Boone Art Crawl (with koans)

last Friday my yin and i went downtown with my brother and his girlfriend to check out Boone's monthly Art Crawl. the four of us get along capitally, and over the course of the evening i began to feel like i was on some bizarro familial double date – a mix between Faulknerian drama Carlin-esque deadpan. but this is beside the point.

the point is that, uncertain of the DBDA's artistic taste, and wizened and cynical from innumerable gallery crawls in North Miami, i went into the evening with a healthy dose of skepticism, expecting a parade a faux rusticism and outsider art tokenism. happily, i was disillusioned.

(if honesty is a virtue,
can there be any other
type of disillusionment?)

we started our night by walking along King Street, ducking into a storefront gallery where my yin immediately made friends with the woman working on a potting wheel. although unphotographed, this woman hails from the same hometown as my yin, and complained admirably about how much she misses South Florida. looking at an imaginary calendar on the wall, i saw that it was July and thought to myself: "this woman may be mentally ill."

strangers to South Florida, my brother and his girlfriend quickly tired of the complaining woman's antics and walked outside to listen to a bluegrass band giving a free concert on the same spot where my yin and i had abandoned a ghost tour the week before:

bluegrass on the porch of Jones House

next we moved west, like the town's long-dead, somewhat famous namesake. along the way we found an African man carving statues on the sidewalk, but my yin was afraid to take his picture head on, out of respect for the well-known, possibly fallacious superstition regarding the relationship between photographic representation and ownership of one's soul:

an African man, seen from a distance

(if privacy is a virtue,
can one ever wield a
camera without guilt?)

our next stop was Shear Shakti, where one of my yin's newfound cohorts offers both cosmetological and cosmological services as a yoga instructor/hair stylist. i have only encountered such chutzpah in a hairdresser once before. it was over three years ago, when a woman (who looked like a woman) laughed at me, told me i needed a haircut, and gave me her card. it read: "hair designer."

Shear Shakti before sunset

inside the salon the cohort was absent, but we found her partner, a woman named Charlotte (sometimes?) who gave us a tour of the place. there were reflections standing midair, and Charlotte told us that when the place first opened, only two of the four mirrors were installed, leading customers to wonder if the salon doubled as a topless bar after hours. we all laughed at this anecdote – but the question was never answered.

(if comedy is a virtue,
can we take one moment
and laugh at our lack of virtue?)

reflections standing midair

lamentably, my yin's cohort was not there but Charlotte told us to come back later because the cohort and wine and cheese would be waiting. my yin and i agreed, and ran into this woman playing a banjo on our way out. introductions were made, then forgotten, and all i remember that the banjo had only four strings, a fact of which i do not approve.

girl playing 4-string banjo

by now 7 o'clock was approaching, and we all walked back the way we came to eat dinner in an old restaurant with a new name. at the table, i listened to my brother go on and on about Floridians in North Carolina – he does not approve.

it was odd, and i felt a strange discomfort pulling me in two directions. on the one hand, i felt the need to lay claim to my "localness" or, if you will, the absurdly vain notion of "authenticity." intellectually i know this desire is preposterous, and furthermore i've lived two-thirds of my life here, but i still felt a twinge of defensiveness, like i needed to establish some manner of provenance to my brother.

(if authenticity is a virtue,
can one ever change without
accepting the impermanence of truth?)

on the other hand, that feeling of being "from here" has trapped, then tormented, then haunted me, for nearly as long as i can remember. i never felt at home in my hometown, and it has only been in the past few years that i have attained some modicum of comfort in the mountains of North Carolina.

moreover, many of the aspects and ideas in which i find solace are the things that are the most "foreign." the yoga studios and art crawls and organic foods have all arrived to this part of the state during my lifetime, and although they carry with them a sense of familiarity, it is undeniably nonnative at the same time. these things, among others, left me unable to express clearly my thoughts and feeling during the course of our meal. on the upside, however, the tempeh gouda tacos were amazing.

walking back to the car, we saw this machine parked next to the sidewalk:

freaky bone bike

neither i, nor my yin, nor my brother, nor his girlfriend, nor the half dozen other onlookers were able to determine if it was a piece of art or not. this was undoubtedly the most-talked about piece all night, and it also ended up being the last thing the four of us saw together. my brother and his girlfriend were leaving early the next morning for Charleston, and so my yin and i soldiered on.

(if perseverance is a virtue,
can we ever reconcile our inborn
stubbornness with surrender to the Divine?)

welcome to nth Gallery

our next stop was like a little piece of Wynwood, as seen thirteen months ago, plucked from its proper place in space and time (and memory, always memory) and dropped onto the second story of a building that once housed a lousy comic book shop. inside was all manners of immature bohemian art, but there was one piece that took my breath away:

"Momentary Glimpse" by Jennifer Barron

the mixed media piece consisted of: 1) the artist lying motionless in a giant pile of wool; 2) printed emails from the artist's sister, describing her diagnosis with ALS and its progression; and 3) a compact disc of a woman's voice (presumably the artist) speaking to the sister, attempting to communicate the relationship between art, the sister's illness, and the impact on the artist.

normally, i find pieces dealing with such issues to be reactive and heavy-handed, but not so in this instance. in fact, it was certainly the most mature work of art i saw all night, speaking simultaneously to both the personal and universal. speechless and smiling, my yin and i stumbled down:

the stairs

only to find a man who shared a name with a famous degenerate. he was wearing a muumuu, had a small canister of herbal tea dangling in a sling around his neck, and agreed to pose for a picture taken with his lady friend:

Tommy Lee and friend

bolstered by this auspicious encounter, my yin and i returned once more to Shear Shakti in search of the missing cohort. what we found was Charlotte instead, who had a cigarette in hand and told us she was stepping outside to "feed her dark side."

a brief aside: as much as i like the sound of "Charlotte the Smoking Yogini," one must admit that this is precisely the danger of Tantric philosophy, which teaches one to embrace the indisputable, unfathomable fact that everything is holy.

(see Ginsberg for details.)

and, while the path between austerity and indulgence is undoubtedly a continuum, i cannot help but believe that the pendulum towards divinity turns the other way somewhere far short of nicotine and addiction.

(if austerity is a virtue,
can one deny the simple joy
of ice cream on a summer's day?)

with the proprietress and banjo player absent, my yin and i met the featured artist, a man named Jimmy who painted on cardboard and made amazing frames out found material, namely the rusted pieces of metal he finds clearing paths through the woods outside of town:

some of Jimmy's art

during the course of our conversation he told about his next show in one month's time. my yin and i assured him we would be there, and left in search of the next stop, a studio/gallery called:

The Collective on Depot Street

along the way, however, we stopped in a place called Modern Rustic, and met another woman from South Florida. we spoke briefly, and a woman from the local newspaper snapped our picture, possibly mistaking us for old friends. the picture, at least for a time, can be found here. eventually though, we reached our final destination:

inside The Collective

which had this lovely piece of artwork, by an artist whose name i forgot to jot down. more than any other, this 3"x8" piece of wood captured the mood of the evening, the Friday night of Fourth of July weekend:

In(ter)dependence Day?