I’m still here and I have been for over 35 years, 35 years and 9 days to be precise. Before that, I wasn’t here. I wasn’t elsewhere either. I wasn’t.
The Dutch word for “elsewhere” is “elders”. There is a Dutch philosopher with the name Elders. I’ll write hime when I’m at Elsewhere. He will understand.
What is it with these letters? First there were the love letters to the perfect audience. There was a letter to the Claires which still has to be sent, will be sent when I get back. There were Sky Lounge Letters, some folded into paper planes, some never written. There have been letters to a bird girl who dreamt about ladders and is teaching herself Dutch. She sends me words and objects with the power to float. You might know who I mean.
I promised myself I wouldn’t get seduced by words again. I promised myself I would stop writing. I hate writing. It blocks my thinking. I love thinking.
I never tell lies. But when I write down words they aren’t necessarily mine.
How are you? Still alive? Still there? Did you change lately (apart from clothes)?
When I think about Elsewhere I think about myself at Elsewhere. I will never experience an Elsewhere without me. I can imagine somebody sitting at the desk I called mine for four weeks but it is as if I’m in the room, looking at that person. My consciousness can’t imagine a world without me in it. Of course.
I was in France last summer, I spent days on end looking at people jumping from a white cliff in the Drome (a region in the centre-east which you pronounce like the Dutch word for dream), flying like birds. I ate the smelliest cheese I ever tasted and was stung by an insect like every year (this is the first year I’m carrying antihistamine pills so I won’t end up in some second rate Spanish hospital or fancy and expensive Swiss emergency room again). I read books with lots of lighthouses in them. I sat in front of my tent and stared at vineyards. I sat in front of my tent and stared at mountains. I sat on my balcony and stared at medieval buildings. My eyes hurt when we drove back home.
Inbetween we flew to Norway and fell in love with a huge building overlooking a gorgeous fjord. We started dreaming of moving there next year and starting an international centre for contemporary art. There is a possibility we might actually wake up and find ourselves the caretakers of the building pretty soon. We’re practising enjoying rain and living without alcohol already. The first isn’t that difficult in Holland. We better not talk about the second yet.
I read “Life: a users manual” in summer and had trouble sleeping the night after I read about Bartlebooth’s programme. I can’t stop thinking about it.
I’m looking forward to be in Elsewhere again, to see what has changed and what seems to be unchanged. I found my name on the internet, somebody wrote she lived and worked amongst Elsewherians: Kelly Monico, David Dotson, Cynthia Brinich-Langloi, Art Codex and the ghost of Monique Besten. I don’t believe in ghosts.
I’m here now and I will be here in two weeks but here will be there by then.
Love
Monique
