Today, [color]Michael Rubenfeld[/color] offers up an account of the unique personal history and creative process behind his show [color]mothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermother[/color]
Michael You think that I’ve been creating a wall.
Mother Yeah.
Michael So you think there’s a wall between us.
Mother Well I don’t know if I would call it a wall, or if you just live a different lifestyle, or if family just isn’t important to you. I mean, to me it feels like a wall, and it feels like your family isn’t important to you. That’s my perception.
***
On Monday, August 13, 2012, I accompanied my mother to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Her health had not been good, and she was there to get the results of some tests on her kidney.
About six years ago my mother had a kidney transplant. Things had been fairly positive for a while until about a year ago when she started having troubles walking and now she was using a walker. She is 63 years old.
Until now, the unspoken fear had been that her transplant was starting to fail. We had always known that this was a possibility when the transplant was done, and my mother has never been the picture of health.
It was 9:30am. I sat next to her madly scrolling through twitter and facebook feeds. I was in the middle of SummerWorks, which is the rather large Performance Festival I run at the beginning of August. I was exhausted and hung over as I warned her I would, but I promised my mother I’d be there.
The appointment was running very late. We were both getting anxious. We had plans to go for pancakes, and for some reason, that morning, the pancakes held a particular importance.
We sat in silence, grumbling periodically about the time, until my mother decided to break her silence. She told me that if the results were bad, she was probably done. I feigned ignorance. Stalling. She explained that she refused to go back on dialysis and she didn’t think she would seek out another transplant.
I asked her what this meant. (I knew what she meant)
She told me what it meant.
I nodded my head. We sat in silence again. I looked at the time. The appointment was now an hour late, and I was starting to get angry. We really wanted these pancakes.
They called my mother’s name, and we were taken to a small room. We were left there alone, waiting for her doctor to arrive with news.
It felt tense. Poignant. Filmic. The clock on the wall. The fluorescent lights. My mother and I, sitting together. Waiting. Wondering. Fearing. Hoping.
And then I did a very strange thing. I took out my phone, and I started to record audio. And I asked my mother what she thought about our relationship.
This is how it begins:
Michael You think that I’ve been creating a wall.
Mother Yeah.
Michael So you think there’s a wall between us.
Mother Well I don’t know if I would call it a wall, or if you just live a different lifestyle, or if family just isn’t important to you. I mean, to me it feels like a wall, and it feels like your family isn’t important to you. That’s my perception.
My mother and I are at an impasse. We’ve tried therapy. That didn’t work. It helped us understand certain issues, but its didn’t give us a practical way in which to enter the question of how to make things better. Stronger. Connected.
Mothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermothermother Is an attempt at find another way to explore this.
My mother has agreed to let this happen. When I tell people this, they are often very surprised. My mother is an intelligent woman. She has seen how important art has been for me. I grew up a miserable child. I am not a miserable adult. I credit this to being an artist. And so when I approached my mother with this idea, she said yes, and I believe she said yes because she is as interested in “fixing” things as I am.
This piece explores the use of performance as a practical tool towards improving my relationship to my mother.
She will not be here forever.
But she is here now.
So we’re going to see what happens.
And try something new.
