Venice Biennale 2023

Pretty drawing ain’t it? Today for brunch, I ate at a small cheesesteak place that had a nice sitting area. As you can see in the pic above, I’m the blue star sitting inside the red store. All the red lines are glass. So imagine me, sitting there, looking in the direction of the yellow line—I was staring into the other window area. In the reflection of the window, I could clearly watch a dude (the purple star) standing on the corner. I had passed that dude on the way to store and boy, he was so hot, but that’s another story for another place and time.

It turns out that this dude was a Greenpeace employee—volunteer?—I’m not quite sure, but he was one of those people you often see on the urban streets who ask for a few minutes of your time. Who has time to give? From the look of it, not very many people.

He had a clear quarter mile view in every direction, so he could see people coming his way (but not many since it was about 11 AM on a weekday). I noticed that he did a lot of pointing. Someone would be about thirty feet away (I knew this because they were Not in the reflection) and he’d start pointing at them as if he threw in a fishing hook. As they inevitably passed by him, he’d sorta throw back his shoulders, give the ‘what?’ expression with his arms, and then turn to find his next fish.

When he did find someone willing to talk to him for a few seconds, he became very rigid, kept pointing, and seemingly stood taller than he was—he looked like a generic politician running for office.

It was the moment where he was a little slumped over, as if he were defeated—taking a pause between pointing and finding fish, kicking around a pebble on the sidewalk—that he seemed super real. It was as if he was more inviting when he was a bit vulnerable and coy. Add that with his looks, and man, I woulda stopped Him and asked him what was wrong. (Though, two things: one, I’d never talk to a stranger and two, clipboards always give the selling-thing away.)

All in all, I thought his performance was more intriguing when he was himself and not the performer he is probably required to be while on the job. Last night I watched Charles Atlas’s The Legend of Leigh Bowery for the first time, and it really got me thinking about the private and public personas we play. (Charles Atlas came to speak at SFAI last Friday. He’s a nice guy.) And perhaps not so much the private persona we play, but the private persona that truly is our default. Do we even have one? So far, mine is that of ‘a still, focused, and total observer’.

I very much enjoyed watching this greenpeacer do his thing, both on and off the clock. I also hope that if he reads this, he has a nice puppy to go home to.