Heather Jones & Laura Jones
The Couple is Present
Remember the night we married? I wanted to stand on our bedroom balcony and overlook the wreckage. The backyard like an abandoned carnival, littered with wind-swept tents. Lit by half-strings of Christmas tree lights and paper lanterns crushed by the breeze. You, in your white silk dress and smudged makeup, you wanted to sleep. But I had to look out over that scene. At the DJ spinning his last song for guests refusing to go home.
I stepped outside, and a plague of black insects swarmed in, clinging to the bedroom ceiling. You shouted for me to close the door. But by then it was too late. I spent an hour standing on our bed, killing gnats with a tissue, left soot-colored scars in their place. Later, we fell asleep beneath them. Scars like stars. That very first night was a curse.
***
On March 30th, 1988, performance artist Marina Abramović embarked on a journey across the Great Wall of China. She walked towards her lover, Uwe Laysiepen, another performance artist known simply as Ulay. The two had planned the walk eight years earlier, when they were living in Australia among the Aborigines. There they learned that the Great Wall was the only man-made structure viewable from space.
Both felt a spiritual connection to the Wall. Parts of it were built as early as 7 B.C. to protect China from foreign invaders. But it was more than a defense. Abramović called The Wall a “metaphysical construction,” an artistic reproduction of the Milky Way on Earth. Abramović and Ulay thought it would be the perfect place for their impending wedding. They planned to walk separately across the 2,500 kilometers of the Wall, Ulay leaving from the Gobi desert, Abramović from the Yellow Sea. They would meet in the middle and marry.
But the red tape of the Chinese government prolonged approval of their project. It took eight years for the artists to get permission, and by then, their relationship, which had been the focus of so much of their collaboration, was done. In the end, the project, now named The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk, became a journey of dissolution, rather than connection. It became a ceremony for letting go. The couple decided that, rather than marry, when they met in the middle, they would instead turn and leave each other forever. Each step brought them closer to this inevitable parting. Each mile became a meditation on loss.
There is no comparable ceremony in our culture, which celebrates coupling with vows and parties and pictures, but offers no such rituals for saying goodbye.
***
This is a photograph of the Great Wall of China:
This is a photo from my wedding day:
|
It’s one of the few I have that I’m allowed to use. The rest are owned by the professional photographer we hired. All the books said, if you’re going to spend money on anything, spend it on the photographs. You’ll want them for the rest of your life. They will be your most vivid memory of the day. My ex-wife, Heather, took the photo. It doesn’t show much, just the white and pink peonies we had on every table and in our bouquets. She added the yellow tinge with a filter after the fact. Heather took photographs throughout our relationship, and because most of them transferred to my computer while we were still married and living in the same house, I have them, too.
Heather often texted me her photographs, as well. Wild, vibrant shots she would take of lavender or green nature. Filtered selfies that caught her at her prettiest or most supplicant. Many of these became desperate acts, once I’d met someone else and she suspected me of cheating. These photographs said: Don’t forget me and Look, I’m beautiful and Remember, I need you. While these images were meant to keep me closer, they only succeeding in pushing me farther away. No matter how beautiful she looked, I never wanted to look at them. They stung me. They reminded me of my failings. Again and again Heather told me, you broke our vows. The photographs were memories then, but not of something I had or was keeping, but something I’d already lost. Something, in fact, I’d willfully thrown away. |
***
Every day Abramović walked the Wall, she reconsidered her situation. She was an artist known for exacting inhuman cruelty on herself. In one piece, Rhythm 0, she lay passively on a stage, inviting audience members to do to her body what they wished. Seventy-two objects were at their disposal, including a whip, a scalpel, even a loaded gun with a single bullet. For six hours, she endured pain, pleasure, and humiliation at the audience’s hands. Moments of terror when one, then another, picked up the gun and pointed it at her head. In another piece, Rhythm 5, she almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning after she dived inside a large burning star. She survived all this, and was said to be able to endure any pain, except that of being left.
To fully comprehend the deep grief of her and Ulay’s parting, it’s essential to understand their beginning. Abramović was married to someone else on November 30th, 1975, the day she met Ulay in a café. They had the same birthday (November 30th); both had torn the same day from their diaries (November 30th); and both had been fixated in their art on knives and self-mutilation. There was an instant connection. They left the café and went back to Ulay’s house, where they stayed in bed for a week and a half, merging themselves together. Finally, Abramović returned home, but was so distraught over leaving, she could barely lift her head.
Soon after, Abramović left her marriage and ran away to join Ulay. They formed a collective known as “The Other,” exploring the concept of a “two-headed body,” the conjoined twins they felt themselves to be. In one performance, they held each other and pressed their mouths together blowing the same breath back and forth until their oxygen was so depleted, they passed out. In Relation to Space, they ran across a room, crashed into each other over and over, trying to merge into one being they called “that self”.
These acts may seem extreme or histrionic, but they illustrate the intense interconnection the couple felt. The connection, perhaps, many couples feel. Like the dragon seen from space, the Great Wall, their relationship rose and broke along lines of unseen energy, flowing between them. Walking towards each other, entirely on foot for a period of ninety days, was the least of the physically grueling things they’d endured.
***
My wife and I didn’t meet in such dramatic circumstances. We didn’t share a birthday or any other coincidental similarities. If these were the telltale signs of fate, then fate was missing.
Like many couples, we met online. Our first date was at a bar in my small town of Oconomowoc, WI. The bar was nothing like the other hardscrabble taverns in town, which smelled darkly of aged smoke and seventy years of spilled Pabst Blue Ribbon. This was a new martini bar called Splash. Inside, you could’ve been in any large city, Los Angeles or New York. The chairs were deep and plush, velvet gem tones you could sink into, and feel you were someplace else. There were silver high top tables and black leather low ones. I huddled around a small two-top in the back while it poured rain outside. Fifteen minutes went by. She was late.
Looking outside the window, I could just make out a woman, bent forward inside her jacket, the collar held up against the rain. She walked into the bar, soaked. She looked mostly like her picture. After introductions, we ordered drinks.
She kept drinking.
A martini. Then wine. More wine after that. There was no way I could keep up. The alcohol seemed to help her feel more comfortable. Besides it was a bar. A first date. I wrote it off as typical, given the situation.
***
Every day Abramović walked the Wall, she reconsidered her situation. She was an artist known for exacting inhuman cruelty on herself. In one piece, Rhythm 0, she lay passively on a stage, inviting audience members to do to her body what they wished. Seventy-two objects were at their disposal, including a whip, a scalpel, even a loaded gun with a single bullet. For six hours, she endured pain, pleasure, and humiliation at the audience’s hands. Moments of terror when one, then another, picked up the gun and pointed it at her head. In another piece, Rhythm 5, she almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning after she dived inside a large burning star. She survived all this, and was said to be able to endure any pain, except that of being left.
To fully comprehend the deep grief of her and Ulay’s parting, it’s essential to understand their beginning. Abramović was married to someone else on November 30th, 1975, the day she met Ulay in a café. They had the same birthday (November 30th); both had torn the same day from their diaries (November 30th); and both had been fixated in their art on knives and self-mutilation. There was an instant connection. They left the café and went back to Ulay’s house, where they stayed in bed for a week and a half, merging themselves together. Finally, Abramović returned home, but was so distraught over leaving, she could barely lift her head.
Soon after, Abramović left her marriage and ran away to join Ulay. They formed a collective known as “The Other,” exploring the concept of a “two-headed body,” the conjoined twins they felt themselves to be. In one performance, they held each other and pressed their mouths together blowing the same breath back and forth until their oxygen was so depleted, they passed out. In Relation to Space, they ran across a room, crashed into each other over and over, trying to merge into one being they called “that self”.
These acts may seem extreme or histrionic, but they illustrate the intense interconnection the couple felt. The connection, perhaps, many couples feel. Like the dragon seen from space, the Great Wall, their relationship rose and broke along lines of unseen energy, flowing between them. Walking towards each other, entirely on foot for a period of ninety days, was the least of the physically grueling things they’d endured.
***
My wife and I didn’t meet in such dramatic circumstances. We didn’t share a birthday or any other coincidental similarities. If these were the telltale signs of fate, then fate was missing.
Like many couples, we met online. Our first date was at a bar in my small town of Oconomowoc, WI. The bar was nothing like the other hardscrabble taverns in town, which smelled darkly of aged smoke and seventy years of spilled Pabst Blue Ribbon. This was a new martini bar called Splash. Inside, you could’ve been in any large city, Los Angeles or New York. The chairs were deep and plush, velvet gem tones you could sink into, and feel you were someplace else. There were silver high top tables and black leather low ones. I huddled around a small two-top in the back while it poured rain outside. Fifteen minutes went by. She was late.
Looking outside the window, I could just make out a woman, bent forward inside her jacket, the collar held up against the rain. She walked into the bar, soaked. She looked mostly like her picture. After introductions, we ordered drinks.
She kept drinking.
A martini. Then wine. More wine after that. There was no way I could keep up. The alcohol seemed to help her feel more comfortable. Besides it was a bar. A first date. I wrote it off as typical, given the situation.
***
This is a photograph Heather took as our marriage dissolved.
We were renting a large house almost like a country estate in a Milwaukee suburb. The back porch looked out on a half-circle of land that stretched to thick trees, fronted by a dull, stagnant pond. Around the property lay large piles of uprooted branches, sticks, discarded limbs and leaves. Heather began photographing and then Photoshopping these piles, making the blacks darker and the grays pinged with light so that the branches looked lit from within. She would return from a walk and show me these photos, flipping through them quickly on her phone.
After our divorce, I asked her what they meant.
She wrote back what felt like a poem:
We were renting a large house almost like a country estate in a Milwaukee suburb. The back porch looked out on a half-circle of land that stretched to thick trees, fronted by a dull, stagnant pond. Around the property lay large piles of uprooted branches, sticks, discarded limbs and leaves. Heather began photographing and then Photoshopping these piles, making the blacks darker and the grays pinged with light so that the branches looked lit from within. She would return from a walk and show me these photos, flipping through them quickly on her phone.
After our divorce, I asked her what they meant.
She wrote back what felt like a poem:
|
The bush photos captured my feeling of disintegration. abandonment.
It became a symbol to me, almost an extension of me. the brittle branches, and decaying leaves. i imagined it wailing, its sobs being thrust into the earth this was during the time i realized you were having an affair. the house in waukesha. the fights. the secrets. the lies. the sorrow. i felt you leaving me i felt like i was dying perhaps why i obsessed about this bush. studied it from every angle. it was a reflection of my emotional life it embodied my loss the grief of something once alive and beautiful now discarded |
***
There’s a video online of The Great Wall Walk. It was shot as a documentary by the BBC. You can see it on YouTube, grainy, lined, palsied in the way VHS tapes are when they fall apart. If there was sound that accompanied the film, it’s no longer audible.
Abramović doesn’t appear for a full nine minutes, during which time the filmmakers show images of the Chinese desert: an old man and woman sitting in a barren landscape, staring at brown mountains; small huts with goats and pigs, rooting in the mud; the slow scan of the terrain, where a thin silver river glints like loose dimes in the late afternoon sun. Finally, we see Abramović standing by the coast where the Great Wall crumbles into the sea. The ocean, unlike the land, can’t be fenced off or claimed. Like Abramović’s love, it’s untamable.
Abramović turns in profile to the camera. Three men outfitted in traditional dress approach from behind the Wall. The film cuts to fabric, lingers on thick yellow brocade and black silk, stitched with magnificent dragons. Was this material meant as a wedding dress? The image dissolves into the sea. The viewer remembers what we’re here for. Abramović will walk. Neither the dress, nor the marriage, is waiting for her at the end of the journey.
This is an image of Abramović on the Wall.
There’s a video online of The Great Wall Walk. It was shot as a documentary by the BBC. You can see it on YouTube, grainy, lined, palsied in the way VHS tapes are when they fall apart. If there was sound that accompanied the film, it’s no longer audible.
Abramović doesn’t appear for a full nine minutes, during which time the filmmakers show images of the Chinese desert: an old man and woman sitting in a barren landscape, staring at brown mountains; small huts with goats and pigs, rooting in the mud; the slow scan of the terrain, where a thin silver river glints like loose dimes in the late afternoon sun. Finally, we see Abramović standing by the coast where the Great Wall crumbles into the sea. The ocean, unlike the land, can’t be fenced off or claimed. Like Abramović’s love, it’s untamable.
Abramović turns in profile to the camera. Three men outfitted in traditional dress approach from behind the Wall. The film cuts to fabric, lingers on thick yellow brocade and black silk, stitched with magnificent dragons. Was this material meant as a wedding dress? The image dissolves into the sea. The viewer remembers what we’re here for. Abramović will walk. Neither the dress, nor the marriage, is waiting for her at the end of the journey.
This is an image of Abramović on the Wall.
But reading the details of the trip, they reveal that Ulay had his own struggles. Authorities picked him up every night driving him to better accommodations, but often times these hotels were hundreds of miles away. He would arrive exhausted, only to sleep for a few hours, and then turn around and return in the early morning hours the next day. Neither knew what the other was experiencing. If they were still on the Wall. If they’d been diverted. Or if they’d given up. The two proceeded on faith alone towards the other, connected only by the promise made that they would meet and then part once and for all.
***
Another one of Heather’s photographs.
***
Another one of Heather’s photographs.
This brittle flower holds in its center a small lump of snow. Looking at it, I notice something for the first time. In all Heather’s photographs, you can just slightly blur your eyes and the nature falls away, leaving abstract lines and shapes like smatterings on a canvas.
I wonder to myself if this is her intention.
I wonder if a walk can be a work of art. I wonder if a marriage is.
Mostly I wonder about failed marriages. Are they failed works of art? Does art or marriage tell you more in its failing, in its falling apart?
Heather explains this photograph:
I wonder to myself if this is her intention.
I wonder if a walk can be a work of art. I wonder if a marriage is.
Mostly I wonder about failed marriages. Are they failed works of art? Does art or marriage tell you more in its failing, in its falling apart?
Heather explains this photograph:
|
i was so cold this day. i walked in the yard for hours, and collapsed to my knees.
i cried wildly. my drinking had spiraled into a bad place. i was trying so hard to deaden my feelings. winter permeated every part of my being you had stopped touching me i felt so alone in our relationship i saw this small fragile flower trying to hold the weight of the snow. i felt small unseen i looked through our wedding photos that morning i was frozen |
***
Reading this, I remember the wine glasses. This bent over flower has the exact shape of a glass of wine. White wine, the color of snow. Heather’s favorite.
In her book Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes about watching longingly as a waiter walks by with a glass of white wine destined for another table. Cold, translucent, the glass sweating droplets, chilled by the icy, straw-colored drink. Knapp sees this in her sobriety, and compares it to watching an old lover pass by, the twinge of heartache and want still present as a physical ache in her breast. Desire is a thing that doesn’t die off quickly. Doesn’t melt away like so much snow.
I remember waking in the morning and finding wine glasses hidden here and there around the house. One by the sofa, half-filled and forgotten. Another by the fireplace. And, of course, one on the kitchen counter near an emptied bottle of wine. When confronted, Heather would admit only to the most obvious one. If I brought up the others, she’d blanch and change the subject. No one wants to be told they drink too much. No one wants to be caught out doing what they’re trying desperately to hide.
When I met her, this other woman, my reaction was much more akin to Abramović when she met Ulay. Did the two of us cling to each other, passing back and forth a single breath? No, but we might have, the way we talked endless hours, spiraling out a constellation of words. Did we crash our bodies over and over into each other, in an attempt to merge to one self? No. But we made love secretly, furtively, in hotel rooms, in cars, at home. The end result was not a merged person, but a new relationship that ultimately could not contain within it the past.
***
Abramović is a controversial performance artist because she believes that performance art can be redone. That is, reenacted. For purists of the form, performance art is temporal – of a specific time and place – and autobiographical – originating from and leaving its mark on a specific body. Take for instance Chris Burden, a performance artist who in 1971 ordered his hand shot off with a rifle. If this piece were to be replicated for the sake of re-membering Burden’s performance -- giving others the opportunity to see and experience the sensations, thoughts and feelings watching it brings -- does it truly recreate the original act or is it a mere simulacrum, no greater than a photograph or any other reproduction?
Abramović thinks maybe it can recreate the original.
She’s proposed opening a space on the Hudson River that will offer reduxs of significant performance pieces. In 2010, she received a retrospective at MOMA called The Artist is Present, which featured many such reenactments of former performances, including many she did with Ulay, with other actor/artists performing the parts. A new piece of the same name was also debuted at the show.
In the work, Abramović sat in a gallery at a table with two chairs. She was dressed in a long gown, her black hair pulled to one side. Visitors were invited to wait in line and sit opposite the artist. Each time, she would put her eyes down, gathering herself for the interaction. A patron would step up to the table, sit down, and wait for her to look up. The visitor could stay as little or as long as he liked, but the artist never said a word. Abramović simply stared into the other person’s eyes.
Several people cried, at this interaction, tears rolling down their cheeks. One viewer sat for an hour and forty-five minutes, but later said sitting felt out of time. The Artist is Present raised questions about voyeurism of an artist’s body (or body of work), which in Abramović’s case has so often been on display. In looking at the artist and having her look back, however, the viewer was also seen and made a part of the spectacle. Queuing visitors watch both people, not just the artist.
While many described The Artist is Present as powerful, joyful, maddening, obtuse, the part most everyone remembers is when Ulay showed up.
He waited in line along with everyone else. Now an old man with deep circles beneath his eyes and a shaggy gray beard, no one recognized him. The two had rarely seen each other since 1988 when they parted on the Wall, twenty-two years before.
When Abramović raised her head and saw Ulay, a note of recognition like a quick flight of birds flew across her face. They stared into each other’s eyes. In Ulay’s, you can see what feels like remorse. He’s threadbare and there’s something pathetic about him, something lost. I wonder when I watch him about the regret he feels or if he’s simply playing a joke. He looks like the very archetype of a trickster.
In Abramović’s case, there’s no wonder. She cries. For the first time in what would be ten weeks of sitting as long as eight hours a day, she breaks concentration. She’s no longer an observer or blank mirror museumgoers see themselves in. She is, in short, no longer the artist. She’s a human being. Ulay is her mirror. The reversal is instant and acute. A ripple runs through the crowd watching. Many guess Ulay’s identity, once they see Abramović weep. Flashbulbs pop off as hundreds of photographs are taken, marking their reunion.
Abramović smiles. She reaches across the table and takes Ulay’s hand. They embrace. Certainly this moment, so indicative of time, place, history and relationship – can never, ever be remade. It’s an accident of art. A rupture. Chaos. Life.
***
Remember the night we married? You shyly revealed yourself to me in your wedding gown, while the crowd gathered below. We picked a moment to show each other ourselves prior to the wedding. They say that’s bad luck, I suppose.
Afterwards, we lay in the quiet, visiting family members asleep in different rooms. Darkness fell throughout the house. You turned over and I held you, my front pressed to your back. What was there to stay awake for? The past was over. The future lay ahead. Of this infinite moment, there is no picture. Only the one left in my head.
Reading this, I remember the wine glasses. This bent over flower has the exact shape of a glass of wine. White wine, the color of snow. Heather’s favorite.
In her book Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes about watching longingly as a waiter walks by with a glass of white wine destined for another table. Cold, translucent, the glass sweating droplets, chilled by the icy, straw-colored drink. Knapp sees this in her sobriety, and compares it to watching an old lover pass by, the twinge of heartache and want still present as a physical ache in her breast. Desire is a thing that doesn’t die off quickly. Doesn’t melt away like so much snow.
I remember waking in the morning and finding wine glasses hidden here and there around the house. One by the sofa, half-filled and forgotten. Another by the fireplace. And, of course, one on the kitchen counter near an emptied bottle of wine. When confronted, Heather would admit only to the most obvious one. If I brought up the others, she’d blanch and change the subject. No one wants to be told they drink too much. No one wants to be caught out doing what they’re trying desperately to hide.
When I met her, this other woman, my reaction was much more akin to Abramović when she met Ulay. Did the two of us cling to each other, passing back and forth a single breath? No, but we might have, the way we talked endless hours, spiraling out a constellation of words. Did we crash our bodies over and over into each other, in an attempt to merge to one self? No. But we made love secretly, furtively, in hotel rooms, in cars, at home. The end result was not a merged person, but a new relationship that ultimately could not contain within it the past.
***
Abramović is a controversial performance artist because she believes that performance art can be redone. That is, reenacted. For purists of the form, performance art is temporal – of a specific time and place – and autobiographical – originating from and leaving its mark on a specific body. Take for instance Chris Burden, a performance artist who in 1971 ordered his hand shot off with a rifle. If this piece were to be replicated for the sake of re-membering Burden’s performance -- giving others the opportunity to see and experience the sensations, thoughts and feelings watching it brings -- does it truly recreate the original act or is it a mere simulacrum, no greater than a photograph or any other reproduction?
Abramović thinks maybe it can recreate the original.
She’s proposed opening a space on the Hudson River that will offer reduxs of significant performance pieces. In 2010, she received a retrospective at MOMA called The Artist is Present, which featured many such reenactments of former performances, including many she did with Ulay, with other actor/artists performing the parts. A new piece of the same name was also debuted at the show.
In the work, Abramović sat in a gallery at a table with two chairs. She was dressed in a long gown, her black hair pulled to one side. Visitors were invited to wait in line and sit opposite the artist. Each time, she would put her eyes down, gathering herself for the interaction. A patron would step up to the table, sit down, and wait for her to look up. The visitor could stay as little or as long as he liked, but the artist never said a word. Abramović simply stared into the other person’s eyes.
Several people cried, at this interaction, tears rolling down their cheeks. One viewer sat for an hour and forty-five minutes, but later said sitting felt out of time. The Artist is Present raised questions about voyeurism of an artist’s body (or body of work), which in Abramović’s case has so often been on display. In looking at the artist and having her look back, however, the viewer was also seen and made a part of the spectacle. Queuing visitors watch both people, not just the artist.
While many described The Artist is Present as powerful, joyful, maddening, obtuse, the part most everyone remembers is when Ulay showed up.
He waited in line along with everyone else. Now an old man with deep circles beneath his eyes and a shaggy gray beard, no one recognized him. The two had rarely seen each other since 1988 when they parted on the Wall, twenty-two years before.
When Abramović raised her head and saw Ulay, a note of recognition like a quick flight of birds flew across her face. They stared into each other’s eyes. In Ulay’s, you can see what feels like remorse. He’s threadbare and there’s something pathetic about him, something lost. I wonder when I watch him about the regret he feels or if he’s simply playing a joke. He looks like the very archetype of a trickster.
In Abramović’s case, there’s no wonder. She cries. For the first time in what would be ten weeks of sitting as long as eight hours a day, she breaks concentration. She’s no longer an observer or blank mirror museumgoers see themselves in. She is, in short, no longer the artist. She’s a human being. Ulay is her mirror. The reversal is instant and acute. A ripple runs through the crowd watching. Many guess Ulay’s identity, once they see Abramović weep. Flashbulbs pop off as hundreds of photographs are taken, marking their reunion.
Abramović smiles. She reaches across the table and takes Ulay’s hand. They embrace. Certainly this moment, so indicative of time, place, history and relationship – can never, ever be remade. It’s an accident of art. A rupture. Chaos. Life.
***
Remember the night we married? You shyly revealed yourself to me in your wedding gown, while the crowd gathered below. We picked a moment to show each other ourselves prior to the wedding. They say that’s bad luck, I suppose.
Afterwards, we lay in the quiet, visiting family members asleep in different rooms. Darkness fell throughout the house. You turned over and I held you, my front pressed to your back. What was there to stay awake for? The past was over. The future lay ahead. Of this infinite moment, there is no picture. Only the one left in my head.
--
Heather Jones is a RN and accomplished photographer. She is new to nonfiction collaboration, but prior to her nursing career, she pursued poetry, painting and the visual arts at Naropa University. She lives and works in Milwaukee, WI.
Laura Jones is a multi-genre writer living in Austin, TX. She graduated from Northwestern University with her MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She currently works as an editorial consultant for Mondo and Alamo Drafthouse, and writes for The Austin Chronicle.