recollected

Notebooks

The reason that I had a hard time starting notebooks in the beginning was — that was my first exposure to them, as a performance. And that is, to me, a really bad way to keep a notebook — it's worrying about what other people are going to think about each page you make. So I do think that was a groundbreaking moment for me where I was like, these pages are not for anybody except myself.

This is a book that was printed in 1936. It’s a book of collected poems by Julian Tuwim who is a very well known and beloved Polish poet, and also a hero in the Polish punk scene today. But this was a different scene in the '30s...

We lived in a communal apartment; one room belonged to a middle-aged, frequently drunk jerk, and another room belonged to me and now to the love of my life...

...It's some sort of very soft wood and it’s from Georgia. I remember being told explicitly that I would never find a stump like this in New England, which felt like an attack.

This is a toy that our mom made for me when I was really little. She made it because it was very expensive and difficult to buy toys in the Soviet Union in the late 80s. And instead of standing in line for hours and then getting some sort of plastic, impersonal thing, or even not getting it at all because the store runs out, she got the materials and made this felt puppet.

It’s a gift. It’s a Father’s Day gift that I received from my son Sam, around 1996, 1997 I think. I’ve carried it around now for twenty-two years in six cities and three continents. So, I’ve had it for a long time. And it’s very important to me.

Ostensibly it’s about making interesting theater. Creating it, writing it, performing it. In actuality, the way that he gets to that place is he goes, sort of in a roundabout way, [by asking] what is interesting to people — what is interesting to an audience.

Anvil is a heavy metal band that existed in the 80s, and then disappeared for a long time. And then, in 2005 or so, there was a documentary made and they were sort of getting back together, and they went on tour.

[This] is my most prized possession, apart from anything related to my family. It’s a Little League baseball that is signed by Hank Aaron.

This is a teddy bear. When I was in the hospital five years ago, I was in the psych ward for five nights. And before that I was in the basement for an in-patient thing. My parents [asked me] “What do you want?” And I asked for a teddy bear.

recollected

Notebooks

The Poetry Book

The Perfume

The Stump

The Monkey

The Gift

The Book

The Fanny Pack

The Baseball

Nana Bear