Explorations

Today a miraculous and epic event materialized, an event that I have eagerly anticipated now for 3 years: Registering for my Senior Fall. I’ve looked forward to the day where I could register for classes ahead of the lowly upcoming juniors, sophomores and freshmen; I looked forward to the day where I could take simply what interested me, without regard to ATC or goals, or major requirements. And dear friends, that day was today. Can you sense my excitement? That day was today!

I began my epic journey towards senior year as I have with any new semester at UMW, with my registration permission number. The only difference was that today those 6 simple digits separated me from my dream of creating the greatest school schedule ever. I’ve found myself in the enviable position of being entirely at my own disposal within the formal education system, such a rarity that I was nearly overwhelmed with shock. When Helen asked me what I was going to take for classes I said, “Whatever. I don’t know, whatever I want.” And that is exactly what I did this morning at 9am- I signed up for whatever I wanted. I ended up with: Beginning Chinese, Practical Ethics, Modern Poetry, Modern Drama and Dance Improvisation.

So I find myself entirely at my own disposal…and I end up here. It’s an entirely unusual feeling: the freedom of being able to do almost anything, but it’s not everything I dreamed it would have or could have been. It’s a bit scary, there’s a lot more at stake, more responsibility; and all of it stems back to the individual. The freedom of doing whatever I wanted required me to really think, I mean really think for myself what I wanted. It’s much easier to be told what to do, to put on a little track and follow it around, instead of forging your own route.  It’s one of those ‘everyone-knows-this-kind-of-lesson’, but actually learning it, and experiencing it for yourself forces you into a whole new level of awareness. Yes dear friends, that day was today.

Waking up Sunday morning a number of tasks were rushing around my head including; packing, blogging, getting breakfast(ohh the donuts), calling my Mom, writing the thank-you notes, and figuring out my Monday…as I bounded down the elevator I remembered one last one, read the New York Times.

So I found myself at breakfast, sans donuts and skimming over the paper.  Reflecting on the week’s interviews I found a certain poignancy to an article about a young artist. Loris Greaud, 29 will soon open ’Cellar Door’, an installation art project at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The kicker: he is the first artist to take all of the 40,000 square feet, at a cost roughly double to that of any other show the Palais has housed. Director Marc-Olivier Wahler remarked that it was large risk to allow such a young artist carte blanche, though the work has been an overwhelming success.

I couldn’t help think of my last interview with Catherine Porter, the developmental director of Dixon Place.  Dixon place began simply enough in a living room. Ellie Covan the founding director used the space(in her own apartment mind you) to showcase and promote new works and talents. As an interesting side-note Catherine explained that since producing plays in the living room of a NYC apartment violated a number of fire concerns(large amount of people in one spot) Ellie told everyone involved that if the fire or police showed up everyone was to start singing ’Happy Birthday’.  Twenty some years later Dixon Place has expanded(barely) while maintaining the ‘living room’ feel and holding steadfast to their mission.

The juxtaposition of seeing one artist with 40,000 square feet, and a whole venue with only 350 square feet was  really quite eye opening. Initially I though Greaud was very lucky to have an expanse of space and money to realize his artistic vision; yet later I realized how we all have that ability. I have that ability.  It’s shocking but I have the means to produce  my work. Of course my means are limited in terms of finance, time, space, and so on-but even if I have nothing but my living room, I can make it work. 

I found this quote as  a part of an ad for Costa Rican tourism in the subway earlier this week. Ironically I took a picture of this tagline with my camera, as it tells me the image with pale in comparison to my own heart-felt emotions. I didn’t mind really, it was an ad in the subway-but it did really get me thinking. This idea of experiencing vs documenting is paramount, not only now with our New York trip, but within museums, theatre, art, the very thing of life itself-do we experience or document?

It’s only natural to remember the good times, things, people, and beautiful moments of our lives. We want to remember these things, and with the expansion of technology it’s became so easy to do so. The ‘point and shoot’ cameras made photography accessible and easy for people to capture image, the camcorder made moving visual and audio ‘capturable’, blogs and online journals made thought and feeling ‘capturable’. But where does this leave us? In a day when signs are all over the MoMA, Met, Frick(this list is endless) explaining the policy on taking photographs, people are clearly more interested in documenting than experiencing. Sure, maybe a select few are documenting their experience, but those individuals are in rare form. Furthermore these people likely understand the truth in the above tagline better than anyone.  For theatres there’s the obligatory sign about ‘recording devices’, and try,  just try to take a picture. I feel that we as people live with a near obsession of documenting our entire lives, things we’ve done, the great sights we’ve seen, good, bad, ugly; one needs look no further than facebook to see this trend.

To me this whole movement towards getting every thing we’ve done ’settled away’, and ‘cataloged’ forever and ever is a dangerous and scary idea. Life is not simply a spectator sport, it’s for living, we must jump right in. We need to stop trying to fit the world in a picture frame, we need to see the world with both our eyes.  We need to let go of this fear about documentation. We are going to forget some of the most amazingly beautiful, truthful, and happiest moments of our lives. This is a undeniable fact akin to death and taxes. We need to accept this and move on. The point of letting go of documentation, is to rely on experiencing the experience. Getting vulnerable and allowing yourself to truly be moved. Instead of taking your picture in front of a Monet, allow your mind, your heart to take in the feelings, the thoughts, and fully let go…This is experiencing the experience.  Overtime the memory of the experience will fade, but the richness of the moment, is so remarkably heightened. Yes it’s only a moment, a mere blimp of time, yet what it lacks in length it makes up for with intensity

I think it’s important to remember: No camera will store as much as your heart.

oh, la, la… 

EverytimeIseesomeonehailingacabIwannarunupandgivethemahighfive.

Whew. OK. One more time: every time I see someone hailing a cab in the city, I just want run up to them as fast as possible and give them the biggest high five ever. I know it’s the dumbest thing ever, but I have to  physically restrain myself every time I see an outstretched arm with a open palm on the end of an unsuspecting stranger. 

So Thursday…I just did it.  I took a picture of the woman(some may say victim) as I passed from behind her, and then walked by her and across the crosswalk, so that I could  have a running start. There was nothing about her that seemed unusual, and after a second of trying to talk myself out of it, I took off. I ran across the crosswalk, leapt up, slapping her hand as if I were dunking the game winning point in the championship game.  As I was catching my breathe(panting a bit hard), I looked into her eyes, and she had nothing but a blank expression on her face. I then said, ‘Yeah, that just happened.’ She stood there for a few more moments until a cab pulled up, and she told the cab driver her destination. With a turn she said I was lucky she didn’t call the cops, we went our ways. There were several men watching from a store front and the were rolling over with laughter. I have to believe that she later smiled about our encounter too.

I can remember numerous occurrences since middle school when those around me have asked,  ‘When are you going to grow up?’ And when I say numerous, I do mean numerous; school teachers, administrators, employers, co-workers, fellow students, and yeah, even the kids I babysat for.  Not one of those people asked that simple question the same way…and the truth is my answer will hopefully never change.

I will never grow up.

Call it the Peter Pan Syndrome. I mean of course I want to grow up; live on my own,  support myself with a career(that I love), get a cool dog, and really ‘make it’. But along the way I don’t want to lose my inner child.

 Monday I had a wonderful experience at the Guggenheim Museum. After a beautiful walk through Central Park, I just lost myself for a few hours within the ‘Gugg’. It was cool, and somewhat unusal to see exhibits that I’ve read about in The Times weeks ago.

Most interestingly I fell in love with Cai Guo-Qiang, and his exhibit ‘I want to Believe’. You enter the  central atrium of the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda, and find 9 identical and actual cars ‘falling’ through the space, simulating a car bombing, complete with flashing LED lights within and stretching out of the cars.  It was awe inspiring to see a visual of such a grand scale. This was a theme, I found that resonated within almost all of his work.  And I’m not alone in being swept away by this visual: Thomas Krens, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, says “[this]may be the best artistic transformation of the Frank Lloyd Wright space we’ve ever seen.”  It is beautiful, and everyone should go check it out. Cai Guo-Qiang also has a number of large pieces on exhibit that were created through gunpowder and explosions.  I was excited by this, but it wasn’t until I saw the video of him working did I really fall in love.  Looking at the final product(that measures up to 12 feet by 65 feet) his work seems so accidental, but looking at the artist work you find someone who has captured and plotted every single explosion and stroke. I really think that’s what pulled me in: the works ‘accidental’ qualities. Working with gunpowder is a really interestingmedium : “These practices integrate science and art in a process of creative destruction and reflect Cai’s philosophy that conflict and transformation are interdependent conditions of life, and hence art. At once intuitive and analytical, his gunpowder drawings and explosion events are intrepid, conceptual, site specific, ephemeral, time based, and interactive—performance art with a new matrix of cultural meaning.”

More info, pictures and video here: http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/exhibition_pages/cai.html

The Guggenheim was an experience. Simply a wonderful, rich, and silently beautiful experience. However, getting there was also an experience-a hilarious one.  Katie and myself set out, full of hope and good intentions, to where we thought the Guggenheim resided. We basically ended up in Soho and not quite near the Guggs, but we found a PinkBerry’s so the whole ordeal was pretty worthwhile. But the store front is green?

Note the disgruntled face. Yeah, it was good-but I could have used more pink, and apparently the store refuses to publish it’s nutritional value facts leading many to think it’s not actually ‘fro yo’. (Soylent Green is people…anyone, anyone?) There are a bunch of articles and blogs on the issue, such as this one:

 http://www.starling-fitness.com/archives/2007/05/08/is-pinkberry-really-frozen-yogurt/

Before we looked at a map, Katie and I relied on the kindness(and subsequent intelligence) of strangers. I’ve asked strangers literally hundreds of times over the course of my traveling life-and rarely do I get steered wrong. When Katie ran into a shoe store to snag us directions she was met with an interesting answer, ’I've never heard of the Guggenheim’.  The woman went on to explain there ‘were of a bunch of old buildings’ around the area and we should ‘check them out’.  Her advice wasn’t very informative or reassuring…and maybe the woman was just yanking our chain(I do love a good joke) but the exchange provided a lot of thinking material, specifically pertaining to my project. Did she really never hear of the Guggenheim? What types of artistic expression does she seek out to view, to experience, to create..? What and Why?  Katie reenacts the whole experience below; proving to us that the Guggenheim is sometimes a hard destination…even when you know it exists.

Reggie put it perfectly: “Theatre kids in their natural habitat, can’t take them anywhere without them bursting out into song.”

And then we ended up in Central Park on Saturday: Spiderman ensued.

This is the tagline to one of the coolest dining options in all of New York City.  Sunday evening after The Seagull, Mary, Mitch, Katie and myself decided to try Panna II. Personally I really enjoy Indian food to begin with; sadly this post has almost nothing to do with how awesome the food was. Totally tasty. But no, this is not about how ridiculously awesome the atmosphere and people were.

From the moment our little group approached Panna II, you could hear a loud, fast beat pulsating down the street. Then we happened upon the restaurant; I say ’happened upon’ because if you blinked you would miss the 8 foot wide store front it occupied. Missing Panna II would be understandable if not for the massive(and I do mean massive) amount of glowing, and blinking Christmas lights and chili peppers in the window. Then there was the doorman. Yes, there was seriously a doorman. But not in that uppity snobbish way-no no, he was there to ‘cat call’ customers into the restaurant. And we quickly understood why: there were 2 other Indian restaurants right next to him, and 1 below him. The other restaurants(though clearly impostors) had attempted to put up chili pepper lights and Christmas lights too: competition was fierce. He convinced us that we picked “The right Indian place to eat at”, and opened the door to a space 8 feet by 40 feet. Tables were packed in very tightly and lights hung so heavily from the ceiling that even while sitting they touched the tops of our heads. The music was also really cool, and it gave the room a vibe. The waiter seemed to be having a lot of fun, and towards the end of dinner  sang “Happy Birthday” to the man next to us, with a light show as well(duh). The food was amazing. At a point Katie realized that the whole resturant was tilted(Mitch confirmed this) and the truth is, it only added to Panna II’s charm. Uneven, blasting music, crazy doorman and staff, delicious food, and more lights than the fire department would say is safe…

This place is just so alive.  

These are the near famous words my great grandmother passed onto my grandmama, who in turn passed them onto my mom. My great grandmother mind you is a woman who survived both the Holocaust and raised six children alone during the Great Depression; she experienced a great deal of hardship. However, my great grandmother never complained about hard life was for a Russian immigrant during these times. She struggled to take care of her children in the face of great adversity; in not only economic terms, but barriers presented by language and cultural as well. It was her demand that the children(my grandmama and her siblings) spoke English. No matter how bad things became for the family, knowing English could save them.

I think about this today while riding the subway in New York City. “You can never get lost as long as you know English”. The words run through my mind akin to the pace of the express train we took…on an impromptu trip to Harlem. Yes, we got lost. It was fantastic. We had planned and plotted everything out, and somehow due to construction the local train turned into an express train the stop before the one we had intended to take. So what?

For starters, we(and by we I mean Mary, Karen, Reggie, Donna and myself) got off the train and walked up to the street. After a gander and a healthy laugh at our shared folly we walked back down into the subway. Thankfully we had already purchased our passes and we got back into the subway with ease. After a few moments with a subway map, and a stranger’s advice we ended up back on the train, and within 20 or so minutes had reached our destination: Central Park.

Being lost was a really useful experience. I couldn’t help but think of my great grandmother, and that perhaps I experienced a fraction, a very small fraction of the plight of trying to make it in a world you don’t totally understand. An accidental trip to Harlem and my great grandmother–funny how things peice themselves together. More later-off to the MOMA