle)

(Frank Moore wrote:)

what do you mean by "next"? We here have been living this for about forty years!

* * * * *

Yeah, the 60's dont count? the swingers? Platos?
SM communities? Mormons?
New? No way.
annie

* * * * *

ah, yes, Annie. And the Radicals of the American labor/etc movement experimented with free love. All through history and cultures, in fact.

Tomi, you wanted to be introduced to Annie and Suzy. Annie and Suzy, this is Tomi!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: distro

hi frank..havent heard back from the guys regarding loading time but..we are planning to be there around 8:30ish PM. a video of the set would be great...i will let u know when i hear back from them...havent really had much time to read a lot of the discussions in ur e-salon community but i will once i get back to unlimited internet access at home...we are now in seattle right now playing at the josephine tonight...an interesting place where the Sun City Girls started their label, Sublime Frequencies.
see you soon frank,
champ

* * * * *

SEE YOU TONIGHT [FRIDAY]! WE ARE EXCITED!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: GREAT SHOW

Hi Frank,

YOu are awesome. I tuned in because my son Sean Ongley and girlfriend Kelly
were on. But, I looked around your website and watched your show , as I am
doing right now...and I think it is great. I am all for free speech and I
just love this whole idea.
Keep it up !

Sandy Ongley

* * * * *

thanks, Sandy, for the kind words! It was a great show... We covered a
lot... And dug up a lot of dirt!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Monday, August 24, 2009

Re: an interview from the past! (Harley Spiller) II

FYI - We have a November 1987 copy of Velvet magazine in our file on “Intimate Cave” with lots of pictures and a story of the event.

Harley aka Inspector Collector!

* * * * *

great, Harley! Could you xerox, scan, or whatever they do now and send it to me?

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

* * * * *

Hi Frank,
Our student intern Grace should by now have emailed you scans of your Velvet appearance from the FF basement – if not let me know. and that gives me an idea for the name of a band – Velvet Underground – heh heee haaa Harley

Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.

* * * * *

thanks again, Harley... And thank Grace for me.

Funny. I will interview the author of the big book on the Velvet Underground. The publisher of rock and roll biographies has started sending luver copies of his books! Don't tell him I have not read a book in at least fifteen years!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Re: following up (David Jolliffe) IV

hi, David. One of the main reasons why I am asking this question... "is there a policy of providing upon request the contact information of the local sponsor /producer of a show on B-TV... If there is, what is the policy exactly? If there is not such policy any more, when did it change and why? "... is it seems important that you and Arielle know what the framework of policies is that you have to work within, as well as the history and the philosophy of the framework. It would at the very least make your jobs easier. Is not a part of your jobs talking to residents, sponsors, producers, members like me, answering our questions, serving us? It doesn't seem like the board is set up to answer questions, etc. After all Arielle has been passing on my questions to "appropriate personnel" with a promise of a "timely response" for weeks! I have not gotten any response, timely or otherwise, except from you. I
wrote to the board a few weeks ago. No reply.

So we have established that there is now no policy of providing upon request the contact information of the local sponsor /producer of a show on B-TV. right? So when and more importantly why was that policy dropped?

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: following up (David Jolliffe) III

(Frank Moore wrote:)

"But we still need to nail down the answer to the question of is there a policy of providing upon request the contact information of the local sponsor /producer of a show on B-TV."

* * * * *

(David Jolliffe wrote:)

Hi Frank,
Sorry, I'm not aware of such policy. You can refer these inquiries to the BCM board.
David

* * * * *

could /would you find out what the exact policy is?

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: from penny arcade VIII

Buenos Aires

Querido Frank

Oh, while I was dancing frivolously away... some fairies were typing and typing till their fingers hurt.

"Jen just finished transcribing the interview! A big job!"

Thank you very much Jen.

"Sheri Falco Interviewing Frank, Linda, Mikee and Erika"

Can you tell me how these 4 are related or will I find that out through the interview?

Looking forward to the big read.

Besos

Tomi

STREIFFSCHUSS FILMS AG

Tomi Streiff

* * * * *
well, we here are six living in two houses on the same block... Living in a tribal relationship /body. Also there is Erika who now lives in another apartment [she was in the interview]. Linda, Mikee and I live in the Purple House with two cats. Alexi, Corey and Jen live in the Blue House ruled by a
cat!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: from penny arcade VII

Buenos Aires

Querido Frank

Sorry for my belated response. It doesn't mean at all that I'm not thrilled by all the bridges I see getting built in such short amount of time. It just means yesterday I got lost dancing through the night of Buenos Aires with drag queens, most of them a head taller then me (well at least while wearing their glamourous platforms...), and hardcore piercing performers...What a crowd... It was 7 am by the time I trotted homewards through the rain... It often reminds me here of New York in the 70/80. Well, but without the same freshness. Something that has already been lived & loved somewhere else on the planet unfortunately can't be relived with the same intensity somewhere else. It's only once new to our planet... But enough of the chattering away... back on track...

Thanks a lot for the introduction to Sheri.

"I am having it transcribed to send to him. Tomi, that is happening."

It will be great to read it once it makes it down to Argentina.

"But I can see Jen still typing!"

And who is Jen?

"Sheri's footage should be much more what you would use than ours."

From a technical side I'm curious to hear how many minutes / hours of material Sheri taped on what video format. And what year the interview was held? And if there is any edited version yet?

"Sheri, this is Tomi. Tomi, this is Sheri!"

Thanks for the match making. I look forward to hearing from her, and hopefully meeting her too someday soon.

>From the Heart

Tomi

STREIFFSCHUSS FILMS AG

Tomi Streiff

* * * * *
the interview was around three hours. I think we did it three years ago.

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Re: following up (David Jolliffe) II

hi, David! Did you get my below email? I am asking because I did not get
your reply to it.

Also could you provide me the contact information of the sponsors on the
list? Thanks!

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: from penny arcade VI

Buenos Aires

Queridos Frank & Sheri

"i will contact tom and see how i can be of service."

Merci!

"glad to see that the universal telephone line is in tact"

And it reaches all the way down to Argentina. And that all for a
Penny...!

De corazón

Tomi

STREIFFSCHUSS FILMS AG

Tomi Streiff

* * * * *

ah, the universal underground network!

Sheri, what have you been up to?

In Freedom,
Frank Moore

Re: from penny arcade (Sheri Falco's interview)

hi, gang! Jen just finished transcribing the interview! A big job! Ah, the advantages of the tribal body! Here it is:

Sheri Falco Interviewing Frank, Linda, Mikee and Erika for Film on Sex and Spirituality

(Jessica is the cameraman)

Sheri: I’m gonna just ask some general questions and then more specific questions, and if you could, after I ask the question could you also repeat the question at the beginning of your answer, that’d be great. So we can capture that. So, I’m just curious. I know that you found a church and that you guys have been together for 30 years (Linda and Frank), you’ve been together for 15 years (with Mikee), and you’ve (Erika) been with this group since about 5 years ago. I’m curious what it is you guys are up to. What does your house represent? How would you describe your relationship as a group?

Linda: Well, for me it’s about… would you like some general stuff? Yes, we did start a church and it was 1978. We won approval from the government, tax exempt. We were turned down and we got the ACLU to represent us, and a number of us went to DC and had a real fancy law office represent us. The reason we were turned down was that the woman said that we didn’t believe in god. So what the attorney’s looked through the various writings and things that Frank had written and saw that in fact they would interpret our god as something that exists in each person. So, yes we do believe in god, but it’s everybody has god in them and that’s the focus.

Frank: Everyone should start a church.

Linda: It’s really worked out because, well for example, all of the work that we do is under the auspices of the church so it’s a way for us to stay clean of it personally, like money wise and everything. So all the art belongs to the church, all the performances are presented by the church, the money that’s made from anything goes to the church. The church can just support itself and we’re independent of all that.

Sheri: How big is the church?

Linda: How many people? It varies. At this point it would be the four of us and Corey and Alexi. What our relationship is about, it’s about relationship. It’s like about focus on relationship as opposed to focusing on other aspects of life, and seeing that everything else falls into place if you stay really focused on your relationship and meeting each other’s needs. Being present in the relationship. That everything else will fall into place.

Frank: Intimacy.

Linda: Intimacy is an important part of that.

Sheri: What do you mean by that?

Linda: Well intimate is like deep, so it’s not like “I’m there for you”. You know, it’s like real, really real. It’s not like you I’m there for you and then I have to go off and walk through the forest so I feel good. It’s like I’ve got to get everything that I need from this relationship, and that’s at the deepest most intimate level. You know what that is. People need things to feel good and I think a lot of times people go, you know, I’ll go swimming or I’ll go walk through the forest or I’ll meditate or something. For us, all of that has to be real and vital in our relationship.

Sheri: What do you mean?

Frank: One body.

Linda: And that’s like really real. You experience it as such. Like we talk about it as one body. We are one body and that, in fact, that’s the experience of it. Like the surrender to the relationship, surrender to what we are as one thing. You have the experience of being one body. I think a lot of people would agree in physics and things like that, quantum physics and stuff like that they talk about the skin as a false border and stuff like that. Our thing is like actually living that. Like that’s true. It’s accurate and one can live and experience life from that place.

Frank: Which freaks people out. Sex.

Linda: People that are in the sex business, over the years because of the nudity and the eroticism in the art that we do, for example, if we tour and we would ask the person that is producing the show if they could line up some local people to be part of the performance because we can’t afford to lug people with us, they would typically get strippers and people in the art thing, and they would typically freak out. People would say to us actually, if you wanted me to have sex with you I’d have no problem, but this intimate thing just freaks me out.

Sheri: So what do you do in your performances that conjured up intimacy in these types of situations? Like you treat your performers as part of the one body so they become engulfed in the…

Linda: The performances manifest/create a space so that people have the experience of being one body. It’s like in their head, I mean it might not even be talked about in that way, but they actually have the experience of that. The idea being then that that infects them in some way so that when they go off into their life, Frank often talks about it as planting seeds that explode afterward.

Frank: Time bombs.

Linda: And time has shown that that’s true, from the responses we get.

Sheri: So are there rules around your sexual expression with each other? Like for example is it polyamourous, bisexual, or does it stick to some more gender specific or orientation specific?

Frank: It is one relationship. Not a bunch of individual relationships. And it is not based on one is not enough.

Linda: It’s not coming from a place of one is not enough, like for example, with Frank and I it wasn’t coming from a place of our relationship isn’t enough so we need Mikee, or the three of us, our relationship isn’t enough so we need Erika. It’s not coming from a place of lack.

Sheri: Where’s it coming from?

Linda: Abundance. Fullness.

Frank: We want to live with Mikee. We want to live with Erika. Not “I don’t get something from you, so I need Erika.”

Sheri: And how is it for you Erika, coming into a situation where there’s a 25 year history? Were you feeling a part of that oneness immediately or feeing insecure about that? What’s it been like?

Erika: It’s like melting, so it’s just like melting into everything, and just following, and fairly smooth.

Sheri: Did you have to reshape your mind in terms of trying to understand, like you thought your life would look one way, or a relationship would look one way but then it’s ended up some other way. Was there a process that you had to go through to embrace that, or was it rather easy?

Erika: Yeah, if you went way back to the beginning, but mostly it’s about trusting a feeling so it was always about that really. It was trusting a feeling, and yes there would be things that would come up in your head that might tell you otherwise, but it was really just trusting a feeling that things felt good and so trusting that and many other ways of doing things didn’t work, didn’t feel good, so it was really following that.

Frank: Great questions.

Sheri: I’m curious how you arrived at your spiritual belief system. Did you two (Frank and Linda) arrive at this together or did one lead the other and were there specific events that caused it?

Linda: Well, what happened with me was that, I think I was 21 when I met Frank. So I had gotten to a point where I was real clear about what didn’t work, and so I pretty much just stopped doing what didn’t work. I quit my spirituality thing and got a regular job at a travel agency. I had a sense that there was something there that would feel like what I wanted.

Sheri: There was something where?

Linda: Out there in the world. But I couldn’t nail down what it was. It felt like it had to do with community and intimacy, but I didn’t have any models for it. I didn’t see anything that fit what felt, so I really was just in a holding pattern. And then Frank wheeled into the travel agency in his power chair, and I’m thinking “Oh my god! I hope this guy doesn’t come up to me”, and he comes right up to me, and I have to lean over the counter to read his board and I would always wear these big blousy things with no bra, so he could see down my dress. So he says “You’d be great in this play I’m doing.” Right away it’s like… there was no play. But he was willing to create one. But really what happened was the minute I made eye contact with him and started talking to him, I saw Frank. All of a sudden the wheelchair and everything else wasn’t there and right away talking to him I had a sense that this had to do with what I was waiting for, and if I didn’t follow it then I was full of shit. This is what I had been thinking I want. It’s not the way I thought it was going to look but you know. So I got together. He said, “My wife will call you.” And his wife called me that night. I went to their apartment. He was in a four way relationship with 2 kids, and they had a two bedroom apartment and one of the bedrooms was Frank’s studio. He pulled out his binders of his writings and it was all about the stuff we had already started talking about with you about relationship. What I got from it was the gap that I experienced between spirituality and the mundane wasn’t there, it all got filled. I realized that was part of what I was missing. I was a very spiritual person but it always seemed too spacey, like here we are and I wanted it to come down, but I didn’t have it all clear in my head. I read Frank’s stuff and thought he’s got it all figured out. I quit my job in a week or two and started working with Frank.

Sheri: Working in what way?

Linda: I’d been living in Berkeley for a year and he had just moved to the bay area, and was trying to get stuff going. I had been trained to do this kind of growth thing. This was in the 70’s.

Frank: I was doing a workshop.

Linda: But he wasn’t having any luck getting people together for the workshop.

Sheri: What was the workshop about?

Frank: Intimacy. I ripped off …

Linda: He had read a book by Richard Schechner about the work that he had done in the 60’s, environmental theater, where there was no audience space and performance space, everybody was in a room together and you didn’t know who the performers were and who the audience was. What happened in the book was…

Frank: They did a play about a commune and the audience thought they were a commune and wanted to join the commune. That freaked out the performance group.

Linda: So Frank thought what if you did that with the intention of creating community, like it wasn’t just a performance.

Frank: Because I had been living communally for years.

Linda: So that was what the workshop would have been about, and the training that I had was for this more hip thing that was happening at the time, the Fisher-Hoffman process. So he said well, what if we took that and kind of put what my focus is onto that and flyer for that. Maybe that would be a way to get people. So that was the first thing we did was we would get together and go through the whole Fisher-Hoffman process and work it to have the focus of the workshop that Frank was doing, and then put posters up.

Frank: It did not work.

Linda: It didn’t work, but we did get one guy who answered the flyer. And we had this free space. This room that Frank had managed to get for free.

Frank: In a Baptist Seminary.

Linda: But no workshop to use, so we get this one guy and the guy sits there for a couple of hours reading Frank’s board and he’s talking and asking Frank a bunch of questions. At the end of it he said, I’m not really interested in your workshop, but would you consider meeting with me like this on a weekly basis and I would pay you. Frank said “Sure!” because he’s flexible. He always says he’s flexible. So it turned out this guy was a psychic teacher, and a very popular psychic teacher like in Marin County, and had a lot of students. So he goes to his students and says “I have a new teacher, and this is my teacher.” So then all of his students wanted to meet his teacher. All of a sudden Frank’s got 30, 40, 50 people that want to meet with him on a weekly basis and pay him. So Frank was working full time, like 8 to 10 hour days meeting with people. Out of that came a core group, a workshop, over a period of 5 or 6 years.

Sheri: And you guys would be exploring intimacy and that whole fiction of separation of bodies and one spirit?

Linda: Yeah, and at the time, Frank often talks about just going with what’s happening, at the time a lot of people were into a growth movement thing. He was meeting with people and he would say that he’d made a bad guru because he wants to get close.

Frank: Personal.

Linda: He would say that in order to have that close personal relationship with you, I end up having to deal with the other relationships in your life because if you’re not being true in those relationships it will impact our relationship. So it ended up being kind of relationship counseling of a sort for a number of years.

(end of disc 1)

Linda: Through his life that had a more radical slant on things that would give him books to read so he read a lot of books, and watched.

Frank: But after I had the pointer, I thought I was ugly and…

Linda: No one would want to be with him and he was a burden. That was the way he thought about himself.

Frank: Not no one. I had friends.

Linda: You had friends but no one would want to be in an intimate relationship with you.

Frank: So I was still watching. Until I figured out 1) that is not being responsible.

Linda: To look at things like that was not being responsible.

Frank: 2) That is not the reality I want. It should not be like that. Not just for me but for everybody. So I had to live how…

Linda: How you wanted your life to be.

Frank: One part of that was quit thinking I am ugly. So I faked it. Did not tell anybody but… then people started…

Linda: People started saying “Wow, you look different. What happened?” He thought “Whoa! It’s working!” And then at some point he said he forgot he was faking it.

Sheri: That’s awesome. So where to you guys feel you’re going in terms of a group and a movement since you’ve been doing this for…

Frank: Why going?

Sheri: Just being and continuing exploring.

Frank: I never plan.

Linda: Right. You truly are really really flexible, so we always just follow. If you look like just in terms of the art stuff alone, one minute we’re doing all the poetry stuff, the next minute we’re doing rock and roll shows, the next minute we’re doing ritual performances in alternative spaces. It’s just kind of whatever is there to do we just move into that and do it that way.

Frank: Luver.

Linda: Like Luver. We’re doing a lot of Luver for the last 6 or 7 years and that was just Frank met a guy on the internet.

Frank: Who…

Linda: Had just read Annie Sprinkle’s book who had listed Frank as one of her teachers. And then Frank found his website and emailed him and he said “Oh my god, I’m just reading about you in Annie Sprinkle’s book!” Turns out he was involved in an internet radio station. This was 7 years ago when it was just starting, and Frank said I’ve always had a fantasy about being a dj. He said I can get you a show. So that’s how Luver really started because Frank got a Sunday night show there which is The Shaman’s Den, and in less than a year, much less than a year, there were a lot of problems with the management.

Frank: They wanted me because…

Linda: Well, Frank had been investigated by Jesse Helms in the early 90’s as an obscene artist. So they knew Frank as this free speech person. They said we’re about free speech and we want you with us, but it turned out they meant by free speech is like you could curse. But they had a lot of things you couldn’t do. And Frank in his way always manages to hone in on those things so it was like, he would talk about things like the djs would say “I don’t think anybody’s listening. I’m going to stop doing my show if I don’t get an email in 5 minutes.” So Frank would say on his show, he would talk about, and he would say #1) I don’t think that’s true that no one’s listening, and #2) even if no one’s listening and someone does tune in and there’s nothing on, they’ll never come back. Well management would come into the chat room and say “You can’t talk about company policy on the air.” So Frank would have me read that. So it just kept going on, and then they started talking about that they needed to sell out, and they needed to get corporate sponsorship. As Frank says the management had wet dreams about quitting their day jobs and having secretaries. Frank would say “Well, how much to do you need? Because if you got every dj to chip in, would that cover it?” They wouldn’t tell us the amount. Turned out it was $99. But it turned into this whole wellspring of people freaking out, because Frank kept saying you don’t have to sell out, you don’t have to do it. What do we need to keep it going at the level where we have complete freedom? It just pushed everybody’s button and we were getting mega hate emails from people. “Why don’t you start your own station if you know so much!”, which was like the last thing we wanted to do. We were doing a kazillion things, we didn’t want to start a radio station. But at a certain point we thought well maybe we should just do that. So Mikee learned in a week how to do an internet radio station so that we never missed a week of Frank’s show, and the intention was we would do Frank’s show on Sunday nights. We had a dj in Japan that would do his show before us. So Luver’s first show was live from Tokyo. But then it just evolved into this 24 hour things and 7 years later that’s a lot of what we do. It’s about creating community. There are a lot of aspects to it that we’ve just kind of gone with i

Sheri: So I’m curious , you mentioned intimacy and I know that’s a word that we’ve all kind of heard before, but I’m curious if you can define it. I don’t know if that’s possible or not. How would you define your meaning of intimacy?

Frank: Intimacy is being together deeply on every level for life. Which freaks most people in the sex world out.

Sheri: Why the sex world specifically?

Frank: Because you would think sex and intimacy would go together.

Linda: So it’s not that it only or mostly freaks people from the sex world out, or are you saying that possibly there’s more in the sex world than the general population? Would you say that?

Frank: Yes.

Linda: Well, I don’t know exactly what you’re saying. I think that possibly one aspect of it is that it’s how people think about themselves. Our experience has been that if we are with somebody that thinks that they’re really open and has no limits, and then they’re put in a situation where they feel uncomfortable, and feel limits, that it’s about more than just the limits that they’re feeling. It’s about the way they think of who they are and that’s more threatening.

Frank: Like we did a workshop at basically a new age sex cult.

Linda: And that was recently in San Francisco. We did a workshop series there. On the surface it appeared that we were a perfect match because they were about using sex as a vehicle for… you don’t think it was even that. They were just into sex. But it was a new age thing so there was yoga and all this other stuff. So you would kind of think there was a spiritual element to it. But what happened was through the course of the workshop there were core people from their group that attended all the workshops and were profoundly affected by them, and it seemed to really freak out the power structure and they really wanted to get rid of us as fast as they could.

Sheri: That’s kind of interesting, if you don’t mind going into that, because in some ways that’s a little bit of what I was curious about in this group is if there’s a power structure in terms of who makes the decisions and how the relationship gets formed. Like how to you guys all live together as one body and live your individual lives and come together as a group and relate at the different levels that the relationships may exit. I’m clearly imposing my own limitations but… like on a day to day basis.

Frank: Good questions. Power is over rated.

Linda: Again, it’s like, my experience of Erika moving in, for example, is like for me it’s about surrender because you get used to, even without trying to, there’s a certain dynamic of the three of us and you get used to it. And there’s a certain level of comfort in that, and then having somebody else come in requires a more, it brings to the fore the need for surrender and trust. So I didn’t feel at all as if I was in a position of power because it was all about constantly having to surrender and be open and trust that I wasn’t going to lose anything. I’m not going to lose anything that I have with Mikee and Frank even though there were times that it felt like that. So it was about surrendering to what we were as the four of us. On the other side of that then you see that there wasn’t anything to lose and everything just becomes more of what it already was.

Frank: Basically we follow each other.

Sheri: (to Erika) So you’re crying right? Are you crying?

Linda: She always cries. She’s the crier.

Sheri: Why were you crying just then?

Erika: Well, I just feel us or something. I just feel the tenderness and it’s a good thing.

Frank: At her sessions…

Erika: We would always joke that they would go through a box of Kleenex. We thought we were going to have to start charging her for the Kleenex. This is mild.

Frank: At least a box.

Linda: Have to empty the trash all the time.

Sheri: So what was your upbringing before? What was your spiritual upbringing? How were you raised in terms of a belief system?

Erika: Nothing very structured, though the string of everything from the beginning, performance was always a part of my life and I was always very interested in shamanism, so that’s probably what initially brought me. But you can’t separate any of that because I think that my deepest longing was in relationship or wanted to know how to be in a relationship that felt good and was working, because I certainly wasn’t having those experiences. All those things were in my upbringing.

Sheri: How do you define a relationship working? What does that mean?

Erika: Well, what we are is very different from what I experienced before, so I’d say what’s working is the level of intimacy or just being there for each all the time, 100% of the time. Feeling full all the time, feeling like life is full and certainly a much greater level of enjoyment that I never knew was possible. It’s about meeting each other’s needs all the time, but you don’t even think about it that way because it’s not even about exchange or anything because it’s just one body working together on a very practical day to day. Everything across the board in my life works now and it certainly didn’t before. I couldn’t keep a job. Just everything. If you just focus on our relationship and the intimacy, then everything else works.

Sheri: Again, I apologize for these limiting questions, but like jealousy and independent relationships with people outside sort of as lovers. Where does that come in?

Frank: By the way, I have never seen an open relationship that really works.

Sheri: You’ve never seen an open relationship that really works? Except for this one? Or including this one?

Linda: I think he’s not including what we are in that category of open relationship.

Sheri: So you’re polyamourous but exclusive, or…

Linda: We don’t even think in those terms because any of those terms have stuff about them. It’s so immediate. Who we are is who we are. We’re not like this or that, I’m not gay, I’m not bi. It’s not about that. It’s about us.

Sheri: So you guys are with each other. To your point that you’ve never seen an open relationship that works, because that’s just like a loose floating thing versus a focus on the relationship.

Frank: They juggle.

Linda: Open relationships are about juggling.

Frank: Not being enough. So that don’t feel good, but when the person don’t feel good, he or she thinks that means he/she is jealous.

Sheri: The person doesn’t feel that they think they’re jealous?

Linda: Because Frank is saying the open thing is coming from a place of not being enough. And so that basic premise is what doesn’t feel good, but the person interprets that not feeling good as “I’m jealous”.

Sheri: As opposed to what you guys are creating. Individually you wouldn’t be enough, right? It requires a relationship, like you alone aren’t enough?

Frank: I was enough. I am not with Linda because I wasn’t enough. But I need Linda.

Sheri: I’m curious how the world interacts with you.

Linda: Generally we have really positive experiences. That’s why we always say you watch things on the news and it’s all about bad stuff, and yet our life immediately is really positive. We meet people feel good because we feel good and so the people we have contact with feel good.

Frank: Like how do you feel?

Sheri: Really comfortable and natural.

Frank: And people feel…

Linda: What we are.

Frank: And is not that spirituality?

Sheri: Sharing the moment and feeling?

Linda: I think he’s saying the fact that people then feel what we are, that’s what spirituality is really.

Sheri: Like an experience beyond the body. It’s just sharing the feeling. How would you define your belief around spirituality like as you did with intimacy? If you can define it in a tangible sense.

Frank: Good questions.

Jessica: I feel like we’ve gotten a good idea of the background and sort of how you come together. The most poignant things I hear you saying are the way that you describe the philosophy behind it. Not so much what you’ve done and where you’ve been and your relationships as things you’ve done but more so the way of being around that. And something that I’m particularly fascinated by is I have a woman that I love, that is my primary partner, and yet I’m still driven to explore other people and to share intimacy with other people and I can’t seem to work that out in my relationship to have the freedom to continue to love her with everything I have yet continue to grow through my relationship to other people.

Frank: Is she enough?

Jessica: I always tell her that she’s not enough. That’s been something I’ve said and as soon as you said it tonight I thought whoa. So she is enough! And something you said, you’re enough, she’s enough and any exploration and relationship I have outside of her just brings more.

Frank: Why outside?

Sheri: You’re separating them, you’re not one relationship. You’re considering it as an independent thing.

Jessica: I guess I’m just considering that she’s not directly involved in it but of course she’s influencing the relationship.

Sheri: But you’re separating her physical form from your physical form.

Mikee: If something’s enough, you don’t need more.

Frank: So everything is taken into that relationship. Absorbed into that relationship. So no juggling. No “you are not enough. I will be back, trust me.”

Linda: This is what’s not. None of that.

Sheri: So what happens in that situation if there’s no separation, there’s no one relationship and then going off to something else, but as you experience something else you’re with your relationship, it is you. You are the relationship, the 4 of you, the 3 of you, the 2 of you. So how does that work if there’s just different levels of attraction or chemistry or connection?

Frank: No. What is attraction? Like Linda could not…

Linda: Oh, well, Mikee was working with Frank and he was this like really yuppie dude, tight ass guy, fancy hair cut one side long, really tight.

Frank: Turn the camera on Mikee.

Linda: Turn the camera on Mikee so people can see him because he sure don’t look like that now. He was the lead singer for the band that went on to become Counting Crow, on a fast track to fame, and I could not stand being in the same room with him because he just weirded me out. He was so tight, so I’d walk him out to the studio and run back to the house. But that’s not what it was about because…

Frank: Where is the being attracted?

Sheri: I’m obviously applying certain filters, but I’m just trying to understand.

Linda: The thing is, getting close and being deep and intimate with somebody is a turn on, and it’s not about, I know what you mean by attraction, but it’s not about that. It’s when you’re with somebody that’s giving you everything they got it’s sexy, it’s a turn on, it goes beyond a surface kind of idea of what attraction is.

Frank: I even think attraction is an alarm bell.

Linda: Just the whole concept of being attracted to someone is an alarm bell. It certainly limits.

Frank: It is pictures, not the person.

Sheri: I get it. You guys are all the concepts of transcending limitations of the society and the messages and the rules to go towards this bigger thing called living as one and inviting people to accept and embrace that. So what is it like to live as one within yourself and with the people you experience life with? It seems like a constant challenge to be able to do that in this society, unless you’ve transcended it.

Frank: Which is what spirituality is, and really what making love is.

Sheri: Is what?

Linda: Well, you were saying that it would be challenging to live as one body. It’s transcending all the things that are out there about society. It’s transcending and it’s living from this one body place. And Frank said that that living from this one body place is really what spirituality and making love is.

Frank: Which they don’t want us to know.

Sheri: But then, do you draw lines? So there’s four, you four have created this organism, but then I imagine this spiritual belief would mean that every person you encounter…

Linda: Well obviously Erika wouldn’t be here if we drew lines, or Mikee wouldn’t have been here. We don’t draw lines but it’s when someone…

Frank: Who is willing.

Sheri: So when someone’s willing, you’re considered a student or an intern or studying with is kind of on the website how… So if someone is attracted to this phenomenon, they would approach the four of you and sort of…?

Frank: Not in a goal of…

Linda: The thing is it’s the frame as we said shifts, so the way Erika came into us is a poster about a workshop about playing, and then Frank talks about working with him in the frame of shamanism. There are a lot of people that come through and work with Frank in various capacities and through the public performances and intensives and workshops and all the various ways. Of all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that have come through, there are four of us that are living together. So when Frank says willing, it’s like there are different levels that people get involved I guess, I don’t know how to put it.

Frank: In fact, she moved.

Linda: Yeah, like Erika worked with Frank for several years, and then when she finished her Masters degree, she moved up to Washington state with the intension of living up there.

Erika: I worked with Frank for about a year, 9 months or something, and then I graduated from graduate school and then I left to go be around biological family because that’s where I thought home was or something, some notion in my head.

Linda: And then there was that thing that you said right before you moved.

Erika: The last night that I met with Frank before I was going to move, I remember it very clearly. I was riding my bicycle home and I just had this feeling in my whole body of Frank or whatever it was, this is what I’ve been looking for my whole life, this feeling of home or fullness or satisfied.

Linda: You said something like you realized Frank was completely there for you or something like that.

Erika: In the beginning it was a lot about feeling seen. I feel completely seen and I was always in this thing about people not being there for me, that was my story. So Frank was completely there for me, and at that point I still separated it somehow. Well, that’s that and then I go off. And in the course of a year of being away everything went to crap.

Linda: You did an intensive, but that was the deal. Frank suggested she come every 6 months as an intensive. People come from out of town to do week or 2 week intensives. To do that so she would continue to have contact with the work that she was doing with Frank. So you did that 6 months.

Erika: Right. Got in a relationship. As soon as I got back from the intensive that relationship just completely fell apart and it was like I got to the point of desperation where I can’t do this anymore. Basically it was these relationships that don’t work and I can’t have something end again. I’m not doing this anymore. I really began to see how miserable I was only just as miserable as I’d been the whole time, it’s just that I couldn’t stand it anymore. Through being with Frank I knew I had the experience in my body of knowing that there was some other way to do it, and I ended up coming back after one year because this was home and this is where I wanted to be.

Sheri: So if you were going to describe shamanism, because you’ve made references to that and I think that in some way that’s a key central aspect of your spiritual belief.

Linda: Direct experience of reality. That’s the one line thing. Frank always says shamanism is the direct experience of reality.

Sheri: What does that mean?

Linda: I can feel it from our life because most of the time there’s a lot of stuff so you don’t really generally out in the world have a direct experience of reality. Because the direct experience of reality is real, things are real, you know, it’s there, it’s still. So it’s like living from that place.

Sheri: And that’s a shamanistic way to live?

Linda: It’s just like shamanism is just one way to talk about it.

Sheri: Being present is another way.

Erika: Well, it’s all about the intimacy and being together, because all that smoke and soap or any kind of pictures that come into your head that are not direct experiences of reality, if you just focus on being together and the intimacy, that stuff just, that’s what saves you from all that crap all the time, is melting into each other.

Frank: Mikee read…

Linda: Right, so Mikee’s the lead singer to this band, pre-Counting Crows, but they’re on a fast track to success. Bill Graham’s their manager and they’re ready for the big record deal and all this stuff, and meanwhile Mikee didn’t go into it for the fame but he said you just get onto this track and that’s what it’s all about. This woman that was working with Frank at the time was someone who would go to their shows all the time, so she got together with Mikee after a show and she “well what do you do?”, “well, I work with Frank”, and she showed him Frank’s writing and he said the floor just fell out from under him, because it was like “Yeah!” So he came, actually he came to a performance. So here he is Mr. Slick dude in this yuppie band, and he comes to a performance at this record store, this store front record store in downtown Berkeley. So Frank’s sitting there nude singing and he has all these nude body painted dancers dancing around with the window wide open so people are standing on the sidewalk watching. Frank’s singing, we’re all dancing and singing and stuff, and Mikee’s sitting there like this (mouth hanging open). He had never seen anything like it before. Why are we telling that story? Just because, yeah.

Frank: He worked in an office.

Linda: He was a graphic designer so he worked in this graphic design office in San Francisco on Union St. So he starts working with Frank and Frank says you need to have the day off on the day that you, you have to work a half day on the day you have a session with me which was like a radical thing to do but because Mikee’s working with Frank he goes in and he says that. No problem

Frank: Don’t dress…

Linda: So Frank says, don’t dress different when you go to work, just dress the way you always dress. Also what appeared to be a radical thing. He did it no problem. Everybody else changed their dress. Everybody else started taking a half day off. It just totally changed the whole office was.

Frank: Finally…

Linda: Oh, his boss ended up leaving the business to work with a shaman and gave the business to us!

Sheri: That’s changing from the inside there.

Frank: Yes.

Sheri: That’s funny!

Frank: That is how life works.

Sheri: So do you consider yourself a medium? Like a spiritual medium?

Frank: What is a spiritual medium?

Sheri: I guess one who’s in communion with the spirit and then manifests those or shares that thought, like is a bit more sensitive of messages from a spiritual place.

Frank: Any good artist is that. But Reed…

Linda: Frank did channel Reed. This was in the 70’s he lived at a community which, funny enough, he’s just getting back into contact with the commune in Massachusetts which was 300 people in this commune. They had land, they had businesses, they had a rock and roll band. Everybody was into channeling, and so everybody would channel and Frank would say but you’re not paying attention to the worldly plane because you’re so busy channeling. No one wanted to talk to him about that.

Frank: Everyday life…

Linda: Everyday life was totally being neglected because everyone was just totally focused on channeling. Well, nobody would listen to Frank when he said that so he started channeling Reed who said the exact same thing Frank said and all of a sudden everybody wanted to hear about it then. Then they’re listening, then they want to do what Reed is saying.

Sheri: You have a little strategy going on there Frank.

Linda: Reed wrote a whole book.

Frank: I am flexible.

Sheri: Whatever works right?

Frank: That is basically what is shamanism, what ever works.

Sheri: Cool. (to Jessica) Do you have any more questions?

Jessica: I do. Because there’s the one missing for me is we’ve talked about how you experience spirituality through intimacy, through relatedness. Do you also experience spirituality through sex, like on a physical level?

Frank: Yes. Sex is a part of life. But what most people call sex is just one aspect of what sex is.

(end of disc 2)

Linda: Well, let’s see, the thing about sex being part of life, that’s the part that comes into my head, because every part of our life is so rich and full and it seems like when you say people experience sex as one thing, it’s kind of this isolated thing. Like in some ways it’s kind of special, or different, you expect some needs to be filled through sex that is not different from most other aspects of life, or stuff along those lines. Whereas with us I feel sex really is just part of life, but that’s not to make it less than, that’s just to make everything more than. So that kind of intensity, or going for some kind of feeling of intimacy through sex, I feel in a sustained way all the time, so it’s not just sex.

Frank: Like we did a performance in Los Angeles at Suzie’s.

Linda: Oh, at Suzie Blocks last time? Felt like it really shook things up. Suzie Block is a doctor of philosophy but she has a weekly show that is about sex where she takes call ins and she’ll talk to people about sex concerns and their sex life, and she’ll often have people from the sex industry, although not only that, but there’s a lot of nudity and eroticism, close-ups of jerking off, talking about orgasm. All the graphic stuff about sex, and then we were scheduled to be on the show and then to be the after hours event, performance or something, and it took the form of Frank’s Cherotic All-Star Band which is where Frank invites different people to be in the band, there’s no rehearsal, it’s always a different group of people. It’s a free form jam music thing with basically Erika Frank and I always as the nude erotic dancers and singers, but there are other people who are involved as they are available. And then you have all these musicians playing and everything. It seemed to make people pretty uncomfortable there, and there was like sex going on everywhere, and the camera going inside and all this kind of stuff.

Frank: In the other room…

Linda: Right, so there was the room, the show had ended but there was all this kind of sex play going on in one room and we were performing in the other room. It seemed like the people there felt more comfortable in the sex room than they did in the room where we were doing what we were doing. It seemed like it made people, and I think it was the intimacy thing.

Sheri: So just to further Jessica’s questions around sort of manifestation of sex in your relationship as a group or as a collective. You kind of expressed that part of the reason you think people have sex is to feel this close intimacy but that’s an other experience, like it’s this time out that people create to have a closeness and sometimes through the fun of sex that happens but then they live the rest of their lives or relationships separate from that. You kind of create that intimate closeness that people get through sex in your everyday experience.

Frank: They think sex is a way to get to intimacy, but sex is an expression of intimacy, so if intimacy is not present in the relationship, sex isn’t going to create it. But people don’t know that. That they even think sex is intimacy. Like we are getting deep. Most interviews don’t even know that there is this depth so they…

Linda: They are satisfied to stay at a less deep place.

Frank: The same with intimacy.

Jessica: Because I have the sensation right now that we’re barely scratching the surface.

Frank: Exactly.

Jessica: Come on Frank, give me the juice!

Frank: Well, I am available. It takes time, but ask more questions.

Sheri: So I’m just going to be… you can stop me if I’m out of line, but I just think, and again I’m sorry for the crudeness, I’m just trying to grasp an understanding for the viewers. They’re getting this exposure to this concept about your spiritual belief system and then there’s this base curiosity. So literally everybody has sex together? You have sex with all of you? You have sex in the traditional orgasm occurs kind of a way and that’s all part of your expression of each other?

Frank: And etc.

Linda: All of that and etc.

Sheri: What’s the etc?

Frank: I am available.

Sheri: When you say things like that, that’s a flirtatious kind of a gesture right?

Linda: The and etc?

Sheri: The “I’m available”.

Linda: I think he means in terms of…

Frank: I am available.

Linda: He’s available to work with you in some capacity. I think the form has limits. The interview form has limits, and the one on one work that Frank does with people, we have found to be the way that he can go deepest with people, more so than when we do group things, more so than workshops, public performances. He always says that one on one work is the core, that everything else comes out of that. So it seems like yeah but, you know there’s a certain, there’s the stuff that feels like the juicy stuff is that stuff that you can’t like, how do you, you can only get so much from this and then the rest of it is going deeper.

Frank: And they will not see most of this in the film. That is just the nature of this. You can show a performance over what you use of this interview.

Sheri: Oh, mix in some of your performances as well. Yeah, that would be awesome.

Frank: That would give people more, but just a fraction. So, I am available.

Sheri: Thank you guys very much for your rawness and your authenticity. You create such a beautiful intimate space.

Linda: It was fun.

Sheri: Thanks for welcoming us into your home and experiencing your life.

Linda: It was good.

Frank: It was deep.

Linda: Yeah, really, because it felt like the feeling of what we’re about was there. I think that really translates. That people that watch it will get that beyond what we say.

Sheri: Definitely.

Frank: You can look at…

Linda: There’s a lot of performance video on the website and find something that you would want to use and we can get it to you.

Sheri: You can get a digital version of it?

Linda: Well, we can put it onto a dvd.

Sheri: That would be wonderful. That’s a great idea too to have you guys talking and then mixing in some of the performance. That would be beautiful.

Linda: Like we don’t have One Taste on there do we? Because that’s, what do we have on the website?

Mikee: We have the UCB Series.

Linda: Oh, the UCB Series.

Sheri: You think the UCB Series is a good one?

Linda: Well in terms of, like, a lot of what’s up there is band stuff, The Cherotic All-Stars which is like the form of, I mean it’s good, it’s really good.

Sheri: In terms of like capturing in physical form some of the...

Mikee: There’s a variety of stuff.

Linda: But if you want variety too, the UCB Series is more of a performance art type thing.

Mikee: Exploring of Possibilities of Passion, I think that’s what that series was called.

Linda: Yeah, couldn’t you just do a search on the page for UC Berkeley?

Sheri: Oh, that’s what you mean by UCB.

Linda: It was a series we did at UC Berkeley.

Frank: But Erika was …

Mikee: Not in that.

Linda: Oh, Erika was not in the UCB series. Right. The One Taste stuff but I don’t, it’s not like…

Mikee: And there’s the 2 things from L.A.

Linda: Oh, the Balazzo gig and the last Los Angeles gig. Erika’s in both of those.

Mikee: Noisefest.

Linda: And the Noisefest. Balazzo, Noisefest, and the last Los Angeles tour.

Frank: Kimo’s.

Linda: Are there Kimo’s that you were in Erika? There were but I don’t know which ones.

Erika: Maybe only one.

Mikee: The last one at the Cherry she had that robe on.

Linda: Yeah, so Kimo’s is no… was there one Kimo’s?

Mikee: Yeah, there was. The one with Xtian.

Linda: Which one was that though?

Mikee: I don’t remember which one it is.

Linda: We could look it up when we get in the house and tell you which one.

Erika: I think it was after the leprechauns.

Mikee: Probably the Mutant Mother Lovers. The one with Jerome. It was the Mother’s Day one.

Linda: So the one that’s Mutant Mother Lovers. That’s part of the title of the gig. So that’s the one to go for ‘cause Erika’s in that.

Sheri: Ok. We’ll have to check that out.

Frank: Balazzo.

Linda: Yeah, the Balazzo one is a good one. Should Mikee turn the camera off? He wants to know. He dare not do it. Should he turn it off? Wait till the last minute. There’s a lot of breakdown to do.

Frank: But you can just leave it running.

Linda: We’ll run the tape down.

Sheri: Are you trying to get the juice out of this breakdown?

Linda: You betcha! We always found the best stuff happens when the camera goes off. We never turn the camera off.

Frank: We did Erotic Play.

Linda: In the early 80’s Frank had this idea of making a documentary about people being beautiful as themselves rather than as a Playboy or some external picture of what beauty is. So he said I’m gonna go out and see if people will let us videotape them. I said Frank you’re not going to get anybody to do this. We’d come home with bags of phone numbers. So for like a year and a half, two years, we were full time videoing people, 2 hours at a shot. It would be Frank and I, the camera and the person, and we had these trucks of costumes. And Frank would say just have fun and play. That’s where he told me never turn the camera off, and that’s where we found you just keep the camera running because the good stuff happened.

Sheri: Off camera, or whatever.

Frank: People did amazing things.

Linda: Yeah, it really blew our minds. It turned into so much more than what our intention was. It turned into really the documentary of that. People would cry, they would just start crying. Why are you crying? Because the way I feel here is the feeling that I wish life could be but it isn’t, and it makes me remember that that’s what I wish life could be. And what is it? Just a feeling of being vulnerable really, of feeling safe enough that they could just be vulnerable and play, and not be protected. And that’s all it is, the form is just trying on costumes. That’s all it was.

Frank: They played with me.

Linda: Yeah, sometimes we would have a mat there and Frank would lay on the mat and they would play. We had gestures, this bag of gestures that Frank had created from a Desmond Morris book about common gestures that people do. He typed them up and we cut them into slips of paper and put it in a bag. So I’d pull out a gesture and you do the gesture with a person. We videotaped that.

Sheri: So you guys have been making art for a long time.

Linda: Yeah.

Sheri: It’s part of the core expression of all of it?

Linda: I guess. I don’t know if I’d call it the core but it certainly we’ve always done it.

Frank: Fun.

Linda: It’s fun.

Sheri: It’s a fun way to being able to interact with people. It creates like immediate intimacy in a way that you otherwise would take so long to get to.

Linda: Exactly! It’s like Luver and the Shaman’s Den show on Sundays. We have incredible people coming over here every Sunday night that will just sit down with us, and it’s like if we said “Do you want to come over and talk?”

Sheri: Yeah, there’d be like no reason to.

Linda: Do you want to be on my live internet show that will go on public access, you know. And then they’ll just sit down and everything is possible. You can talk to them.

Sheri: That’s what I’ve been experiencing just with this process. It’s like, especially the subject matter. It gets you to have these opportunities to have these conversations with people. Even whether it ends up being on camera or in the film or not, it’s more just the journey of having the conversations with people on an everyday basis. It’s a far more immediate access to intimacy than talking about movies or whatever else, the weather.

Frank: What we did here.

Linda: Right now.

Frank: Opens things up, even if…

Linda: You never use the footage. Just the act of it.

Sheri: Yeah, totally.

Frank: That is shamanism.

Jessica: You have the best laugh Frank. I love that.

Sheri: It takes a lot, it just takes a lot to be able to transcend all this stuff all the time. I don’t know, you guys really pulled it off, but…

Frank: Like what?

Sheri: Just like the rules around the limitations you place around what relationships should be, like what life should look like, like not constantly buying in, it’s like constantly trusting your own sense of intuition or spiritual direction and not second guessing it. Just really melting into is and fully living from that place. Because you know, I’ve have moments where I melt into it and then my brain kicks in and I’m like stop, stop, bad, bad, thing, thing, this, that, that, box, box. You know? So It’s just like to constantly live in that space, it’s an ideal space to live in but it’s very challenging for me anyway. I guess you guys pulled it off.

Frank: In the air.

Linda: We call it “in the air”. There’s stuff in the air. And then there are really times when we feel the stuff in the air. You know? And so it’s like what do you do? Well, say that. I’m really feeling stuff. But then what is it about? It’s just like kind of, it’s really us is what makes it doable. Because we have us. So no matter what’s going on we always have us. So then that’s the anchor. That’s the thing you hold onto that makes the stuff that’s in the air not, makes it go away.

Sheri: Did you ever think about not having us? Have there been times where like you or you or you have just said I’m outta here, this shit’s too much, it’s not what I want.

Frank: I am not stupid.

Linda: Yeah, really. It would seem pretty dumb to do that. I mean what is there?

Sheri: Didn’t it happen even earlier on? Like you for 15 years, like the first year, or you 5 years, the first year you weren’t like I’m out.

Mikee: Probably like one time I think I did it, but it was just for show really. It was like acting out something.

Linda: My experience of it was that it was harder at the beginning. And the harder was about me feeling like I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. It was just like this is really hard. But I would always think, ok so let’s say I don’t do this. Then what do I do. I didn’t feel like I had any options. Frank calls that desperation. That desperation is a good thing. Cause that was me, I was like what are my options, so I guess I’m gonna have to do it, goddamnit.

Frank: Practical. This works. That doesn’t. Hence…

Linda: Yeah, that was my experience of having no other options because it was like this was the thing that works.

Sheri: (to Mikee) So did you leave your corporate environment? I guess they gave you the company so it became your company?

Mikee: Yeah, well she gave me the clients. Chevron and so on.

Linda: Chevron bought this house.

Sheri: Oh yeah?

Mikee: That was really the only one that was left at that point but it was a big job.

Sheri: So in those situations would you be like this is my partners. I’m trying to figure out the practical reality of what you call yourselves.

Linda: Oh, how do we identify? Family, we call each other family. Erika has some interesting conversations because as we said she works at this retirement home. It’s like a major large retirement home and she’s the director of enrichment. She’s like one of the big guys, she’s got like a staff person, and is very out in the open about what her situation is when it comes up, and so she just had a conversation with somebody and they kept asking questions and Erika kept answering, and they were just like…

Erika: She was blown away. She was like all I wanted to know was if you were married or not, that’s all you had to say. But she was blown away by it in a good way. She was like wow! You told me a lot! She was uncomfortable or something saying oh you don’t have to tell me. I’m like no, no, no. I slow all down, getting ready for a birthday dinner, taking my time. But she wanted to try to…

Sheri: Understand it.

Erika: You know, people say “So is that your husband?”

Linda: “Which one’s your husband?”

Sheri: Is anyone legally married?

Linda: No.

Frank: Like your boss…

Erika: My boss. Well, he’s never tried to put it in boxes. We had a very good conversation. He’s about my age. What else do we say about him? Justin in general.

Linda: Well through his family he became the head of this large retirement home because his father owns the company. So he’s Erika’s age and he’s running this place.

Frank: We are taping all this.

Linda: Right.

Sheri: Well, it’s your tape though.

Linda: We play our tapes indiscriminately.

Erika: We were stuck in a car together for a while and he was asking me questions about our life. He really wanted to know who owns what house, kind of like understanding how things work. And he was really like “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I can see how that would really work. Everybody should live that way.” He got the feeling of it.

Frank: Everyday people get it.

Linda: Like our neighbors for example.

Frank: Betty.

Linda: We have neighbors in the apartment, Betty and Joe. They’re in their 70’s , they’re Christian, always going to church and everything, they just love us, our life. She calls us all the time and says she loves us.

Erika: They watch performances.

Linda: She’s always giving me jewelry, and so I’ve taken to wearing her jewelry as my costume because we don’t wear costumes, so I’ll just have Betty’s jewelry on. And now Erika wears Betty’s jewelry, and they always want to watch the tapes. And so they watch all the tapes. “Oh those pearls looked so good on you! I’ll have to give you some more.”

Sheri: That’s awesome. So it’s the same kind of theory you applied with the job. Take the half day off, let the guy know when you’re going to work, do the thing and then the world adapts.

Frank: Mikee did not tell…

Linda: His boss about the vacation thing.

Mikee: The tours, yeah.

Linda: One of the things Frank said is you’ve got to be right up front with your boss and say when we tour you’re going need to take time off work, because at the time we were doing a fair amount of touring performance art stuff, and Mikee didn’t tell her. So then a tour time comes up and that’s when we all find out he didn’t say anything to his boss about it. Bad boy.

Mikee: Worked out. No problem.

Linda: Yeah, it worked out because it was not a problem which was Frank’s point from the beginning. Just tell her and it will be ok. Where do you guys go next?

Sheri: Home because we’re both Florida coast and we just flew in today.

Linda: Oh, you just flew in today?

Jessica: I was in San Diego.

Linda: Oh wow, and then you’re just going back to Florida?

Sheri: We’ve got about 4 or 5 interviews lined up for tomorrow and on Sunday we go back.

Linda: Wowee. That’s pretty intense.

Sheri: I know.

Linda: Is that the way it’s been?

Sheri: Well, we’ve done some in Miami and then we’ve done some in New York. New York was a little bit more relaxed. I don’t know why we did it exactly so intensely this particular weekend. I think it’ll be fine.

Frank: How along are you?

Sheri: Well, we’ve done maybe 3 or 4 interviews thus far, so the plan is to get the next batch tomorrow and some more in Miami and then start to do some experts. And we want to do a little trailer and then there’s an event in NY called the IFP where you shop a work-in-progress documentary that may be picked up for distribution, so we’re hoping to get maybe a 5 or 10 minute trailer by the end of May or something like that so that we can submit it for that. So then in September we can shop it around to try and get a distributor. It’s just in the very early phases really. It’s just starting to happen, and then we got a music designer, and we’re going to mix in the animation, so that’s why your performances make perfect sense because that’s consistent with kind of what we’re doing in general. We’re going to be mixing some spoken work interviews with a lot of visuals and sort of animation and multi-media. See where it goes. So we’re not at ground zero. I’d say we’re at ground 2.

Linda: So it’s you two? You two are the ones that are doing all this.

Sheri: Yeah. It’s fun. It’s definitely the most exciting thing going on for sure. You know, feeling like you’re creating something. Feeling like the idea comes to you and then you just kind of put it out there and then see who responds, and then see where it evolves, and then see how it takes on a life of its own. You know that creative process.

Linda: Yeah.

Sheri: So it feels very much in that vein which is very exciting.

Linda: This is the first documentary you’ve ever made?

Sheri: Yeah. She’s worked on a lot actually.

Jessica: That’s why I was brought in. I’ve been making documentaries for 9 years so that’s really what my passion is, and I own and operation a video production company out of Miami. But mostly stuff that I do nowadays is commercial and corporate or music video, that kind of thing which can be really creative and really fun, but I love the story telling of documentaries. Just like something really raw about it.

Linda: Really fun.

Sheri: Yeah, you had fun?

Linda: Oh yeah! It was really fun!

Sheri: Me too!

Frank: One of the best interviews.

Linda: Yeah, because you were, even like the way you were sitting on the chair, you were just kind of back and you were all spread out.

Sheri: It’s really comfortable! You guys create a real comfortable space.

Linda: But like a lot of times the interviewer will get kind of like this, especially as they get into it they’re like this (tight). But you’re kind of like, you didn’t feel a lot of pressure to come with the next question or anything. You were just hanging out and would just look at us, and that allowed it to be something. I don’t know what you came in with but you certainly were just here with us so it made it feel nourishing and good.

Jessica: That’s been my favorite part of the project. Like I have no preconceived notions about what story we’re telling. So I come in and I’m just open to receive, and that’s just how it occurs for me, like truly listen.

Sheri: Which is part of the impetus too. Like who knows how it all plays out. It’s been an attractive journey just to kind of, and in the journey trying to see the lessons and the jewels from each experience. And we’ve also done, have you ever heard of landmark forum and stuff like that?

Linda: No.

Sheri: It’s just like some educational listen. So we’ve both been a part of that kind of a training, so it’s very much like…

Linda: Oh I guess we read it. You showed it to me on a website or that’s how I know it? How do I know it?

Sheri: It’s been around for years.

Mikee: One of the people from the..

Frank: Carol.

Linda: The person you’ve just been emailing. She was involved in that.

Jessica: It’s derived from EST. You’ve heard of EST?

Linda: Ah, don’t get us talking about EST.

Sheri: Not now because we’re on camera. It’s late. It’s 6am in my world. So it’s like a listen. It’s a way to be with people.

Frank: He…

Linda: Werner hired Frank back in the 70’s to take his personal staff and do an all day workshop with them because it was the year of integrity. Our personal experience with his staff and our attempts to arrange meetings with him and Frank which they had decided they wanted to do was anything but integrity.

Sheri: Oh shit.

Linda: And so when Frank confronted him with that he said “well how about I hire you?” And what he did was he said to his staff “I’m not making you do it, but I think it would be a really good thing.” So the whole staff signed on for this 12 hour all day workshop with Frank. At the time we taped everything like we do now, but it was audio tape because it was before everyone had video cameras. He said you can tape it but I have to have final ok on the use of the tape. Well, during the workshop, everybody except the lowliest person on the staff, the guy that’s the handyman dude, the mechanic dude, everybody else pretty much just admitted that they go along with this integrity thing but they sure don’t live it except for him. And he genuinely, you know Frank created these series of situations so it wasn’t them just them saying it, they were kind of put on the spot and it was revealed. Werner destroyed the tapes. Wouldn’t let them out.

Jessica: Wow. They just did a documentary on Werner which I don’t know really anything about him. EST was so in the past and they’re really refined it.

Linda: So is he still involved in the other stuff?

Sheri: No, I think he had to leave the country.

Linda: Oh, he had to leave the country?

Sheri: For tax evasion or something.

Jessica: So they actually started a new company.

Sheri: Yeah, I think the integrity pieces of his financials were questionable.

Linda: So the landmark thing comes from the whole.

Sheri: It’s got its origin but it’s decades later, like 3 decades later, living in the present versus the legacy of the intensity around that.

Jessica: And it’s powerful stuff. It’s really good.

Linda: So you both did that.

Jessica: Yeah. I’ve been doing it for years.

Sheri: Yeah, I’ve been doing it for years as well.

Linda: Wow.

Frank: I am available.

Linda: Final words.

Jessica: But are you flexible Frank?

Frank: I am very flexible.

Sheri: Don’t question the man’s flexibility now, especially since the camera’s going off. Don’t even speak to Frank anymore. He doesn’t have any use for us now that the camera’s off.

Linda: So we’ll start making trips in?

Sheri: Are you guys having dinner now?

Linda: Yes.

Sheri: You’re like a late night family.

Linda: We’re all nighters.

Sheri: Oh really!

Linda: This is an early dinner for us.

Sheri: Get outta here. What time did you wake up?

Linda: Well let’s see. Frank got up today at 5:30pm.

Sheri: Oh, you’re like vampire hours.

Linda: Yeah, kind of. We start working around 10-11pm. Well, not Erika. Theoretically Erika goes to bed at 1am but often that doesn’t happen, but she gets up for work everyday at 8:30am.

Jessica: I’m an early bird.

Linda: Alright so we’ll start then. You’re carrying everything in at one time huh? You can carry all your stuff?

Sheri: I can.

Linda: Yeah, ok.

Sheri: It was really nice to meet you. Thank you Frank. Thank you so much.

Jessica: Thanks Frank.

Linda: Pleasure.