Surprise

Work Type: Writing

 

2006

Giving yourself to the possibility of learning from your actions.

First time, making a painting with a visitor during Twenty-five Cent Art Lessons.

A gentleman from Venezuela, a former boxer, his story without words comes out.

The connection made because of the offer, to listen, to record, how specific or complete does my knowledge need to be?

We draw a boat; it explains how he arrived to America.

Last year in Macedonia during Skopje Park Fun, I set myself up with the task of pulling people about the park aboard a boat on wheels.

The rope red and longer than needed afforded others to take up the slack, in spirit of want or need, people are heavy, and boats are heavy, visitors understood. Jana a friend helps connect my activity to a group of twelve boys, they’re Albanians, bright eyed ranging in ages of 10 to 15 the power structure obvious, sometimes brutal, boys will be boys.

Yet the activity they’re inclined to participate in is my pulling, I feel conflicted, making others do my job, but they want, they appear to need and thrive in entertaining others, a position I’ve maintained since an early age. I let go accepting a new role, occasionally attempting to correct their pulling when the riders seemed whip lashed by their exuberance.