Life has a habit of going days without feeling too real. In the week or two before I left NY, it felt like I was immersed in something that co-exists on another plane, something that wasn't meant to emerge or gate open into our world.
Not one, but two 2nd Street thrift stores open up on the Upper West Side, double-frying the streets of my childhood, already and always under construction and becoming some new, blander thing. Meeting Jeremy Fragrance, too, superimaged the internet world onto my real one, and suddenly I couldn’t trust the ground I was standing on. The greenscreen road suddenly clear, rippling water.
The surface, though connotatively thin, is infinitely layered. The complexity of the surface is linked to a thought around performance that I hope to keep revisiting. I’m interested in a stance akin to “the defense of performance” and am beginning to understand performativity as a blown-out cliché that skips over how it can serve as a routine form of communication and connection.
Performance takes on empty and meaningless forms when the stage is too present, when there's too much focus on a one-way broadcast of information. But superficiality—the surface—does not mean lack of depth, or meaninglessness, or dishonesty, or a lack of sincerity, it simply means it’s there for your eyes to see. When was the last time you performed? Maybe you’ll find it was a pretty mundane, brief moment.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so worried about whether or not i can trust the surface and focus on my literacy skills, so I can always read it for what it is.
In an awesome essay by Tavi Meraud ("Iridescence, Intimacies"), propaganda about the surface-level is interrogated. As a cliché, surface level diminishes the depth, tension, and play that actually occurs on the surface, exemplified by the mirage of glistening water, or how the color of snake and fish scales can't be captured as they move through light.
The surface itself can’t be dismissed as lacking depth, and is its own complex system full of information.
Under the heavy arch of the weeping willow is a solid green pond, marbled and frozen syrup on a perfect September day in Central Park. When you toss something in it, a rock or a wood chip, it ripples plainly and reminds you that it’s just water. Something impossibly light clings to the surface. The little green dots take back the full shape of the water right after a rock falls in, but the initial moment of illusion carries on.
The glassy, oily bloom is a play on optics, even if you know what you’re looking at. But there’s another, dare I say, crazier illusion, which is stereotypical of poison: the whole of this beautiful bloom is harmful. It's right in the green thing's name: Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs).
HABs have become an increasing concern for the parks department and the City’s conservation orgs over the years. On this perfect day in the park, the bloom coagulates like fatty sauce on refrigerated leftovers, producing a spectacular iridescence, a shimmering that looks even shinier when photographed. One of those instances where the moment isn’t fully captured, but a special effect is produced.
"Harmful blooms tend to make the water look like green paint.” This comes from an article by the parks department on identifying HABs and informing the public that they’re a growing problem, to not let their dogs drink from these ponds, when they appear and disappear, etc.
HABs prevent oxygen from circulating throughout the ecosystems they obstruct (killing fish and underwater plants), and can cause things like eye irritation, breathing difficulties, and dizziness in humans. Of course, Harmful Algal Blooms are not just a problem in Central Park, but around the world as temperatures rise everywhere.
The paint effect, I can corroborate for sure. The camera intensifies the shimmering, green paint sensation. Does that mean the camera is also a harmful bloom?
I end the night finding out that this green dream is really the sister phenomenon of red tides. And then, there’s the Pacific Blob. Late late, in front of Wikipedia, I remember sitting under a crowd of trees, looking into the green pond. I'm happy this small moment formed a connection between all this different information. It’s also slightly harrowing.