It was a curiosity, seeing a Nattle presentation in Taipei, Taiwan. They are still relatively few,c these presentation, as the projects and preparation has not yet caught up to the growing interest, and it is true that Nattle, as with the others identified as "Oneye" is a matter not completely decoded, by any means. Much is really not ready for presentation, and may not be for many years. But of course the enthusiastic jump forward witgh unfinished ideas and misunderstanding intact, and that is often the way it is with revivals for instance of early music, and is this way not, with this variety of art and its weighty history. So, Nattle occurred here in Taipei, and i have to say perhaps it was not a decoding, but an intuative presentation. There are several Christian churches here that have bilingual serviced, and the Nattle presentation was at one of the bigger ones. I had a short preparation before the presentation by several weeks. I had started going to the church, mostly to hear english of course,, though i had been going to a chinese church before that. There was something comforting and familiar to go to church here, as i was raised in the church, my father being a baptist minister. So, i have been clutching to any scraps of my own history, attempting to retain the familiar, for my mind. And though i had stopped going to church long ago, i resumed in Taipei. I found the minister of the church to be very charismatic. He spoke in chinese, and then an interpreter spoke in English. The minister had spent several years living in the US, and talked a little about it on several occasions, using his international experiences in his illustrations. It was a familar thing as well, as my father often used personal illustrations in his sermons. It gave them an eccentric quality i supose, as did the stories of this minister, talking about how he had taken advice regarding borrowing money in the US and buying properties, rent, buying more with the revue, then being over invested- in an obvious illustration about greed - obvious like my fathers, and homey. I liked that. So, the Taiwanese minister was a bit eccentric. He had great humor, and expressed a knowledge about quite a few obscure things maybe he had no conventional right in knowing. They were likely areas of his personal interest and investigation. So, it was a surprise, but not out of his character, that he spoke briefly one Sunday about the "Oneye" group and materials. He spoke, briefly, but with an impressive familiarity with the present and up to date thought and work on the matter. And, he announced that there would be an unusual presentation the follwing unday, after the service; a concert of a Naggle presentation. I was astounded. Apparently, he had been responsible for organizing it, had brought in others familiar with with, and also, her said, there would be a special surprise, of which, he said, he took great personal pride, but he didn't reveal what the surprise was of course. We would have to wait until the following week.

It was indeed a very great surprise, and one completely i think consistant with the thought and work of Nattle. They conception was that of one Chris Wang, an instructir in music and arts from Taipei National School of Art, He presented new works monthly, of his students and visiting artist and composers, as a kind of mini festival, at the campus gallery. He had a deep interest in the newly discovered "Oneye" works, and, knowing the minister as well as one who had this interested, had been asked, and agreed, to this presentation. But the surprise - was that the minister's own son would be the sou performer of the work, under Wang's guidance. I could see immediately when the youth was introduced that he was probably autistic; his body language and movements, and the fact that he was being led by an assistant to the stage, was evidence of this. The work was very simple, but elegant. The you took the stage, the podium moved away, in front of the baptismal pool. He carried a few pieces of paper. After introduction, there was silence. During this time, he tore the sheets of paper, one at a time, into small scraps of paper of seeming random shapes, and scattered them, scaps from each sheet keep in separate groups, in separate locations on the stage. He then produced a ball of string from his pocket. He broke pieces of the string off, and ran them like power lines along the floor, straight lines, connecting each of the little grouping of scraps. When this was done, each group of scraps had a line that passed to the next group of scraps, i think five groupings in all, the final group, having its line pass back to the first grouping, forming a circuit or loop. The young man then chose a group, and stood next to it, and began to read the scraps, the first group, as extreme facial expressions, seeming i think to give of expression to each scrap in the group. Completing the first group, he followed his power line to the next grouping, and performed gestures of both arms and legs to interpret this arrangment of tearings. They were exageranted, and easy to read from a distance. He looked a little bit like a drunken mime. For the third grouping, he expressed with a series of high pitched whines, each a little different in pitch and phonetic from that which came before. He followed his line again, and for the fourth grouping, he rolled his head on the floor, in a way different for each scrap again. At the fifth grouping, he stood completely still, and i imagined, he was quietly performing an inward calculation or expression for this group. And then, having completed the circuit, and went back to the first. And rather than performing the same sequence, he performed a completely different one, pulling the collar of his shirt in slightly different directions to correspond to his scraps in that group. And, he contined on. This continued in fact for over an hour, each cycle being completely different in act than that which came before, yet a recognizable likely emerged as he repeated from the grouping with a different action, showing that even as an audience, the shaping, number and ordering of those scraps could be read in a different way while retain some basic uniqueness to their particular formation in the cycle. It was a facinating, subtle, and i think as accurate as i have seen - interpretation and understanding of this work of Naggle. I left the event in some shoke, without speaking to anyone.  And as i have seen many reviews write of things without confering with the artists or performers even when present, i write this now, still having not made any contact. But when i do, and i will, it will be thoughtful and a complete analysis, as complete as i can offer, because the wor presented deserves to be taken seriously, as it showed both a universality of human artistry, and a great achievement, an interpretation that felt personal, and from the heart. I think i will log this event with others as i witness they, and refer back to it with that growing and widiening context as these works continue to unfold over time, in all the locals and venues that they are likely to occur, because the work defies possesion by acedemics and intellectuals, as it defied possesion by the crude or unknowiing. The work itself inspires i believe, and delivers universally through a different place than most creation productions. I was happy to be its witness on that day.