My friend Liz Keithline asked me to perform a work in her curated event “A TOOL IS A MIRROR,” presented at Mobius as part of Cyberfest. “Come up with an idea,” she said. Ideas have to come to me fast, like the proverbial flash of lightning. My brain toyed with the idea of the computer—the quintessential tool of today, perhaps the only tool of today—as a mirror or reflection of my personality. Nothing much happened, probably because my brain never quite kicked in. I say this because people at my age like to talk about the atrophying of the brain. “Can’t remember a damn thing,” they say. But I’ll be honest: mine never got out of the gate. So I resorted to cheating. I started the cheating life in 4th grade when I figured out how to cheat my way through Reading Comprehension. This Reading Comprehension torture was a box full of stiff cards on which were printed boring stories on things like TURTLE MIGRATION. One, meaning me and everyone else in 4th grade, had to read these meaningless stories and then get another corresponding card (I was stuck in the Brown Card level) on which were printed questions about the gist of TURTLE MIGRATION. One day, I realized that the corresponding answer cards were actually at the back of the READING COMPREHENSION box. From this moment on, I spent my days at school waiting for the moment I could slip the answer card out of the box, fill in all the right bubbles and slip the card back. I skyrocketed from Brown to Blue to Purple to Gold! Of course, I got caught, of course my parents were called, of course I begged forgiveness so I could return to my reason for living: recess. Did I quit cheating as a result of this humiliation? Absolutely not, and I automatically cheated on this whole Tool As a Mirror idea, even though I love Liz and would never want to put one over on her. But I must admit that instead of thinking I danced around my kitchen to a good Donna Summer song while balancing my computer on my outstretched arms/hands. The problem? Hands are useless in dance—for the most part—so at one point I just got down on the crumb covered kitchen floor and wiggled around with the computer on my outstretched arms. From a worm I morphed into a turtle and, bingo, I pictured my old laptop on my back—a house. My house for sure. My pictures are in this refurbished laptop: my songs, my poems, my rants, emails to my long-dead mother. I pulled up a video of myself imitating a Chris Burden monologue, set it on Loop and away I went crawling all over the kitchen as I talked on my back. It’s called “CRAWL.”