I’ve been trying to understand you since I met you on the street 8 years ago smoking a cigarette under a shrub.
I followed you into a basement and watched dust twinkle sprinkle in sunbeams as you pulled out delicate scraps of paper covered in coloured tape and called them paintings.
Have you ever read The Idiot by Dostoevsky? No? Have you ever seen Pierrot le Fou? I only ask because it reminds me of you.
You showed me a thrift store doll painted black with its head sewn on upside down with a tiny red LED in it’s mouth that only worked when you gave it a hug.
Moving through the city like something I read when I was 16, showing truths and enacting myths. One leg bent against the brick wall at 4am. Floating through back doors, a string tied around your neck.
If someone had a headache at the after hours club I’d bring them to you and nod assuringly as you placed a hand on their head. Can you believe it?
I walked to work and saw my name spray painted on the side of Toys-R-Us surrounded by hearts. I walked down the hill and saw a row of pink animals on the back of an apartment building. Elephant dog snake whale. Dog.
Everything is a creature. Everything has two eyes.
Swept away in a wave of your own creation. Pebbles are just models for skyscrapers. If it can be made, it can be made with plant matter and eaten over the sink.
The only film you recommend is Lovers on the Bridge.
I watched you give a speech wearing your father’s oversized tweed blazer, balancing on crutches. Stakeholders looked on as your hands shook a piece of paper. A motorcycle passed by drowning out your poem.
Years later, we returned to your sculpture and there were signs advertising Super Cuts stuck in the native plant garden you built. You laughed while taking pictures saying “look at my new sponsor.”
You tattooed a diamond on my leg the third day I knew you.
Everything is precious and your hands always shake. Laying on concrete with tweezers helping a spider off a piece of tape.
Everything is big and important because you say it is. Outside the outside. 5 days to install and 5 minutes to the dumpster behind the gallery.
I want to say I remember it all. The things you remember are: the plant grew under the door. A child wanted to touch it. Your friend slept on your gallery floor for a week.
You dragged a broken christmas tree through the streets and placed it in your exhibition in the middle of July.
Every year you plan a birthday party for yourself that never happens.
You peel stamps off envelopes from my mother and put them on the fridge. You spent an entire day painting a 5mm moonshiner.
You build exotic sports cars out of cardboard.
You give everything away for free.
Originally published in Ar(n)t Write - Issue 2: https://issuu.com/arntwrite/docs/zine_issue2-printpdf
Leah McInnis: leahmcinnis.com; Kai Choufour: www.kaichoufour.com
Images and text are courtesy of Leah McInnis.
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