The Governors Goulash

After three months or more of preparations, organizations, carryings, loadings, installings, deinstallings, unloadings, more carryings, disorganizings and whatnot we have finally arrived at the absolute end of the 2nd Annual Governors Island Art Fair.

So Nix and Jack, two of the five 4heads, unable to stop organizing, loading, concocting and whatnot insisted on having a goulash party in Nix's garden in the outskirts of Crown Heights to celebrate with and thank all the artists involved.  She acquired her lovely German mater's family goulash recipe and cooked up enough of this fascinating stew to feed all the military ghosts of Governors Island at once. 

Her back yard - once a pile of rotting rubble and burnt out debris - is now the proud home of thriving rose bushes, xmas lights, bizzare scultpures, trees, bird cages and - on brisk autumn evenings - a couple of 55-gallon drums of blazing trainyard campfires. 

As much as I needed to be done done done with all the Governors Island garbage - I have to say what a welcome and well considered event this little sioree was.  After all the work and drama that seemingly must arise from such an extended affair as the GIAF, it was incredibly soothing to spend time with all these amazing people - old friends and new - gobbling goulash and sipping civily over the delicious flames of the Northeastern fall.  There were no more concerns of lighting, shipping, installing or cleaning.  There were no piles of garbage or bureaucratic redtape standing in the way.  There were no krylon sprayed floors or sharpie stained walls.  It was just a bunch of smiling, contented faces staning about with lots to talk about. 

Such a sense of community had been stirred up by this little (!) fair.  Lifelong friendships had been formed - and maybe a few broken.  We had all lived through something meaningful and beautiful.  Everyone involved took their crumbling little room and blew it out into a recreation of some corner of their mind.

Art is so funny in that way...  anyone is allowed to do it.  There are obviously no rules.  Artists - people - from all over say similar things... like, "I don't know...  I just had this thought, this idea... and I wanted to see what it would be like to bring it into reality."  The variance of presentations that we were able to enjoy through this exhibition - room after room of differing and overlapping voices; color, form, sound, movement, poetry, construction, scribbles, brushstrokes, hangings, pinnings, pokings, dottings... - it was really eye-opening. 

What were all these rather urgent voices?  Where do they come from?  What are they trying to say?  Is it just - "I like this."?  "This is some remnant of my life that maybe I don't even understand so well - but here it is."  "Here is a vague rememberance of a life I once lived, eons before, that is a mystery to me within the quietude of my own existence."  Its hard to say just what it is.  No one can, I suppose.    And I guess no one should have to.  I guess we should let these expressions speak for themselves in their chosen language and do our best to translate to whatever degree we are capable.  True - we can't help asking questions as the human mind is a catagorizing and labelling machine designed to aid us in our survival at the most fundamental level.  So that when the eye perceives, "charging bull", the mind can reply with the instant catagory of "danger - run away".

But more often than not, in this phase of eveolution, we are tangled in the branches of complex thoughts and ideas - where our rudimentary catagorization device has led us into the often cloudy myre of layered meaning and inter-dimensional being.  We can philosophize and pontificate all we desire without having to suffer the brunt of a charging rhinosaurus - only to volley with the support or defense of more thoughts and ideas. 

On some level, there in the garden around the burning barrels, we celebrated the freedom from hard labor and the actual ability to create the expression of more or less complicated ideas.  We raise a glass to rational behavior since the middle ages are behind us and none gathered here have the need to attack the other with a battle axe.  We enjoy the aftermath of compromise - sometimes difficult but ultimately satisfying in the feeling of a small community growing around a single idea.  The idea of excavating unused space for people to express themselves.