stay with me
Recently, I was on my way back to Copenhagen after a week of dancing in northern Italy. My flight home was scheduled to depart in the evening and thus I found myself with a day to spend in Milan.
After dropping my suitcase at a luggage storage place for a few hours, I made my way through the crowds, past the pigeons, the Duomo, the overpriced late morning cocktails being served, to the Osservatorio Fondazione Prada. I was going to spend this day in the company of one of my favorite artists: Miranda July, whose solo exhibition at the museum spans three decades of work.
I was there for hours. I took notes, photos, watched and rewatched footage. (I am a huge fan of this woman.) If you’re in Milan between now and October, please go to this; it’s a remarkable collection of remarkable works, by a truly remarkable artist.
But there was one work, and one passage from that work in particular, that bit my flesh, plucked the fibers of my self, cracked through my sternum to nestle somewhere dark and airy, deep in my chest.
‘New Society’ is the title of the exhibition, but it is also the title of a 2015 full-length performance by July. In the performance, July tells the audience something along the lines of:
“I don’t know about you but I have been trying so hard, every second, like making movies and books and web etc and that is all great, but like: this feeling, I wish this could go on and on and on, I wish this was the feeling of my life.”
She then invites the audience to “imagine how it would feel if we all stopped trying as a group forever”; to stay with her, in the theater, for the rest of their lives to form an independent community — a New Society. She elects herself as the leader, while audience members are assigned establishing roles: an anthem composer; medics; a flag designer; a constitutional author. Over the course of the performance, twenty years passes.
I don’t want to give too much away, and anyway the point of this isn’t to give a summary of her work. (I’m not sure any of my writing has a point, really, but you know what I mean.) It was a fascinating watch, and I believe the longest video work I’ve sat through at a museum: I watched New Society in its entirety. Rarely have I felt so grateful — especially since becoming a parent! — for a luxury of time.
The passage that hit me started gently, and ended with me finding it almost hard to breathe. I took notes, and paraphrase-typing, here is what I recall. One year into living in the new society of this theatre, Miranda is discussing her choice to do so, including the emotional consequences of leaving a four-year-old son behind:
“I admit that I sometimes questioned this choice we made…it means admitting I’m a terrible mother….”
And then, the punch in the gut:
“I did all the little things: made his lunch for preschool every morning in his little box, pretend to be a cat for a really long time, sing the song again and again…but every second I was trying to escape, a little bit — by being on my phone or looking at a magazine…my whole job was just to sit there and watch and be interested, and I couldn’t do it. I was always thinking about my work. And then when I was at work I was always pining for his sweet little face. So I was neither here nor there. And now I’m here. So I’m never there. And I’ve never missed him more.”
Sitting there alone at the Osservatorio Fondazione Prada; on a Sunday in July; after a week away from my own six-year-old; as someone whose career means so many nights, weekends, playdates away — the floor beneath me opened up, swallowed me whole, I could have been anywhere and nowhere.
How many times had I been quietly tired of playing café, nail salon spa, “guess the animal”? How many times had I glanced at my phone, when I should have been helping with a puzzle or watching a performance that was violently underrehearsed but oh-so-enthusiastically performed? How many times had I come home with my brain still full from work, unable to make genuine room for questions about the origins of mustard, or where the universe comes from, really?
I’m not going to be undeservedly hard on myself. I consciously make sure not to actively be on my phone when my son talks to me; I do my best to make-believe (though — and he will say it — I’m more suited to “games with rules, grownups are not so used to fantasy, Mom, it’s ok that it’s hard for you”). And if I can’t give all of my true attention, if the day has filled my brain with too much grownup nonsense, then I do my very best to fake it.
But the thoughts, and the thoughts of distractions, and even the occasional lust for time to engage in brain-rotting, doom-scrolling non-activities, all still exist. And the guilt of their existence is a heavy one, even if the sins are abstract in nature, in this case.
But my absence is real.
As a ballet dancer (and especially as one who never made it out of the corps) I am pretty much constantly working from August to late May, six days a week. Between one and three nights a week, and five in December, I am performing. I work late frequently, arriving late to or missing family dinner, putting him to bed, weekend playdates and bike tours with Dad, movie nights, emotional or physical milestones. This career was my choice, as was the decision to have a child in this career. But I think sometimes, I didn’t realize how difficult it would be, to miss him.
“And then when I was at work I was always pining for his sweet little face. So I was neither here nor there. And now I’m here. So I’m never there. And I’ve never missed him more.”
The older I get, and the older my son gets, and the older my husband gets, and the older we all get together, the tighter I want to hold onto this life. The more I want to, every day, throw my phone — this cursed, addictive rectangle — into the ocean.
After fifteen years of living in Denmark and absolutely loathing the rain, my son slowly and accidentally coached me to begin to think, ‘Well, now we know flowers will come eventually,’ each time it’s a typical Copenhagen gray day. My husband, a former chef, encouraged from the start of our relationship — ten years now; eight of those married — a love of and appreciation for food. He recently bought me my first chef’s knife and gave me a knife tutorial. For a long-recovered anorexic, at 35 years old, I am finally at the step of being ready to confront my fear of inadequacy in a kitchen. I’ve cooked three (really good!) meals this week, on my own, and am proud of this.
These things — not hating rain, cooking a meal unsupervised — are not big deals. They’re certainly not big deals in today’s society, nor would they necessarily be in a New Society. And yet: they give me a little bit of hope.
Hope that I haven’t been fully desensitized by technology and the current horrific state of things. I felt hope last week, when I found myself in a tent being gently shaken and illuminated by a violent summer midnight storm, wide awake in the contrast of the tent’s cocooning coziness and the hugeness of Mother Nature. I felt hope in the middle of a particularly warm class, when an unexpected breeze filled me with sudden, intense, and genuine gratitude. I felt hope when, getting home from my trip at 3am instead of midnight, I crawled into bed and my husband immediately hugged me, even in his sleep, and the hug felt like home. I felt hope the next morning, when my son tiptoed in while my family let me sleep in a bit, and half-awake, I felt him put his tiny hand on my hair and stroke it.
This hope, I guess, is what makes any of us keep going, keep trying. To be present. To leave the world, or at least our small corner of it, a little bit nicer than we found it. To sometimes just sit there and watch and be interested.
At the end of the performance, Miranda July puts to a vote whether it is time to leave the New Society, to re-enter ‘outside,’ as it were (albeit, 20 years in the future). Before the vote, she tells them:
“After 20 years of doing nothing, you are desperate to try. You should know that if you leave you will all die trying.”
I can’t think of a better way to live.