Tell Me Love Is Real (2016)

In the winter of 2012, two famous American performance artists sat in anonymous hotel rooms on the West Coast, waiting to take the stage, and in a bizarre coincidence, over-dosed on the anxiety drug Xanax. One survived, one did not. The two individuals are Whitney Houston, who tragically died, and the author of this piece, who lived. Incarcerated in a psychiatric ward, the author began an arduous and experimental journey towards recovery. What is life, and why should we live it, having had it thrust upon us like the assigned reading of a baffling mystery novel, the chapters jumbled, the text often incomprehensible? In the thirty-seven years of life leading up to this event, we find a simple but elusive answer: Love. The athletic struggle between Love and Death is played out time and again through life, as the pendulum swings back and forth between the heart and the grave. Longing for a hero to point the way, the ghosts of Buddy Holly, Amelia Earhart, Bruce Lee, Serge Gainsbourg, and a host of others are resurrected, but it is the words of Leonard Cohen that echo through the room: "I am not the one who loves/ It's love that chooses me." Right here, right now, the prayerful Oberzan calls upon you, the audience, for help. He will give you all he's got.