Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street

Hedwig Gorski's memoir and archive of her pivotal 1978 avant-garde literary performance. Cover photo is by award- winning photographer, Lauren Piperno. Contains the full script for experimental verse drama "Booby, Mama!" and portions of Joy Cole's epistolary journal of the troupe and times in "Letter to Krystal," an intimate letter to her daughter. The conceptual art process behind Hedwig Gorski's 1978 avant-garde literary art Booby, Mama!, seems impossible to pull off. There was no money, and it used "found" text and "street" actors who were drunk, stoned, or filled with existential angst living on the fringes of society. The troupe members spent spring and summer in an abandoned house on Powell Street near Spellman's Bar, a local hamburger joint where Lucinda Williams and other gravel-road stars performed. Joy Cole, embodying the performance poem's character Red Light, became artistic soul-mate, nemesis, and, eventually, Gorski's dearest departed friend. Portions of inebriated Cole's epistolary journal document with candor and compassion how such mythic creations materialize and survive. Images by award-winning photographer, Lauren Piperno, letters, and other texts complete a performance artwork that stunned even the infamous world-weary bohemians and individualists engaged with Austin's anything-goes Romantic Period. Altogether, it paints an atmospheric landscape of the town that summoned and intoxicated so many beloved dreamers and artists of the time toward intense self-actualization.