Last week in fast forward

I feel strangely lonely. I've left North Carolina! I am no longer elsewhere. I'm trying to sum up my stay there. And what I'm coming up with is this: being at elsewhere was like having a team around me supporting me (and everyone in the community) in everything we did, even eating dinner, even crazy stupid ideas, even in gluing hair to the floor. I could talk to anyone or take on anything new because I had this whole community of supportive creative people who are doing just as crazy and over ambitious projects themselves. I'm suddenly without them! It's like the day when the internet was down. No one remembered what to do without the internet! I'm sitting here without my internet and without my community. Elsewhere, I miss you. Elsewherians, I miss you more.

Last week was just out of this world. Here's some things we did:

1. Travis's artist conversation went amazingly. It was such a great event! He had everything together and it was smooth sailing for everyone. He led tours every 15 minutes up to the third floor to his bathroom installation, and there were a lot of rules. No one could speak until the end, you had to sweep the second floor as you walked through it and then put the dust in the corner, then only one person could go into the bathroom at a time, for 1.5 minutes each. I was the announcer for the evening. I sat at the station and announced the current time, and also announced that the “8:50 tour is now beginning, please proceed to the back alley for your tour orientation.” I was glad that Colleen sat with me for most of the night. Travis also read a piece he wrote about cleanliness and dust and dust mites and dirt. It was great and gross. Maybe I can find a copy from him and post it. At the end of the night, Travis led a really special staff tour of his installation. I went up and experienced his performance, and his wife was a part of it and really that was one of the best parts for me, seeing Travis interact with his wife Lisa. She was the timekeeper. Because we were honored members of the elsewhere community, Travis allowed us each to be in the bathroom installation as long as we wanted. It was great. The hair on the floor looked amazing and creepy but not, the bathtub was filled with dust but also strangely clean, the cupboard was filled carefully with little objects and bathroom items that were perfect. The noises and drips were beautiful. And the best part was when I came out and Lily went in, and Travis asked Lisa, “Timekeeper, how long was Aliya in the bathroom?” “2 minutes and 5 seconds.” and then Lily came out and the next person went in and Travis asked, “Timekeeper, how long was Lily in the bathroom?” “2 minutes and 5 seconds”. It was so perfect! We are destined to be best friends! we were in the bathroom for the exact same amount of time!
2. Colleen made an amazing fourth of July cake! It was so beautiful and professional. It was a round chocolate cake with fresh strawberries in the middle and covered in two layers of white frosting on the top – one so that the crumbs don't go everywhere and one to make it nice. And we all sat around the table and smushed in about 16 people in the booth and everyone ate this delicious cake. Also, Mary married Shalin, a hampshire alum who I guess is the person who highly recommended elsewhere and the reason why I knew that this place would be so great. She was just swooning over his 1957 eyes, divorced that jerk husband she fake-married previously, and shook her new husband's hand across the table. How official.
3. Speaking of marriages, on Monday, we built a chuppah in the front room. Inadvertently. We decided monday morning that today was the day that we were going to overhaul the front room store front. We moved Lily's desk to more of an angle so people would be drawn into it and not just pass her by, and then we built a tent over that desk so that it was more prominent, like a ticket booth. The color scheme of that front room is white because that references gallery walls, etc. So we made the tent white with white pompoms. It was beautiful! With lights underneath, and ribbons on the poles! But as soon as we finished, I realized immediately that it looked like a chuppah, a fabric 'tent' that Jewish weddings are performed underneath. We suddenly had a whole new more official place to have fake weddings! George proceeded to spend the night reading old copies of “The Jewish Times” of Greensboro aloud underneath the tent. Aside from that, we cleaned the whole place and really evaluated whether or not this stuff should be in that place, or if it was just dumped there at some point. And then Yuri tore down the front wall! So now, people passing in the street will look in the front window and see the store and amazing things, not just the empty (except for our friday events) front window space! Also, there is so much more real light in the store. It's just great! Lily and Chelsea and I spent Tuesday fixing the previously unused visitor's center which is supposed to make the whole thing more interactive and be a place for visitors to play in the space. And I think the whole flow of the space is just so much better now. I wish I were there to see how people reacted!
4. I went bamboo hunting. As part of the urban garden, J wanted to create some archways out of bamboo for over the swales. Or maybe this bamboo opportunity came up and so that's how it evolved into archways, or something, but whatever. We went on a bamboo expedition on Saturday. I rode with one of the artists, Joshua, and had a really great conversation with him about making art that is creating new worlds while also staying inside and acknowledging our own messy world right now, not trying to escape it. That was so useful for me to hear. And! The bamboo forest was so beautiful! we went in with saws and cut some down, and left some standing on their stumps to dry out and then come collect them later. It was like a magical forest because everything was smooth and made a beautiful sound in the wind and was so light and easy to cut. I also felt very important and strong cutting down a freaking tree. I love going for drives in the North Carolinian country and getting the chance to get out of elsewhere, and it was a beautiful morning. Also, I think I was a good encourager, to try and keep people on schedule, attempt to be back at elsewhere somewhat on time for the lecture that afternoon. Also, at some point, you're just so sweaty and buggy and just done being in the bamboo forest, even if it's beautiful.
5. I had my very own exit interview! I was really excited because I thought only visiting artists had exit interviews before they left, but Stephanie asked me if I wanted to have one too, and I said yes! So she and Lily conducted an official exit interview for me and recorded all I had to say and it was so fun! Just talking about my experience and how I ended up here at the end. I feel so different from when I first came here! I understand so many more things! It was just a special time with Stephanie and Lily, and productive too. And then we clapped. Because we clap for everything.
6. A new artist came who is just awesome. Grant has the best outfits and is just an all around great guy as far as I can tell and I'm sad that I'll be missing most of his residency at elsewhere. But I think we made a special connection, and he said that I remind him of his friend's friend, so I'm most familiar to him in his first week here, so he feels a special connection to me too. I'm so excited to visit all these new artist friends I've made. I can't believe how many friends I've made.
7. We had dinner Monday and Tuesday nights in the front window, in honor of knocking down the wall. We moved the kitchen table to the front window and even mic-ed it up to the outside sidewalk for some reason, and it was like a reverse reality cooking show. eating show? I just looked around the table and thought, wow, what a freaking group. What an amazing collection of people that I get to eat dinner in a front window with.