![\"\"](\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Electric-Woman-cover.jpg\")
<\/a>Come inside Tessa Fontaine\u2019s The Electric Woman <\/em>and you\u2019ll travel through a hall of mirrors. You\u2019ll watch a young woman incorporate the timeless dramas of grief in a sideshow tent, reflecting richer gestures of love and loss in the distant center ring. You\u2019ll see our narrator undone by the sight of her mother\u2019s bleeding brain, gleaming beneath a crescent of cutaway skull. You\u2019ll see the mother levitate between life and death, here and not here, unloved and utterly beloved, as her daughter flees to strut and fret upon the carnival stage.<\/h4>\nThe show has plenty to offer. It\u2019s a \u201cdon\u2019t try this at home\u201d<\/em> tutorial on ageless pantomimes of endurance. You\u2019ll learn how to eat fire, to set your arms aflame, to pass the heat from hand to hand. You\u2019ll take in the concept of swallowing swords. You\u2019ll see women contort themselves from box to box, share legs, trade their heads for metal posts. You\u2019ll watch them hold very still as burly men throw knives. You\u2019ll feel the tightening squeeze of a boa constrictor. You\u2019ll reach to touch bodies singed, cut, scarred and tattooed, bitten and beaten.<\/h4>\nTrue to its carnival nature, the narrative both reveals and obscures its compartmentalized mysteries. You\u2019ll stand in the forbidden \u201ccarnie\u201d world, as promised, but mostly it will guard its medieval secrets. You\u2019ll meet fathers practiced in the magic of never being where their children are, even as they wave photographs of little daughters like talismans. You\u2019ll witness the brutally hard work of people who live outside of \u201cregular\u201d time, beginning and ending their repetitious days by the motion of the Ferris wheel. You\u2019ll sense the ghostly flutter of heartland American family values threading through a map of muscle and sweat and exile: carnies who lift and secure small children on the rides by day, circle in to beat a fellow to death by starlight. You\u2019ll trust the voice of a narrator who leans in closer than most of us will \u2014 maybe because we know she must return and report, anthropologist of the arcane.<\/h4>\nYou\u2019ll realize that before she can comprehend her own motives, this ravaged daughter insists on transposing her fear onto a neat calendar of ritual endurance. You\u2019ll see her body learn to incorporate guilt and fear by rehearsing them in increments, iterating the physical until it becomes the existential \u2014 act by repetitive act, day by stifling day, night by cramped and sleepless night in a narrow semitrailer bunk. One hundred and fifty days of enacting small scripts of pain will teach her to contain the intimate devastations of her mother\u2019s mortality: blood, brain fluid, urine, shit, organ, organism. She will hearken toward the enigma of the maternal body. She will concede the futility of imagining we can know the people we love.<\/h4>\nTessa \u201cTex\u201d Fontaine will stand with us as she raises the curtain on the rarest spectacle of all: a man who gets on with loving his wife, and a wordless wife who takes it in as if love were sunlight and meadow grass. You\u2019ll stand agape at his bona fide death-defying scheme to take a damaged, yet utterly whole, woman across a continent and ocean. You\u2019ll long to stand near as the beloved wife opens her eyes in wonder, as he pushes her wheelchair toward a site of deeply personal memory. Likely you\u2019ll gulp the whole thing in, as the real attraction requires. You won\u2019t ask how he got the money, you won\u2019t question the logistics, you won\u2019t solicit a backstage reveal on what it takes to transport 250 pounds of luggage and medical equipment by rail and ship and taxi \u2014 to Italy, and home again to a wary wayward daughter.<\/h4>\nAnd, bonus: you\u2019ll emerge with a whole new vocabulary! \u201cBally girl.\u201d \u201cYeller.\u201d \u201cMarks\u201d and \u201cdings.\u201d You\u2019ll feel a bit like you\u2019ve just jumped off a trapeze after riding out the dizzying temporal swings \u2014 present to past to present to further past, further present, a bit of future, present. You\u2019ll walk onward to new attractions with peculiar questions, some specific and trivial, some grander and more cosmic.<\/h4>\nThe Electric Woman<\/em> plays carnival as rich metaphor, yes, and it stays faithful to the conceit. But finally more striking is Fontaine\u2019s portrayal of mortality as inescapably opaque. Every surface signals yet obscures another depth. We\u2019re here on the stage with our intrepid guide, but somehow the show is always somewhere else. Mostly, the book sustains itself and its readers on this hard truth, holding to the stark requirements of a very good memoir. Ultimately a genre of the unresolvable, memoir traces the contours of bottomless gap. It plays against surfaces, mirrors the indefinite. As character, Tessa Fontaine cannot face her own mysteries. As narrator, as rememberer, she teaches herself to hold them like a handful of flames, beckoning us as she tilts each spectacle toward a glimpse of the spectacular.<\/h4>\nPay up and go on in. Tarry about. Peek through.<\/h4>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDo you think you can be hypnotized by a snake?\u201d I ask the boy. He shakes his head and walks a little closer. \u201cMany people believed snakes have the power to hypnotize, so come close and look right into Pandora\u2019s eyes,\u201d I say, which is my cue to guide the strong, heavy snake\u2019s head out toward the willing participant so he or she might gaze into the pools of her eyes, but when I start to pull her head, she won\u2019t budge. I try again, gently still, smiling at the boy who is waiting to prove me wrong. The little boy has a bright red shirt a few sizes too big, and buzzed blond hair, and I can see his teeny rounded teeth inside his open expectant lick-lipped mouth as he looks from snake body to my face to see what the damn holdup is. <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which is an excellent question. What the hell is happening? <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I pull at her neck, trying new angles, grabbing different sections of her thick body to extract her, and each time I do she does not slide any farther out, but I can feel a hard pull on my hair. She\u2019s stuck in there. Tangled deep, deep into my sweaty, curling-ironed hair. <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The little boy is still staring up at me with a slack jaw. <\/em><\/p>\n
You\u2019ll realize that before she can comprehend her own motives, this ravaged daughter insists on transposing her fear onto a neat calendar of ritual endurance. You\u2019ll see her body learn to incorporate guilt and fear by rehearsing them in increments, iterating the physical until it becomes the existential \u2014 act by repetitive act, day by stifling day, night by cramped and sleepless night in a narrow semitrailer bunk. One hundred and fifty days of enacting small scripts of pain will teach her to contain the intimate devastations of her mother\u2019s mortality: blood, brain fluid, urine, shit, organ, organism. She will hearken toward the enigma of the maternal body. She will concede the futility of imagining we can know the people we love.<\/h4>\nTessa \u201cTex\u201d Fontaine will stand with us as she raises the curtain on the rarest spectacle of all: a man who gets on with loving his wife, and a wordless wife who takes it in as if love were sunlight and meadow grass. You\u2019ll stand agape at his bona fide death-defying scheme to take a damaged, yet utterly whole, woman across a continent and ocean. You\u2019ll long to stand near as the beloved wife opens her eyes in wonder, as he pushes her wheelchair toward a site of deeply personal memory. Likely you\u2019ll gulp the whole thing in, as the real attraction requires. You won\u2019t ask how he got the money, you won\u2019t question the logistics, you won\u2019t solicit a backstage reveal on what it takes to transport 250 pounds of luggage and medical equipment by rail and ship and taxi \u2014 to Italy, and home again to a wary wayward daughter.<\/h4>\nAnd, bonus: you\u2019ll emerge with a whole new vocabulary! \u201cBally girl.\u201d \u201cYeller.\u201d \u201cMarks\u201d and \u201cdings.\u201d You\u2019ll feel a bit like you\u2019ve just jumped off a trapeze after riding out the dizzying temporal swings \u2014 present to past to present to further past, further present, a bit of future, present. You\u2019ll walk onward to new attractions with peculiar questions, some specific and trivial, some grander and more cosmic.<\/h4>\nThe Electric Woman<\/em> plays carnival as rich metaphor, yes, and it stays faithful to the conceit. But finally more striking is Fontaine\u2019s portrayal of mortality as inescapably opaque. Every surface signals yet obscures another depth. We\u2019re here on the stage with our intrepid guide, but somehow the show is always somewhere else. Mostly, the book sustains itself and its readers on this hard truth, holding to the stark requirements of a very good memoir. Ultimately a genre of the unresolvable, memoir traces the contours of bottomless gap. It plays against surfaces, mirrors the indefinite. As character, Tessa Fontaine cannot face her own mysteries. As narrator, as rememberer, she teaches herself to hold them like a handful of flames, beckoning us as she tilts each spectacle toward a glimpse of the spectacular.<\/h4>\nPay up and go on in. Tarry about. Peek through.<\/h4>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDo you think you can be hypnotized by a snake?\u201d I ask the boy. He shakes his head and walks a little closer. \u201cMany people believed snakes have the power to hypnotize, so come close and look right into Pandora\u2019s eyes,\u201d I say, which is my cue to guide the strong, heavy snake\u2019s head out toward the willing participant so he or she might gaze into the pools of her eyes, but when I start to pull her head, she won\u2019t budge. I try again, gently still, smiling at the boy who is waiting to prove me wrong. The little boy has a bright red shirt a few sizes too big, and buzzed blond hair, and I can see his teeny rounded teeth inside his open expectant lick-lipped mouth as he looks from snake body to my face to see what the damn holdup is. <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which is an excellent question. What the hell is happening? <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I pull at her neck, trying new angles, grabbing different sections of her thick body to extract her, and each time I do she does not slide any farther out, but I can feel a hard pull on my hair. She\u2019s stuck in there. Tangled deep, deep into my sweaty, curling-ironed hair. <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The little boy is still staring up at me with a slack jaw. <\/em><\/p>\n
And, bonus: you\u2019ll emerge with a whole new vocabulary! \u201cBally girl.\u201d \u201cYeller.\u201d \u201cMarks\u201d and \u201cdings.\u201d You\u2019ll feel a bit like you\u2019ve just jumped off a trapeze after riding out the dizzying temporal swings \u2014 present to past to present to further past, further present, a bit of future, present. You\u2019ll walk onward to new attractions with peculiar questions, some specific and trivial, some grander and more cosmic.<\/h4>\nThe Electric Woman<\/em> plays carnival as rich metaphor, yes, and it stays faithful to the conceit. But finally more striking is Fontaine\u2019s portrayal of mortality as inescapably opaque. Every surface signals yet obscures another depth. We\u2019re here on the stage with our intrepid guide, but somehow the show is always somewhere else. Mostly, the book sustains itself and its readers on this hard truth, holding to the stark requirements of a very good memoir. Ultimately a genre of the unresolvable, memoir traces the contours of bottomless gap. It plays against surfaces, mirrors the indefinite. As character, Tessa Fontaine cannot face her own mysteries. As narrator, as rememberer, she teaches herself to hold them like a handful of flames, beckoning us as she tilts each spectacle toward a glimpse of the spectacular.<\/h4>\nPay up and go on in. Tarry about. Peek through.<\/h4>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDo you think you can be hypnotized by a snake?\u201d I ask the boy. He shakes his head and walks a little closer. \u201cMany people believed snakes have the power to hypnotize, so come close and look right into Pandora\u2019s eyes,\u201d I say, which is my cue to guide the strong, heavy snake\u2019s head out toward the willing participant so he or she might gaze into the pools of her eyes, but when I start to pull her head, she won\u2019t budge. I try again, gently still, smiling at the boy who is waiting to prove me wrong. The little boy has a bright red shirt a few sizes too big, and buzzed blond hair, and I can see his teeny rounded teeth inside his open expectant lick-lipped mouth as he looks from snake body to my face to see what the damn holdup is. <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which is an excellent question. What the hell is happening? <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I pull at her neck, trying new angles, grabbing different sections of her thick body to extract her, and each time I do she does not slide any farther out, but I can feel a hard pull on my hair. She\u2019s stuck in there. Tangled deep, deep into my sweaty, curling-ironed hair. <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The little boy is still staring up at me with a slack jaw. <\/em><\/p>\n
Pay up and go on in. Tarry about. Peek through.<\/h4>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDo you think you can be hypnotized by a snake?\u201d I ask the boy. He shakes his head and walks a little closer. \u201cMany people believed snakes have the power to hypnotize, so come close and look right into Pandora\u2019s eyes,\u201d I say, which is my cue to guide the strong, heavy snake\u2019s head out toward the willing participant so he or she might gaze into the pools of her eyes, but when I start to pull her head, she won\u2019t budge. I try again, gently still, smiling at the boy who is waiting to prove me wrong. The little boy has a bright red shirt a few sizes too big, and buzzed blond hair, and I can see his teeny rounded teeth inside his open expectant lick-lipped mouth as he looks from snake body to my face to see what the damn holdup is. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which is an excellent question. What the hell is happening? <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I pull at her neck, trying new angles, grabbing different sections of her thick body to extract her, and each time I do she does not slide any farther out, but I can feel a hard pull on my hair. She\u2019s stuck in there. Tangled deep, deep into my sweaty, curling-ironed hair. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The little boy is still staring up at me with a slack jaw. <\/em><\/p>\n