June 27, 2010

It is craaaazy out here on weekends! It feels like half the city is trying to get away from itself by coming here. I wonder if the island is big enough for all these people?

But my studio is cool and private enough -- it's a nice feeling to come out in the middle of this mass and then be able to sneak away and work when everyone else is escaping together. It's the inversion of the standard practice that makes it a real escape, I guess. And since my studio is just on the edge of the gallery space, I'm sort of vaguely observed by the visitors, which keeps me working. It's good.

So, it's been a while since I've written but it hasn't been a while since I've been coming here -- I've been coming out pretty regularly now that I am feeling better and my schedule is a tiny bit less hectic. I've just been soo busy producing stuff -- brick walls, sound files, etc. K, M and I moved 500 bricks out here last week for me to use in my installation. It was so much fun. But it made us realize how much labor goes into the littlest things. 500 bricks probably won't even make the room. So imagine how much work it takes to make a big room, a building, the pyramids. And it's detailed work -- each one has to be pretty carefully placed or the wall will topple higher up.

I have so much to write about, but I actually want to get to work. N is coming with a marine radio and a projector soon and we're going to to a studio visit. I need to talk with someone other than myself about my ideas.

But one thing that I've been thinking about, since the seizure -- or remembering -- is how we can be trapped in our own bodies. I was thinking about this when I visited Roosevelt Island and then was thinking about it even more when I was so limited by my injuries and illness. It was very restful when I could accept my limitations -- when I was really, really not well and couldn't do much. But then the process of recovering physical and cognitive capability/mobility was most difficult because I felt my limits so strongly. It was like hitting a brick wall -- I'm trying to work, I'm trying to go places, I'm trying to communicate and then BAM! I'm tired, or I just absolutely can't remember how to spell, or I'm just not seeing straight and there's absolutely no way to will myself around it.

So, back in the day, epileptics were confined with the 'insane' -- I'm not clear on whether there was an understood distinction between the physical condition of epilepsy and emotional/psychiatric illness, or if epilepsy was actually considered a manifestation of madness. It seems like there was a distinction, at least in France just before the revolution. I think in the US there was not. In any case, Foucault writes about how being labeled and confined as mad makes you mad:

"Early in the nineteenth century, there was indignation that the mad were not treated any better than State prisoners; throughout the eighteenth century, emphasis was placed on the fact that the prisoners deserved a better fate than one that lumped them with the insane. ... The struggle against the established powers, against the family, against the Church, continues at the very heart of confinement, in the saturnalia of reason. And madness so well represents these punishing powers that it effectively plays the part of an additional punishment, a further torment which maintains order in the uniform chastisement of the houses of correction. La Rochefoucauld-Laincourt bears witness to this in his report to the Committee on Mendicity: 'One of the punishments inflicted upon epileptics and upon other patients of the wards, even upon the deserving poor, is to place them among the mad.' The scandal lies only in the fact that the madmen are the brutal truth of confinement, the passive instrument of all that is worst about it. Is this not symbolized by the fact - also a commonplace of all the literature of confinement in the eighteenth century - that a sojourn in a house of confinement necessarily leads to madness?"

June 11, 2010

So, I'm finally starting to get back out here and back to the work. I had a huge seizure at the end of March and ended up out of commission for about three weeks. It was scary and difficult, but also very illuminating in so many ways. I feel and broke some bones, but the most important part was what happened to my mind. I had a pretty serious concussion, which, along with the seizure, caused some confusion, memory loss, and trouble with depth perception, spelling, math computation, etc. It was sooo strange. I think everything is mostly back now. But what was so amazing was this process of coming back, and of realizing what was valuable and what was not so valuable about what I lost. I have been thinking of this Elizabeth Bishop poem I love, "The Art of Losing." I think it's actually about attachment and how the narrator is trying to deny her attachments. But there is something about losing it that makes it so much more valuable, in a more tolerable way than if you cling to it.

I was so afraid of losing my mind. Literally. So much of my identity is tied up with my ideas about my intellect. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to teach, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make my work any more. But I also had this realization that I still would, regardless, and that there is something else that motivates me. I was very afraid I wouldn't be valuable to anyone anymore. My friends and boyfriend were so amazing in that respect. Actually, I was probably easier to get along with when I didn't have the energy or focus to be telling it to everyone all the time.

So it was pretty educational, I guess, to go through all this in the midst of this piece. I think I've started to understand a little more about what it means to be trapped inside your body or your mind, and how the two are very fluid. And also how lucky I am to be able to make my own schedules, to have my ambitions, to be able to try to be productive. Strange to see that as a luxury, but when you lose it, you appreciate it.

So I missed opening weekend out here because I was recovering from surgery. I missed the NYT, the press preview, open studios, everything. I was lying in bed in Manhattan watching the news show images of Governors Island, and feeling so trapped and frustrated. But it was sort of funny -- a total inversion of what I had planned. And I thought, ah ... I go through all this elaborate trouble to see what it might be like to be sick and confined and then this happens.

It's not the illness that was so bad, it was the possibility of not recovering. When you know you are healing, when you know you can make progress, it's ok. And the resting and separation was important, but isolation would have been the worst. I woke up from the seizure deeply, deeply lonely. It was a real feeling of desolation. I was scared for my body, but I also needed people around me for other reasons. So that made me think about how really awful it must be to be expelled because of illness, to be neglected or just without any people.

I guess in a way my brain is sort of self-taming. It gets pretty hyperactive and then shuts off, which isn't a great process. But it quieted me down enough to realize that I could do a lot more if I really were open to collaboration and exchange. Like, really open, not just from a theoretical relational aesthetics perspective. I think if I could do that, somehow this piece would have something to give.

I'm not totally sure what's next, but I think visiting and talking are the most important things for now. So, that's what I'm going to try to do.

June 7, 2010

So. It's been a while. And now I'm in a rush. Here's the short version:

All is well.

Then, a few weeks ago, my epileptic brain short circuits and I wake up in a pool of my own blood, with memory loss and broken bones. (Really.)

Then, I discover that my friends, family, and boyfriend are really really awesome.

Then, I spend a few weeks wandering around half-myself in and out of hospitals getting tested and put back together.

Simultaneously, I regain my awareness that I really love my life and my work and my mind and my body and would hate to lose any of it. But I guess I'll take what I can get.

Then, I get very afraid that I will never recover. But I do, and I am. And I finally sort of feel like myself again. Except a little humbled, and very thankful. I moved my dining table next to the window. I miss my studio. I needed the rest.

So I'm thinking even more and differently about memory, confinement, health, the body and the powers hidden in it, time and fragility, work, rest, freedom, identity, weakness, and how much we need each other.

And I was just looking over my writings about this piece and I think that the idea of exchange is what is really missing. There needs to be a dynamic conversation, a back and forth between the audience and the "subjects," in a real, literal way, in order for both sides to care what they're doing, seeing, hearing, experiencing, making. I don't know why I didn't see it before, but I see it now.

May 15, 2010

I'm writing from my studio in the Bronx right now -- we can't be on the island on weekends yet. I'm working on editing videos and sketching and thinking thinking thinking. I think something might be developing out of it all. This is one of the first times I've worked in this way -- producing and developing the idea at the same time. Producing and thinking at once; laboring and reflecting. Well, not really at once, but alternating at a faster rate than usual. Or blurring the definitions of concept and fabrication more. I think that's what this blog is.

G texted me just as I was editing some video. I had been thinking of her so much today, because I feel like I really don't quite understand what I'm doing, and I think she could help me understand. So I called her, and we made a date to talk tomorrow morning. She makes me so happy! It was great to hear her voice. I told her I was so sorry for not having called. She said: "I know you're very busy over there in Jessica-land." And I was saying something about how I make myself feel so busy, like everything's a crisis, and then I can't call anyone or see anyone. I told her I was having trouble, in my life and the piece, with real-time communication. She said: "Having trouble with real-time communication! It sounds like you know exactly what you're doing." Thank you, girl. You just gave me my energy back.

It's a quiet spring night, and the air is the way it is on quiet spring nights. I'm feeling some joy in this work right now. It's one of the best feelings in life -- when you can work with a sense of confidence, or security, or limitation, rather than under duress and with infinite possibilities and endless tasks ahead. I was listening to my interview with Eddie today. I asked him how he felt and he said: "I feel like a slave. A free slave, but a slave."

May 14, 2010

It's awesome weather today. It's FINALLY warm out -- not hot yet; it's about in the 70s. It's moist, though, like summer. I love it. My studio windows are open. I went for a run this morning in the park and it was misty and overcast and just wonderful.

I'm feeling stressed about our upcoming studio visits -- I have very little to show in terms of objects. I was hoping I would have the room built by now, but I'm not ready. I need more time with the people and the recordings. And I need more time with the site. I think that is really what I need to know about -- it's a site-specific installation, after all, and the piece centers around the problem of place and displacement. The problem with the site is, I don't know what it is. NPS has given me a space just outside of Castle Williams, which is not my dream spot, but which I actually find very interesting. I think I can make a lot of it. The piece will change, but that's OK, since the piece isn't solid yet anyway. The thing is, it seems like the space they're offering me is currently fenced off and filled with dumpsters. Hmm. I was like, 'Is this right?!' I went out to look at it yesterday and at first was so upset, but then I thought it was pretty funny. In an insulting sort of way. I don't know if I'm supposed to say it, but I have this horrible premonition that the powers that be out here have a very different aesthetic than I do. Or maybe it's just all a big misunderstanding.

It's a fear in general, though. That those necessary and important to me resent what I'm doing. Or, there's this sense of confusion that is coupled will alienation. Or maybe the work just sucks. I overheard some women who work here on the island talking on the ferry yesterday on the way back, and it was so disheartening to hear the way they were discussing our projects. I'm not saying "they just don't get it," but a little more generosity of spirit, or a little more space before judgement would be nice.

But back to the Fear In General. It's more a fear of being misunderstood. As esoteric as things can get, I think the point is to be understood, and to understand. Or for me it is. I think. I hope. I tried to explain a recent performance to S the other night. He tried to understand, I think. But I had also recently looked up his ex-wife, who is, at least in my mind, about as opposite to me as could be. She is a publicist who used to be a dance writer who at one point I think used to be a dancer. And man, she has a very different aesthetic than I do.

So. Fear. It makes us withdraw from each other and push each other away and judge each other. Well. Glad I figured all that out. I'm on one of the last chapters in the Foucault, which is called 'The Great Fear.' He describes how the perception and treatment of insanity came full circle, when the insane were sent to live in sanatoriums that previously were built for lepers. Then and there developed a paranoia and general fear that these sanatoriums were filled with bodily disease and "bad air," which endangered the nearby towns, causing greater separation and a general sense of disgust and terror. It also was the beginning of a medical treatment of insanity -- not out of kindness, but out of fear of its spreading. F says:

" ... fear and anxiety were not far off: in the reaction of confinement, they reappeared, doubled. People were at once afraid, people were still afraid, of being confined ... But now the estate of confinement acquired its own powers; it became in its turn the birthplace of evil, and could henceforth spread that evil by itself, instituting another reign of terror. ... There prevailed, then, a sort of undifferentiated image of "rottenness" that had to do with the corruption of morals as well as with the decomposition of the flesh, and upon which were based both the repugnance and the pity felt for the confined."

May 13, 2010

It's another very cold day out here. I really want the windows open, but I think I'm going to have to close them. I want the smell of the sea to come it, but it never does anyway. It's gorgeous out, though, except for it being unseasonably cold.

I feel like I don't have that much to say -- Im ready to get to work. I want to start building, but I don't have the materials or help I need. I lost my glasses, so I can't drive a truck out here with the drywall and wood anyway. And on top of it, I just stopped taking my seizure medicine, so I really shouldn't drive until I know I'm ok without it. And that will take a month. I've been thinking a lot about the practice of medicating. People are very opinionated about it, that's for sure. I was sitting at a starbucks on the upper east side yesterday, next to two guys who, well, didn't fit in on the upper east side. Anyway, one of them was going on and on about how all the women over 30 in New York City are on psych meds. He was a total asshole, but he might have had a point, or something resembling a point. And he definitely didn't like women. Or psych meds. Or homosexuals, or white people, or homeless people. Or anyone, really. He was hard to sit next to. But, I was thinking - what is it in our culture, especially here in this city, that makes us so in need of calibration? And what makes the difference between being sent away for "correction" and doing it internally? Some of the answers seem obvious, but what I've really been trying to understand is what it means to quarantine or expel someone, or some problem. And, more so, what it means to draw attention to that practice, that problem, that someone.

Oh! There is a barge filled with garbage passing my window. It looks so cool.

Anyway, yeah. I'm thinking about how so much of my work has been angry and violent and about all the awful things is society. And I'm trying to understand what it means to show that to people, and why I want to. Which is sort of the inverse of expulsion. And if, perhaps, there's some other way.

May 6, 2010

I am writing this while sitting in the waiting room for the ferry. I missed the 10 am ferry by about 10 minutes, which is typical. But I REALLY needed that coffee I went to pick up around the corner. And, truth be told, I am getting a lot done sitting here in this room. I left a message with S about his connections on Riker’s and Randall’s. On Ward’s Island there is a psychiatric hospital “for the criminally insane.”

Last night I had the worst nightmare. In my dream, there was a serial killer who went around with his little son killing people by throwing them on the ground, planting his foot on their backs and shooting them in that soft mushy spot on the back of your skull, where the skull meets the spine. But before he killed them, he talked to them about how insignificant life was, how were are all so meaningless, how we’re all just going to die anyway. And he brought his son as a way of “teaching” him this truth. And in my dream I was thinking: yeah, sure, of course. But I’d still be screaming and begging him to spare my life. A says serial killers don’t kill because they think life is insignificant, but the opposite.

S called me back – the wife of his friend on Riker’s Island just gave birth and is still in the hospital. He says she’s doing pretty well and that it’s a big baby – over 9 pounds. I didn’t ask much more. But he said that she is waiting for him to call so that she can tell him we are coming to visit, and then can tell us when we can come. He’s been so helpful – he also has a contact on Randall’s Island and is working on getting me a visit there. But it seems he wants a date in return.

So now I’m out here – we just missed the rain beginning. They are still moving the sand today. I think they might have finished today, but I’m not so sure now since it’s raining. The sand will be so much heavier when wet, so I’d think they’d stop working until it dries.

I’m still on the Foucault, and I’m simultaneously feeling quite conflicted about this piece. I have all these video and audio recordings of other people, their lives, their rhythms, their work and rest, their spaces, but I don’t know what that says, or what I’m bringing to it. There’s not enough in it, I haven’t made meaning yet. I think there needs to be true collaboration; I need to open it up and open myself up to create a real conversation that is human and caring. And I’m trying to figure out where the art is in all of this.

F writes:

… representation within the image is not enough; it is also necessary to continue the delirous discourse. For in the patient’s insane words there is a voice that speaks; it obeys its own grammar, it articulates a meaning. Grammar and meaning must be maintained in such a way that the representation of the hallucination in reality does not seem like the transition from one register to another, like a translation into a new language, with an altered meaning. The same language must continue to make itself understood, merely bringing a new deductive element to the rigor of its discourse. Yet this element is not indifferent; the problem is not to pursue the delirium, but by continuing it bring it to an end. It must be led to a state of paroxysm and crisis in which, without any foreign element, it is confronted by itself and forced to argue against the demands of its own truth.

May 5, 2010

I AM SO HAPPY TO BE OUT HERE TODAY.

Or I was until I realized my mic isn’t really working. I got it to work with my little portable recorder. That thing is the greatest. But now I’m worried that I didn’t record Eddie at a high enough volume. What I’m recording now is just the sounds of labor. When I first got here, someone was sanding or something like that a few studios over – a regular rough analog sound, without a machine. At the same time, there were a few guys out the window shoveling sand into the fake beach. Great sounds, the sound of the shovel plunging in to the sand. I just wrote: the sound of the shovel plunging into the sound. Hmm.

Anyway, what I was going to tell was about how wonderful it is to be out here today. The air is perfect. It’s FINALLY not freezing anymore. I was grouchy and achey this morning, and I have been making myself very stressed out because it is the end of the semester and I’m preparing for a performance on Monday, and I have a kabillion applications and proposals due. And I’m all uneasy and frustrated about well, love, I guess. It’s really a pain in the ass sometimes. Love and work – too much work and not enough love.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I kept trying to write about how happy I am and it keeps turning into a complaint.

I guess there is some luxury in being able to complain, especially about heartache and noise. Anyway, I was so achey on the way down here, and felt barely awake. And then I got off the subway at south ferry and was hit with the smell of the salt water and BAM! Life is beautiful again. I know that’s very romantic, but it does it to me. There is something about the sea that is magnetic. I feel this urge and longing for it, especially when I am so overwhelmed with work and obligations. I think, wow, what would it be like to give it all up , to leave and go work somewhere on the ocean. I took a day-long vacation to the sea last summer and I really didn’t want to leave. I kept thinking: what if I just didn’t go back? I could get some job bartending and spend my days swimming and riding a bike and cooking good food, spend my nights serving drinks to some stupid sleazy guys with thick necks, and smile a lot. S was trying to tell me that he thought the poor people living in the villages he visited in Cambodia were happier than he was. I basically wanted to slap him, but I didn’t. And hey, it might be true in some cases. We do find ways to torture ourselves.

So I just videoed the shovelers for about an hour. My legs hurt from crouching down at the window. So I can’t imagine how they feel. Amazing, the amount of work that goes into making that ugly fake beach.

And now I’m feeling grouchy and stressed again. I guess time just goes too quickly for me. I feel like it’s moving out of control – everything and everyone is just slipping through my fingers. Opportunities passing, work hours passing, feelings changing too quickly to monitor them. I have to go make a list of everything I have to do. There is so much. And it’s all things that I make myself do, that’s the trick.

I was with this guy this weekend who is a public defender in Canada. He was telling me about his visits to maximum security prisons up there. He said that the inmates for whom there was hope were the ones who tried to carve out a little home, a personal space for themselves, within the jail cell. Eddie has done this with his space on Roosevelt Island. I have still to do it with my space here. It’s sort of just a dumping ground for gear and a too-small desk right now. In a way, the settling in marks a kind of hopefulness. It seems paradoxical, because what he wants most is to get off that island. It’s the ambition that kills you. But it’s the ambition that saves you. N and I talked last night about how to be more in the moment, how to accept working on and living in what is happening now. We both always have too much to do, too much that we make ourselves do. She was going home to her husband and I was going home to pay bills and fold laundry and set my alarm to get up and come out here. And she was saying how jealous she was that I could do whatever I wanted with my time. Somehow it doesn’t feel that way at all.

I was also telling her about this piece, how hard it has been to establish communications, especially as there is such bad cell service on the island. She was shocked, because she says there are so many radio waves in downtown Manhattan that she can’t stand the noise. I think: the water between here and there is another glass sea, but one of communication. It’s a sudden drop-off, a dead zone.

April 26, 2010

OK. I know it's been a while. I've been running around all over the city meeting with people, interviewing, visiting. I went to Roosevelt Island and met with Eddie for a long time. It was so intense. I think I'm going to Riker's this week. That's just the beginning of the story.

More soon. In the meantime, thinking about this term:

THE GLASS SEA

this is the name for the area surrounding Fort Jay, which is basically the killing zone.

April 14, 2010

It is fucking freezing out here! That’s about all I can think of right now.

Well, the other thing is the frustration of communication. Getting in touch with the mythical Eddie, who should be the easiest to reach, has been so hard. The idea with this piece is to call people interned on other islands and ask them to describe their lives and living/working spaces to me. And to use the audio recordings from these conversations in the piece. Maybe. Well, that's the beginning part of the idea. The idea is a lot more than that, but that's what I need to do right now. So:

First: I couldn’t get an audio line out of my cell phone. Then I could, then it didn’t work, then it did. Then my computer crashed. Then it turned on again. Then I couldn’t call because cell service is so bad out there. That was last week.

Then: I got a new jack, which should work. But it seems to mute my mic and only take the sound of whoever is speaking to me, not of me speaking as well. I tried to test it out by calling K, but her phone is broken and kept disconnecting. I tried calling Y but got voicemail, and she never called back. There’s no one else I can just call and test things on. Either my calling is way too loaded, or we don’t know each other well enough. Or both. That was last weekend and Monday.

Then: I figured the safest thing is just to build a contact mic and attach it to the speaker. This works. So. Then I tried to call Eddie. Except, oh yeah, cell phone service out here is terrible. I think all those helicopters don’t help. So I called and called. Then I finally got through and the operator said she wouldn’t connect me without his birthdate or social security number. So, I called Katy to get this info, except, her phone sucks. She texted it to me, but I was already back in Manhattan. That was Monday.

Then: I tried again today. The mic works, I have the numbers. Her text gives his birthdate, his room, and then says “don’t say who u r.” So I call. And again no cell service. And again. And again. I finally think I found a sweet spot in my studio where there is a signal, and I’m still attached to the cables into my laptop. I marked a big X there with tape. Last week, I marked off a 6 ft x 9 ft area that is the size of a Riker’s Island prison cell, I believe. Or my imagination of its dimensions based on my research. The X is about 2 ft away from the imaginary cell. So I called from there and got through. I just asked for his room and this operator tried to transfer me, but said it’s busy and I should call back in 10 minutes. K said it might take a few tries because all they have is one pay phone for all these guys.

In the meantime, I’m writing this. It’s occurred to me that I should just go on over there and visit, but I am not sure if that’s the point of the piece. Maybe the experience of the frustration of isolation and jilted communication is part of it. What I think is part of it is the talking, describing, and imagining that I am hoping to create through a phone call. We’ll see where this goes. Right now, my piece is a bunch of tape marks on the floor and a series of dropped cell phone calls.

April 12, 2010

Today is better. I stopped writing for a little bit because that last post just seemed way too over-the-top. It reminded me of why I stopped writing altogether, when I was in college and “studying” creative writing. It was too self-indulgent – or too revealing – or too subjective. It’s funny what can happen if you have no audience, and what can happen if you’re not sure you have audience.

I want to make this quick because I really want to call Eddie today. It’s been a comedy of errors getting things working so that I can record a phone conversation on my cell phone. Seems like it shouldn’t be that hard, but it is … I think I’m just going to solder up a contact mic and use that – I’ve heard that works. We’ll see. I’m ready, though. I really want to start talking. I think I’m learning a little from S and other journalists I have known – there’s a sense of entitlement or “end justifies the means” or just plain boldness that allows them to pursue an interview. I don’t have it, but I’m trying to fake it a little.

I loved the ride out here today. I almost always do. And I’m noticing how many of the wonderful things in my life right now involve crossing bodies of water, or just water in general. I regularly run from my house, across the hood, and across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, and back. I love this run – I did it last night and it was sooo dark. There’s something so freeing about crossing the river and then returning. It gives perspective, makes me love New York from the outside again, and also lets me feel like I can escape. It makes me realize how close a different world is. It also keeps me running, because I can’t really just wimp out and stop in the middle of the bridge or in another state. Also, baths. I love taking baths.

And then I was watching the water through a hole in the boards along the dock as we were docking. It moves though and around – the fences and boards don’t really contain it at all. It reminded me of the way sound moves – though and around walls – and about my thoughts about how the medium, in that respect, is sort of naturally in the public realm. Water, similarly, is impossible to own.

I’m still obsessed with this Foucault. He is talking now about hysteria and hypochondria. In the 18th century, he says, hysteria was attributed to having an overly fluid body, a body in which the parts could move around, that was not “solid” enough. Eventually this was transmuted into the idea that the body was overly sympathetic, that the vibrations of the nervous system created sympathetic vibrations throughout the body, causing the person (woman) to feel things more extremely:

“Simon-Andre Tissot conceived this double function of one and the same fiber as the combination of an undulatory movement for voluntary stimulus (“this is the movement of a fluid enclosed in a malleable container, in a bladder, for example, that when I press it would eject liquid through a tube”) and a corpuscular movement for sensation (“this is the movement of a succession of ivory balls”). Thus sensation and movement can be produced at the same time in the same nerve: any tension and any relation in the fiber will alter both movements and sensations, as we can observe in all nervous diseases.”

S and I were walking in Riverside Park on that path along the Hudson River yesterday morning and there was a big huddling of police cars along the riverbank. They had found a dead body floating downstream. The ME was slow to come. That night, the body still hadn’t been identified. S says a body in the water usually means a suicide or a mob hit. The water carries, removes, displaces, decontexualizes, and washes away a lot of information.

April 7, 2010

It’s another beautiful day. And I am thinking about how A. likes it when I write. Or at least, he seems to approve. I am so lonely right now, feel so cast aside myself, that I think I am seeking the feeling of collaboration or partnership anywhere. I just want someone to be monitoring me. Someone other than me. Someone to know what’s going on, and to care. Sometimes it seems like all my efforts are so small, especially because I am very alone in them. It’s enough to deflate you a little. I guess that’s why we need all these institutional structures of approval. But those are so empty without real connections, real investment. It’s a strange thing, to feel like I need to keep myself alone, protected, solo, in order to think clearly, to see the trajectory of the authorship of my work and my life, and yet to know that maybe it doesn’t mean anything to anyone.

I screamed this morning, in frustration, the loudest scream I have ever screamed. It was totally uninhibited, I just let it out. It hurt my throat. But what an amazing feeling – it just vibrates your whole body and you know when it’s done and it has all come out of you. I think that was the best part of it – just to know it was all fully out of me and finished – one long complete thorough scream that used all my air.

So now I’m out here, and I feel kinda tired. I don’t think I’m sleeping enough, or properly. There’s no one to put me to bed, and there’s always so much work to do. I’m aware of this tendency of mine and I know I have to combat it, be very ritualistic about letting go and shutting down.

There is one little spot outside my window that always makes waves. There must be something under the water there causing a rift. I can actually hear the waves sometimes, over the buzzing of the fans in the studio. I think I want to video it, and take some audio. Maybe I’ll do that next.

I have to call Eddie on Roosevelt Island. I’ve been putting it off. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I think will go wrong. I’m just scared, or shy. Or lazy. I’m afraid to bring another person into this.

April 2, 2010

It's absurdly beautiful today. It's one of those first spring days when everything is beautiful, everything is perfect, it's just a miracle, and people are wearing shorts prematurely. Everything is very, very clear and crisp. No clouds. I'm romantic about the twinkling caused by the sunlight reflecting off the cars driving across the Brooklyn Bridge. You see what I mean? Ridiculous.

I've decided that I'm not really having an experience of confinement out here at all. It's more like an island retreat. So, I'm very lucky. I think the closest experience I've had to feeling trapped is the subway. The FUCKING subway. I took the 1 down today and it was one of those rides when they stop it for about five minutes before every other station. We spent more time "being held by supervision" than actually getting places. What does that mean:

WE ARE BEING HELD BY SUPER VISION

?

I think I'm going to get all metaphorical on your ass now. We are held by our visions, we are held prisoner by the extent of our visions, we are confined by both the limits of our vision and our ambition to have a greater vision.

Yup. Metaphor. Either that or I am spending way too much time on the subway.

Speaking of vision, there's a little sailboat going by my window. It's quaint. It looks like the kind of thing you'd put in a bathtub, except person-sized. But compared to the ferries and water taxis and helicopters and downtown Manhattan, it looks like a toy.

I'm thinking about scale a lot today, and motion. One of my students took me to see an installation he had just made yesterday. It sort of blew my mind. And it was about those things: scale, models, the earth, man-made creations, projections, vision and perspective, silence and slow time. He is a rock climber and we talked about plate tectonics, instability, and the fact that we're just very very slowly floating around on hot liquid all the time.

By the way, what happens when you drill into the mantle? I know nothing about this stuff, but it seems like all these punctures can't be good. He's also a ceramicist. And now I'm thinking about that Keats poem (Ode to a Grecian Urn) and looking at this crazy man-made sandy beach outside my window and making associations. Earth, clay, crust, heat, cracking, subterranean motion, water, the frozen moment.

There is a Lawrence Weiner piece painted on the wood of the Governors Island Ferry dock in Manhattan. It reads: AT THE SAME MOMENT.

March 31, 2010

I don’t want to go back! It’s definitely true that it doesn’t take long to take your stresses with you. They came with me today. And it’s taken 2 hrs to get them out. It takes that long to let go and start to be free enough to work and dream. This whole idea of blogging makes you so exposed. I’m not sure about it. But I come here with my list of things to do, schedule, timeline, thoughts to make public. After a day I have already institutionalized myself.

It’s very cold in here today. It’s cold outside, too, relatively speaking. And very, very grey. But at least the rain has finally stopped. I got very warm just before I came out here – I was getting a cup of coffee and digging through my bag looking for my id. I just wrote idea instead of id. I think that’s pretty Freudian, no? Anyway, by the time I got to the boat, I was so hot, so I took off my coat and sweater and stood on the deck shooting video in my tank top for most of the ride. It’s good to feel the wind, but there was something frantic about the whole experience. My camera’s battery died just before we docked, so I didn’t get to shoot the whole trip.

I feel like I am always trying to insert too much into a space too small, including things to do in slots of time, tasks to complete with limited power. It’s quintessentially New York. I remember a quote about the city – something about watching someone parallel park an 8 ft long truck in a 7 ft long parking space. So much resourcefullness and creativity come from the pressure and tightness, but I’m not so sure about it sometimes. Necessity is the mother of invention, but where is the room for inquiry and mistakes? My space out here on the island is raw and institutional and empty right now – I haven’t brought out anything very large. It looks like I’m not working, but I am. I think. Or maybe I’m thinking. It’s really a perfect set-up – being given the space to think, three walls but not four, specific times when we can and cannot be here. I’m starting to think the situation of this residency is more important that the space itself. I wouldn’t mind a little heating though.

I’m reading Madness and Civilization. Foucault says:

"Montchau, who cured a maniac by 'pouring ice water upon him, from as high above as possible,' was not astonished by so favorable a result; to explain it he united all the themes of organic calefaction that had succeeded and intersected each other since the seventeenth century: 'One need not be surprised that ice water produces such a prompt and perfect cure precisely when boiling blood, furious bile, and mutinous liquors carried disturbance and irritation everywhere'; by the impression of coldness, 'the vessels contracted more violently and freed themselves of the liquors that crammed them; the irritation of the solid parts caused by the extreme heat of the liquors the contained ceased, and when the nerves relaxed, the course of spirits that had proceeded irregularly from one side to the other was re-established in its natural state.'

The world of melancholia was humid, heavy, and cold; that of mania was parched, dry, compounded of violence and fragility."

March 29, 2010

Govs Island 3/29/10

I love the motion of the water. Something about this view, this isolation, makes it safe enough to write. There is a constant humming in the background, but I don’t think it’s a typical electrical hum. I think it has more to do with the boats. Or at least, it reminds me of the humming of the motor of the ferry that brought me out here.

This place is almost surreal. Actually, it is surreal. To be on an isolated island just 5 minutes from downtown Manhattan – is almost surreal. But the brightly colored fake palm trees and man-made beach outside my window, against the cold late winter rain, that really pushes us over the edge to the surreal. Life is so weird you can’t make it up.

The train just wouldn’t come today. I waited forever for the 1 train, and then got the 2, and then again the 1, and that was another forever-wait. I am starting to think this humming is going to annoy me. I’ll be glad when it’s warmer out and I can open the windows and let these sounds out, and new ones in. Anyway, I waited forever for the train. As I was waiting, there was this guy sitting next to me on the bench. Young guy, probably in his 20s. I couldn’t tell if he was disabled or schizophrenic or just very impatient, but he kept making popping sounds with his mouth and punching his thigh. But not in a very violent way. Then an mta worker came by, put some coins in the payphone, and called the dispatcher, and told him that he had been waiting a long time for the train. And I thought: Is this how it works, then? They just call from payphones and say they’re waiting for too long? I’d think there’d be some sort of system. Or at least walkie-talkies. It was doubly weird, as I’d almost never seen anyone use a payphone in the subway before for much of anything other than trying to pick up change from the change collecting-thing in the bottom of the phone. Or maybe to call a drug dealer. Anyway, but then the train came. The young guy stood and banged his bottled water against his leg. His pocket was filled with change and it jingled every time he hit his leg.

Is this journalism?

We took this little boat out here. The proper ferry is undergoing repairs. Something’s always broken in nyc mass transit. Something’s always broken. But the boat was beautiful, or at least the ride was. It’s small enough so that you can really feel the motion on the waves; really feel the weather. It’s an escape, but not a fleeting one. It’s more transportative than that. You enter a different universe when you leave dry land. You put yourself in the hands of someone else – I don’t know who or what – God, the elements, the laws of gravity, that curious guy with the tattoo on his wrist who was steering the boat. I can see why you have to cross the river styx to go to death. I can see why the I-Ching always insists ‘it would be advantageous to cross the great stream.’ I can see why water can carry the vessels of madness. I can see why people leave. It’s not constrictive – at least I don’t feel it that way yet – it’s very, very freeing. Not just physically. It’s the release from the standards of society – of any society – the leveling, the removal of any rules of behavior, of correct behavior, of linear time. It’s the rocking. So now I’m thinking, yeah, ships of fools, that makes sense. That’s probably a lot more humane than what we have now – the institution. But how long on a ship until a ship becomes an institution?

I had a boyfriend who was a sailor. He loved the sea, he loved swimming in the middle of the sea, away from the boat, away from the shore, in the middle of the night, under the moon, and feeling infinitesimally small. At the same time, he loved the structure of the maritime life. It’s not what you’d think. Most of his time was scheduled. And the time that was free, wasn’t very free, because, what can you do? There’s little room for ambition. No internet, no TV. Read, exercise, think.

Where is hope in all this? And, come to think of it, is hope such a great thing?

All I know is that the markers of time are different when you watch the water. These boats pass back and forth in front of my studio window in a semi-periodic fashion. Slowly, creeping, and they really seem more like large, slow animals. The waves seem to be going in both directions here. I know there are places in the Hudson River along the Manhattan shore where the water flows both up- and down-stream. I wonder if that's the case here. What seems to be certain is that time becomes spherical.