the process

Think about it. Scratch it on paper, a napkin, the back of your hand. Let it keep you up all night. Grab the materials without thinking. Lay it out. Lap it up. Cut it. Destroy it. Mend it. Reunite everything. Peel away the layers slowly. Rip into the meaning quickly. Tag it. Scrutinize it. Hang it on your wall. Try to ignore it. Wake up in the middle of the night and look at it in the dark. Take a picture of it. Take 20 more pictures of it. Edit. Re-edit. Keep it simple. Kiss it goodbye. 
That's my process in a nutshell.

|image Judit Reigl, Outburst, 1956. Metropolitan Museum of Art|

ten

love is in the air

image via nonenus quarterly 

“I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.”

— Paul Auster, Moon Palace

kiss kill bang bang

We were like our own Jerry Springer episode me and this guy. But it wasn’t always that way. We met. We liked one another. We shared the same interests—we were both easily bored and we liked adventure. And by adventure, more often than not, I mean trouble. And by liked, more often than not, I mean desired.

One of the first things he told me that I actually remember was that I look like trouble. I wasn’t sure if it was a pick up line or a warning, but those words made me feel warm and my actions right.

We would start fights on bridges that would end up in bedrooms—drunken, stupid fights in the middle of winter that left both of us cold, tired and defeated. He would set my bras that I left at his apartment on fire and send me photographic evidence of his rage. After all was forgiven, I would look back on those moments and think of them as acts of romance— minor instants of misplaced love. When waiting in lines and crossing through city parks on my way to work I would imagine all the intensity he must have felt while torching my delicate underthings and I would smile to myself on occasion. How silly! How juvenile and dysfunctional of me to think that way. I should have figured it out then. I should have known it was never romance. This was never love. This was a game –Russian roulette for the emotionally negligent. 

image Rene Magritte 

this is what I'm talking about

“Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. 

Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.” 

Tom Robbins

right time wrong turn

Installation Images by Alicia Kwade

“I like to be the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place. Being the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place is worth it because something interesting always happens.” 

This quote from Andy Warhol echoes the theme of recent days for me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have a habit of being at the wrong place at the right time. Timing, in general, has always been a point of interest and concern for me --I’m chronically tardy, I never wear a watch, and I have an unrealistic perception of time. And luck! My (mis) fortunes should be tracked and studied by the Lady Luck herself  due to the sheer volume of people and opportunities storming in and out of my life in the most peculiar ways. Luck and timing always go hand in hand. And although many people are afraid to acknowledge the huge dependency their lives have on luck --thinking they have this great control -- the truth is that we don’t have as much control as we want to believe. After many years of experiencing head-spinning chance encounters, I’ve realized that there’s no sense trying to control them. So when the clock strikes trouble I’m usually nearby. As much heart- and head-ache as I experience, being where you perhaps shouldn’t (or didn’t want to) be can also be life changing and force you into unanticipated situations where, as Warhol put it, interesting things always happen.

Has a wrong turn ever turned out right for you? 

x

this village is yours and mine