Pond Water

My little brother texted me yesterday from deep within a spell of studying. The second round of first year med school exams are scheduled for early next week. He and I both balance fanatic work sessions with big time playtime. But this med thing has his mischievous side on lockdown, with one night on the town allotted every two weeks or so.

He’d spent seven hours that morning studying in the Anatomy Lab, which houses fifty cadavers and countless prosections (hearts, joints, limbs). Seven being the max he’s figured out you can be down there with the dead before your own brain starts throbbing with formaldehyde fumes, probably sensing its own premature preservation and sounding the alarm.

He texted me to see if my painting sketch, “Pond Water,” had sold yet because, if it hadn’t, he really wanted it because it looks like a cell and just like an intervertebral disk.

“Like a what?”

“Like if you cut a vertebra in half and look at the cross section from above.”

“You sure you haven’t been overdoing it? Do you have some friends that you can study with?”

“No, I’m serious. It looks exactly like the Annulus Fibrosus and the Nucleus Pulposus.”

“You’re going to have to spell those for me.”

“You didn’t know you were drawing that, did you?”

“I was painting an oil spill like the one in the Gulf. Did you see the people playing in the water? I was thinking about Regina Spektor’s song “The Genius Next Door.” 

"Some said the local lake had been enchanted

Others said it must have been the weather

The neighbors were trying to keep it quiet

But I swear that I could hear the laughter

So they jokingly nicknamed it the porridge

Cause overnight that lake had turned as thick as butter

But the local kids would still go swimming, drinking

Saying that to them it doesn't matter

If you just hold in your breath til you come back up in full

Hold in your breath til you thought it through, you fool

The genius next door was busing tables

Wiping clean the ketchup bottle labels

Getting high and mumbling German fables

Didn't care as long as he was able

To strip his clothes off by the dumpsters

At night while everyone was sleeping

And to wade midway into that porridge

Just him and the secret he was keeping

If you just hold in your breath til you come back up in full

Hold in your breath til you thought it through, you foolish child

In the morning the film crews start arriving

With donuts, coffee and reporters

The kids were waking up hungover

The neighbors were starting up their cars

The garbageman were emptying the dumpsters

Atheists were praying full of sarcasm

And the genius next door was sleeping

Dreaming that the antidote is orgasm

If you just hold in your breath til you come back up in full

Hold in your breath til you thought it through, you foolish child!"

“Well I’ll send you some pictures of Pulposus and you’ll see what I’m taking about.”

It's no accident that this conversation revolved around a painting of a circle. I know more than one painter who only draws circles and circles within circles and finds infinite subject matter there.

Plato’s ideal form of the circle comes to mind. One way of fathoming the original circle, of which all others are shadows.

“For everything that exists there are three instruments by which the knowledge of it is necessarily imparted; fourth, there is the knowledge itself, and, as fifth, we must count the thing itself which is known and truly exists. The first is the name, the, second the definition, the third. the image, and the fourth the knowledge. If you wish to learn what I mean, take these in the case of one instance, and so understand them in the case of all. A circle is a thing spoken of, and its name is that very word which we have just uttered. The second thing belonging to it is its definition, made up names and verbal forms. For that which has the name "round," "annular," or, "circle," might be defined as that which has the distance from its circumference to its centre everywhere equal. Third, comes that which is drawn and rubbed out again, or turned on a lathe and broken up-none of which things can happen to the circle itself-to which the other things, mentioned have reference; for it is something of a different order from them. Fourth, comes knowledge, intelligence and right opinion about these things. Under this one head we must group everything which has its existence, not in words nor in bodily shapes, but in souls-from which it is dear that it is something different from the nature of the circle itself and from the three things mentioned before. Of these things intelligence comes closest in kinship and likeness to the fifth, and the others are farther distant.”

      -- Plato, ‘The Seventh Letter,’ 360 B.C.E. Translated by J. Harward

Meeting the Magazine

This all started because I have a thing for fashion. I blame my grandmother and all those bedazzled jean jackets and tiny fur coats she used to outfit me in. My penchant for playing dress up is only fueled by my fashionable boss’ philosophy of exaggerating one aspect of her personality each time she goes out (i.e. the African Witch with bone jewelry and studded gloves or Raggedy Ann with her mini-Disney tee and overalls). So when my upstairs neighbor confessed that she had nothing to wear for an upcoming photoshoot, I gave her an armful of garments, including my grandmother’s pleather pants, and she gave the photographer my card. 

I spent Thursday building shelves and organizing our studio’s cavernous new sculpture space in the Clinton Hill Navy Yards. By the end of the day, sawdust evenly coated my body, stuck fast to a thick layer of sweat. But one of the joys of this city is the opportunity it presents to dip quickly in and out of social spheres. Dimensions, tied together by community, culture or profession, lie right on top of each other. I’ve found that, as an artist, it’s important to develop your ability to move between them fluidly. Chameleons can learn from each, are forced to stay openminded and are constantly creatively adapting. 

All this to say that I pulled a telephone-booth-style makeover in the bathroom and booked it to Manhattan.

I was told to meet the photographer, Hassan, for the art and culture magazine Karin and Raoul above a gallery in the Lower East Side. He had hosted a casting that afternoon and wanted to talk with me about my artwork. When I got to the appointed cross streets, I gave him a call. A head of cascading blonde hair and a naked torso appeared from a graffitied doorway. “You’re supposed to be up here,” he called.

Not one to argue with Viking oracles, I followed him up.

At the top of the stairs, a bright white space opened up around me. The walls were crawling with artwork that included mounted horse heads with bionic parts, or perhaps their harnesses had become part of their flesh. Dark surrealism was the prominent vibe; paintings hosted haunted figures and enigmatic lights. In one particularly striking piece, a mammal (we argued over its species) was caught in the headlights; its motion arrested mid-collision. 

Brett, my blonde guide, resumed his position against a spotlit central wall. Hassan directed him to hold a skateboard above his head and began snapping photos. There were two stations for painting and two antique iron beds with white linens lining the walls. At the near end of the room, a man handed out Whole Foods containers and a small group gathered around a dining room table to relish their quinoa, kale and brisket. In the bathroom, a model was dipping her hair into the sink. Another was pulling on 5-inch heeled sneakers with studs that would rival the most robust of porcupines.

“I’ve changed this room around about 50 times,” said the Whole Foods emissary. His name was Justin and he was the director of the NY Studio Gallery one floor below. 

Brett finished the shoot and dug into the brown-boxed feast. I learned that not only had he never modeled before, he had barely seen a skyscraper that wasn’t snow-topped and scalable. He and Justin had met while building houses in Peru. But he harkened from Northern Alaska where he worked construction for a family company. He’d arrived in New York for the first time two months ago with just a backpack and $100 to his name.

“You must be in culture shock,” I said.

He nodded vigorously. “I’ve been living like a rockstar.” 

The evening unfolded as a series of beautiful vignettes, as Hassan photographed each of the models in waiting. The light was draining quickly from the sky as he finished up his last shoot on the roof with a woman so stunning it was hard to fathom her using her guitar as anything but a photo prop. But she was a singer/songwriter and former professional gymnast. Hassan had her hold a position where she raised her seated body up with her hands. She worried aloud that it was stretching her shiny new tattoo of a cameo-esque young girl. 

Hassan had been photographing since two in the afternoon and powered on undaunted until the sky had nothing left to offer and his flash refused to light another step.

When the last subject cleared out, Justin, Brett, Hassan and I gathered around the rooftop picnic table and hashed out methods of cleansing body and mind. Hassan reviewed the talented people he’d met that day, generously heralding us as a new generation of creative talent and professing his happiness at having a hand in making us visible. He revealed his strategy of pushing the boundaries of the people he photographs in order to bypass the facade of what they think he wants to see. When they start making excuses, although he tries not to show it, he’s happy because he knows they are gaining ground. For instance, when the musician was holding that strenuous gymnastic pose from her past, there was no excess energy to maintain a mask.

Back inside, Hassan turned on disco lights and some jams to start the photo editing process. 

The boys revealed their battle strategies for Burning Man. They took me to their Lady Bugz mobile (designed by Yarrow Mazzetti). It was a psychedelically pimped out transport, lit up like a mushroom from Alice’s wonderland and punctuated with plasma headlights. Their uniforms included bug-eyed goggles and an elaborate assortment of bandanas. These were contained within their many-pocketed, sparkly camo vests that they fastened over bare chests and ornamented with beads. 

“Did you use glitter spray?” I asked.

“Pure stone pigments,” Justin responded, his voice muffled by the fabric. Then he ran upstairs to get Hassan to photograph their desert gear.

Your House is My House

“What House would you be in?” Lev Grossman asked Erin Morgenstern. We were sitting in the bottom floor of the McNally Jackson Bookstore on Prince Street. They on stools. (Thrones, if you will.) I on a folding chair with thirty-some-odd others. 

“Well, if you boil each of the Houses down to their defining characteristic. You know -- Hufflepuff is kind, Gryffindor is brave, Ravenclaw is smart and Slytherine is cunning -- then I would have to say I’m Slytherine.”

“No!” Lev was flabbergasted.

“Yes,” said Erin. I wasn’t surprised, maybe just that she admitted to it. “And yourself?”

“Well I took a Jo-sanctioned (Lev’s on a first-name bases with J.K. Rowling because he’s interviewed her for Time) Sorting Hat test and it turns out that I’m Hufflepuff.” A collective groan erupted from the spectators. “I know. I’m still coming to terms with it myself.”

Images from Sleep No More which, Erin is the first to tell you, greatly influenced The Night Circus.

Erin has been to see Punchdrunk's version of Macbeth at least 10 times in various locations and leaked that she may be working on a collaborative project with the director.

These two authors of some of my favorite genre fiction did actually go on to talk shop in a way that dug into their craft and addressed the tedium of writing, the demons of self-doubt and their respective strengths and weaknesses (which were opposite). But I did find it remarkable that their launching off point was Harry Potter and both possessed unabashed enthusiasm for the moppy-headed wizard, especially as their own work tends to be for an older readership, has more roots in the “real,” contemporary world and explores the darker underbelly of what magic they conjure.

A piece of fan art by Christopher Shy (<-- enter at your own risk) of a scene from The Magicians. Lev revels in and stokes the fires of online fan culture. 

Anyway. These are some interesting things they said:

• They both felt lucky to have grown up in New England, believing that it is a rich land to draw from for fiction. The Salem witch trials factored in. (I was surprised by this since, for me, growing up in Connecticut always seemed so bland and regular when I compared it in my head to all the other places where I might have been a kid. But, then again, everything is “normal” when it’s all you know and it takes a special kind of sight, and often the perspective that comes with distance, to be able to see what’s been in front of you all along with fresh, inquisitive eyes.)

• Fantasy borrows more from its archives/ancestors than other genres. Steal as much as you want.

• It’s really hard to have faith that an educated, alternative, adult audience (their ideal audience) will follow you down into magic fountains and up through jungle gyms made out of clouds. Especially before you’ve established yourself as a writer. But you have to take a blind leap. Lev’s first two novels were realistic fiction and the first time he wrote about casting a spell, he nearly gave himself a hernia. 

• Erin began her book during National Novel Writing Month (really!?!) where you are challenged to produce 50000 words.

• That the amount of publicity tours, readings, lectures and appearances required if/when one’s novel gets popular is toxic to the development of story that begins to grow after it.

So then the talk was over and the authors were ushered behind a large oak table. A line had snaked itself around the stacks of books before they could even assume the position. 

I wanted to say, ‘Hey, so should we ditch this lineup and grab a beer?’ As if we went way back. Because in a way, we do. Their characters walk around with me and make snide comments about passersby or chill in the tent villages in my paintings on a regular basis. And I actually have written with Lev and he’s into my paintings. Especially this one.

When I Was A Boy

So it figures that these authors, who write in the genre that I work in and whose characters can read minds, should be able to sense that I am part of the same House. That we should shoot the shit in the common room. But, of course, there's no spark of recognition and I’m just the girl who awkwardly holds eye contact for a beat too long and cuts through the line to get to the door.

Junebug

June was one of those months you saw coming from a ways off. A dark swarm of notation descending like cicadas on your field of calendar days. The buzz was ominous and getting louder. All you could do as it rose up in a roar was take a deep breath and dive in. 

I’ve been putting in my time this month in someone else’s shoes. I’ve gained a lot of ground and seen quite a few sights but all of my travels were in service of someone else’s internal compass, following their trajectory. 

At night, when I’d get back to my room, I’d throw my spent self on the bed and look over at my own neglected Toms. Still in the box. I’ll open them tomorrow, I’d think. But my legs ached with growing pains - teenage-style - and I knew I’d been stretched. 

It’s hard to quantify what you take with you when you work for an artist. The real lessons are hard to look at straight on, squirmy muse-like creatures. Perhaps metaphor is as good a method as any to describe it. When you walk in their shoes, you know their stride, what they stop for and consider, their pace, the height and brand and style of their heel, their posture and weight. You learn these things when you are busy trying to be an effective shepherd of the work that you respect and admire (which better be the case because it isn’t worth it - all the time and acrobatics involved in facilitating someone else’s journey - if you don’t believe that the byproducts of that journey are good seed for the earth).

One downside to assisting is that often my head is so full of someone else’s logistical matters, that my own get crumpled under the bed in a rat’s nest of receipts. (That one’s not a metaphor.)

I was at a garden party with Julie Heffernan, a painter I used to work for, in Woodstock last week as June conceded to July and I ran for the hills (of upstate New York). The attendees were art folk from the City and one painter was raving about a translation of Proust’s Swann’s Way by short story writer Lydia Davis. How expansive it must be, the painter exclaimed, to work so closely with such a master work of literature. To bring it down from its canonic pedestal on high and get your hands dirty with it. But wouldn’t she be tempted, another artist chimed in, to change the meaning here and there, just a little, in the service of making it more contemporary or flow better in English? A formalist painter asserted -- form is meaning. She changes the whole thing every time she translates a word. But wouldn’t it be daunting too? I asked. Probably, was the consensus. 

I asked because I’ve chosen to learn by surrounding myself with artwork and artists that inspire me the most. I imagine Lydia fully exploring every nook and cranny of this great work and then turning to her own short story. How do you make your own work on your desk beside something that’s carved its place in the pantheon of immortal works? Is it in hopes that your humble, awkward attempts will one day yield great shape or content, fed from the nutrients of their predecessor? Or are you really content to grow in the literary forest as a lesser tree, providing some shelter while you stand, some organic matter while you decay, and be neighbor to the greats?

Being asked to join Julie at the garden party (I was dog-sitting for her that weekend in her cozy Woodstock cabin) and talk shop with the artists there is another boon of assistantship. Strong artists have hungry minds and gather good company to feed them. Julie is very generous and quick to include me in her group.

Bags of shoes and clothes sent to the Studio.

The end of June was punctuated by a photoshoot for Elle magazine’s Women in the Arts issue. They are featuring the artist I assist. (It comes out in December!) She decided to have the five women who work for her included in the photo. She believes that having a strong team around her is invaluable and she wanted to showcase that. We used spider imagery for the set -- creating a web or a network.

I would like to say that I fell right into the roll of professional model. But the fact of the matter is, the Studio got into the body bags of shoes and tried on half of them before the wardrobe people arrived and we guiltily zipped them back up. I ran around with two different cameras snapping pictures of all of the stylists until they banished me to the far end of the room. The Studio greedily devoured the catered lunch that the chef had delivered herself, staying just long enough to explain each dish and the local origins of the ingredients, well before noon. When the shoot was over, I started posing various members of the Studio for my own photographs until the head of wardrobe commanded me to take off my shiny black fairy dress (not her exact words) and stay out of the camera crew’s way. It was awesome.

Light check for Elle shoot. Testing out the center of the spider.

So now it’s a few days on the other side of June. The rushing sound isn’t impending appointments but rather wind roughing up the river and rustling the oak trees. I’m in my family’s cabin on the St. Lawrence River. It’s the last day of vacation for me in the North Country, where time returns like a monarch each year, perching on the Point for the same view as always and getting ready for the next go-around with a cold river bath.

4th of July flairs at dusk in Oak Point, New York.
(Photo by Billy Freeman)

The Other Wagners

"It is my favorite picture of my dad and mom. Maybe as happy and carefree as I ever saw him. He was a pretty serious man." -- my dad

I have a lot to say about work ethic. But I'm not going to go into it right now. I'd like to tell you that's because I'm exhausted from a marathon day in the studio. But I was actually celebrating my birthday at Spa Castle with some of my dearest friends. Instead, I'd like to share an email my dad recently sent me and my little bro.

Hey,

This quote makes me think of my dad and his dad…and you two.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas Edison 

Love, Dad


My brother recently got into a favorite med school and my dad brags when he's slept more than five hours. Sure, the whole thing gets a bit questionable when you realize that the grails we sacrifice our sun and sleep and social lives for are noctuid larvae, rat surgeries and sketches of tiny men with animal ears.  But, then again, what's cooler than these guys:

“It is easier to raise strong children then to repair broken men,”

read a simple orange sign that bobbed up and down in front of us in the crowd. The festival energy of a protest is supercharged with goodwill and bright banners. We spent the first few hours milling around the booths and listening to the stylings of heated speakers and metal bands that blasted through a crude stereo system. The thrill of a demonstration is more satisfying than the kicks one gets at fairgrounds and carnival spectacles because, instead of indulging, you are aggravating – stirring up dialogue dust. Social boundaries dissolve way faster in this political cause cloud. Suddenly, instead of turning away, you accept a pamphlet with a smile from the boy with the piercings and the hoodie cut up like a macabre snowflake and strike up a conversation with the grizzled man in the wheelchair who knocks into you in the crowd.

Photo by Ali Giniger (instagram: @alinicoleg)

 

The art studio that I work for showed up armored with aprons that read “Artists for Immigration Reform.” I realized after the fact that maybe only artists know that artists wear aprons. But they made good blank canvases for slogans anyway. We thought we’d highlight the fact that we were artists because it is much harder to get a visa to live in the US if you work in a creative field. The elusive artist visa for this country requires the blood signatures of the entire top echelon of the art world pyramid inscribed on the skin of one of Damien Hirst’s sharks. (This is an exaggeration. But only kind of.)

The paper-mache barrier fence was a nice touch when fist-pumped into the air.

    

My apron had a strike through “HB56,” Alabama’s aggressive anti-immigration law that requires police to determine someone’s legal status if there is any suspicion that that person might be here illegally. It has turned all official interactions into checkpoints and encouraged racial profiling. The goal is “self-deportation,” a concept championed by its originator and Mitt Romney’s unofficial advisor Kris Kobach. And it is effective. People reach a threshold of harassment, exclusion, and fear for their families and they leave. A similar, though not quite as militant, law is in place in Arizona. Check out the podcasts for more:

           This American Life on Alabama 
           NPR on Arizona

  

Photo by Ali Giniger

I had expected immigration reform to be the issue of the day, but it was International Workers Day and the Occupy movement was out in full force. Any group concerned with race and economic inequality came out to play. And then there was the guy in the Captain America costume and the boy in a loincloth dragging a cross around who gave you the impression that this was status quo. It just so happened that today they woke up and got dressed and instead of being ostracized and run off by the police again they were embraced by the pit stained arms of thousands.

 

One group of activists took me by surprise. It was the first time I’d seen artists marching for… artists! Demanding more support from the State and raising awareness that being creative is productive. Signs read “ART IS WORK,” “PAY YOUR INTERNS,” “ART STRIKE,” “ANOTHER ART WORLD IS POSSIBLE.” This shocked me at first. Don’t these people know that they signed up for something inherently useless? Didn’t they get the memo that our country’s puritan roots would never support such frivolous antics? But of course, art has always taken progressive stands and demanded change. It just usually speaks (for good reason) through the medium itself. Either way, we agreed with their sentiments and joined forces with this group, marching alongside them from Union Square deep into the bowels of the Financial District.

Highlights of the day included sighting a monk with a sign that read “Occupy Time” hanging from his back and “Occupy Space” hanging from his front. I also loved watching a women’s group – protesting the neo-conservative, repressive dialogue about women’s health and sexual freedom that has recently been spouting from Republican presidential candidates – melt into a chorus of oohs and aahs at the appearance of a baby in a stroller.

 

Back before the parade began, my street artist friend Felix drew a chalk circle by the Gandhi statue. He tagged it with “good luck” in one section and “bad luck” in another. The “good luck” side was immediately occupied by the most flowery of the ribbon-wearing, barefoot hippies. Signs of “PEACEFUL PROTEST” and “LOVE” sprung up in this place as if it was a goodwill garden. Soon the arbitrary circle was ringed with people and a shrine of peaceful objects began accumulating in its center. People began to meditate and soon the circle was too thick with bodies to see the “bad luck” anymore. These harbingers of peace might have been reluctant to plop themselves down on just any plot of dirty, crowded pavement. But inside the chalk circle they were safe, sanctioned, choreographed -- not by society’s red tape -- but by an outsider, by old magic and old pagan ties. It was a reminder that the central mountain is everywhere. And an illustration of how a few simple lines can start to mean something. 

Ekphrasis

He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea's water,

and the tireless sun, and the moon waxing into her fullness,

and on it all the constellations that festoon the heavens,

the Pleiades and the Hyades and the strength of Orion

and the Bear, whom men give also the name of the Wagon,

who turns about in a fixed place and looks at Orion

and she alone is never plunged in the wash of the Ocean. 
(Description of Achilles' shield from The Iliad, 483-489)

I saw this on my way home from writing this blog post at a cafe! Chillin on a street corner. Certainly a sign...

Ekphrasis. Sounds sinister. Like in the medical, hesitate to Google it kind of way. “But really it’s creative alchemy,” Caleb, the Classics PhD student, assured us. “It’s a dramatic description of art in a piece of literature.” We were circled around him story-hour-style. The MIMA space had been emptied of furniture, musical equipment, my paintings and the surprising number of lambskins that usually adorn its surfaces to make way for an incoming Pratt show. Only a handful of essential instruments and a lone painting, too big to shove into my car, were left standing.

When a work of art is described through another medium, it morphs and becomes a new piece of art in this form. Ekphrasis isn’t about exhaustively cataloguing the parts. It’s about translating the impact. One early, powerful example of this is the description of Achilles’ shield in the Iliad. The shield is hewn by the god Hephaestus after Achilles’ original armor is stolen by the Trojans and the death of his friend throws him into a state of mad bloodlust. The description of the shield’s concentric rings of imagery is epic, encompassing all of the senses. Within the bold, detailed metalwork, lutes and lyres provide a dynamic soundtrack; reeds sway in windy marshes; characters argue and marry, dance and chop each other to bits on the battlefield.

These stood their ground and fought a battle by the banks of the river,

and they were making casts at each other with their spears bronze-headed;

and Hate was there with Confusion among them, and Death the destructive;

she was holding a live man with a new wound, and another

one unhurt, and dragged a dead man by the feet through the carnage.

The clothing upon her shoulders showed strong red with the men's blood. (433-438)

These pictures are navigated much like a god from on high might effortlessly zoom in and out of the worlds below, moving close in to see a maiden collecting flowers for a festival and then zooming out for a panoramic view of the cosmos. Scholars and artists have tried to map out the shield of Achilles and, although there have been many interpretations, the scenes depicted within resist being frozen in a 2-D plane by mortal hands. Words are necessary to communicate the magic of an object made by the blacksmith of the gods.

Then Caleb announced that this week our song-writing workshop would stem from my painting. (The one left standing. Which was fitting because the painting is from my Outpost series and is about the last remaining thing in an environment hell-bent on tearing it down.) It would be our own “visual to musical” version of ekphrasis. We started by asking questions about the painting. Just questions, no answers. “Is it being built or falling apart?” “Is there any way out or in?” “What’s making the light?” “Who lives there?” “Are they happy?”

'Honey I'm home,' she said. The wind turned its mouth up at the corners.

This won’t surprise any recent MFA graduates, but these are not the questions that artists get asked in an academic or critical setting. More often you will hear, “How are the derivative, impressionistic marks in the bottom left corner detracting from the formalistic unity?” But these were refreshing inquiries and way more representative of the way I talk to myself about the things that I make. Then, each of the musicians came up with a phrase associated with the piece, set it to music and played it for the group. With all these melodic fragments floating around in our heads, we began to play, improvise together, build something in the spirit of the thing.

Playing the Building

MIMA and I met for the first time at Princeton. It was Indian summer and that Kingdom of Learning was green-drained and autumn brilliant. Universities are in their element in the fall – the pace is right. Unlike the stillness of winter or the silliness of the warmer months, the fall casts campuses with a dignified, wizened air. Princeton students bustled up and down the grounds, kicking up leaves like bio-bright plankton, wrapped in wool sweaters, clutching mugs of warm tonics.

MIMA is a creative collective that provides music workshops for kids with limited resources around the world. This was their 10 Year Anniversary and they were celebrating by bringing their music and methods back to their place of origin. I’d been recruited by friends to assist in transforming Terrace, the most hippie Eating Club (not saying much when you’re used to Oberlin’s Co-ops, the most hippie of which is constantly pushing the boundaries of the word), into a Living Instrument. Each room was to embody a different character of music: dissonance, consonance, rhythm and silence to name a few.

Laini and I getting dressed in the study.

I was cast as a dryad (ß favorite phrase ever) and was put in charge of the Bacchanal-themed entrance hall along with fellow woodland spirits Laini and Kate-Lynn (painter and poet respectively). Our job was to usher in the collegiate recruits, strip them of as many clothing layers as they would part with and cover them with body paint (!). It was the anti-chamber, the portal between the codes and protocols of university life and something more playful.

The gears of the Living Instrument were set to start up at dark, so we spent the afternoon taking stock of our room and the beautiful fall grounds and then combined them. We dragged in bags of leaves and branches and ornamented the windows and tables with drapes and garlands. Then we went upstairs to a stately study (leather couches and Viking-sturdy tables), threw the remainder of our scarves and clothes into a giant colorful pile, and went about wrapping each other up nymph-style. It was clearly a room that would raise a disapproving eyebrow to such a flurry of ladies’ garments. Other MIMA members were donning bright onesie bodysuits, sumo second skins and Mexican wrestling masks. There were definitely clothing items that never made it out of that costuming cyclone alive. I swear a grumpy armchair swallowed some of the more flamboyant items out of spite.

The line to enter the Living Instrument ran long around the side of the building as night settled in. When each person entered, they were handed a small glass of ritual punch before being lead into the belly of the beast. Inside, they were guided throughout the house and directed in different exercises by MIMA musicians. I would hardly recognize these team leaders when I saw them later without their war paint. I had to re-meet them when we started hanging out as civilians in Brooklyn. And still, their alter egos sometimes flicker across their plainclothes, Clark Kent-stylings.

In the afternoon at Terrace, there had been a bright, open sunroom where students breakfasted. But no light came though the glass that night and the space was filled with a giant plastic bubble that the recruits filtered into at the close of their tour. Inside, the ears met nothing but the soft whirring of fans that kept the ceiling afloat. It was the silence room. Signs were held up to take us through different breathing exercises, to quiet and focus the mind.

So then the masses cleared out, most likely funneling into the nearest frat party. The MIMA managers, dressed as all manner of mythical beasts, circled up around a blue-suited Martian who bounded around the inside of our ring, leading us in a chant that grew and swelled and exploded into a primal scream and then melted into dance. Wild lose yourself dance at the hands of DJs you could trust your rhythms to. Who would build the beat slowly and wait until you were just dying for the music to peak and then take you to an epic height and cradle your descent.

We dragged ourselves into the hotel lobby just before the sun came up, a molting mess of melting mutant parts and raw human skin exposed. Blinking fiercely and working to get our spines steady, we looked like we had just hatched out of some psychedelic cesspool. Dripping colors onto the beige linoleum. The man at the desk didn’t look up as he handed us our keys.

The next morning found us sprawled on Princeton’s Elysian Fields, drawing energy up from the plush grass underneath. Gentle bouts of guitar and yoga and conversation would start up and then fade into the sunshine as we worked ourselves back up to consciousness. And of course there was Terrace’s house-made breakfast buffet complete with everything. (Yeah, they had that. And those.)

A communal painting at MIMA's new space in Brooklyn.

MIMA music party and reception for my painting show.

So why the flashback to this musical evening a year ago? Well, as it happens, MIMA set up headquarters in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn this January (relocating from Brazil). And so did I. Their space -- exposed beams, white walls, high ceilings – plays host to all manner of jam sessions, teacher trainings, workshops for kids, dance parties, yoga classes and communal painting parties (that was me). It’s becoming my second living room and the hive brain that’s based there is a powerful, creative organism.

If you want to join in on future events, shoot me an email and I’ll keep you posted. I have paintings up now and we’re planning an epic Folk Fe(a)st for May 12th.

MIMA Brooklyn

MIMA Music