Bus Projects
Melbourne, Australia
February 2017
The lewd stench of the freshly cleaned washroom, or the daily ritual of drinking wine from a $.50 glass and looking through the endless scroll, down, down, down, down, down. Not anymore though, not really ever. I’ve taken more baths in the last two weeks than notches on my bedpost. Sometimes two or three a day, when I feel overtly tired or scared or stressed. It’s become more of a habit than chewing on my fingernails. Habits or rituals? I try to read for a while, but can’t focus. Decide it’s probably better if I go out and get something to eat. The walk from my apartment to the front door is long, 5 flights of stairs, because our elevator hasn’t worked since I moved into this place 2 years ago. I told myself it would be good, and keep me in shape, but now I definitely see it more as an inconvenience, of course. I usually dread this walk, as it is where I see all of the people I never really want to see but have to make endless small talk with, while really trying to get away and just go about my evening of eating decent Indian or Italian food and drinking a glass of wine; preferably by myself, but sometimes with a friend. Tonight, it’s with a semi-close friend that I usually go to small gatherings with, but rarely hang out with one on one, so I’m not really sure how much this is going to suck or not. I find myself staring at their pores, and inspecting their hair. It’s something I do when not really thinking or doing anything. It’s called brain stemming, I think. Like when you sit in the grass and immediately start pulling it for no apparent reason other than that is what you are doing. They are talking politics at me, a subject of which I care for a lot, but rarely find the energy to talk to people about. Instead I fester on things that really piss me off, and never ever talk about them (because that seems like the healthiest way to do it). After a while we change the subject, and order another glass, and our main course, and have a decent time while eating some decent food for a decent price. There’s nothing quite like mediocrity when it comes to dining. I never want to be blown away, because that usually means I can’t afford it. The walk home is beautiful, the air is slightly moist and makes weird little halos around all the lights, and it makes me feel warm like when I was a kid and would watch the snowfall under the street lamps around my house. Make the trek back up the 5 flights of stairs into my apartment and decide to do what I always do in this situation. I can hear someone playing loud music in one of the corner apartments adjacent to mine. It’s loud and probably masking sex, but becomes low and muffled when I go under the water. It seems so distant, like an underwater scene in a movie. You know what I’m talking about, when the camera bobs between under water and out of water, and there is music playing, and every time the camera goes under it sounds distant and distorted. The steam makes it easier to breath, and I put my head under the water again just to listen some more.
Duo exhibition with Emma Courtney Cook