Letter to Believer Magazine

The Young and the Restless

I shot this video footage of my sister in a hotel in Pennsylvania the evening after my aunt's memorial service. In a state of partial dress and infected by the spirit of her Spanks undergarments, my sister, who is a mother of three and a full-time nurse, took on a different persona. I was fortunate enough to capture her alternate persona on video. I added the theme music from "The Young and the Restless" , called "Nadia" as a nod to the drama which pervades many of our familial relationships. Growing up in the 80's, we would run in from school, and throw on the TV to encounter the discordance of this unusual theme music which came to punctuate our days for a short time; we would usually run back outside to play basketball with our older neighbor, John McNulty. Basketball was my sister's obsession, and we would talk about Villanvova's team while practicing dribbling and layups.

Dove (excerpt)

Durt said that Dove’s brain secretes acid, but that doesn't seem fair. There is something incredibly ill-fitting about using the word “secrete” in any kind of sentence containing her name. Then again, Durt doesn't put anyone on a pedestal.  

The night I met her, we were introduced by two close mutual friends on a rooftop.They said, “you know each other”.  And so we did.

She was a curator of experience, sending invitations to meet in a theater, or a rooftop drum circle where a pig roasted on a spit. There were dance parties at Halcyon where each of us knew that we were connected to each other and Dove appeared and disappeared like a puff of smoke throughout the evening and danced in the spirit of her Korean ancestors between cigarette breaks. One Summer night, on rolling green fields between the train and our destination, Dove somersaulted down a hill while the rest of us walked; this being an extension of her martial arts practice. Once, she coordinated a rendezvous at an abandoned communications building on the icy Gowanus Canal. Durt was there with tools to pry off the plywood. We climbed down one by one until the lookouts were in, and the wood was back in place. Dove's communique suggested we come with a poem, or other listenable fare. These were recited from the balconied upper levels of the structure. The floorless shell rose up basilica-like, lending itself to resounding acoustics. We stood in a maze of tags - the ghosts of previous interlopers.   A feather-hatted dandy recited "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" while the Gowanus lapped our sides....