LOVE LINE, week four

Wednesday 4 March

I walked the little loop at the top of the “O” with Elsewhere Programs Manager, Jess Hoyle, who said something interesting. “We’re going about it wrong, trying to get privilege for everyone. It ought to be no one has privilege.” I asked how, in this utopia, would we remove privilege from those who have it, since they are the ones who make and enforce the laws? It seems unlikely without a revolution, but yes I see the point. It is the ideal world.

On another day, another Elsewhere intern recounted how he put a fire out. He noticed smoke from a wooden fence around a gated community. He stopped the passing cars. A person on the other side of the fence passed a hose out. Me, I would have let that fence burn down. I know an architect and a dancer in Seattle who got their neighbors on both sides to agree to take their fences down and they all designed and built a beautiful hillside garden with pathways between the yards they all could share.

Thursday 5 March

Six artists busily preparing for a showing, Elsewhere group #106.

Friday 6 March

Final installations underway. Show opens at 6pm. The staff made a savory diner as we continued to focus on our installs. Before we opened, Emily brought us together to toast our work. The Creative Director thanked us for our efforts and for stepping up with self-promotion and documentation during a difficult time of transition. Several staff positions at Elsewhere are currently unfilled, grants have been pulled because an interim director is in place, grant writing has been underway, a new director is arriving next week. This has meant some frustration and lack of support for the current artists. While the residency has been rich, the disruption has been a burden to us all.

Saturday 7 March

Group walk of the LOVE LINE was scheduled for today. I’ve lived in Greensboro for one month. I invited everyone I met to walk with me. One other artist-in-residence, Kylee Jo, joined me. Two is always enough. Kylee Jo is a nomadic artist looking for a community. She works on trail crews in Yosemite and has helped fill water stations along the Mexican border. I respect her work and her style. She makes paintings and room-sized installations. Her style is chaos and imagined other worlds. We started out the back to the train tracks and crossed to the south. We went around the Union Cemetery, the oldest known black cemetery in Greensboro, which incidentally is not identified on Google Maps. We sat for a long time in the sun on The Porch Project: Black Benches by Heather Hart. We talked about how we experienced the geographic spaces we were moving through. We talked about the people we saw, where and how they were going, what they were carrying, their attitude, their gait. The few who passed were black and moving slowly, they all looked poor, two were crippled. One asked for money.

Sunday 8 March

I walked the LOVE LINE from start to finish. I began at 10am and returned at 9pm. I did not use the tracker. My phone battery could not handle it. I believe the walk was +20 miles. I walked for 11 hours, city walking in sandals, a rotary telephone in hand. My arms and legs and shoulders got tired. I did not need to look at my map once. The sun set. The full moon rose. The birds encouraged me when I needed them. I saved an earthworm. I saw a heron in a stream by Florida Street. I spoke to a few people along the way—Al Brilliant, Edward, Alexandra and Denny. Today was about me, about walking, looking, understanding what it means to LOVE and protect myself. I’d been told about Glenwood Community Bookshop. I knew Grove Street from walking the “L” in L-O-V-E before. The bookshop is on Grove and Glenwood. I looked it up. The LOVE LINE passes ½ a block away. I’d just missed it last time. I intended to stop in today. I was lucky. The owner was there, having work done on the door. The shop is normally closed on Sundays. I was greeted by Al Brilliant, the proprietor and founder of Unicorn Press (1966, Santa Barbara, CA). Al moved to Greensboro 46 years ago to publish and teach bookmaking for UNC, http://www.unicorn-press.org/about/index.html when, as he says, universities were still “town and gown.”

Al says Glenwood has been good to him. He added a beautiful message to the LOVE LINE and told me about Vietnamese poet and Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh whom he brought to the US and whose poetry he published in English. He said Dorothy Day was the reason he converted from Judaism to catholicism. He is an anarchist who took a vow of poverty. I asked what I should see and do in Greensboro, related to my work. He said go to (1) Elsewhere Museum, (2) Beloved Community Center, (3) Weatherspoon Art Museum and the (3) Civil Rights Museum. I have been to all four.

Al’s neighbor, Michael Joseph Roberto, is a Marxist, a survivor of the Greensboro Massacre, a former professor of Contemporary American History at North Carolina Agriculture & Technology and author of The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940.

Leaving Glenwood, I encountered Alexandra at the little free food pantry. A pickup truck had just driven away from it. Someone was making a deposit. Alexandra and I went to see. It was a case of canned corn. She took two cans. She said she has two men at home and you know how they eat! I said yes I do. Then she told me about her son who is a paraplegic. He was in a car accident in his early 20s. There are nurses caring for him around the clock.

As in most cities, it was difficult to find a restroom. I used the bathrooms at UNCG, Sonic Drive-In Burgers, Elsewhere Museum, a Super Market on Summit Avenue and a back alley on Wendover (by then it was dark). Denny, the teenage son of a woman working at the customer service desk at the supermarket let me into the bathroom with the sign on the door, "Out of Order." They bent the rules for me. I told Denny about my project and invited his voice. I asked if he spoke a language other than English. He said “Hello, how are you, have a good day” in Spanish.

Monday 4 March

I leave Greensboro having started a new work, LOVE LINE, 2020. It is a work that happens within me and without me and can go anywhere. The voices of Greensboro and the old rotary phone stay at Elsewhere. Visitors to the museum will be able to see the map, read about the work and listen to the voices. I hope the audience feels invited to move outside of their comfort zones and begin a dialog about LOVE that extends beyond their known worlds. I plan to develop and take this work to other cities starting perhaps in Brattleboro and NYC. Here are my happy feet after the 11-hour LOVE LINE, Greensboro walk.