Strange spring. Little or no snow on the ground. Like a resumption of autumn. But there is light and birds to remind us that we are moving forward. It’s the sugar season, but also the season of splinters on the hands from the wood and the evaporator.
But before.
When I got back to the hotel, I stained the white bathroom tiles with black. It often happens that my clothes or shoes are ruined with paint. Not this time. My gallery owner warned me: if you’re going to walk on the beach, be careful of the oil. At Venice Beach (I spent the week in Los Angeles, a stunningly beautiful city, for artist’s licenses), it is common to walk on tar balls at the beach, it seems.
On TV – CNN surprisingly, not Fox – we repeat over and over that the resistance of the American Congress to release 60 billion for Ukraine comes from the fact that more and more people, elected officials and voters (the world apparently only wants ‘to these two sons), believe that the cause is lost. Two years ago, with the help of endless ideological promises and sanctions, we believed, in absolute terms, that we would overcome this dictatorship and this senseless invasion. Bad movie. While we just celebrated the Oscars here; a universal celebration of bling-bling annual, maybe a little, a lot to escape the reality behind?
The bottom line is nothing like the windows. Perhaps it is to our advantage to believe more in facades than behind the scenes? To have likes and pretend that everything is fine. “Fake it ’til you make it,” they say.
I was taken for a walk around town. Magnificent, that said. Immense. With a concern for residential architecture which does not seem to have an equivalent elsewhere in the world. Very few electric cars, on the other hand, for this Democratic state which will vote for Biden in November. But everyone I spoke to – Democrats obviously (in art, it’s a pleonasm) – said they were fed up with the “too left-wing” atmosphere of the day.
Their votes will be reactionary. A little, a lot because of the extremes in the times. These votes will be added to the votes of those who defend candidate Trump. And this reaction will tip the scales. We move forward, we move back. The Republican will most likely return to the White House.
I was also told that it was a media issue. “There are more Americans who don’t care about elections and the presidency than Americans who vote. » They are somewhat right. It has been, for many, a media neurosis since 2016. With some real consequences here and there. Nothing reassuring, of course, but the gaps and social problems will not be resolved under any party or candidate. Hey, hey… No more than a battery factory without an environmental study will save the world (yay, when it gets wet on your parade!).
On Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, dozens, if not hundreds, of influencers are taking selfie in front of the windows of Balenciaga, Vera Wang, Hermès… I was also brought there because I wanted to buy something from Goyard, the most chic handbag store in the world, at vulgar and indecent prices. Shops lined up with giant palm trees, which serve no purpose. Otherwise than to decorate and be emblematic. Clarification: it’s not true that I went to Goyard to buy a bag, I didn’t even get out of the car.
And even if sometimes, in this life of an artist, I participate in these deviations, I instead asked my hosts to take me to Skid Row, the most trash from the city. Nothing for Instagram or TikTok there. Nobody talks about it.
Thousands of men and women living on the streets, in thousands of improvised tents on the sidewalk and vacant lots. Zombie men whose entire life fits into a trash bag or transparent plastic from a convenience store. There are more than 75,000 of them, according to official figures. In the shade of the palm trees, this stupid tree that casts no shade.
And then a dream last night. That of cutting the useless palm trees to make a wonderful cream for my dry hands and their splinters. At a price just exorbitant enough to believe it, of course.
This America is not only manic-depressive as we like to see it, and which defines us. There is also this third space, immense, between the extremes of oneself that we struggle to understand.
It’s time to go home and sugar.
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