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The L.A. Dialogues (1-3) 1988 - 89
by Lin Osterhage and Peter Rose

"Working alone together tonight"
The L.A. Dialogues (1) National Artist's Organization Event, Los Angeles, September, 1988

"Intimate Strangers"
The L.A. Dialogues (2) Powerhouse Theatre
Santa Monica, California, 1988

"Nature World: A Fertile Dialogue"
The L.A. Dialogues (3) for Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, California, May 6th, 1989

Downtown Los Angeles, 1988

"Nature World: A Fertile Dialogue"

Music: Mozart Flute Quartets fade into birds singing in an English Meadow

Lin: My life has been so stress-free lately that I feel no need to perform.

Peter: No need to exorcise the spiritual and economic decay of post urban chaos, through movement, sound and visuals?

L: That's right. I exercise in my garden. I weed and kill bugs. I have more of what I want in life.

P: So there's less need to blame others for what you don't have?

L: Exactly. I don't feel like asking people to pay money to hear about my angst ridden life anymore. Now, it's a question of cultivation, fertilization ...

P: It's boring bring preoccupied with what you did as an adolescent.

L: There's a great battle to be waged!

P: In your garden.

L: Yes. I can dance bare-foot in the rich earth.

P: An Art Goddess at last.

L: Yes. I've almost quit drinking, almost quit smoking. I've moved out of downtown Los Angeles, became free from most of my anxiety and I'm saving whatever energy is left to save myself for this world. I got a grant for it complete with a patio and validated parking.

P: I think I heard about you. Art Goddess gets beach cottage with patio, lawn chairs, parking and gardener.

L: It's a national domestic endowment.

P: Household honorarium.

L: My life is so aggressively wholesome and healthy that I'm becoming a living breathing catalyst for the art of living.

P: Art de vivre, j'oie de vivre, l'eau de vivre.

L: Flowing water of life, c'est moi !

P: I can see it. Early morning sunlight, you sitting on the patio, fresh coffee, Chock Full 'O Nuts brewing in the kitchen. (Sings): "Chock Full 'O Nuts is that heavenly coffee, heavenly Coffee. Better coffee a millionaire's money can't buy."

Bird tape fades out

L: Meanwhile, out in my garden, the gardener waters the lawn. I invite him onto the patio for coffee and tequila. We discuss the earth in all it's richness. The talk gets intimate. We get closer and he takes me.

P: I have to put fresh fertilizer into the garden. I get the garden hose and we rinse each other off.

L: How wonderful.

P: Orgasmic gardening.

L: Organic gardening. C'mon. There's work to be done.

P: Everything is possible in the garden.
Where the flowers speak in aroma
And blades of grass and roots and petals are one.
It's a multi-colored, multi-sexual, multi-lingual array
Of incessant harmony
In discordant tones in an unrelated simplicity.

The songs of nature's children
Are creating an equilibrium
An intense dramatic coexistence
Ever Still. Still.

Mozart fades up.

The End

Copyright Lin O./Peter Rose 1988-89
All rights reserved