The Unbearables Big Book of Sex at FusionArts part one

What do I know about the Unbearables? Not much, but the more I think of the name of this loose assembly of writers and artists, the more I think of the essential unbearablity of life and how the arts, music and literature lift some of that burden. Maybe, after a good read, or time spent contemplating a work of art, life becomes a few ounces lighter.

Last January 31, 2010, a Saturday night, I attended a reading by Unbearables at the FusionArts Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There was a nice crowd there, and the reading was raucous, in part because of the subject - sex in many of its varieties - and partly because there was a lot of energy in the gallery.

I took photos and then forgot about them. I was busy with getting the last pages of the novel I was writing finished, and then I was revising it. I wasn't taking as many photos and I wasn't thinking about them either. Maybe I even felt a little guilty not sharing them.

Enough time has passed and they've matured, sitting there, in the digital vault. I've taken them out, examined them, discarded the utterly useless, hidden the uglier ones and chosen these for anyone to enjoy or revile. I hope nobody is offended by them - I find them thoroughly inoffensive - and if you are, please go away and deal with your problem somewhere else.

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Ron Kolm

Bob Holmon of the Bowery Poetry Club

audience

If you think I know who all these people are, you are wrong. I'll label the ones I know, but honestly, does it really matter?

Jim Feast

Jim Feast

Publish Post

Tsaurah Litzky - a demonstrative reader, indeed.

Tom Savage - he read too

Shalom Neuman held temporarily hostage by Jim Feast

Bonny Finberg

Tom Savage competing for attention with the installation

Shalom Neuman

Carl Watson

Leonard Abrams

Catherine Sand

In the background, Ron Kolm and Jim Feast. In the middle, a woman either captivated or terrorized by the goings on around her. You decide.

Thanks to Ron Kolm for helping me identify people in the pictures. If you recognize someone and want to help me, post a comment and I'll caption the photos.
If you made it this far, thanks. I'll post the more tomorrow.