Wednesday.
Rain almost Purple.
Wet day, like wet sound.
Luciano Fabro.
Pirelli Hangar Bicocca.
Wet weather inside me and outside of me.
I saw Davide and Elena, the first thing I noticed when I saw them was that Davide was wearing Balenciaga boots and Elena had beautiful breasts, which she hid.
Then Maja, Mila, and another girl whose name I have already forgotten.
Of the entire exhibition I saw, I was most captivated by the spiral staircases, which were not actually part of the exhibition but an integral part of the hangar itself.
Imposing. Almost too honest.
Again the same feeling: I go to an exhibition expecting something to happen to me. Something. A small internal earthquake, perhaps. A door opening somewhere behind the ribs. But nothing happens. Again I leave empty-handed. Or rather – empty.
It is a strange disappointment, because I always arrive with this little superstition that art might alter the temperature of my body. Today it did not.
I know Luciano Fabro’s work from before. I like his work. But the way it was presented at Pirelli made something disappear.
I could not detect what exactly I like about it, what moves me, what shifts something in me, what changes me. What I could detect were potatoes, at the entrance.
Potatoes, waiting there with the confidence of sculpture.
Luckily Maja, Mila, Davide and Elena were there. So it was not a completely wasted journey to the Hangar.
Today I am under my 4’33’’ vow of silence. I take this vow from time to time. Especially at exhibitions and openings. I don’t like talking there. Talking seems to put a lid on the thing before the thing has had a chance to happen. So we communicated through my phone notes. Writing to each other. Passing the notes back and forth.
Maja, Mila and the third girl stayed outside.
We went inside. Davide ordered a Negroni. Elena wine. I ordered water, room temperature, of course.
We jumped from subject to subject. Then they asked me how I was in Milan. I said that Milan has a shadow. There is some shadow attached to this city that I don’t resonate with. I don’t feel Milan as a place where I am supposed to be or live. They accepted this.
Elena asked: In which city do you feel good or happy?
I said: in my inner world and my fantasies.
This seemed, for the moment, like a perfectly reasonable geography. We continued jumping from one subject to another. Elena is a Taurus, very lovely, a grounded and stable person. She said some wise things about happiness, about what happiness means to her.
Then a woman in green appeared. Davide told me her name is Dragana Obradović, also from Belgrade, and in very that moment, I remembered that someone from Belgrade had once mentioned Dragana and her work to me. I know we have some mutual friends from Belgrade, but I couldn’t remember exactly who.
I also know another Dragana from Belgrade who lives in Milan, but she has an Italian surname, Capasa, because of her husband Ennio. Now I have met another Dragana in Milan. In Serbian, the name Dragana means something dear, something beloved.
Two Draganаs in Milan. Two dear ones.
Elena and Davide explained to her that I was currently not speaking. Dragana extended her hand. We touched palms. Everything was understood.
She said: Ah. Vipassana.
I was happy she understood me
without the inconvenience of words.
I like communicating with people at the essential level, where language has not yet arrived, or has already failed.
Because perhaps half of what we say is only noise we have agreed to call meaning.
I thought to myself: today is Wednesday.
According to Jyotish astrology, every day has its own colour, and Wednesday belongs to green. I wondered whether Dragana had chosen green because she knew this, or whether it was simply a coincidence.
I regret not taking a picture of Dragana’s green raiment. It was such a radiant green – emerald green, a noble green, like noble silence.
So instead of taking a picture of Dragana’s green raiment, I took a blurry picture of my own green shirt. I follow the Jyotish rules about colours and days, and every day I wear something in the colour associated with that day. Sometimes it’s just a small detail; sometimes it’s the whole outfit.
Then Davide sent a voice message to his yoga friend asking him what Vipassana actually is. This seemed appropriate. Dragana and Elena left to Como. Davide and I stayed a little longer so he could finish his drink.
Then, somehow, astrology appeared again. It always does. As if the planets are waiting patiently for their turn in the conversation. I told Davide that his Neptune is at 26 degrees Sagittarius.
I messaged my friend Maja on WhatsApp to see where she was, but she told me she had left because she was tired. She texted me that she had seen me talking to Davide inside, and she assumed we were talking about astrology, so she didn’t want to interrupt. She simply sent me a lot of kiss stickers.
Davide and I were getting sleepy too. We left Bicocca and headed towards the purple M5 line. Outside, everything was wet, and David’s Balenciaga boots echoed against the wet concrete.
As we walked, David asked me what my plans for the future were.
I wrote in my notes : To be peaceful.
Then I asked him: and you?
He said: To move to Berlin.
I told him, knowing his natal chart, that I wasn’t worried about his future. I told him that he will be famous and rich. We laughed.
Then suddenly the clean smell of oxygen after rain entered the air. I love that smell. The city becomes briefly washed of itself and then the rain-air mixed with Davide’s scent, some exotic Byredo. This was perhaps the most successful installation of the evening.
At that very moment, I received a WhatsApp message from my friend Tessa. She sent me a photograph from Venice with the words: IS WATER ALWAYS USEFUL.
And all around us, there was purple water from the purple rain that had been falling softly the entire time we were walking.
We entered the purple M5 line, while in my head Prince’s Purple Rain was playing on repeat.
Davide said he was getting off at Zara, not the store but metro station. I got off one stop later, at Isola. We sat opposite each other. I took a few photographs of fragments of his body.
Then I looked at his face and I concluded that the face cream from Lidl is, in fact, extremely good. Regardless of which micellar water he used. His skin was luminous. Well hydrated, better than Chanel. A small empirical discovery. Perhaps this is what an exhibition should give you: not revelation, but evidence. That Lidl can defeat Chanel.
That rain can enter a city and briefly make it breathable. That a spiral staircase can remain more impressive than all the things displayed around it. That sometimes you leave an exhibition empty, and still, somehow, you have been accompanied home.
I was thinking about what left the biggest impression on me this evening, and I came to the conclusion that it was definitely Elena’s breasts, David’s Balenciaga boots, Dragana’s emerald green westment and purple rain. How little it takes to be happy in Milan.
This is how my mind works. I notice beauty before I notice meaning.
A boot.
A breast.
A staircase.
The smell of purple rain.
A face unexpectedly well moisturized.
I am happy when beauty appears,
in any possible form.
It doesn’t have to announce itself as Art.
Sometimes beauty is simply there:
wearing boots,
wearing a green garment,
falling as purple rain,
appearing in a décolleté,
or as a random green billboard caught in the reflection of a metal fence on the street.
