Dress A Day, Day 12: Wave Patterns

Monday, May 17

At the jam again, with a dress I love to get sweaty in. This is, I believe, the first dress in this project that I can say I bought new at a store. It happened like this: on a stormy Thursday night in early June of 2006, lightning hit Brooklyn and my hard drive was fried through the electrical outlet. This being the day before the last Ask the Robot that I produced, a multimedia performance/installation/video/art event on the Frying Pan on the Chelsea Piers, I was in a bit of jam. The next day I trekked to the Apple store in SoHo, and was met by a line which was followed by a wait and I was short on time and patience which was only making the situation more stressful. So I got myself out of the store and on to Broadway, where I went on a bit of a shopping spree. I only bought sexy clothes that part of me thought I would never wear, short shorts and tight dresses - I refused to buy anything practical.

That night on the Frying Pan, an early 20th century lighthouse boat docked on the Hudson River, I felt for the first time in a long time that the world outside was mirroring the one inside. There I was, in the belly of a rusted boat, surrounded by sounds and visions at once foreign and strange and yet familiar, for they were there by my invitation. We were all of us in constant motion, rocking to and fro as the waves of the river crashed into the boat over and over and over again.