memoriesoftheresa

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Theresa left Detroit on a train to D.C. with $80.00 in her pocket, wearing black and white polka dot tights, a mini skirt and Eiffel Tower earrings that swung in synchrony with her blonde hair when she moved her head. All of her belongings were stuffed into a mailbag that she dragged behind her. She never looked back through her big hazel eyes, literally or figuratively, to wave goodbye or to waiver in her decision. This was all by design, to leave small town, industrial America for the creative life in the big city where she knew she belonged. Her journey would lead, in a few short years, to three award winning cd roms, a film accepted at the Whitney Biennial, essays published in elite journals, screenplays, tv shows, D.C., N,Y., L.A.; and in 2007 to her death by suicide; a week later her lover, partner and cherished companion of 12 years, artist Jeremy Blake, walked into the water of Rockaway Beach, leaving a note behind.

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Theresa was tall, blonde and strikingly beautiful, but more than that, she was a self-taught scholar, intimidating in her wide-ranging intellect, witty, sarcastic, hard working and determined to succeed, a feminist in red lipstick and designer shoes. She loved words, and was an inspired writer and cultural critic. In her innovative blog Wit of the Staircase, written in her living room surrounded by books and art, she ruminated on philosophy, film, art, politics, music, literary works, fashion, perfume, and life; she developed a large and devoted following that she referred to as the “Children of the Staircase”.  The entries to Wit, in retrospect, seem increasingly troubled in the weeks before her death, with the final post a quote by Reynolds Price

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“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens–second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day’s events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.”

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To share Theresa’s story I have compiled the best of the essays from Wit of the Staircase, her published works, journal entries, excerpts from her screenplays, and other works in progress. I will also included cartoons that her lover and partner and innovative artist Jeremy Blake sketched to make her laugh, photographs and images from her cds and film. Her life and work were a seamless and colorful collage. No one can speak for Theresa or tell her story as completely as she has already done, and it is her story in words and images that I will post over the next few weeks.

The clip above is from The History of Glamour which was selected for 2000 Whitney Biennial, illustrated by Jeremy Blake and Karen Kilimnik.

Theresa Duncan's Wit of the Staircase.

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This film was shown at a memorial for Theresa in New York. The film clips came from Wilbur King's movie "Charlotte goes Swimming"and were organized into this film by Raymond Doherty. My thanks to them for creating this legacy for Theresa. See link below.

https://vimeo.com/user4712835/theresa-duncan-video?share=copy

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Video games by pioneering game designer Theresa Duncan, Chop Suey, Smarty and Zero, Zero, can now be played free online thanks to the innovative work of Rhizome to preserve the games and make them accessible to a new generation.

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http://archive.rhizome.org/theresa-duncan-cdroms/

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Image: screen shot from Theresa’s film The History of Glamour

#Theresa Duncan #Smarty #Chop Suey #Zero-Zero #Game Designer

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Transfixed by Maps

I am transfixed by maps, colorful, blue and pink and pale green, black lines tracing the paths I will never take. Mountain ranges rising from the surface, where you can run finger down and imagine all the towns, all the places where you could go and make your life better. Maps are like words, the anecdotes to describe my life. I give a one-dimensional, flat portrait of myself, using sentences and guesses about myself. I map out my existence. But like the maps themselves, the stories create a verisimilitude which has nothing to do with reality. See this line? this black highway running  toward the West? You can follow that line all the way and never imagine the flat fields and endless roads.

I can tell you where I came from, what classrooms I sat in, where I drank my coffee and even who I kissed and what he said, and my sentences are merely black lines running into my past, a past whose richness I could never explain with black lines, a place you can’t even imagine. My mother’s house, her porch and yard and the roads leading to it amounting to only a dot. I pull myself farther and farther from the earth, I see longitude and latitude, it was here, I could even point my finger here where I left him behind, my heels kicking up the dust of the road. Horizontal lines, vertical lines along the earth, forming a mesh, a net to catch the past in.

-From Theresa’s journal, 9/17/1989

Image: Two of Theresa’s journals and a few of the contents clipped to the pages.

See Theresa’s blog The Wit of the Staircase

#Theresa Duncan #Wit of the Staircase #journals #Transfixed by Maps #writer

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                            Theresa Duncan 10/26/1966-7/10/2007

#Theresa Duncan #Birthday

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”I believe that what we want to write wants to be written. I believe that as I have an impulse to create, the something I want to create has an impulse to want to be born. My job, then, is to show up on the page and let that something move through me, in a sense, what wants to be written is none of my business.”

—Julia Cameron

Posted by Theresa Duncan on Wit of the Staircase, Sunday, November 19, 2006

Image: Theresa and Tuesday in California, December, 2006

#Theresa Duncan #Writer #Julia Cameron #Wit of the Staircase

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Theresa Duncan 10/26/1966-7/10/2007 

Writer, Filmmaker, Game Designer, Blogger 

“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing… And when you’re consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you’ll be glad you’ve known me.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

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“Let’s regard her lasting spark and tell the tyrants of the dark who has left the greater mark.”

~Rachel Wetzsteon, excerpt from May Poles

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Rachel Wetzsteon wrote this poem in memory of fellow poet Sarah Hannah.

Rachel died in 2009 at 42.

[memoriesoftheresa]

Transfixed by Maps

I am transfixed by maps, colorful, blue and pink and pale green, black lines tracing the paths I will never take. Mountain ranges rising from the surface, where you can run finger down and imagine all the towns, all the places where you could go and make your life better. Maps are like words, the anecdotes to describe my life. I give a one-dimensional, flat portrait of myself, using sentences and guesses about myself. I map out my existence. But like the maps themselves, the stories create a verisimilitude which has nothing to do with reality. See this line? this black highway running  toward the West? You can follow that line all the way and never imagine the flat fields and endless roads.

I can tell you where I came from, what classrooms I sat in, where I drank my coffee and even who I kissed and what he said, and my sentences are merely black lines running into my past, a past whose richness I could never explain with black lines, a place you can’t even imagine. My mother’s house, her porch and yard and the roads leading to it amounting to only a dot. I pull myself farther and farther from the earth, I see longitude and latitude, it was here, I could even point my finger here where I left him behind, my heels kicking up the dust of the road. Horizontal lines, vertical lines along the earth, forming a mesh, a net to catch the past in.

-From Theresa’s journal, 9/17/1989

Image: Two of Theresa’s journals and a few of the contents clipped to the pages.

See Theresa’s blog The Wit of the Staircase

#Theresa Duncan #Wit of the Staircase #journals #Transfixed by Maps #writer

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Theresa’s games and film The History of Glamour were exhibited at Dundee Gallery in Scotland, July 16-Sept 04, 2016, curated by Graham Domke. 

#theresaduncan #Game Designer #writer #filmaker #Dundee Gallery

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“I’ve always been interested in misfits…I think their toughness and nonconformity and propensity for trouble belie a different interior, the person who is a perpetual outcast is usually too good for this earth, too smart or too funny or too kind or too sad or too lonely or too talented to fit into a world where the mediocre fare best.”

Theresa Duncan, journal entry August, 19, 1989.

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“Let’s regard her lasting spark and tell the tyrants of the dark who has left the greater mark.”

~Rachel Wetzsteon, excerpt from May Poles

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Rachel Wetzsteon wrote this poem in memory of fellow poet Sarah Hannah.

Rachel died in 2009 at 42.

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Photo courtesy of Wilbur King, filmmaker.

#Theresa Duncan #Wit of the Staircase

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…the older I get, the more I see how women are described as having gone mad, when what they’ve actually become is knowledgeable and powerful and fucking furious.

Sophie Heawood  (via brosetta-stone)

#Theresa Duncan #Wit of the Staircase

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Theresa Duncan 10/26/1966-7/10/2007

Filmmaker, Video Game Designer, Writer

Photo Courtesy of Wilbur King

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Theresa Duncan Video.

Film clips of Theresa Duncan shown at her memorial in New York, 12/2007. Thanks to Theresa's long time friends Wilbur King for allowing the use of clips from his film Charlotte Goes Swimming, and Raymond Doherty for editing the clips to make this memorial film.

#Vimeo #theresaduncanvideo #video #witofthestaircase #memorialvideo #theresaduncan #theresa duncan #writer #Game Designer #filmmaker