Encounters

So, yesterday, I took a MOM day off and had a date with LACMA. Not some new mom lactation support group, as my friend Jefferson kidded, but the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I realized upon checking the current exhibition roster that I'd missed the Kubrick show (sadly), but I noticed a number of other interesting things I'd like to check out. Most notably, the Hans Richter retrospective.

The show is called Encounters. It's a term that Richter coined to define the context of his interactions with his fellow artists and filmmakers of a particular period of time. Heady enough descriptor, eh? But it was actually a really interesting tour through Modernity and collaboration in portraiture, film, music and political print. 

You see, Richter fought in WWI and after seeing the atrocities that come in war--and more poignantly, trench warfare--he became a pacifist. He also was associated with the Dadaist and Socialists of the time. Like many artists, he absorbed what was going on and took a spin on it for a while before moving onto the next thing. While I love this period of art and world politics, you have to wonder if it would not have been as groundbreaking if rich kids like Richter didn't have the time to hang out and do lots of odd artsy fartsy stuff. Mind you, I'm not knocking him. I would be doing the same thing if in the same position.

The show also got me thinking about collaboration in general. Musical collaborations. Love relationships as collaborations. All those Burning Man collective camps (FunkCamp, Fandango, Acid Cabaret) and the fundraisers I was involved in throwing to their behalf. It seems life is a string of collaborations. I mean, right now, my husband and I are collaborating on raising our daughter. And as any parent out there knows, you try to provide a unified front, but really, you're two individuals with different outlooks and opinions who have to work together to make something beautiful.

I've been lucky to experience this beauty many times in my life. I really love 3 collaborations in my musical life--"Feels Like Rain" with Tom Glynn, "Overwhelmed" with Tim Lefebvre and "The Low Hum" with Moby. All are very different songs and yet all resonate with me from a very vulnerable place. In that quiet softness, I feel beauty.

I feel like I've met some amazing people along the way. Both on a personal level and on a work level. I don't know how many of you know this, but I used to work as a freelance writer for film, music and lifestyle magazines. I was lucky to interview people like Joan Chen, David Cronenberg, and Norman Reedus among the known ones. 

But just as amazing were the people I met maybe only for a moment. Two specifically come to mind. One day in 1996, I was in NYC interviewing for some public relations job the summer after I'd graduated from Syracuse. After said interview, I changed into clothes that would allow me to survive that still, hot, humid weather and began walking around town. At a random sunglasses table, a guy asked me if a pair worked for him. We chatted a bit and then I moved on to get lunch. He came by and asked if he could eat with me. It seemed forward, but I had nothing in my schedule, so I decided to do so. He wasn't at all lecherous or even flirty, just a traveler in town for a day or so on some leg of a trip with no friends to meet up with until later that day. We had lunch and continued to talk about life in Madison Square Park that afternoon. At a certain point when I felt the conversation was played out, I said goodbye. He was kind and didn't press for more than a simple "Nice to meet you." I never saw him again. I can't remember his name, but I remember that day as one of those moments in your life. Maybe it was my opening up to a stranger in the present that wedged it into memory.

The other meeting was on a train ride from Fez to Rabat, Morocco, in December 1998. I was tiredly making my way back to a flight home after 10 exhausting days of travel across Morocco. I had done some fasting for Ramadan while on the trip and the combination of that, some food sickness, and the grind of the Medina each day had worn me out. In walks this woman wailing in sobs with her husband and child and they sit across from us on the train. "Oh shit," I think. "This is NOT how I want to spend the next few hours." 

After about 15 minutes of awkward silence while her husband calmed her down, the child engaged with me. His father was quick to apologize if the boy was disturbing us, but it was an in. Plus, I learned at this moment, they spoke English. Through some delicate questions, I learned that the woman's mother has just died and they were on their way to deal with the "biz" of death and the funeral. I also had a chance to talk to this woman, who I found out was an extremely educated person that had been living in a very remote town for her husband's job. She had reached out in her community to offer literacy classes to other women in town. She was seeking connection and was promptly ostracized for her efforts. So she was alone with out friends or nearby family, or in many ways, without her culture... Her story and openness moved me. Once again, I cannot remember her name. I never saw her again, but I remember her face, her stories and her young son's most amazing green eyes.

I long for these kind of moments, where life puts you in places and situations where something is created. A memory. A song. A dialogue. Maybe those are all around us and we just lose track of them. There's always an email, an errand or something in the news that distracts us from what is in front of us. I feel grateful that I had a little time alone yesterday to be inspired and to remember all this. I'm going to try and keep a little of that with me today.