Skip a life completely, Stuff it in a cup

During days when I feel like it's just about impossible to get it together and my head is wrapped around itself like a vice, it takes more effort than it probably should to shake the nonsense out of my brain and expand my focus. My scope during that agitation is pinhole-tight, leaving little to no room to survey my surroundings and get a real grasp on what's happening. A little escape would be welcome, maybe a chance to step outside myself and pull on another reality for a while, but honesty to myself and others has always been an annoying priority in my life. Even with my somewhat noble intentions I've always secretly envied anyone that could construct an alternate reality for themselves and put it on display, without modesty or reservation. One part of me is perplexed, another part rolls its eyes, but I'm always left with the question how long do you fake it until you make it? 

It's a cheesy sentiment. You remember it the first day on a job you're not quite sure you're ready for or in a social situation that's beginning to feel less appealing than a night alone on the couch, but it holds weight and it holds water. And the best (worst?) part is that we've all felt the need to fabricate a new existence in a particular moment. So what happens when you do? Does the truth intersect with the fiction, lines meeting for a moment only to speed through time in opposite directions, maybe possibly hopefully meeting again? Or do they run parallel, never touching, but a breath away? Close enough to remember where you started and how far you've come? 

Abelardo Morell- Camera Obscura: Times Square in Hotel Room, 1997

I had an unexpected reunion with the concept a few weeks ago when Abelardo Morell's retrospective The Universe Next Door opened at the Art Institute. I had seen his camera obscura photos at the Art Institute back in 2007, but didn't think to write down his name so I could do more research on his work. I was too overwhelmed by the worlds he created in his photographs. Morell covers the windows of whichever room he's shooting with black plastic except for one small hole to allow light and an inverted image of outside surrounding to flood in. Yes, he's essentially photographing two very real places existing in the present... but the marriage of the two results in an alternate universe that allows his subjects to be reborn through a form of photographic photosynthesis. It's as though he's made any parallel worlds imperceptible to the naked human eye not only visible, but gloriously illuminated and in strange harmony with the world we've become familiar with. In addition to the camera obscura shots, his tent camera photographs pull your attention to more familiar, but still surreal places as you begin to examine his landscapes and the viewers relationship to them as well. 

Morell's tent camera photo of Yosemite Valley was one of my favorites. It wasn't just the landscape that interested me or the juxtaposition between the organic shapes and the hard lines from Tunnel View, but the way the tent floor view reminded me of latitudinal and longitudinal lines criss-crossing over the mountain peaks. Taking something as wild as our wild and hoping to get a better sense of it through geographic coordinates and degrees seems like the ultimate dysfunctional relationship, but the beauty is the struggle to understand our place. Whether you take your environment and dissect it or throw yourself into it and wait for a primal response, we have all been actively searching for the meaning behind where we currently find ourselves. 

Abelardo Morell- Tent-Camera Image on Ground: View of the Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View. Yosemite National Park, 2012

Checking out The Universe Next Door a couple of weeks before I organized an all-girls venture out to Landmark to see Frances Ha couldn't have been more perfect. If there's any group that inherently understands the unique relationship between our surroundings and how we can skew, mirror or absorb them it has got to be the TWENTY-SOMETHING FEMALE. Without giving too much away, I'll just say that the way Frances responded to her surroundings and the people in her life felt familiar to Abelardo Morell's lush photos. Frances' perception of herself in relation to those around her and the resulting performance she puts on for them was like an animated version of Morell's tent cameras- layered images culled from differing angles and influences in an attempt to create a singular message, or in Frances' case a complete and content person. Frances has an adolescent (and eerily familiar) stubborn streak and immaturity. Her lack of grace, inability to push herself and dependency on friends kept her spinning her wheels while she so desperately wanted to find herself on the same plane as those with forward trajectories.  Her self-constructed facade is backlit by her eagerness for validation and uncertainty, allowing the audience to see how close she is to where she started and how futile her half-attempts are. In the end the difference between Morell's photos and the woman Frances begins to become is that she isn't the sum of two parts- she becomes a mosaic of all the pieces she's picked up from others and all the fragmented pieces of herself she had to break in order to truly analyze where the good and the bad lie. She didn't find herself in one room, allowing the light to gradually pour in and illuminate what was just within reach. No, she switched neighborhoods, hopped a plane, left the country, and even squeezed everything she was dealing with into a single-sized dorm room bed for her ultimate wake up call.  It was amazing to see her character put so much energy into resisting AND giving into herself in equal parts, beginning to succeed right after she "failed." 

As tempting as it sometimes is the thought of temporarily detaching from myself is never really an option. I'm too intrigued by truth and what it can mean for someone once they've explored a part of their identity through their environment, influences and origin. But within the time it takes to walk through the Art Institutes galleries or spending an hour and a half in Landmarks darkened theater you can be given the opportunity to see how others have manipulated reality around them, bending it around their own experiences and allowing it to open up another world to hopefully flourish in.

Set Me Free

Seeing Patti Smith live at the Vic recently was one of those precious rare moments I've had in my life where I've stood mere feet away from my object of obsession and all I could think was there's no way this is real. There was no way this mirage and dream has materialized and I am, in fact, bumping and swaying along with hundreds of other people completely taken away by a surreal sense of freedom in what became a very cramped place.

There have been plenty of shows, bands, records and nights that got my heart pumping. They were dedicated to sweating and singing along, maybe the senses dulled a bit from drinking and smoking, but with piercing enthusiasm that nothing but mortal exhaustion at closing time could dampen. The difference, though, was simple- those bands were setting the tone, guiding us through whichever explosive or melancholy landscape they've dreamt up. We were all free to dance and sing or resign ourselves to passive foot-tapping, but it was always in response to what was happening before us. The responsibility of action or reaction was lifted from our shoulders, and in turn and we were presented with a pre-determined emotional state.

The problem with Patti is that she seems to feel everything all at once, embracing both sides of the coin and reminding us that having both the good and bad to experience is the real gift. Having any experience at all is the straw and your job is to spin it to gold. What are you doing with these moments, each minute, small as they may be? It's one thing to react to the stimuli around you, but what are you throwing back? If you aren't constructing the world around you, who are you within it?

I'd gone to the show alone, refusing to let anyone that wasn't experiencing the same Patti heart palpitations sully my experience and eager to be selfish with my emotional indulgence. I figured the best person to understand why I was in near-tears during Kimberly or Free Money (or virtually any other song) would be me, so why not save any potential date the embarrassment of just not getting it? And I'm glad I did. With her constant reminders, nudging and urging us to action, that we're free it would have felt cheap to need someone there beside me to experience this. Her songs dedicated to artists, everyone in the audience, Amy Winehouse of all people, and especially writers.. anyone who struggles to get the right words out... brought out a response in me that few other shows have. Yes, there was singing and dancing and chanting, but it was less about the physical response as much as the lingering side effects of her words. It wasn't about what she wanted to bring out in us. It was about seeing what we wanted to do with ourselves. "This is what I see. This is what is out in the world. Do you feel this, too? What are you going to do about it?" Her entire performance mirrored my favorite line from the very last song of the night, a line I loved at sixteen years of age without knowing who first penned it, but felt it in all my adolescent discontent- Do you like the world around you? Are you ready to behave?

The entire experience changed the way I think about the role we play as a spectator, audience member, or witness to what happens around us. Going to the show to watch Patti Smith was a passive act; going alone held more intent. It involved me becoming a vessel for someone elses emotion and a harbinger of my own, placing responsibility and, ultimately, freedom back where it belongs. Her openness and insistence in putting the heart into action is what floods me with a sense of duty to create, to self-censor less and close my eyes more during the process. Vigilance should be left for making sure things are done rather than done the right way, and I owe my renewed sense of responsibility to this woman.