What twisted webs the hands of time do weave, it is difficult to find calm in which to write during the beautiful tornado that threatens to engulf us all.
A lost soul from London found his way onto the beach bearing bottles of red, onto a bonfire and a band in a garden and then onto my rooftop - so strange seeing a familiar face in this otherworldly place, two entirely separate times and places and selves colliding but in a way which reassured me that i am still in fact real.
Artist Maria Abramovic famously performed a piece called "Action Pants; Genital Panic" through which she commented upon the position of women in a public space and the role of the voyeur. Abramovic straddled a chair wearing a pair of crotchless leggings without underwear while wielding a machine gun. Naturally, the eyes of the audience are drawn to the very public and naked display of her genitals, whilst the weapon gives Abramovic physical power and creates fear in the voyeurs. The audience are both scared and unable to resist looking; the threat is emphasized by the artist's meeting of every pair of eyes in the room directly with her own. The performance piece may be interpreted as a challenge to the male gaze: 'I have what you want but i also wield this element of control - the power lies in my hands.' It is a subversion of the traditional sexual world in which women are stereotypically viewed as the submissive sex.
The latet Subrosa open mic night i attended was the monthly women and transgender event which aims to both express and raise awareness of the issues faced by people who identify as female. The Abramovic piece was performed there and had such a huge impact - five whole minutes of tense, challenging silence in a room which holds twenty people at the most certainly produces some food for thought.
My roommate as always did not disappoint, and turned up in typically 'feminine' dress with a friend's freshly shaved beard hairs glued to their face. Genius.
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The dream- like quality of life continues here; afternoons spent in meadows playing instruments and gazing at the ocean surrounded by cows. Nights drift by in fogs of beaches, of bonfires, of tattoos in the living room and swimming naked in hot tubs with strangers in the rain. My favourite game is to leave the sweet heat of the jets and plunge into the icy swimming pool outside in the darkness, causing the blood to fizz and splutter through my body like electricity, flooding me with the violent tingle of life. Raccoons frolick in the bushes as we discuss our next nude photoshoot underneath the stars, liberating ourselves outside of supermarkets all in the name of guerrilla art.
Spring Break brought a wonderfully ramshackle and sleep deprived adventure to New York city. Naturally, we spent a sleepless night in Berkeley before arriving in New York without having planned a place to stay. After choosing a subway station at random in Brooklyn from the map, we asked passers by sporting anarchy badges if they had a solution to our situation and found ourselves directed to a place that might be able to help us out named 'The Chicken Hut'. It proved to be as dubious as it sounds - a boarded up building with a phone number to call on the door to reach the fourth floor, answered by what called themselves 'a loft of weirdos' but later turned out to be members of the 'black label bike club'. Needless to say, we continued on our journey, pointed down the road by the bike gang to a flat of artists living round the corner. 'Greg's loft' proved to be just as unfruitful and our bags appeared to be growing heavier until a guardian angel friend of an angel came to our rescue and drove us to see their band before letting us sleep on the sofa of 'The Flamingo Palace' with three week old kittens that fitted in the palms of our hands.
The rest of the week passed in a haze of tree houses, of leaving our luggage in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, of picking cherry blossoms in Central Park, of watching the air shimmer in Times Square, being asked to leave the Chelsea Hotel, fuelled by houmous and whiskey, encountering political debates in stumbled-upon apartments, sleeping on sofas and visiting flea markets, of being shown around Williamsburg by old punks called Scott and drinking copious amounts of bloody mary, of dancing at the opening of a yoga studio surrounded by bonfires and psychadelic lights, of making brownies in a face- stroking stranger's kitchen in the early hours, of being spontaneously tattooed by rum drinking artists in downtown Brooklyn, of being asked to leave the set of Coyote Ugly, of free tie dye tshirts and photobooths with bartenders, of five thirty am dinners in French restaurants in Manhattan, of taking the ferry out to Staten island, of finding a pair of leopard print Prada boot on the street in my size, culminating in being driven round the city in our own private car complete with driver before heading straight to the airport and almost missing our flight. Searching compulsively for the pulse of the world.
It is so easy to get lost in the delicious gossamer bubbles blown gently from the lips of Santa Cruz, where people bring me artichoke hearts in bed and they sell patterned woolly jumpers by the pound, and forget that the rest of the world exists. Leaving for a little while reminded me that there is life elsewhere, too. That said, returning after a flight during which the man next to me forced me to read and then discuss his book named 'sperm wars', coming back felt just like coming home.
This week brought with it the familiar dull-grey ache of goodbye, but so is the fleeting nature of the transient butterfly lives we lead.
I expressed to a friend my reluctance ever to leave this burning ball of sunset magic by the sea. He replied, 'But it is not this place that you are in love with. It is the realisation of the potential of what the whole world has to offer'.
I think he may be right, for once.
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