traces

mike kelley at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Pictures. I used to post so many pictures. My camera and me, my web cam and me, recording, cataloguing, memorizing - now it seems as if I had lost myself in those images.

Amsterdam was lovely; it was cold but beautiful, but it was real without writing about it here. It was relaxed and perfect, the Mike Kelley exhibition made me think, my perception of his art differs so much now from the super glossy superman skylines I visited in Venice once, when I was facing literal superpowers and dreaming was mandatory. After he had killed himself every object has acquired a different narrative. The slate grey “grachten”, old buildings, narrow, fragile, ancient and eternal, white and brown and gold, the hot chocolate, the toxic chips, the wonderful hotel - dark and romantic, in an old school building, the arts, the relaxed atmosphere. I was scared to go back, but I was still glowing from the lack of sleep and the lack of familiar sights that I was hit nowhere near as hard as I had expected when I arrived at the ugliest airport to my knowledge – schoenefeld.

Its winter over here indeed and I  - having been born into more humid but never as icy and chilly climates - find this something I cannot deal with. I can deal with rain and wet and piercing winds as long as the sea is at least in a 2-hour train ride distance. I am slowly losing myself these days, my social phobia gets worse and the less I feel mirrored in some sort of interaction the less I am able to interact the less I am there. Social phobia is described as the fear of being judged – but what if your whole social surrounding potentially solely consists of like or dislike responses? Why does it seem to make people feel better about themselves if they criticize others in a non-constructive way? I am glad I did ballet, I will never forget my old ballet teacher saying that putting others down will not make you any better. Practice and work will make you better.

And what if you can only be considered as privileged and lucky and you simple cannot feel it? What if you cannot and under no circumstances relate to the terror of the current aesthetics? What is wrong with me? Where is me? I used to create worlds. For myself to live in. I used to brush off everything and laugh about my own mistakes, because everything comes at a price. I used to run. But most of all I used to dream. If it wasn’t for him, as stuck and empty and frozen as me during this winter – which like any winter seems much colder and longer than the previous one - I would not know where to turn to. But maybe I would run without direction and get back to myself. But I guess this is the true other side of love, not the pain, the desperation, the love sickness, not even the bland and the everyday, the other side might be – and if only for me and only in my case - the loss of something that I used to perceive as the essence of me – loneliness. And maybe that is where my phobia stems from.

Or maybe it is still the after-effect of having been bullied at work for 2 years. But this does indeed sound just a little too bland.

(pic by me)