Shinji in New York
Chelsea Hotel and High Line --
Magritte on Sunday.
Yesterday after sleeping in and trying to catch up on emails I set out to meet Shinji Shishikura -- the performance artist who I had been scheduled to collaborate with in Tokyo. Shinji is being sponsored by Sony to record his performances around the world, in front of museums including the Louvre in Paris. He was in Okinawa for the earthquake, on a smaller island of the many islands that make up the prefecture. The ferries stopped running, and in order to get back to Tokyo (where his mother was potentially scheduled for an operation), he had to hide himself on a fishing boat that was checked by the sea police. He told me all of this yesterday, as we walked around Chelsea, and I spoke Japanese again. Faltering at first. Feeling shaky. But soon, we were drawing pictures to describe the things my Japanese couldn't muster, and once a wavelength was reached, my confidence returned, and then I felt there was nothing I couldn't express.
Shinji had been scheduled to arrive in New York with his troupe of performers -- but because of the earthquake everything was thrown for a loop and he barely managed to get out himself, finding a last minute accommodation over the net. The weather was cold yesterday, but bright and sunny. We talked about a candy that comes from Brighton, England -- where Queen the rock band got their start and where Grahm Greene wrote some of his novels. The candy is called "Brighton Rock," and is like a peppermint stick with a picture etched in the center. No matter where you break the stick of sweetness, the image stays intact, like the rings of tree. I had my storyboard notebook which I had purchased for our collaboration, and had even written on the first page, in Katakana: "Shinji to Regina." He drew two pictures in the two storyboards...starting with a sketch of BRIGHTON ROCK on the top right frame. Then, in the top left frame, he drew the same rod sketch, this time with a face etched in the top. This, he said, was "Kitaro." He also wrote the kanji for it beneath the letters. Apparently, KITARO is a candy just like BRIGHTON ROCK, in Japan. It goes back at least 100 years, and is known especially by the older population. Looking at the two images side by side, and picturing a map of the world in my mind, I told him: "naru hodo." "I get it." A specifically sweet coincidence of candy cane proportions.
Shinji is staying on 28th Street, off the 2/3 -- so I thought the high line was a good place to start. I pointed out one of my favorite sights in NYC -- the wooden water towers that sit atop countless buildings. They are quintessential Manhattan to me -- and always pull my eyes upward. I told him I wasn't sure where else these vats made from wood existed -- and didn't they seem like they belonged on a farm? We made our way south, turning west on 23rd street. The Chelsea Hotel loomed at our left, and as we approached I remembered going there once with Cynthia Karalla, to a party in one of the apartments one winter when I lived in New York. Thinking back to that night, the images were mixed in my mind with the film CAPOTE; still not sure why. Maybe I had seen CAPOTE right around that time. Or maybe the interior of the apartment was so very similar to the party scene from the movie. Grand piano. Velveteen couch with significant wear. Low lighting and old lamps. Hardwood floors and built in cabinetry. Guests who each seemed to step off the pages of a Salinger novel -- everywhere I turned people seemed fabulous in their vintage frocks and black framed glasses. Sipping wine while a plate of cheese, crackers and grapes made its rounds. Listening to Cynthia introduce me as "Regina the actress," who "is just simply fabulous as Agnes in Agnes of God."
We snapped some photos in the lobby. I noticed the old telephone booths to the left of front desk, and told Shinji that those kind of full standing 'boxes' were a thing of the past -- so hard to find a Superman telephone booth these days! We made our way west, but the entrance to the High Line at 23rd was closed for construction so we walked along The West Side Highway, stopping at what looked like a stage. In fact, it was a building that seemed in transition -- with a wall that had been spray painted in black and white, and off the side (aka stage right) -- an old black and white photo of a man leaning down in front of a brownstone had been plastered to the wall. We stood on the 'stage," marveling at the space with the cars flying by where an audience would be -- and the Chelsea Piers buttressing what might have been the back of the house.
Walked by the new IAC building, which was featured in the opening credits of the most recent version of Wall Street. A Frank Gehry work, it is a glacial white, shaped less like a building and more like a complex carbohydrate under high magnification. The building itself is owned by media magnate Barry Diller, and is in fact like a complex carb, home to many media companies within -- including Notional, the TV company that hired me to do the gameshow with Chris Wylde in February at TV Asahi -- in Tokyo. It's also where Potocki worked last spring and summer, on the pilot "Tonight's Funniest," for Comedy Central -- and where Mom and Dad came to stare at the Hudson from high above with a view of the Statue of Liberty. I have a picture of my Mom, her back to the camera as she looked out towards the revitalized piers, remembering bidding farewell to the steamships that carried her Aunts and Uncles on vacations when she was a little girl.
Up on the High Line, we marveled at the architecture. I explained that it was once the elevated train line that ran down the west side. And that Barry Diller himself (owner of the white glacier building), and his wife Diane Von Furstenberg (the fashion icon), were huge supporters and donors for the construction of this much loved social space. I was turning out to be quite the tour guide -- in Japanese, no less.
As we walked past the closed Chelsea Market, I urged Shinji to return on his own (it being so close to his place). The conversation turned again to the earthquake, but this time about my leaving Tokyo. I felt I needed to explain, and started to describe what had happened to me 16 years ago in the Kobe quake, and how (having just recently returned to Kamakura) I had come to realize the severity of my staff infection (which engulfed my right leg). No sooner had I mentioned it, that Shinji stopped me -- pointing to a solitary black boot that lay on the sidewalk next to a fire hydrant in front of us -- seemingly abandoned. We stopped and stared at it. It was a combat boot for the right foot, and next to it was a plastic bag filled with some mystery contents. On the fire hydrant, spray painted in yellow, was a singular question mark. "Anata no hanashi to kore o mittara -- Magritte mittai, ne?" Shinji asked me, smiling. "It's like a Magritte -- your story about your leg and this, here now." We marveled at the surrealism. I pictured Dali's melting clock and for the first time understood the intersection of our imaginations -- and reality.
As we approached 28th Street it was getting towards 6pm. I talked again of this week. Was there some way we could collaborate? Shinji thought about it and said that we had met in Tokyo, and were collaborating now -- by walking and talking. That like a good wine, what we can create will be even more delicious if we give it time to age. Perhaps we should shoot something in front of the Louvre -- where his work is currently on exhibit. Or maybe in LA. What was better, he wanted to know -- shooting in LA or New York? I hemmed and hawed, explaining that New York has an energy and a history that LA cannot touch. Thinking of Woody Allen's movies and the way the shadows cast on old brick. But -- that LA has Venice, and the canals. And that the history I had discovered there most recently (of Abbott Kinney and his Coney Island of the West with roller coasters and piers) -- could also make for a beautiful setting. We decided to leave it undecided. But certainly in process.
Where else did he want to see? The Dakota. Central Park. Dumbo. So that is now on tap. I'm excited to be a tour guide for Shinji -- but also for myself. He will come to dinner here with Chris, Bentley and I tomorrow night. The south street seaport, where we are now, is a treasure trove of history. Cobblestone streets and the Brooklyn Bridge. Oh, the Brooklyn Bridge. Nothing quite like its cathedral-like arches in pigeon gray.
