REVIEW: Life As I Knew It: Kate O'Keeffe's One-Woman Show / Adelaide Fringe

Kate O'Keeffe is a performance artist. She is also someone who, the past eight months, has endured terrible anguish.

On July 15th 2011, after an ordinary conversation with his father in the morning, Kate's 24-year-old brother Daniel O'Keeffe disappeared from his family home in Highton, Victoria, taking nothing with him. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Since that time Kate and her family have been living in a kind of purgatory, spurred on by reports of unconfirmed sightings across Australia, in places as far-reaching as Colac, Melbourne, Ballarat, and most recently Brisbane, where CCTV footage was captured of a man believed to be Daniel walking into a medical centre and asking for a glass of water. The footage gave the O'Keeffe family tremendous hope and they flew to Queensland, continuing their search in a different state.

Daniel is still missing.

Theories about what might have happened to Daniel are interminable, and none of them make much sense. There's no question Dan was beloved, admired and deeply connected to the people in his life. It's true that he had recently been diagnosed with depression and was taking medication for it. He had expressed an interest to friends about the homeless and their way of life. Did he run away to escape some insurmountable feeling of discontentment? Possibly. Did he find a way to kill himself without his body surfacing? Highly unlikely. Was he murdered? It isn't impossible, but why has no trace of him been recovered? Why have there been no witnesses? Daniel was last seen at 9:40 a.m. on the morning of the 15th - an unlikely time to run into foul play.

I went to see Kate O'Keeffe's one-woman show with serious reservations. I worried that perhaps I would be confronted with an opportunist, exploiting her brother's disappearance for four or five nights in the spotlight. After all, theatre is all artifice; it's about creating an illusion and suspending the audience's disbelief. How does someone devastated by such a life-altering occurrence as this 'perform' her grief and personal horror on a stage? I braced myself for a terribly uncomfortable and disheartening hour. Surely this would be further proof that people will use any excuse, no matter how macabre, to draw attention to themselves.

Kate emerged on the stage, began speaking, and almost at once the cynic in me was silenced. This was not a show about Kate. This was a show about Dan. There was nothing about it that was self-indulgent. What I saw was a very lucid, very intelligent woman speaking (and intermittently singing) candidly about loss. She tells her story with graciousness, honesty and confidence. She shares personal photographs that run throughout. She shows us snippets of news reports which aired at the time to convey the particulars of Dan's disappearance in an engaging, economic way. At one point she mentions her mother and glances left, where I notice her mother (Lori) is sitting, dabbing under her eyes with a handkerchief.

The last ten minutes of the show are the hardest. Kate shares some footage taken of her family at a restaurant (it appears to be fairly recent). It's a large family, gathered together around a table. Everybody is talking at once, laughing. Dan is there, smiling.

I come from a close family and I know what a close family looks like. It dawned on me that this family looked like mine. I know if I disappeared tomorrow the search would never end. I have a sister, mother and father, and between us there exists a profound, unsaid, and exclusive understanding that, sink or swim, we're in this together. If everything else should crumble around us, we'll be standing side by side amongst the debris, finding in each other enough reason to start over. So what does a family do when they wake up one morning and find themselves one member short? How do they cope with the questions, the conjecture, their own sense of guilt, of remorse, whether it's warranted or irrational? Where do they start looking, who do they talk to, how much support can they depend upon?

As I emerged from the small theatre room after the show had ended, I intercepted Lori, Dan's mother, who was still sobbing. Perhaps it was wrong, but I told her that her daughter had done a wonderful job, then I hugged her and said, choking back tears, that I hoped she finds him. My friends and I ended up talking to Mr. and Mrs. O'Keeffe for twenty minutes. It was a cheerful discussion. Lori told us about Dan. She said that when he was a little boy, Dan would put his hand on her back and lead her across the street rather than the other way around. She told us that only a few weeks before he disappeared, Dan threw her a birthday dinner, cooking for her and fourteen of her friends. I hope Mrs. O'Keeffe will forgive me for sharing the details of our conversation, but our discussion afterwards was as moving to me as the show itself.

It has been hours since I saw the show and I should be sleeping, but I can't. I keep thinking about Daniel. Is he in some shelter in Brisbane, passing the night in a bunker? Is he in seclusion somewhere, and if so why? Is he alive or dead? Does he know how many people are looking for him, how much heartbreak he has caused? Will he find his way back home?

If you are in Adelaide and you happen to be reading this now, check the date. If it is not yet 8:00 p.m. and if it is not yet the 18th, book tickets and make time to see this show. It is an exceptional experience, deeply moving, deftly scripted, full of hope and disappointment, assured yet unresolved, and all of it centred around a bewildering mystery.

In the spirit of the show itself, I'd like to conclude this commentary with the following information:

Daniel O'Keeffe is 24 years old, 180 cm tall, with dark hair and hazel eyes. Before he disappeared, Dan was a friendly and talkative individual. It's possible he may give his name as James (his middle name) if asked - and if you think you see him - ask! He is well-travelled and was heavily involved in Mixed Martial Arts, competing in tournaments. Dan is very interested in spirituality and has read 'The Art Of Happiness' several times. His family have a website www.dancomehome.com which includes pictures and updated information on the continuing search. There is also a Facebook page, 'Missing Person - Daniel James O'Keeffe', which is worth visiting.

Apologies to Kate and her family if any of the information given here is incorrect.

A Letter To Nobody

There is something I should tell you. No, it's something I must tell you. It's not about broomsticks and unicorns, nor is it about your soon-to-be-dead eyes that look so earnestly into my soon-to-be-dead eyes.

It isn’t about anything as tangible as the solitary blood in your veins, its separateness, confined to the prism of your stinking, palpitating body, which I’m just so sick of looking at. You float around me like a murmuring terrorist, spewing all of your shit into my ears. So don’t panic. Don’t be alarmed. We’re not going to talk about that.

I’m talking about rape. The sweet peeling back of scrub and roots. I’m talking about the dull-grey tumours sprouting up all over the blue-green face and snowy white hair of the decapitated head who rents that ball of orange fire with eight other deadbeat, bodiless tenants. I’m not mentioning it in a sort of Gore-Lennon-Bono-Heal-The-Band-Aid-World-type way. I don’t give a mounted fuck about rape. Let them continue to ram their giant steel-enforced cocks into every available cavity until green-blue is grey-black. Let them fuck her sorry cunt until she’s choked on enough shit to move along her trajectory with the same, dead grace of her empty, spherical friends.

But there is something worth talking about. Perhaps the last thing worth talking about. The only discernible use human consciousness has left. Because you see, and let me try to be very clear here, because I don’t want you missing anything (and I know how much you’re always missing) - she nurtured us, didn’t she. Miss Blue-Green. She engineered us, decorated the nursery; the silly slut. She took the innocence of water and air and gravity, the non-partisan trees, minerals, caves - all of the world’s ostentatious flourishes - and charged them, necessarised them, made accomplices of them. I know necessarised isn’t a word, you side-splitting fuck, but do I sound like I give a wild toss about that?

And this is the part where it’s important you don’t get confused or lost, so try to keep with me, dear. I think about as much of the world as it ever thought of me. It pains me to regard it all at, but because the sick of consciousness compels me to regard it, I can tell you I think it’s a dizzy, spinning, lobotomised piece of trailer-park shit. It spins and belches blood that flies back into its face. I don’t watch the news because being an audience to a series of suited-up turds drawling a bunch of erroneous shit isn’t exactly my idea of entertainment. I don’t listen to the radio because they hire personalities, don’t they. Personalities. Only those who've spent no less than a ten-year period snorting the snot back up into their brain need apply.

I know about as much about what’s going on in the world as anyone else who doesn’t really give a shit - and more than those who do, of course. We’re in a recession, aren’t we? Financial crisis; diarrhoea on Wall Street. So, what is that exactly? Banks give out credit cards. Here, have some money. Nah, really, it’s fine. Have it, it's yours, buddy. Wink. And then – and you can imagine just how devastating a surprise the next part is; seriously hope you’re sitting down for this next part because it just might blow your fucking knob off - people used them! Used their credit cards like toilet plungers, didn’t they! Bought shiny cars and cappuccino makers and trips to fucking Italy. Florence is a beautiful city, by the way, don’t you think? You’ve not been? Oh well its the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance! No, no, you’ve not really seen anything until you’ve been to Florence. Isn’t it silly you didn’t pop in while you were there? I mean, Venice, Rome – you could’ve caught the train, been there in 1 hour and 37 minutes. That’s how fast they got the trains going these days!

So there’s that bullshit going on, yes, thank you, got a whiff of that - in spite of my best efforts to jam a rag down the throat of every broadcaster and print journalist who ever spewed their way out of the stench of their mother’s womb. What else have we got? Starvation and war, but nothing new there. Brown, bloated bellies and round heads; six-year-old skeletons with eyes like saucers, peering up from brochures, their corpses piled into trucks and carted away as if there’s some grandeur, some universally understood sense, in separating the living from the dead. A pulse check is the determining factor, by the way; the point of divide. People don’t like blurry lines.

And war is just one government fingering the ass of another government until it gets so raw they’re forced to become executioners. This essentially involves conferences, assessing statistics, and discussions about how these statistics might affect their cabinet positions. These statistics, these altogether different clumps of bodies, we don’t load onto trucks, heaven's no! That wouldn’t do at all. No, we give them each a king’s burial; we swathe their caskets in the vivid colours of our nation’s flag; don’t stop looking at the TV or you’ll miss it! Just our little way of showing our appreciation. Thanks John, thanks Paul, thanks Henry, thanks Tom. Thanks for dying. We’ll build a few sheltered monuments and inscribe your name on a wall so that the rats and cockroaches who move in will never forget you. Please, don’t fall out of your grave thanking us! It isn’t necessary. Really, it’s our pleasure.

Second-tier issues are good, too. Fun. Like the leaking boats that keep turning up on our shores, filled with those pesky coffee-stained foreigners who obviously got wind of places like Coles and Woolworths. Or terrorism: the war on terror. You probably heard about a couple of planes crashing into some towers a while back. Yes, well, since then it’s extremely fashionable to be terrified. Terrified of the terror of the terrorists. The terrorists are coming, didn’t you know? Without meaning to alarm you, it might be a good idea to pause reading this sterile, paragraphed ejaculate - this written bile - and check the backdoor. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you should find an Allah-loving bearded Islamic monster declaring Jihad on your family right this minute. It’s possible he’s already upstairs raping your mother. Let’s all shiver together after we’ve ambled into the taxi, sat down, and noticed with mute, abject horror the round silhouette of a turban poking out from behind the driver’s headrest. What a moment. Thank God we keep ourselves well informed and are now expert detectors of the face of evil; the bringers of holy war and genocide, and can be fashionably terrified, or at the very least remotely uncomfortable for fifteen minutes, until the cab stops and we pay the fare.

Let’s do a couple of third-tiers, because honestly they're the best fun of all, as I’m sure you know. Human Rights issues they like to call them, don’t they? The Chinaman, for instance. He’s a funny one, isn’t he? Very ancient. For whom no scent is sweeter than the comingling odour of a slain Tibetan in a nearby church and a newborn baby girl rotting in a bin just down the road. It's not an awful country, China, certainly not! It’s just their customs are so strange, so different from ours. You want to help them, but where do you even begin when it comes to a civilisation so unprincipled, so stunted, so big on imports/exports? They can’t drive and they just won’t stop eating a chicken - won’t even stop at the beak or anus. And let's not start on the harpoon-wielding Japs. Can't they just slaughter cows and each other like normal people? I'll never understand it. Soft chuckle. Shake of head. Good impromptu conversational meat for strangers waiting at bus stops.

Let’s flip the page. Change the channel. Fags want to get married! Well sure they can! In Spain, Belgium, Canada, Norway and wherever the fuck else they say it’s okay. Run to your nearest airport, fags! Hop onto a plane and exchange rings, tell the same lies and make the same insane promises husbands and wives have been making to each other for years. Congratulations on finally reaping the benefits of your united tenacity, after so many trials and setbacks! You finally proved you’re every bit the equal of everybody else. It’s like a magic balm, isn’t it? That tight-lipped woman at the bank doesn’t shake her head anymore, does she, when she sees you and your twink husband step into the place together? And your father doesn’t get that look of nausea on his face anymore, does he, when he sees the two of you kiss (on the lips) out of the corner of his eye? Oh what grand strides you’ve made! Hallelujah, we are all witness to and part of society’s glorious evolution into a broadened, higher stratosphere of being!

But this is all ignorance. I don’t know anything except what I hear, so I know nothing at all. About as much as you. Maybe a bit more because let’s face it the ‘majority’ are about as thick as the fat around their asses. No, we can do better than that. The majority - that is, you - are easily as stupid, as fucking senseless and as full of irrepressibly useless shit as anyone. Every word you say is misspoken; every habit and action just time misspent. You are an embarrassment, you (in particular) are laughed at, you are an incorrigible, temporary old joke that’s been told a billion times since 8000 B.C. You’re too pathetic to hate, but I don't like you much. I like you the way I like my reflection after a big night, perhaps - because frankly, I like you a little bit less than everybody else.

But I’m not here to talk about that, am I? We’ve talked about you until I’ve wanted to take all the verbal excrement you've filled our precious silences with and spew it back up in a blinding storm of my disdain, my disgust, my violence. You incompetent, unseeing, tedious fuck. You can't know how ridiculous you look when you resemble yourself. Or me.

No, the point I’ve been trying to make - the one I might have made years ago if you’d ever shut your fucking mouth; if you’d experimented with a period of say five minutes where you weren’t finding yourself so monumentally important and ground-breakingly fascinating - is that none of what I know or don’t know, none of what you’ve said or not said, concerns or distresses me in the least. I don’t give a fuck about the recession, starvation, war, terrorism, chinese babies or fags getting married. I don’t care about it any more than I care about the blue-green world turning grey-black and shrivelling into a noxious pit of carbon-sulfer hell, which is first-tier stuff, isn’t it? Those naughty noxious gases. Our fetid, toxic leftovers. Our shitting spew, our bile, the stain of our yapping, texting, pill-consuming, cheese-grinning, layabout, luxurious, tax-inclusive lives.

The point I’ve been trying to make since I started writing this, since before I was born, what I do care about, is that you die sweetly, absently. And so it will be. It will take care of itself, before you wake. This silly, sleepy, slutty blue-green decapitated spinning head, who dances seamlessly around her black star-studded ballroom, who for thousands of years foolishly nurtured you, is looking fatigued (have you noticed?), and will soon close her eyes so they are as tightly shut as your own. She will birth again and you’ll be dead, and me with you. Well, hopefully not with you. Death is not a scout meeting. We will be separated in a permanent and blessedly absolute way. But she will sprout again, long after you're gone. She will give rise to sea and air, to sky and earth. And thousands of years after that there will be one-celled organisms, and fish and insects centuries after that, until one day there are creatures not very much like or unlike ourselves. She will watch as they emerge crusty-eyed and full of bewilderment. She will find humour in their misdirection and occasional fits of savagery; in their clunky-headed posturing. And she will feed them and cradle them in her many folds and canopies, replenish them in her deep blue lakes, sedate them under her warm night skies. She will smile down at them now and again, as she used to smile down at us. And if she could think, she would know it was okay. That it hadn’t been all for nothing. That you had indeed been worth the miserable effort - even you - if one day her little nestlings, not very much like or unlike ourselves, break an evolutionary precedent, fix their gaze directly on the path ahead - and smile back at her.

It is 3:45 p.m.

Not to be confused with its hopeful future (3:46 p.m.) or its dead cousin (3:44 p.m.) with whom he became deeply acquainted less than a minute ago. It is simply and adamantly 3:45 p.m. and there is no penetrable layering or soft undergrowth to prod, no argument persuasive enough, to shift it from being true. This is how he counts time at his desk, ergonomically assessed to best place him in relation to his keyboard and monitor, as long as he remembers to sit primly upright all day with his ass to the back of the seat and his feet side by side and flat to the floor. It is a desk tailored to a man, and a man tailored to a company.

It was lunch that did it. That always did it. Stopping for lunch. What a ridiculous thing to do. A sudden jolt into the shrieking veins of commerce, peppered with glossy reminders that people, on billboards and in streets, are better for not remotely resembling you. Prior to lunch he was fine. The brutal stand-off with the alarm and the well-rehearsed bus ride only ever roused him enough to perform the basest of physical functions, allowing him to operate in a sort of warm coma that tickles his ears and echoes in his tendons when he stretches his legs. Don’t misunderstand - only now and then does he ever fall completely asleep, eyes batting and watering, head growing heavier against the palm of his hand until his eyes surrender and his head lurches forward and the sensation is like falling gently from a cliff top and he wakes with a violent shudder, conscious of the breath as it escapes his lips and the noise-sucking hum of the office walls.

Then there is always paper. The occasional bit of petty administrative intrigue, open to interpretation, which might divert him for 10 minutes, or perhaps 20 if it’s a real zinger. A real unusual case, worthy of a half-raised brow. Something that temporarily disguises him as a skilled professional, raising precedents to form arguments with the other desk-sitters, a thoughtful pause or two shared between them for good measure. He can fake it as well as the rest of them.

But mostly he thinks about shit. A great deal of time and concentration he devotes to the careful writing and proof-reading of emails to a random assortment of people, encumbered with their very own desks in their very own glass towers, all of whom he would reluctantly describe as friends. There is nothing wrong with them. It’s just that they are quite linear and docile. They are resigned, programmed, affected. They are very much like him as he appears to them.

Of course, they are not enough to fill all 480 minutes of every day. He spends a great deal of time inventing excuses to leave early that he will not use. Food. Cigarettes. Sex. Sex is a big one. How cunningly it sneaks into his head and lodges itself into the narrow folds of his consciousness, encouraged by its own bad timing. And there it remains, ticking away, scrambling his thoughts. It’s possibly the restrained civility, the cold, expressionless exchange of data and advice. He cannot be sure what triggers it (outside of sheer exasperation), but something about the office inevitably sets his mind to fucking. But there are only two desk-sitters in the entire building worthy of appraisal, and they live on levels 2 and 4. He is level 3, and pickings are slim on level 3.

And yes there are days when they sell it and he buys it. When he actually allows them to convince him there is some sort of pride to be had in ‘contributing’, and so he will sit, engaged and stricken, at his desk, looking through the glare ahead at the snaking mass of work that slips beyond the horizon before its ends can be traced. He opens himself up to the hysteria, the pervasive gravity of importance etched on the faces that visit his desk and change like a holograph one after the next, files slapping down, again and again, until he is convinced that such things might matter. He might actually have to account one day. Someone will pull at the threads, uncover past foul-ups, it wouldn’t be hard. They’ll all know the truth sooner or later. That despite his very best intentions, his struggles to remain focused, diligent, awake – most of it had just been a touch-and-go dance to keep them all fooled. And that’s when he remembers. He’s not alone. They are all unqualified dancers, none with the time to seek out evidence of another’s incompetence. How could they when they were so busy juggling to keep hidden their own? The place is a cesspool of cheerful frauds, likeable liars, adjusting slowly along their trajectory into mediocrity, into the crunching confines of a conventional life... No, the conventional life. The start-at-nine, white-collared, voicemail-optioned, break-for-lunch-at-one, who-stole-my-stapler confabulation of every nightmare conceivable to a man not long ago a boy whose mother had asserted him numerous times as exceptional, different, bound for greatness. Instead he had become his father and every other characterless face who began and ended at a desk, stepping into that long line of ghostly worker ants who lived and died, nameless and forgotten, their legacy a computer number, an access pass, a shadow in an old work-party photograph, a disorganised inbox, eventually cancelled and relegated to the virtual graveyard.

He looks at the time.

It is 3:46 p.m.