Collaboration With Rick Herron

My friend Rick Herron asked me to do something to one of his photographs. He gave me this photo of the Rem Koolhaas building on 23rd street and he also gave me a playlist of some of his favorite music. The first track was by a swedish singer, Anna Ternheim, called "What have I Done" and we had a nice conversation in my studio yesterday about what the song might mean and about relationships in general. It seems some of us keep going after them, like a moth to a flame, while others are sort of trying to get what we want, love and affection, with a minimal amount of risk. This song seems to be about giving it your all and hoping your partner feels the same way too.

I watched the movie "Up in the Air" Last night and was pleasantly surprised. At first it came off as a lighthearted, breezy, comedy about these goodlooking people who had figured out how to get by and have some human contact while remaining safely distanced, a concept that seems pretty foreign to me on the surface..but I won't digress. The characters all seemed to have an "Ah-ha" moment and realized they were just going through the motions, playing around without really giving it their all. And so the George Clooney character tried really going for it, putting himself into a situation with another person where he went out on a limb and he got really hurt. I suppose if we really stop and analyze the potential risks and rewards of a relationship in some scientific manner we would be overwhelmed by the potential risks and never take the chance.

I guess one important lesson is to remember that we all approach these situations of intimacy with different histories and there is really no right or wrong...we just do what feels right depending on our history. Some of us have survival strategies that might seem bizarre to someone with a different history. We all approach relationships differently and I suppose we learn how to negotiate them by what we have seen at home. We can continue to act and respond the same way that we always have or we can examine what really works for us and what isn't working and try and change. We are not doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. We can reinvent ourselves. I've seen old dogs learn new tricks and believe me, it's pretty exciting!

The thing I learn over and over in my studio is that the only real development as a human comes about when we do take these risks, when we try the thing that used to seem so scary and give it our best and believe we can succeed. Even if we don't succeed, failure won't be so bad. We will have learned something and we will have gotten closer to some future success.

I hope I can remember to think this way till the day I die.