Posted: Conversation(s) Three in a Series

I began writing letters, and later the Dear John experiment, in an effort to share more of myself with others. Those "others" were friends, they were loved ones, they were anyone who had encouraged me to grow and challenged me to question my perspective. But if sharing more with more was my pursuit, I was forced to consider: What would happen if I shared my thoughts, my fears, my faults, my faiths with strangers? What would happen if I increased my vulnerability to a public scale? What would happen if we all chose to make ourselves more vulnerable? Would we celebrate each other? Would we shun one another? 

Previous installations were pasted (and posted) anonymously.  A viewer could learn about me from my letters (or perhaps this blog), but beyond that there was little connection.  If my hope was to encourage neighbors, strangers, and community members to open up (share some conversation) and become more vulnerable (expose their soft underbellies), I must do the same.  If I was to connect with someone without my own cloak of Chameleonism, the final series of letters needed to be an open, honest, public display.  And I had to be there.  A face to the words, a voice to the letters.  A conversation, if desired, to be shared.  

At the corner of Frenchmen and Decatur on a sweaty Sunday afternoon, more than 60 letters were strung and hung from a second story balcony to the street below.  Drifting in the breeze, the strung letters invited passers-by, travelers, tourists, locals, the curious and the concerned to walk amid the words that chronicle my evolution and tear them off should one happen to surprise them.

I dreamed that the Dear John experiment might serve as an invitation for conversation.  I hoped it might offer a platform for some neighborly discussion.  I am fond to wish that maybe a handwritten letter hanging on a string might inspire someone somewhere to write a letter of their own to someone somewhere, a little more of someone shared with each pen, each paper, and each envelope. How successful the endeavor, I might never know.

Instead, the success of the experiment came from those I encountered who so wonderfully shared their time and space with me, and it was I who was reminded that when we open up, the world opens up with us.  To all those, the friends and the strangers who chose to engage in Conversation(s) Three, I wish to express my gratitude.

With Great Affection,

Camille 

Rebecca

Dear John, Letters from a Friend: Conversation(s) Three in a Series

Previous Dear John letters shared with you a glimpse of my relationship with a friend and with a mother.  But what of the rest? What of the long-time-ago's, once-was', maybe-will-be's, still-together's, I'm-sorry-I's and only-if's?  What of the fathers, brothers, friends, teachers and lost-ones to whom I owe so much yet understand so little how to adequately express my gratitude for the magnitude of their actions upon my efforts at living? 


In continuing pursuit of what I've attempted before, Dear John, Letters from a Friend: Conversation(s) Three in a Series intends to share more with more.  It will be an open display of multiple letters written to multiple long-time-ago's, still-together's, and I'm-sorry-I's.  It will be an open display of my relationships with others, with myself, and then with strangers.  It will be an open display of words I've said, actions I've taken, mistakes I've had trouble admitting to.  And it will be me, on open display.  


Unlike Dear John, Letters from a Friend: Conversations One and Two, which were anonymous wheat-pastes, mailbox drops, and small shop lagniappe, I too will be on display.  All day I'll be with the letters, in case you'd like to share some conversation about them, about you, about us, or about anything at all.  Blank paper and black ink pens will also be attending, in case you'd like share some conversation with your own long-time-ago, still-together, or I'm-sorry-I.  


Coming this week to the corner of Frenchmen and Decatur, a hanging installation of letters from a friend.  Your presence is cordially requested, your participation is earnestly appreciated, and your own letter to a friend is eagerly anticipated in a mailbox somewhere, sometime soon.  

Posted: Conversation Two in a Series

Pasted, posted, and delivered, the second series of Dear John letters have found their way to the mail boxes, electrical boxes, cafe tables, sign poles and shop displays of the Marigny/Bywater and, hopefully, into the hands of neighbors and strangers willing to spare a few thoughts with one another, perhaps even take the risk of striking up a little conversation. 

The Dear John experiment was born out of a desire to increase our willingness to share.  As I encourage others to do so - to share some words with one another and become a little vulnerable - I attempt to do so myself.  With the second series, To My Mother, A Love Letter, I seek to offer more of myself than before, and to increase my own vulnerability. 

The distribution of the second series is slightly different than the first.  In the hopes of inspiring neighborly participation, the letters were delivered in pairs to adjacent residences, one of the envelopes containing the letter in full and the second envelope missing the final page.  Both of the letters contained notes, one that informed the bearer of the complete letter that their neighbor was lacking the conclusion, the second informing the resident who lacked the letter in its entirety that their neighbor could provide the rest.  

Five letters have been pasted, only one of which is full-length.  It can be found adorning the sides of a defunct pay phone in the Bywater, at Piety and Burgundy.

Four other letters are pasted on walls at corners near you, all of which are missing the final page.  The final page, however, can be found at the end of the post beneath this one you are now reading.  

A lone letter found its niche amongst other penned soliloquies, nestled between stationery and stamps in a virtual written-art warehouse at the corner of Royal and Dumaine.  


Pasted in the hours of first light, the letters are anchored to their places with the most gelatinous, thick adhesive I have ever produced.  Due to the batch's extreme viscosity, the letters are not sealed-over with a layer of clear paste, leaving them subject to simple destruction by the elements or at the hands of those unsympathetic to their message or existence.  

Like myself, and perhaps like you, the letters, too, are more vulnerable this time.  

Dear John, Letters from a Friend: Conversation Two in a Series

To My Mother, a Love Letter.

How many times we have detested our mothers.  How many times we have labeled them outdated or overbearing.  How many times we found ourselves growing impatient with their cautions and dismissing their concerns.  Soon to post in a neighborhood near you, a love letter.  From me to my mother—from what was meant for my mother, now meant for you, too— Conversation Two in a Series: To my mother, a Love Letter. 

Act(ion) II of the Dear John, Letters from a Friend experiment shows something more in order to share something more.  Unlike the first letter, destined for Evan, this love letter to my mother is meant to connect us by something rooted more deeply than friendship.  It may be that not all of us have an “Evan,” but each of us has a mother. 

Written in Fall 2009, this letter to my mother is a confessional, an apology, and a tribute to the woman whom I know must have faced many trials, most of which I know I cannot understand.  Penned freely and honestly in a moment brimming with both gratitude and remorse, my mother’s love letter is intended as a testimony to the sacred nature of all that has preceded us, to all who have paved our way.  From an intimate place in an intimate moment came a love letter, to my mother.  Perhaps it is an intimacy too crude-less than should be displayed on the streets, with a kind of tenderness to make us blush.

Posting soon to your neighborhood— Dear John, Letters from a Friend: Conversation Two in a Series, a love letter to my mother.  Let us blush together. 
 

Posted: Conversation One in a Series

The first of the letters have made their way to various locations throughout Marigny/Bywater.  They were printed, pasted, put down (and hopefully picked up) by curious citizens willing to engage with one another in conversation. 

Left on tables in cafes, in the mail boxes of homes and complexes, amongst books in the library, strewn about the cast off 45"s at Euclid Records, and pasted on a few choice slabs of concrete and undulating tin walls, a sampling of their locations are as follows:

Cafe Mojo

Who Dat Cafe

Aunt Sally's Praline warehouse on Chartres and Press Street- The best smelling place to paste

Industrial Sized Dumpster #397 in front of the abandoned building at 317 Burgundy

Metal Pole on Chartres between Piety and Desire Streets.  This location is most likely a major FAIL and up for viewing for a very limited time only as a man driving by passed, stopped, reversed, rolled down his window, and proceeded to inform us he would have it removed promptly.  

There are letters beyond the locations mentioned above and if you spend some time in the neighborhood, I hope you find one somewhere unexpected.   

Dear John, Letters from a Friend: Conversation One in a Series

The first conversation begins with the first letter.  Written to my old boyfriend, but more importantly, written to my old friend.  

We are quite different, Evan and I.  I suppose we always have been quite different, but it remains as true now as it did then that he means a great deal to me.  Evan has always, and I predict will always, keep me accountable to my actions.  He does not mind never letting me off the hook.  He does not mind telling me so.  

The first letter, as written to Evan, admits my Chameleonism.  It addresses our differences, it discusses our sensibilities, it celebrates our relationship.   It commemorates our past, challenges our future.  It shares a part of me with someone who was responsible for shaping a part of me. 

So was sent my first letter to a friend, and the beginning of the breakdown of self-made barricades.  And so begins what I hope to be the first conversation of many throughout the Dear John, Letters from a Friend experiment.  

Already shared with Evan, I now share it with you. 

Conversationalist, Shared

My personal quest for authenticity with others began with a personal question.  How do I share myself with others?  In what way do I let others in?  In what way can I challenge myself to cease changing colors and start making statements?

The answer to these questions resulted in letters- many letters- in a form of methodical documentation that enabled me to write down and own up to my personal thoughts, fears, joys, prayers and shortcomings.  Writing it down and sending it off to those who had deeply affected me was my first step toward being truer to others.  Eliminating the possibility of changing colors in the afterward, I entrusted to another human the handwritten proof of my shared self.  Throughout the past two years I labored to share more with individuals.  Now I will labor to share more with more, hoping that, possibly, you might also.       

So I begin the next Act of the Dear John experiment sharing with all who may wish to see- who may keep me to my accounts- my personal letters.  The letters comprise, with increasing efforts at entirety, years of reflection and realization.  They do not hide my colors, but instead show all things illuminated at the moment of composition. 

The letters open formerly reserved spaces of my self and my soul.  They are a declaration of all my colors in an attempt to identify them, to document them, and to shed them.  Layer by layer, hue by hue, I hope exiting the Stage might bring me closer with the audience of my peers and ignite a dialogue between myself and you, him and her, us and them, all together.

Conversation One in the Dear John experiment series will post in a NOLA neighborhood near you in the coming weeks.  I invite you to call out your colors and participate in the Conversation in any capacity you prefer.