public love diary LONDON

March 31  afternoon hits a wall

paul:

I realise it’s now almost three days since I wrote a proper blog entry. I’ve been very tired. I still am very tired. Like camping holiday tired. Like really need a good night’s sleep in my own bed tired. And a nice long hot bath.

Wednesday was a day of stimulation, of loveliness, of intimacy and of space. Thursday there was amazing intensity, awe and relief. I’m really feeling what I wrote a few days ago about this project being bigger and more important than both Kathe and myself. As much as we’re both catalytic in the process that takes place, the heart of the work is the people and the lives and the love that they bring and share. This is at once awesome, overwhelming and somehow debilitating. It’s not about us, it’s not about us at all. “Detach with love” Kathe says.

march 31  one week



(sabine)
(kathe and sabine meet in the store & browse a little through the clothes)
(sabine beautiful)
(graceful)
(talk turns to horses)
(turns to flow)
(flow turns to deep need)
(is it need or connection)
(is deep desire necessarily obsession?)
(addiction)
(flight animals)
(attraction to intense focus)
(lateral thinking)
(due a highly choreographed & creative hen party sabine excuses herself from the closing party)
(she will be missed)
(communication)

(emily)
(kathe loves a return patron to the love palace)
(it is emily's birthday & she has brought a cake)
(& strawberries & homemade meringues & whipped cream)
(kathe is excited as the chocolate ran out the day before & the store has been to short staffed to run for more)
(it was last may when emily came for love)
(she is shiny & bright)
(plans are made to travel to ibiza)
(to be a podium dancer)
(much discussion on polyamory)
(kathe wonders if nonmonogamy is an old fashioned word)
(she feels old for a minute)
(emily likes nonmogamy too)
(kathe asks for news from the new lesbian front)
(same old news)
(for polyamory/nonmonogamy=communication communication  communication)
(emily stretches out on the bed)
(love to see you happy)
(love to see you happy)
(love to see you happy)
(lots of love interests)
(moving past the horse whisperer)
(it's a good thing)
(putch more camp/gay man masculinity . . . the other butch)
(appropriately klub fuckk)
(questioning the therapy construct of love for one hour)
(kathe shrugs it off)
(says it's what works for now)
(love)
(love)
(wahoo energy)

. . . . . .

(paul took the day off)
(kathe slacked around)
(lots of time in the cafe staring out the window)
(recovering from the eclipse)
(or something)

March 31  evening

paul:

Today I’ve had the day off and it seems to have done both Kathe and I a lot of good. As much as this place is our joint home (albeit a temporary one), conceptually I am a bit of a houseguest in Kathe’s project. She’s a perfect and and accommodating hostess, as I’m sure I’m a perfect and considerate guest, but there’s still a certain effort involved and an understandable tension that results. That said, we’ve gotten over ‘the hump’ and now look forward to a final two days with renewed energy and purpose. Time seems (as it often does to me) an abstract concept – the past eight days seem like a lifetime but also just like a blink. Two days left and it’s gone. Space too has ceased to have meaning. I used to think the Bluebird was at the bottom of the King’s Road, but it now feels as though the rest of the King’s Road might not exist. Indeed, the rest of Chelsea, London, the world could well have gone. Our microcosmic movie set room in our movie set street (with well-timed passing buses and choreographed pedestrian extras) has developed a certain security as well as a claustrophobia. As I stood outside the front door earlier this evening, I flirted with the possibility of crossing the courtyard to the edge of the pavement. This filled me with a rush of excitement but also a quiet trepidation – what if I looked up the road and decided just to run?

april 1 ecstatic love





(david)
(so much going on)
(Yoshi weaving in and out with his camera)
(film crew)
(david repeatedly worrying that he is not getting his love due to the chaos)
(kathe giggling & touching his knee reassuring him)
(giggling)
(david is a star)
(it must be love for kathe has given him the red chair)
(her domain but he commands the space)
(david avoids a difficult question by fixating on the toblerone)
(kathe touches his knee)
(wild gift)




(emilie)
(lovely)
(the story she tells of her father eclipses all other memory)
(in the month before he died he traveled to be with her)
(he took a walk in the woods with a friend of hers)
(Emilie could not be there)
(he fell asleep several times in the forest)
(after his death emilie returned to this forest)
(and slept there for a month)
(alone)
(in all the places that her friend remembered)
(her father sleeping)
(kathe asks emilie if she is in love)
(emilie smiles)
(energia)
(amorosa)






(paul)
(ana)
(paul tells kathe later that it went ok)
(his first time loving alone)
(it was a little awkward to start & he got confused about the pictures)
(but he remembered that kathe said that it's all ok)
(whatever happens)

paul:

(hangovers)
(pop justice)
(2 month love bliss)
(mexico)
(squat parties)
(comfortable quiet)
 
(brilliant)
(breeze)

(felicity)
(lynn)
(warm hugs)
(best friends)
(it is felicity's birthday)
(kathe launches into a long monologue bordering on tears)
(on love & why she does it)
(she feels fragile)
(she gets the girls all worked up)
(she doesn't shut up but they appear to be enjoying themselves)
(kathe talks about feeling like Hansel & Gretel with no evil witch)
(abandoned siblings)
(this is how she & paul love she explains)
(abandoned durational artist siblings with an innate understanding of each other)
(beyond the actual real time of their love)
(kathe talks about high school camping trips that she hated initially)
(not being the camper type)
(this she explains while wearing a 600 pound hazel brown corset jacket with wide peplum)
(but she persevered on these trips because her parents let her go for the weekend & she was 15 & got to be away with her friends)
(& smoke tons of pot)
(she would have anxiety when the dark came & sometimes the cold)
(but usually on the third day something turned over & she became more of herself than she could ever call up on her own)
(because of living with the fear of the dark & the cold)
(the irrational nameless fear)
(because of living with the fear & not dying)
(she became more of herself & everybody saw it)
(she fell in love with herself & everybody else & everybody fell in love back)
(lynn worries about kathe & paul a bit & comments on their yawns)
(kathe lays back on the bed)
(everyone is beaming though)
(beaming bright & shiny)
(the sparkle of eyes)
(spring)






(armand)
(andy)
(they get it)
(Armando says it is enough to just be)
(kathe says you win the prize like the 100,000th shopper – the ceiling will open up & shower you with confetti & now we will role out the Lamborghini)
(beautiful friends)
(andy paints beautiful still things)
(kathe believes him & pours her heart forward)
(maybe embarrasses him a little)
(tells him that she could feel the stillness in him when he opened the door)
(& tells him how attractive it was)
(how she was drawn to him)
(Armando is an excellent lover)
(he loves with every fiber of his being)
(before the love appointment kathe went for a walk in the staff stairwell and put her head against the wall & prayed for energy)
(she imagined a fish net that she flung out into the world to collect all remnants of all the love she had put out there)
(& brought it back to herself)
(felt it pour through her cranium into her soul)
(she entered the room)
(it was an excellent time)
(stillness)
(blue)






(beate)
(deej)

(paul will remember)

paul:

(hearts and sweets, presents)
(living in a cube in Amsterdam)
(paul is in awe of such endurance and touched by the love that it can inspire)
(beate loves the teddy bear)
(she is a beautiful angel)

(wiy)
(sapphire)

april 1 very late

kathe:

today was a whirlwind day verging on out of control, mostly because it started with filming for this documentary that a woman Gabriela is making for Channel 4 on Erotomania, which actually is not as it sounds.  I at first recoiled when she approached me thinking that of course she was making the same assumption that everyone does, that I am some kind of sex fiend or egomaniac (actually she is making a film on egomania as well.) but it turns out that erotomania is love addiction, in particular the kind of stalker-esque love addiction where one is convinced they are in love with another that they may barely know (if they know at all) and that are convinced the virtual stranger is also in love with them.  In any case, the whole doc is basically on addiction and obsession with love and they came in to interview Paul and I and film a couple of faux appointments:  one with David who came a couple of days ago (and who Paul and I fell charismatically in love with immediately) and one with David Lillington, who I know well enough to feel that the cameras would not interfere with my love of him (and they didn't).

Gabriela and her cameraman Yoshi came early but things never really go as planned in filming with things like line noise in the microphone and shadows of the cameraman falling into the screen and it got later and later and the day got messy and it was hardly "real" but Paul and I did our best throughout it all.  I thought the film seemed really smart and Gabriela really disarmed me when she questioned me about the origins of my obsession with love

I didn't feel like doing in-depth surgery on my childhood which I've talked about ad infinitum with just about anybody who would listen for most of my 20s and 30s (and also had shared extensively with Paul on many late nights). I did weirdly remember this film I saw when I was in high school THE STORY OF ADELE H by Truffaut.  It supposedly was the story of Victor Hugo's beautiful youngest daughter (played by the over the edge and beautiful Isabelle Adjani when she was very young) who falls in love with this young lieutenant who will have nothing to do with her but she is convinced that she loves him and he loves her and she has this hysterical pregnancy and spends all of her parents' money trailing around after him til she ends up in someplace like Tobago walking the streets in her tattered ruby red dress out of her mind and she actually passes her "lover" on the street as she wanders aimlessly looking for him.  Gabriela told me that David Letterman's stalker through herself in front of a train a year ago . . .  In any case she wondered how I got to see this film when I was 16 and I told her that my English teacher had told me about it and then I kind of glazed over and she asked me about him.

I had heard around school that John A had slept with some girls at my school and I decided I was in love with him before I even met him, which tells tons about me and my early basis for love.  My high school was fairly experimental and also large so we could register for a variety of English classes and I chose John's filmmaking class and systematically & strategically moved my way closer and closer to him, ending up on the street in front of his apartment on the upper West Side (I lived in the suburbs by then), casually calling him working my way upstairs (on many occasions).  I guess it was fortunate for me that he realized I was a live wire and never physically touched me (although he ended up marrying a girl a few years older than me) but I think in the end he really loved me too (in some fashion) and never told me to go home but continued to engage me and really brought me forth, taught me things about art and life and I thought about love but I don't know if I was making it all up (oh god, I know it is all so cliché).  I remember he gave me a beat up copy of A CHILD"S CHRISTMAS IN WALES and the inscription inside said something like "I swing from inside these yellow walls (he meant of the school) like an anchor . . ."

I used to sit by his desk in the English Lab during my free time and pass my notebook to him so that he could comment, as my English teacher, on my poems.  They were about him and my obsession with him.  He would read them and say something arch or provocative and then write some comment in soft pencil in the margin and pass it back to me and we would love like that for the better part of a year, til my skin was tight it hurt to breathe on it.

Black Love Song

from my journal in high school 1975 junior year

it's days like today
when I feel the pain
and it hurts like
an old war wound

days when I play
hard chords on myself
days when I
ask myself why

is it that
I feel this
wanting
to feel you in me

wanting
to feel you
wanting
to feel

days like today
when I split my side
sew you in
to me and you

wearing the same air

april 2 last day of love (for now)

(to begin a secret anonymous guest)
(presents, always such lovely presents)
(we like chocolate, we need it)
(trust is hard)
(we love ourselves)
(that is also hard)
(but it’s worth it (because we’re worth it))
(let out that the appointment (love) wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be)
(paul had said her last installation was bonkers)
(oh beautiful one, you are worth it)

(paul's parents)
(june & malcolm)
(on board for everything)
(kathe & paul tried to give them the royal treatment)
(as much as possible on the last day)
(everybody was a little quiet)
(kathe asked june how old they were when they met)
(16 & 17 respectively)
(they were at a dance in East London)
(she played hard to get)
(she was there with a mate of his)
(it didn't take long)
(june said hitched up)
(kathe asked what that meant exactly)
(because in the states hooking up can mean anything in the states & is intentionally vague to blind parents to the intricacies of teen dating)
(she thinks)
(everything was more innocent then)
(we think)
(kathe talked about the kick-in of oxytocin)
(the deep body vibration of a long term relationship)
(a lot of nodding)
(paul says later he hadn't heard that story before)
(about the hitching up)
(love)
(perfume)
(good)




(gilly)
(requests paul)

paul:

(needs some male attention, gets a giggly philosophical campfest)
(swimming)
(crushes)
(hormones, kidneys, lots of water)
(how will I know (if he really loves me?))
(love is a rebellious bird)(carmen:
If you don’t love me, I love you;
if I love you, look out for yourself!)
(the wisdom of dolly parton)
(swimming dogs)




(the lovely wakana)
(the last appointment)
(kathe & wakana fall in love immediately)
(which is good because paul is busy w/ another admirer)
(it is the last appointment & kathe is alternately relieved & a wreck)
(crying)
(mostly on the inside)
(but wakana appreciates the importance of being the last appointment)\
(open)
(beautiful)
(wakana & paul know each other from school @ Canterbury)
(wakana is on a love journey)
(she has tried not to be in love w/ someone who is too far away)
(she (&he) have tried to believe that the timing is not right)
(they met at sequential raves in japan)
(wakana pretended she didn't speak English)
(til he worked hard enough to prove he wasn't on the random make)
(they have lived at opposite ends of the world)
(they have loved other people)
(now is their time)
(she leaves for San Francisco in a few days)
(wakana & kathe bond over their adoration of Koreeda (nobody knows, afterlife, maborosi) & kathe starts to cry a little about the films)
(she says each film of his she has seen has been with her here in the shop @ bluebird w/ paul)
(nobody knows & the abandoned children taking care of each other)
(mabrosi & the slow consummation of the arranged marriage)
(after life & the care of the outside world in their passage from one state to the other)
(wakana remembers a moment with paul)
(a small cinematic moment set in a lunar dune landscape)
(somewhere near paul's parents home)
(where paul told wakana "when I came out to my parents")
(wakana says she comes back to that moment)
(perfect)
(world is a nice place!)

april 2  the closing party

kathe :

the closing party was really sweet.  I thought it wasn't going to happen.  I figured, right, this always happens to me, I throw a party and no one comes.  It really does.  This has happened more times than I can remember.  Someone once explained to me that this is because people think I'm such an expansive personality that I must know tons of people and that if I throw a party I must have invited everybody and that maybe they don't make a difference.  I'm actually pretty shy, though you wouldn't know it considering my chosen medium, but I really value every interaction and rarely rarely ever do anything casually or randomly . . well in any case, everyone came fashionably late including paul and I, who were with wakana in the love palace and rolled out about 5:30.  The champagne started being poured about 20 minutes later and then they rolled out the those Cadbury candy covered chocolate eggs that are so yummy.  It was a small party but a good mix of love patrons, store staff, friends and a bunch of new people (I think mostly coming through the Fritz connection) that were just coming round to the love phenomenon.  I was able to squeeze in a couple of off the cuff love appointments although I was trying to be the bad cop and say we were closed.  Ilkar was particularly lucky because he hadn't showed up for his appointment and I gave him a hard time.  He said he left a message but . . .  h m m m .  He was too cute to be ignored and we had a smoke outside and poured into each other's eyes and talked about being able to have less and less casual sex the older we got and how there's no time for hate.  I think the highlight of the party was when Martin, who I hadn't met but who seemed very enigmatic and fabulous, sequestered himself away in the love palace by himself and was writing furiously, came up behind me and grabbed my elbow, murmuring "one of your dolls has just spontaneously combusted" and when I entered the room there was a small fire on the little attached end table on my side of the bed.  It was the little black rag doll I had made for my mother and had confiscated after her death, I guess dangling into one of the candles.  I have to say that was one, the biggest one, of three small fires, vanilla tealights gone awry, in the last 24 hours (don't tell bluebird).   Either we were really lucky, as we left the candles burning all the time even for an hour or so when we left for lunch, or there was something else combusting . .  When I asked Martin why he didn't just put the fire out, he said "I thought you should see it" and I fell deeply, deeply in love with him then and there and sat on the bed holding his hands and staring deep into his eyes.

april 2 later in the outside world

kathe:

when paul and I left the bluebird shop that evening with eldina & ana to go to the hotel, it was really not that startling, not as startling as I had imagined it would be.  The night was beautiful & kind of warm & it was lovely but in kind of a normal way.  I had accidentally stepped on the sidewalk earlier in the day because the patio was full of souped up sports cars & I had to walk all the way around them to get to the café.  I just put one foot down and it gave me a creepy feeling like I was betraying paul.

april 3  early morning (alone in separate rooms)

kathe:

they put us in separate hotel rooms, across the hall from each other. We joked earlier that we would miss each other so and come knocking in the middle of the night, wanting to watch kath n kim or something. When we came home from having thai food with ana & e it was almost 11:30 and we were beat.   We found out the next morning we had both taken a bath & both watched fight club on the tv, both in our own beds.

when I stepped into the bath (finally) several of the tiny red hearts that had followed us around all week floated to the top of the tub from the bottom of my feet.  In the morning they were still there, stuck to the bottom of the tub.

april 3