Conversation—Making Waves (mouseover)

St. Louis, Missouri
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Dear Kim,

I love your new drawing: Making waves. Is that us: you and me, Kim and Joan sitting at sea, stirring up the waters? Or is it any two people who attempt communication?

(Kim: yes)

Or is it gendered for a reason, ie a specifically male perspective and a female one?

(Kim: it is about conversations between a man and a woman.)

I love the fact that we—see, I will be narcissistic for a moment and assume it is us—are at sea. The water is one of my favorite places to be and when I cannot be in the ocean, or the pool at the downtown Y, I settle for my bathtub.

Why do I like the water so much? It is a foreign body. A completely different environment. It both takes me away from and returns me to myself.

But it seems to me that being at sea, in the sense of being lost—as the common connotation of the phrase suggests—is a good thing to be. I used to get pretty scared when I was writing a new piece or constructing a new project and didn't know where it was going. When I was "at sea."

Now I still get scared. Excited scared. But I also know I have to swim out, to float, to dog paddle through waves, or do an elegant breast stroke to find where I am going. Now I know that being at sea is necessary before finding land, especially finding the land of the new.

Next question:

Why is truth masculine to you? It is because your truth comes out of you and you are male? Why do you think some languages gender it as feminine?

(Kim: Maybe because it is so elusive.)

Later,

Joan

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