After two short weeks here, my residency is coming to a close. Or is it? The idea of being elsewhere while Elsewhere is a notion we Elsewhereians who can't bear to be parted from this magic have invented in order to be sane while pulled from this dream. I feel as though I am being rudely awakened by my outerworld. I long to get back to my life, but I am hating to be awoken from this incredible dream. In this dream, I get to be art full time. I am it, it is what I am. In this completely improbable/impossible reality is where I can be most natural. If "natural" means what I am without an outer construct, or any societal rule placed upon my person and my being, then I can say that I have found that here. This is not to say, that I have been living completely without a system.
The best, most obvious, and most fortuitous analogy comes to mind immediately for me. When discussing the issue of psychotropic or psychoactive substances, which is to say, "psychadelic" substances with people who have a basic resistance to the idea of it, they generally say the same thing: "I don't like the feeling of loosing control". I always try to convey to this statement or idea, a different thought that I have about it from my own experience. I always have felt that it is not loosing control, but rather gaining a different set of controls that produce different outcomes. Hence, the use of the phrase, "alternate reality".
I have always been struck that I seem so much more natural and more "myself" in "alternate realities". I do love my 'normal' life in Brooklyn and certainly incorporate and travel into alternate dimensions, including the use of dreams with my daily art practice...but nothing like this. What happens here can only happen here... I will bring back with me what I can, but I do sweetly mourn the loss of this place in my daily life.
For two weeks, the only thing determining my destiny was art, the flow of the conversation and the day, intuition, whim, and exploration. Fate laid out a path in the absence of any that was more vivid than the most planned super highways. The synchronicity (thank you, Christopher) and supernatural qualities of which I couldn't have invented better myself. The people here are incredible beyond all expectations, while remaining real people. Everyone experienced here was of great interest, intelligence, originality, and honesty. The collective generates not only art, but living. It is about living art.
My relationships here have been incredible beyond my expectations, as can only magnified by the context and physical reality of the cradle in which we have been rocking and dreaming. I am in my element with a lot of other people who are in theirs. That my work has inspired others to make works in response, only deepens my appreciation and respect for this place and process. This is a fertile ground where the strong seeds grow and are watered, doted upon, encouraged, and loved into existence. I have been supported in a way here that I will never part from, no matter where I am. I have made, for me, monumental work here. I have loved and have been loved...please don't wake me.
I might be separated and woken from this most marvelous of dreams, but I'll leave a silver thread trailing behind me. One end will live with me in Brooklyn, and the other will live Elsewhere.
