Highlight From the Archives: [_______] (Peter)

[Don't hit play yet - I'll tell you when]

In 2013, I was tumbling through my final year of college at NYU in Abu Dhabi. We were asked to prepare a Capstone graduating project, so—displaying my usual over-eagerness—I opted to pitch a 9-month study on the topic of what it means to miss someone or something. It was titled "[MISSING]," but as I was 20, pretentious, and entirely unaware, I insisted on writing that title as "[_______]." Years later, still pretentious but in recovery, I remain excited by the discoveries I made through the project, which managed to happen in spite of my sense of style.

I wanted to use performance as research, and for the first of three phases of the project, I designed an exchange.

"Send a letter anywhere."

I made signs in English, Arabic, and eventually Hindi and Urdu, and started setting up shop in various semi- or demi-public spaces in Abu Dhabi. Those curious enough to stop and ask questions were met with one in return: "If you could send a letter to anyone in the world, who would you choose?" It wasn't hypothetical; in my bag I had stacks of envelopes and paper (and very nice pens). The deal was this: if they'd write the letter right then and there, I'd bring it (unopened and unread) to the post office and pay to send it. In return, they'd agree to speak to me for 5 minutes, and answer some questions about who they wrote to, and why.

Cue me, standing around looking bizarre and confusing, which is genuinely somewhat intentional (a dear collaborator once described my aesthetic as being "vague enough to be interesting"). Standing with me (with considerably more grace) was Amani Alsaied (friend, filmmaker, all around bad-ass and excellent thrower of get-togethers), who had helped design the questions for the interview, and served as Arabic translator. Eventually, a pleasant (if hurried) man was curious enough to approach: Rashid.

Who did you write to? His wife, who was in the hospital, pregnant with their next child.
Why did you write to her? "I love her too much. She is nearest to me […] Um, that's it."
He politely bid me farewell, handed me the envelope, and rushed away (presumably to join his pregnant wife).

One down.

The second person to approach was Peter, who wrote to his boyfriend, Nate. Once the letter was done, we settled in to talk about him, while a self-playing piano in the lobby nearby banged out "the Moonlight Sonata" like Beethoven owed it money. 

[Hit play]

Yannick: Uh .. would you mind telling me a little bit about him?

Peter: Um yeah sure. Uh, he's a lovely boy (laugh). Uh, I met him—I met him on

Valentine's day this year, at the Biennale in Berlin. He's um .. American, he was

born in Minnesota, spent a lot of his life in Colorado and—considers himself to be

Californian, but I think that's more about his construction of who he wants to be.

But he's lived all over the States, and he's lived in Berlin for the last five years, and

his family still live in Minnesota. On a very beautiful um, piece of land on a lake. And

he's a hairdresser, but uh, he loves film—I think he's a reader more than anything

else, he just he loves reading books. And he loves film—and one of the things that

really um, endeared him to me and made me fall in love with him, I went back to his

house the night we met, and um .. he had these film journals of every single film

he's watched since like 1998 I think. Or, he had like 5 or 6—5 years of them, and I

mean I just thought that was so .. sweet, and I mean and [artistful?]. Um. And

another thing that really made me fall for him, um, was that he said "I—I want to

look after you." And he said that probably after we had known each other for 3-3

hours. And, if most people had said that to me like I would have found it very

disturbing, and it would have freaked me out. But there's something about Nate

that actually makes me want to be looked after by him. Um. And normally I find that

I look after other people—and I look after him to some extent, but he really looks

after me. yeah. Um, I have um,.. I'm kind of well adjusted and stable but every now

—I have a kind of—I get chemical build-ups in my brain and I can get freaked out

quite easily, especially in large crowds and stuff. And he really like—when he sees

me like getting freaked out he just kind of picks me up and steers me right, and ..

makes sure I'm okay, which is lovely. And I've been kind of, um .. I mean I'm—I would

get a lot of love from the world, but I've also .. I've been very alone and kind of

lonely for most of my life, so. So it's really lovely to meet this boy,

Nate [REDACTED].

Yeah.

[Hit pause]

This interview ended up lasting about 45 minutes, though I reminded Peter at around 5 minutes that he was free to go. We moved to the second question: who didn't you write to?

[Hit play]

Peter: I think if I really could I would—another—I would have loved to have written

to my cats .. [yannick (laughing)] [...] Um, so I've always—I really—I have a very very

deep relationship with my  one cat, and my—and b-both my cats, I love them both,

I mean, in-in different ways. Uh but my one cat is like—my soulmate. Which might

seem strange. I met her on a rooftop, [ REDACTED ] like 10-12 years ago. And we

just immediately like struck off um .. uh—we just yeah we hit it off with each other,

and I just love—I love Rocket, like so much. And my-my criteria for a relationship

would always be finding somebody who I was as happy or happier to wake up with

than when I wake up with—when I wake up and my cats are next to me [...]

We work through a few questions together before arriving at the one I've been building to.

Yannick: Wow . This is fantastic.

[Future Yannick, 2021: Yes, it is. You don't need to say that aloud. Just get back on track.]

Yannick: Uh, you said missing. Actually I want to talk about that. Uh .. what does it

feel like, for you when you miss someone, or something, or a place? What does

that feel like?  

Peter: It's kind of.. that network between a neurological and a body feeling. I kind

of feel it kind of in this channel of my .. my heart, my stomach, my head, my throat a

little bit. You know when you start getting sick and your immune system starts

going down there? I feel it a bit over there. Um, and in my eyes. Um … …. yeah, it's a

longing. A yearning. Um .. wanting to physically .. yeah I mean you've got me

thinking what missing is. … Such a thing of being aware of absence I suppose—but

it's not quite that. It's .. when we miss people, I .. it's a kind of act of remembering in

a way. A kind of Melancholic remembering. … … yeah and a yearning, a longing, of

course, but that's kind of … yeah, and I think .. I think in a way there's a kind of

desire to be whole which may .. almost have nothing to do with the person who's

being missed.

Yannick: What do you mean by that?  

Peter: I'm not sure it just came out of my mouth.

[End]

That last phrase struck me, but it was really only much later, when I was transcribing these interviews, that its true meaning sank in for me. I had originally viewed these exchanges as a way to collect stories, quotes, images and cat-based metrics for emotional states (clearly, already a success there). But I discovered that the experience of the exchange had a powerful meaning for the people on either end of the trade as well. The exercise of the letter and the interview after was an invitation to sit as long as they liked with the things they did and didn't "miss" in their lives — and often a moment where participants ended up saying things which surprised us both. Years later, I find myself still obsessed with creating moments and places like that, which are both safe enough and challenging enough to say something new.

Back in 2013 and 2014, I worked with an amazing team of collaborators and translators to conduct 23 interviews like this; we reached out to siblings and friends, lovers and mothers, lost mentors and pets in Australia, the UK, Argentina, Bangladesh, Romania, Doha, Zanzibar, and Ukraine—as well as quite a few in the United States of America, where I was soon to be returning. Eventually, I took pieces of all of these interviews, remixed them with interviews from a group of actors and directed them in a 30 minute theater piece exploring what we had found together.  When the piece ended, audiences exited the theater to find students outside waiting for them, carrying a sign:

"Send a Letter Anywhere"