Saturday 25th September 2.32 pm
My days are beginning to run into each other...blurred by the impact on my sleep and being isolated in this new city.
On my second or third day here I familiarised myself with the environs near my apartment in the ville of Asnieres sur Seine. I entered a messy and run down opportunity shop, owned by a furiously chain-smoking, abrupt French woman...who questioned me on my business, and upon finding out I was here solely to work on the Christo project, spat out an emphatic "Poubelle". ( rubbish tin) ;-)
Holy hell, I was momentarily surprised! but decided to embrace her exclamation.
What do I know...my journey to this point is one of privilege and magic.
I pass these moonlit shifts with my Italian sidekick, we have become partners in crime ;-) keeping each other entertained with much laughter and sharing...
Fourteen Million Euros! Mon Dieu! Sacre Bleu!
14,000,000 €
3 Moroccans bail me up by the protective barricade at the top of Avenue Friedlander... at 4.30 am, to ask what my opinion is of the sum it took to produce this work. (The most beautiful sports cars I've ever seen redline around the iconic circuit behind us)
I remember back to 1961, 7 years before my birth...Christo and Jean Claude are in love, in Paris. He has a hotel room near Place Charles de Gaulle de l'Etoile...he passes every morning...
60 years later, a year after his death, their project is realised. How to quantify the momentum from conception to this, in a currency that was not even tendered then? Yes, the art world IS crazy, mad and often misunderstood by those who don't create
"& those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music"
I can't transmit the enormity... perhaps they can't get past the folly.
That while Christo hasn't cured cancer or solved homelessness...there is MANA. The impact he has had on millions of lives, and you can't ignore it, you can simply pay courteous respect to it—whether you like it or not.
/ˈmɑːnə/
noun
(in Polynesian, Melanesian, and Maori belief) an impersonal supernatural power which can be transmitted or inherited.