Walking With Man…

Earlier today I joined Man Bartlett for a small part of his #Theseus project. I conducted an interview with Man a few days ago, the results of which can be found here. It was brutally cold, but when I caught up to Man I caught him in high spirits. He was definitely feeling the effects of having been exposed to the elements since 9am. Our 4pm meeting coincided with the weather taking a turn for the worse, dropping at least 10 degrees in the course of an hour. Nevertheless, Man was brave and determined to see his project through. We walked, talked and tweeted our journey, which for me lasted for a bit over 3 hours. Considering Man’s walk took him close to 9 hours, I really have nothing to complain about.

The Importance of Quotation

The reason I joined Man, when after writing about the project, I could just have easily stayed away, safe in the knowledge that I had supported someone worth supporting, was that his project didn’t really make sense to me. During our interview, I was disappointed to learn that Man hadn’t gone back and read the original source for the Theseus myth. It’s a lazy move. As a poet I can’t imagine quoting or referencing work that I am not intimately familiar with.

But walking with Man answered a lot of my questions and doubts. Our conversation ranged from the boom and bust cycle of the art market to the needs of the individual artist. This is where Man really shines. I asked him if he does these durational pieces, which of course cannot be sold, as a way to shine positively on his other more marketable work. He agreed but demurred, insisting, with a good dose of authorial integrity, that he does these performances simply because he has to. Whether or not they help him sell other work, whether or not people participate via the real time Twitter stream, he is going to do them anyway. He just has to. We ended up talking about the ascetic lifestyle, which in a city like New York, very few people experience. Man’s walk, and the kind of transcendental experience it can bring about (trust me, after even 20 minutes in the cold, things do really slow down a lot, and your consciousness level is concurrently raised a few major notches) spoke directly to the experience of a detached artist. In a city like New York, with the constant stimulation, finding ways to reach a level of distance necessary to live as an artist is a task in and of itself.

Discovering the Labyrinth of Manhattan

In our interview, I had asked Man how a planned-out, google-mapped walk around Manhattan was in any way like a Labyrinth. Again, it seemed to betray the original source code. But what I discovered walking with Man was that this city, despite its gridded evenness and symmetry can be extremely labyrinthine. Several times we came across construction detours that closed down the sidewalks, sending us down plywood passageways. Beyond the city’s subway system, which has always existed as our own, these construction passageways belie the constant nature of the cities growth and change.

The elements also made conversation necessary. At 15 degrees, with the wind howling, the only real way to maintain any semblance of warmth is to talk. As we traversed block and block, we came upon all manner of odd sights. An old sewing machine store, somewhere on 26th street between 7th and 5th avenues, in particular caught my attention. Stocked to the brims with old sewing machines it seemed a nostalgic throwback to the glory days of the garment district. The labyrinth of memory unearthed itself.

The simple presence of this store initiated a series of memories and reflections about a lifetime spent in this city. I told Man of the simple pleasure of discovering a street that I had never seen before, something that happened recently in Chinatown. Even after 29 years of living in New York, there are still nooks and crannies that I have yet to discover.

Walking with Man did more than dispel my doubts about this project. It allowed me to participate in a project with a hidden force, where the artistic power of chance and randomness presented themselves to me in a way that I could not have foreseen. They also assured me that for whatever weaknesses or shortcomings I had sensed in Man Bartlett’s project, I was in the presence of a true artist. Perhaps I am not supposed to fully understand the artist. And recognition of this is something that I’ll take on with me in the rest of my journey.

Tagged as: #Theseus, Man Bartlett, Social Media Art