Lights and Walls (the way that everything is achingly beautiful.)
Have you ever walked into a space — or down a street — and something has suddenly caught your eye and — suddenly — you realize you have never really looked at that thing before? The thing could be anything — a red bird partially covered by a leaf on a tree trying to break open in cold New York spring, a tiny mitten with no friend forlorn in a doorway, a portrait of a boy on a horse in high tops hanging in the Detroit Museum of Art — anything. It’s the feeling that is at issue here. It’s the feeling that you missed out on something so beautiful, and for so long. Maybe you didn’t look at this thing for your whole life, or even for 40 years. This thing of aching beauty existed in the world and you didn’t see it.
You just didn’t see.
Realizing you haven’t truly looked at something is a unique feeling. Here, I’ll try to describe it to you. It’s like, well, an unhinged cavernous yawning feeling that combines all the pathos of a newborn baby’s midnight screams with all the Greek tragedy of a cat’s face waiting for breakfast. That’s what it feels like.
I first felt it at a spa in the depths of Russian Brooklyn in a hot swirly pool surrounded by Ukranian lovers. I looked up and saw that the chandelier was a huge woven fish. A huge woven fish lit up from the inside. It was at once elegant, playful — and full of vibe.
Once I had the feeling, I did important things that anyone would do. You would have done them, too. We take these actions because now we know, utterly, suddenly, that there is a piece of the Visual World that has eluded us, and that in order to have a complete encyclopedia in our head of What It All Looks Like (and what it all means) we must do everything in our power to make it right. That without that puzzle piece of a thing — bird, mitten, painting —the Visual World is incomplete.
(This is called obsession. It can be helpful, and I will explain why in a bit.)
First, I spent two weeks learning about lighting design and lighting designers, the schools they attend, the degrees they get, the jobs they take.
Second, I doomscrolled on Amazon and ordered all new lighting for my apartment which I put together without instructions at 2am with the sincere companionship of my roommate’s faithful Japanese dog, Tuna.
Third, I changed my Instagram bio to explain I am “obsessed with lights now.” This way my handful of followers who aren’t p0rn accounts won’t be surprised when I post pictures of lighting design. And also to explain that I continue to exist.
Fourth, I found and documented lights in the Visual World. l found solemn, seductive lights in a tiny cathedral brushed away in a leafy part of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. When I found these, I was off on a Tuesday night adventure with some intense and hilarious friends (Pictured. The lights, not the friends.).
Quick backstory to set myself up to drop a well placed adjective to describe the church walls.
At the close of our evening, riding Passenger Princess in a friend’s car, I regaled him with stories about life, life long before rehab, long before dirty basements and cups of coffee and the word THINK hung upside down on a wall. Stories about the way it was to be an alcoholic party girl in New York in the late 90s. How one would come out of a club in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district at 5am in fake snakeskin pants split up the back from dancing and a nose full of cocaine — and walk past, well, actual meat. Butchers hacking away as you searched for the subway.
Fiiiiieerce! My friend yelled, and, begging for more stories, drove us bumpily down the road underneath the elevated J-line in Bushwick. And now the word fiiierce is stuck in my brain.
All that is to say, the little church had some fierce walls.
My friend is stuck in my heart.
Walls are a forever love and an important part of the Visual World. The church walls are full of stars and patterns and texture. Dazzling walls.
But the truth is I’ve always known walls were important, ever since I was a little girl in Germany. We arrived, a family of seven, in Munich as the Berlin Wall fell — it was announced over the radio as our brand new next door neighbor drove me to German school, which was school in a language I didn’t understand.
I understood the word wall. Die Mauer. I understood it because adults said it a lot. After German school, I took the long train home by myself to a little house next to a steam. Loads of adults came to our backyard and chain-smoked cigarettes and talked about Die Mauer and their family and their money. My parents explained that everyone was very worried about their money because it was stuck behind the wall. Some of their families were stuck behind the wall too.
When adults talk about family and money their voices change. That was how I knew Die Mauer was important, even as a little girl.
Die Mauer fell in Berlin a long time ago. I’ve fallen in love other walls since then. In London, walls were flyered with papers layered one over the other, and then ripped up, and torn and reapplied until the wall was a tapestry. Like a medieval tapestry. But instead of unicorns and nuns, the walls of Vauxhall and Brixton had advertisements of girls in big white coats and big white boots and skinny brown legs, angularly shaped letters spelled out into names of bands, underground club announcements and Shepard Fairey’s Obey Stickers.
I can’t tell you if I like one more than the other — walls or lights. I just know that each are important in the Visual World.
Both are important in the Heart World, too. Sometimes people get stuck behind walls. Sometimes those walls fall down and sometimes they don’t. Other times people light up your world and you can feel all of the good days you have ever had all at once — days with beautiful intense friends yelling fiiiierce; days dancing in the whirling beauty of drunken cocaine New York as meat sways outside on pikes; days with cups of endless coffee and jittery legs and cigarettes and a broken heart because so many of the beautiful ones overdosed or killed themselves and you have to keep living without them.
We spoke of obsession, earlier, and I told you about Ukranian lovers and how they kissed and loved and flirted and how my eyes drifted to see how, overhead, the ways in which the fish chandelier glowed. I told you about how I became obsessed with learning about lighting design, and love, and my own heart and yours.
It’s like this.
Sometimes our friends and family get stuck behind walls. Sometimes we get stuck behind walls. You can’t find any light and you wonder where it is. Maybe even for 40 years you don’t notice the light. Maybe you hate walls because Palestinians die on one side and Israelis die on the other. Maybe you hate walls because little girls get raped by adult men paid to smuggle them from Guatemala to Texas. But the thing that I want you to do — and hey, listen I will too. I will do this too — is when you do notice that there is light all around you, then look for a long time. Look at the little lamps and huge chandeliers and notice how each piece is elegant, and seductive, and charming and vibe. Look at the difference in the kinds of walls, because some are full of stars not blood — and just see. See. Really look at all of it, you know?
See the green leafy streets, see the airy fish chandeliers and the J-train. See the people you love and the people you have lost. See yourself, see the encyclopedia of things (mitten, Mauer, lamp) to collect, and photograph, and know, and count, and delight in.
Life is so achingly, achingly beautiful when we see.
