My last night was on their porch, when the police came after they heard the sounds of our fireworks leaving hazy trails of smoke in the sky. It was one of those hot nights in St. Louis with fireflies, my final hurrah before I returned to my empty apartment, furniture-less, and everything just on the floor. I'm always the last to leave. Those people and those places that are now cast under the light of hindsight, becoming distant islands within the smokiness. What's left are these memories, the realities of which are prone to editing, embellishment, and the one that hurts me the most, forgetfulness.
Which is why I remind myself of now. And so from now on I'll tell you about how beautiful Taipei is, which it really is. How the summer heat can simply swallow you whole, how a crazy forest of green can brim over great big blocks of concrete (which I love), how the city is like an un-ending gestalt, a kaleidoscope of signs and sidewalks and bicycles and 7-elevens. How good music is, playing just over the sounds of the subway. How wonderful and humbling it is to see your grandmother, the same woman from '89 as far as I know, so often and so conveniently. How it feels to discover strands of the culture you thought you grew up without laced within your mental fabric, as well as the kind of redemption that it offers.
My work has been all about places and spaces, the exchanges that occur between the internal and the external environment. It's time to be brave and embrace new ones. Taipei isn't Paris or New York or Shanghai. But you cannot deny that the people here are among the kindest, most warm-hearted and down to earth people in this day and age. It doesn't have the most active art scene, but it is earnest, and that's enough by me. Even better, there is also freedom here.
Let me tell you, I could really grow into this, and I hope you'll let me tell you about it: my experience of coming to understand a city that is utterly new and foreign, and yet, one that I am deeply, intimately, irrevocably related to. Perhaps even more so than I can understand.
Most importantly, in addition to finding and discovering this current time and place, I need to allow myself to grow into someone better, kinder, and wiser. Less fearful. I don't have the luxury of being an art student anymore, I have the privilege to be an artist. (And to be young... everyone keeps telling me I'm young.)
And so I'm also going to make work. And come out of paralysis and make art for the Fat Lady. Live without the air conditioning on and let nature inside. And dance and love and all that. Say yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Yes.
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