Jumbo

Without being lugubrious or sententious, it could be argued that this is a messy business, full of potholes and trolls who hide under bridges. You don’t need the human propensity for extrasensory self-implosion to realize the tightrope one walks. Within an increasingly short period of time, you have to negotiate morality and mortality. Why not like the character of Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Mr. Watanabe--hit the town when you know you’re going to die? Remember Jimmy Stewart’s Walpurgisnacht in It’s a Wonderful Life? Even members of the Hemlock Society might be too scared to take the leap into the unknown (which btw is the absolute nothingness of no longer being a  sentient being). Do doctors or lawyers drop their caseloads of suffering clients when they realize time is running out? Do the dying more actively covet their neighbor’s wife and husbands? Do you finally knock his block off? Do you tell the couple talking at the top of their voices in the airline lounge to shut the fuck up? Do you inform them that all their chatter is about drowning out feeling? Wouldn’t it be fun to say “fuck you” to the friendly neighbor who's about to enter the elevator? And what about all those thoughts, all the weird non-printable thoughts about all the things people could do if they didn’t matter and if they didn’t give a shit—such as hosing down your guests the way Lyndon Johnson did his colleagues with his beloved “Jumbo?”

read Hallie Cohen's interview on collaboration

and see the invite for her show, Mi Ricordo: Roman Watercolors, on exhibit until April 27