MY MOMMY IS BEAUTIFUL - yoko ono project by Paolina Weber

There we were. Some landfill that is now Tribeca. My revolutionary mother and that artist. I was the... tag along. Had we been to PS1? Back when it was an empty school. Or were we at some happening on Wooster Street. I remember those (always) red square pillows. Sitting on them on the floor with you watching: naked people bump into each other. No, that one, that was in Venice at the biennale. This one was a screaming man naked except for a sheep’s skin hide (Willem DaFoe). That one, they walked in a square pattern and eventually crashed. Now I understand. Was that Merce Cunningham by the way? Marina Abramovic?  Sometimes I was really bored. Bored beyond sentences. Another performance in Venice : Do you remember the artist that made a fake cow with a seat inside and then he had a Bull mount the cow, while he was inside collecting fluid. That was so obscene. I remember you pulled me quickly away, but a bit too late. Some other island in some other factory or church. I was still the tag along. Sleeping on piles of coats at my bedtime, during the parties for the openings. The coats piled in the only room in a loft; back when a loft was just a big big space and a wall to divide the loft space from the bed space. Except for your friend who had that crazy big white foam couch like the surface of the moon and a mirror with a man inside it looking back at me.
And your car. Our car. The yellow Wolzwagen Beatle, driving up the West Side Highway, with the rocks shooting up at me through the little rusted hole on the floor. They hadn't really paved the West Side Highway yet. At least not evenly. I was in my Swiss orthopedic shoes; shoes you said were so elegant (I hated that word) for my knees from the Doctor in Cortina. Blue ankle boots. Driving back up to our apartment. Listening to the radio. I push the buttons. I turn the knob.Our apartment on the River, with the aluminum square cold floor tiles placed like a square. My hopscotch game, a Carl Andre that Daddy left us, along with that work, who made it? Those four funny wheels drilled into each corner on the ceiling! I imagined if the house fell into the river, I would just roll down the hill, standing on our ceiling. Some conceptual artist. I was seven and I could say the word "conceptual artist". The corner light piece Flavin gave (Untitled, to Paolina) that later you sold. To Paolina. I understand why. Now that I am a mother. You sold it like we buy groceries. What was mine was yours and yours was mine. We were the same body. The 'strumming my face with his fingers' song. You wouldn't even have to tickle me, just singing it wiggling your fingers at me; I'd burst into a frenzy of laughter. Jeepers Creepers. The hand in the lagoon.How was it that every car broke down? All those rentals, whether it was in Pisa or in Pennsylvania. Mommy you took me to the Lightening Field. I understand now. I saw the Lightening Field. The Walter De Maria Lightening Field and that log cabin. Walking through those lightening rods. The rain and then the field lit up like a grid and the mountains met the sky in the pink darkness. It was the same as the car breaking down. I understand. It was for me to see everything. To pause and look. To pause. The poppies on the side of the road. The landfill off Tribeca. This wall drawing, that dance piece, this word, a definition printed on a canvas, that shoe, this smile, that flag on the George Washington Bridge, this neon tent, that wrapped church, this striped red and white piazza, that artist in linen, this sea of coats, that FREEDOM, this Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. A freedom to bend language and space. You are so beautiful I understand. I was always there. You showed me everything, you gave me everything. Even when you were always looking everywhere else, you had me inside your eyes, looking out. You gave me eyes.
When I'm looking from above the graph. Time is not as important as memory. It doesn’t have to be flat. We are together.
Paolina Weber to her mother Annina Nosei