First ask ‘are you choking?’
There are icebergs floating down the Hudson, the city’s a giant slushy. It’s been snowing in the Tri-state for a record number of weeks and the news out of Jersey is that ‘salt supplies are critically low’. The sanitation department is under armoured guard to prevent people nicking salt to clear their driveways at the expense of safe city streets. But Super Storm Thor must not deter!
There we were, day one, out walking the Highline. The only hint how great this reclaimed space must be come any other season hidden in signs inching just above the snow that said ‘please protect the plants’. Plants? What plants? So we went to Central Park to see sad naked trees and ogle super cute dogs kitted out in matching jackets and booties. Patrons of New York’s art week also rose to the challenge, turning out in droves despite it all - the weather actually proving a great leveller as everyone struggled to pull off a stylish avant-garde-ski-bum look.
Luce and I whipped over to Brooklyn and stepped off the subway in the direction of Crown Heights, a cheery old man calling out to us from across the street, ‘Damn, beautiful! How’d y’all get like that!’ Hallo, what is not to love about this city, and this borough with more church ministries and nail salons per capita than any other place on earth.
Back in Manhattan, Caitlin invites us to a house party, so being good tourists and good guests, we stop by M&M World in Times Square and turn up with a brick of multicoloured baggies. The host is a doctor, but turns out he’s a writer for Dr Oz ‘America’s Doctor’, so it’s more a media party than a medico party and people are talking about social networks like it’s the second coming and Oprah like she’s god. I spend the next two days convinced I have deep vein thrombosis after being out all night squeezed into knee-high boots with thermal leggings and ski socks on.
We take a day trip on the Poughkeepsie train up to DIA Beacon and after a mind-blowing afternoon of some of the best minimalist work I’ve seen in the one space (Richter, LeWitt, Bourgeois, Beuys, Flavin), decide to stay in town, trudging over to Max’s Diner on main street to order red beer and bloody burgers and chat to the locals like how it is on TV…
The rest is pretty much work, and small-talk and art and more art––the Armory show, Scope, VOLTA, the Guggenheim (On Kawara amazing OMG), MOMA, and a treasured trip to the Natural History Museum for a taxidermy fix. And food––Mexican, Japanese, Italian. Highlight buy was button-fly Levi’s. What’s it been––twenty plus years???
Waiting at Newark for our flight and having spent two weeks together already, I’m flicking through US Vogue when I voice the thought ‘maybe I could be a plus-sized model’. Luce says, ‘well, you are great at posing’, but then we devise a plan to do something when we get to Hong Kong about all the orange food we’ve been eating, and though our resolve to work-out in the hotel gym may jeopardise my new career move, I think my heart will thank me. Forget Iran and all the talk on all the many, very bad news channels about Nukes, America will surely die of a coronary complication.
Forgive me, it’s 6am and I’m in a state of mild delusion in a super chic Sheung Wan studio, looking out a window that’s one of many millions, and the insignificance of a single human life boggles... An early morning drive past Hong Kong’s vast port will do that. Though mild in Hong Kong compared to last year’s Art Basel hot and sweaty May-dates, I've shrugged off my puffa, ski-jacket, and thermals and wondered, did that actually happen? Was it only yesterday I fantasised about rubbing baby seal fat all over my face to protect it from the bristling cold? Installing a new show tomorrow, so to save hammering a nail through my finger, I take my leave for this very plush bed.
From Brooklyn to DIA Beacon.