Her Early Work

Segment of a transcript from an unfinished documentary film about the life and work of Maia Marcelo, founder of the School for Subliminal Journalism, Present, Future and Past as interviewed by Maia Marcelo in the Future and the Past Present.

“You should never doubt what no one is sure about”

--Willy Wonka

INT.- MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM- DAY

Old Maia looks through tall, dramatic windows overlooking Lake Michigan.

OLD MAIA (VO)
(Sighs. Looks at the water)


Lake Michigan goes from remote to populas, clean to dirty.
It is deep, but not frighteningly so. 900 feet at its deepest I believe.
I think I came here, to Milwaukee, deliberately to set my self apart from that other shore, the soft one north in Michigan, and start to explore the watery space between what I was capable of and what I dreamed of. The sea between the real and the imagined. I would become a diver in that sea.

EXT.- MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM MUSEUM- DAY
Outside the very same windows, young Maia walks by, hands in coat, not looking at the lake. She is carrying a scuba tank with her. She has a scuba mask on her head.

INT.- KLOTSCHE CENTER POOL- DAY
Young Maia aims the video camera at herself. She is in complete scuba gear.
she readjusts her mask then falls backwards in to the pool. She watches from underwater as a strong swimmer men and women swim back and forth above her.

YOUNG MAIA (VO)
You see that woman? that lovely, gazelle like woman moving above me? The one that looks lovely and feminine and graceful even in the warped, bloating chlorine light.. Thats all anyone would ever have to be to be happy. If you were her, you wouldn't need to be anything else. You wouldn't need to talk. You wouldn't have to think really. People would open doors for you. You could just walk quietly through the world as it opened up for you. If you could move like that, being so beautiful and thin and lovely, thats all you would need to do, ever. And you would be loved.

Will I ever feel like a beautiful woman? Will I ever walk easily through the world, allowing doors to be opened for me?

EXT. Landscape Shots of Lake Michigan

YOUNG MAIA (VO)
Meanwhile I collect stories. Stories about impossible love and inventions that were destroyed before they could be invented because if they came into being the world as we know it would die of joy. Its a collection that does not need a physical archive. Does not need any sort of a case. Its a collection of tales of suffering, mostly. You know the Buddha, its said, when he died, took on as much suffering as he possibly could, because he knew he could take it. He wished all the darkness and pain of the world on to himself, sucked it out of the air and put it all on him. And when one of his disciples was angry with him for leaving the world, thought that he was getting out easy by abandoning him, the buddha gave him all of the pain in just one of his fingertips, and just that fraction of pain was more than the disciple could stand. It knocked him over and had him crying out for the pain to stop.

Well, this is kind of the opposite of that. This is a collection of unborn joys that being stunted have become tumorous knots in the conscious of mankind. Or of me. An ultimate sort of selfishness. We are so afraid of our own pleasure that we thwart it, put deliberate kinks in it, drive ourselves crazy with rules against our selves. Its what we keep ourselves from knowing.

INT- YOUNG MAIAS APARTMENT- DAY

Maia's workspace. There are old postcards with a nautical theme tacked up on the wall. There is a sculpture of a mermaid, a boat wheel on the wall, then there is a sculpture with a woman's mouth taped over. In a year book there is a photograph of young maia much like the sculpture- duct tape over her mouth in an otherwise regular year book photo.

YOUNG MAIA (VO)
The more we trust the body, the more we know. This trust results in an openness
that allows for us to have thoughts that are sudden and ecstatic, like a child's.

My mother wanted me to trust my gut.

I did until puberty, and then from puberty to adulthood fear seemed to rule that region of my body, and I so I started to use my head instead. As an adult, and when I arrived here, on the wrong side of the lake, I used the mental muscles I had developed to find my way back to my gut. Have you ever seen Picasso's last self portrait? Its fantastically disturbing. It has the black hole eyes of a drawing made by an upset child. Picasso said more than once that his goal was to draw like a child again. I think he reached that goal in the horrible, ecstatic weeks before his own death.

OLD MAIA (VO)
(Sighs) Lets get a cup of tea, shall we? Coffee gives me gas.

Old Maia wobbles into the museum cafe at the Milwaukee Art Museum

OLD MAIA (sipping tea)
I was right in some ways. I'm still not so interested in work thats striving for some kind of perfect form. I am far more interested in work that, in its form, is evidence of a life well lived. Ecstatically lived. And I was just living through the various kinds of work I did.

Sometimes striving for form, most of the time striving for love. Which, aside from the milky cliffs and baths of the Hieropalis in Turkey, is truly one of the only things worth living for. But love comes in many forms. Then it was a more selfish love I was looking for. I was, and am, quite self centered. But also very full of love for others. Less concerned with being loved now. Now I know the true pleasure of love is in the loving.

DON'T LET YOUR LACK OF CONFIDENCE HANG AROUND YOUR DAUGHTER'S NECK LIKE A STONE

This is what a psychic said to me in a run down store front on Congress Avenue in Portland, Maine when I was 26 years old. Inside the store front he had a fortune tellers tent set up and that is where I sat across from him, sobbing. I had come there to ask him about love and work and why the two didn't seem to be panning out for me. I thought I wanted the love of one man more than anything.

I told him about the man I'd wanted for a long time. He said I could have him if I really wanted him. He waved that subject away. Said he saw other opportunities coming for me. Besides, he asked, what would you do with him if you had him? Nevermind, I know what you'd do with him.

Listen, if you want to be have a career, you have to take yourself more seriously.

And so thats when I started really working.