"We're going to need a bigger [boat] truck..."

Hi Santa Monica.
How's everyone doing this holiday season? Me, I'm in hibernation mode, avoiding as many people as I can (within reason, one has to get groceries, and when one goes, one has to answer the solicitous Trader Joe's employee who wants to know just what you're going to do with that dinky bag of trimmed leeks).

It's a common misconception that people (like me) who avoid large gatherings of humanity "don't like people." I like people just fine. I even (gulp) love some people. What I don't like is crowds. And yes, a crowd is a what, not a who, because a crowd is what happens when a group of individuals becomes so large that you lose track of where one person ends and the other begins, when beings cram and shove and stuff themselves into a maelstrom, or a melee, or any other chaos word that starts with m. Am I being dramatic? Well, sure. But you've seen those horrid black friday videos, right? You know what a crowd is?

This is why you'll find me hibernating. Because the holiday season means public places are more crowded. I'm really not sure why this is. Maybe it's because people are consuming more and the easiest way to consume is to leave home. Or maybe every single person, right after thanksgiving, gives birth to another whole person; a fully grown, impatiently driving, canned goods aisle space taker upper. You don't have to take my word for it, just try a grocery store parking lot anytime after 3pm and see what happens.

In addition to the pulsing hordes on sidewalks and in shops, I'm hibernating because I just finished a big project. It's almost a week since I shared my culminating performance with folks in the Sand & Sea room, and in that week I've found it challenging to handle some of life's simpler tasks. Don't get me wrong. I've gone to work. I've gone to get coffee. But I've felt less equipped to feel, well, crowded-- or maybe more accurately, I've felt less equipped to take up space, myself. I don't want my body, voice, or any fiber of my being to participate in crowd-ening. I want to be invisible, I want to disappear. And I'm seeing now that this is taking a dark turn. But don't worry. This treatise on extreme introversion isn't a cry for help. It's just a whisper request to be hidden, for now, and maybe through the rest of the year.

Am I alone in this? I don't think so. The end of the year finds lots of folks presenting annual reports, showing up for peer reviews, doing all sorts of stock taking. So on top of the shocking accretion of people in CVS, there's an added layer of self-examination, or self-awareness, or just "how am I doing-ness."

So I present to you the following: let yourself experience what you need to (again, within reason, and with some endeavor of civility toward your fellow people-- that Trader Joe's cashier REALLY needs to tell you about the best chickpea recipe, really!). If you can sit somewhere quietly, under a blanket or under a pet or under a lap top playing an endless loop of your favorite crime procedural, then do it. And if you don't have the privilege of a few nightly hours of peace, then take the 5 minutes you'd normally spend scouring the internet for in-law gifts, and use it to watch a puppy video, or listen to a favorite song, or just hang out in the bathroom pretending to fix your hair.

My final office hours are this weekend. And unlike a Whole Foods parking lot, the Beach House is a lovely, quiet place this time of year. Please feel free to stop by and talk art, or talk holidays, or talk least obvious methods of hiding at a family gathering.
be well :)
-analisa

A Thank You Note ...

to the people who came to my show, the people who texted or direct messaged because they couldn't come to my show, the people who listened to me talk about this show for the past few months (and longer), and to the person who provided the very first kernel of inspiration: my heat-rash mottled, sun-sick, angry girlfriend.

For those of you who didn't see the show, you all know the name of its title character by now: Graham Canyon. It's really just a sound-alike joke, a typical punny drag name I said while hiking through the Grand Canyon in the summer of 2018.

We've all been there. No matter what the activity, no matter what the relationship. We've all been in a position where a friend wants to stay longer at a party where you don't know enough people and the ones you do know aren't so compelling. We've all been on a too-long drive or a winding hike with the end never quite in sight, while our travel partner seems totally unfazed by the meandering, or worse, enjoying it. And if you've never been there, maybe you've seen it: a couple at the batting cage or the mini-golf course where one seems to be an infuriating combination of adept and peppy while the other whines and drags a bat or club across the plastic blades of astroturf.

In the summer of 2018, my girlfriend and I took a road trip through the southwest. Both outdoorsy types, we decided to hike from the North end of the Grand Canyon down to Ribbon Falls and back. It is and always will be one of the most beautiful hikes I've ever been on. And in all honesty, I felt one hundred percent great in my body one percent of the time. My girlfriend, on the other hand, got so hot on the way back that dark red bloomed in circles on her ankles and calves. She got so hot that her whole face, normally a complexion I'd classify as "milky vampire," turned closer to one of those honeybaked hams you find at every holiday party. She got so hot that when I asked her some inane question, trying to keep her spirits up, she said, "I can't talk right now, I just need to keep going."

Sometimes you're too hot to talk. I get it. I mean I don't really, because I'm never "too" hot. And while "too cold" is something I am frequently, the solution for that is usually to chatter constantly while jumping up and down, so it's more of a celebratory, if not manic, situation.

I happen to love hiking in silence, so I took the cue and let things be quiet for a while. But at a certain point, when we started to climb back out of the canyon, and the air got thinner, and the dirt got looser, and our feet were starting to feel like wet sacks of flour, I figured I better think of something to say to keep up morale.

Another twenty minutes of silence and climbing passed before I mumbled, "What do you think of a drag king named Graham Canyon?"

She laughed softly, still not turning around. And that, ladies and gentlemen and neither and both, is how the character was born. And on Saturday night, almost two years later, Graham got to meet Santa Monica.

I still have one week left at the Beach House, so if you were at the show and would like to come and chat about it, I'll be at my office hours next Sunday. And as always, I'm here and here and here (that's twitter, ig, and my website, respectively).

There will be another, proper thank you coming soon. For now, I have to get to sweeping all the bits and pieces of papier-maché in my studio.
best,
analisa