BONNIE JONES: Foods, Toothaches

Bonnie performing at High Zero Festival; photo by Michael Anton Parker

"Born in 1977 in South Korea, Bonnie Jones was raised by dairy farmers in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, MD. In sound performances Bonnie plays the circuit boards of digital delay pedals. Her primary sound collaborators are Joe Foster in Korea (as the duet “English”) and Andy Hayleck. She is also a member of the Performance Thanatology Research Society, a interdisciplinary performance group dedicated to the advancement of a higher histrionics brought on by imminent finalities. Bonnie has performed at the Kim Dae Hwan Museum, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, the ErstQuake Festival, and the 14 Karat Cabaret. She is currently an MFA candidate at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College." She's obsessed with the microtonal and the microsyntactic, but she parties like a bear in a stream, is always ready with a joke and will roast you a chicken any day of the week. Whether its wearing fake teeth at the 14Karat Cabaret while Blaster Al Ackerman tosses red glitter about in a dental monologue, or masterminding elaborate, sophisticated events, Bonnie's body of work is varied, exciting, and, best of all, just begun.

English: Bonnie Jones & Joe Foster

What do you do?

I make music with broken digital delay pedals and microphones. I make sound/text compositions. I sometimes perform these sound/text pieces. I write a little prose and a little poetry. Lately I've been practicing my variousness with seriousness.

How long have you done these things?
I've been inputting for 32 years and outputting at a low frequency for about 20 years and at a higher more accessible frequency for about 10 years.

Why do you do them? How does it make you feel?

I do these things because it makes me feel human and closer to other humans and helps me understand things - My things and other people's things and non-human things. I feel pretty good about it on the whole. Sometimes though it's better for things not to be understood. That's also what I'm learning these days.

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?

I'm not so sure yet what I am to become so that's a hard question. There might instead be a series of self-defining moments - one after the other after the other in a rapid motion through time. Oh this is what it's going to be like, oh this is what it is, oh this is another one. The last one I remember was when I realized I wanted to stop thinking about everything as a problem to be solved. First off - everything is not a problem and every problem doesn't need to be solved.

How has your life changed or not changed to accommodate that moment's effect on you?

To the last moment, I'm taking a lot more time experiencing things. People, sounds, foods, toothaches, closenesses and farnesses. I'm starting up an old machine that is latent in me called - experiential living. Also - I'm thinking about how if I want to make things that are very fast, complicated and layered --- how they can really communicate this idea of slowing down and paying attention that I find to be so intriguing these days.

How has your work affected your life in return?

Every time I make something I wonder.

Bonnie atop a human pyramid during a Lexie Mountain Boys performance for Sophia Dixon's Glowworms at Current Space, Baltimore MD 2007.
L - R, top to bottom: Bonnie, Samantha Garner, Lauren Bender, Nicola Knight, Amy Waller, Liz Flyntz, Megan Reid, Jen Kirby

How does David Lee Roth make you feel?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgo-ks37M2s

Do you have anything you'd like to ask me?
I'm wondering how you do your hair? Or what your hair routine is like each morning/evening/every other day? Also I'm wondering what you're working on these days.

Wash with a mixture of pearls and enchilada sauce, comb thrice with cat's paw to increase shine, apply coagulated salve of baby tears beneath a fountain of cold running water and upon drying much prayer is necessitated so any curl will hold even after the sun has set. The trick is never changing the basic shape ever for years and always making sure it looks like David Lee Roth in the darkness but without the balding part and the shameful cutting of the locks once he reacheth fifty. Tender shampooing is always careful, on the condition that one does not transmit head lice to a family of four in Portsmouth, NM. Including dog. Some things cannot be helped, and the itching persists for years. Nature's Gate opens the herbal way to a deep shine on my checkbook, ordered by the gallon and biotin its cousin and friend also soaking me for the long run. DO NOT BRUSH WHEN WET!! Do this every other or every third day as the weather and smell in the air dictates. Lately, I've been working on a remix of a song and it will be debuted at Mirkwood sometime this month of November 2009.

baltimoreperformance.com/lossolos
bonniejones.wordpress.com