6 crackers in a minute

There happens to be a myth that all people can only eat a maximum of six saltine crackers in one minute. The idea is that a person does not produce saliva at a fast enough rate to make the cracker powder into cracker paste that will go down easily. Nevertheless, people find some sort of satisfaction in trying to beat the impossible themselves. More often than not, the individual will even try to overindulge with the attitude that not only can the heshe beat this well-established trend, but heshe can in fact go far beyond the limit. 6 crackers in a minute is a piece about overindulgence. We push excess to the extreme in that bigger must always be better with an almost impressive ability to turn off our buffering censoring abilities. We reach a sort of absurdity in re-masking this idea of excess in a competitive realm. What are eating contests, and, seriously, why is that a good idea to eat competitively. What do we prove by winning? What skill set does that promote? Eating six crackers in one minute takes the competition further to a performance. There is also personal competition, and if the competitor is able to accomplish the task heshe wins praise and acclaim from the group.

The piece was physically rather harsh in performance. My face was red and scratched after the first time because I shoved crackers in my face so vigorously. I think this parallels the very real physical harms of overindulgence.

The first time this piece was performed in class, I thought that the critique aspect of the piece was just as interesting and could be considered part of the piece. People just wanted to join in and have an eating contest of their own. People wanted to nibble on the crackers.