All posts tagged: art

Ragnar Kjartansson’s Art Made Me Cry

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota By James Wright Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year’s horses Blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life. What do grown-ups do all day? I often thought about this question as a child. Adults’ homebound tasks like sorting out the mail or talking on the phone to strangers seemed so unimportant and boring. Then there was their mysterious life outside the house: magical, thrilling, and filled with adventurous trips. It rarely occurred to me that most adults work to sustain their lives. The way grown-ups spend their waking hours might not be the first thought to pop …

How to Possess Your Travels

Most people can’t help buy souvenirs and take photographs while on vacation. These two activities provide the simplest way remember the journey taken and take a piece of it home. Yet do they really enhance our experience? In an earlier post, I wrote how the impulse to document our lives with photos increases when we travel to beautiful places. The connection between buying souvenirs and taking photographs became clear to me as I sailed to the Manchones Reef on a small dive boat in Isla Mujeres, Mexico off the coast of Cancun. Not long ago, it was a tiny fisherman’s island. As Cancun turned into the decaying resort-town it is today, the island’s sand streets also gave way to paved roads and shabby hotels. Nevertheless, Isla Mujeres still remains a haven of calm in comparison to the degenerated concrete that is Cancun. So I jumped on the ferry and sailed straight to the island as soon as my flight landed. The plan was to get over my jetlag while relaxing on the beach. The only thing I wanted to “do” while over …

The Impostor Blogger: On Self-Doubt and the Fraud Police

Before I quit my job and became an unemployed writer of unpublished texts, I used to work as associate editor to the Journal of Levantine Studies. As one of the founding members of the journal and having dedicated five years for its ongoing excellence, separating from my baby wasn’t as easy as slapping a resignation letter onto my boss’ desk. I mean that metaphorically; my ode of separation was sent via email. Since then, I continued to help the new team, answering questions on dealing with annoying authors or dilemmas regarding capitalization rules in Arabic transliterations. All simple and straightforward. The most recent question the editor-in-chief asked, however, caught me off guard. She explained that they were preparing to launch a new blog for the journal’s website and needed input. “As a blogger yourself, what do you think Nathalie?” she wrote in an email. Me? Blogger? Whaaat? If anything, I am the imitation blogger. A woman who writes stuff online without a clue. A blogger-impostor in disguise. “I don’t know anything about blogging!” I said to the screen. Thankfully no human lives behind …

A Story of Syncronicity: The Horrors of Solo-Travel

“Aren’t you afraid to travel alone?” I often get asked this question for traversing Latin America. A woman in bandit-land that is Mexico.  I must be out of my mind. Rather than a land of delicious food, great museums and beautiful towns filled with the kindest of people, in most people’s imagination Mexico conjures horror stories of kidnappings and drug-gang murders. “It’s quite safe as long as you don’t go around doing stupid shit,” I reply with a shrug. But I must confess. This is no off-hand reply. It’s crafted with precision to mask my luck in having managed to stay safe, despite doing stupid shit. Like wondering the streets of Mexico City alone at 2 AM with five shots of mescal in your belly. Don’t do that. After all, it would be naïve to say that Mexico is Denmark. The story I’d like to tell today begins in San Miguel de Allende, my beloved town of crazies and artists. But I will start this tale toward its tail end, which happened in Tel Aviv: my …

“Fever to the Form”: Can Art help make sense of life?

I frequently find myself mulling over a song for hours and days, playing it on repeat until I can no longer hear it anymore. In most cases, the compulsion ends within a day or two and I can go back to my life again. But other times, madness takes over.Not too long ago, my obsession with Marcia’s song “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM” made me translate the entire song from Portuguese. (No, I don’t speak Portuguese). The song in question today happens to be in English so I didn’t embark on adventures in translation of languages unknown to me. Instead, Nick Mulvey’s “Fever to the Form” made me think about too many questions I could handle in 3 minutes 44 seconds. The obvious one was: What does “Fever to the Form” even mean? But let’s leave that aside for a moment and go back to Mexico. How art can help make sense of life One of my fondest memories of San Miguel de Allende, the Mexican town of artists, is from an Italian potluck dinner around …

The Secrets of San Miguel de Allende

“En San Miguel cada uno y su vecino es un artista,” Louis said–in San Miguel everyone and his neighbor is an artist. It was my third day in this colonial town and I had already grasped the San Miguelean spirit: drink mezcal, party hard, and make art. Hung-over from the wedding I had crashed the night before, I managed to drag my cruda self from my bed to attend my Airbnb host Crystal’s birthday BBQ in the garden. Herself a jewelry maker, among Crystal’s guests were a painter, a pianist, a graphic designer, and a gallery owner. I felt as if I had found myself in the 21st-century version of Paris in the 1920s. As Gerardo the painter poured me another shot of mezcal, the group began to speak about secrets: how they were different than lies and why we loved our secrets so much… I wondered whether a secret had to involve two or more parties; was a secret an interactive concept by its very nature or could it also be internal? “Everybody has …

First Stop: Opening Closed Doors in Paris

It’s hard for me to admit but I do believe in signs, messages from the universe that I am in the right path. In Western secular culture a binary divides people into believers (be it in religion, a creator, or superstitions) and the so-called logical persons who don’t. But even the non-believers see logic in Murphy’s law. Ever since I bought my ticket to Colombia, I’ve been thinking a lot of about these signs. After I left the hairdresser in Istanbul, with a confirmed ticket sitting in my inbox, everything seemed to be going eerily smooth. The day before arriving in Paris, a family that I had only met over three days in Spain last year invited me to stay with them, relieving me from a last-minute hostel search in Paris. I was picked up from the bus station in Étoile and quickly ushered into a lovely Shabbat dinner with shrimps as appetizers and delicious cheese as dessert. My first night in Paris was capped with draft beer and entertainment from a group of French boys …