The Apple. Oh, Does It Seem Big To You Because To Me This Is Just A Regular Sized Apple

FELLAS!

This is a quick one (RELATIVELY SPEAKING), largely because I didn't bring my camera to NYC on my two whirlwind trips this fall, but I wanted to register two things and two things only. After the jump, in order of significance...


1) Friends are the best. Friends you've had for something like a decade or longer are the double-best. Friends that throw beautiful weddings and are thoughtful and gracious hosts and generally make life delightful (and find partners who add to the pile o' delight) are the triple-best. And what can you say to such people except for "sorry for dancing like a weirdo at your wedding."

Seriously: it's been really wonderful to find out how much I still love weddings - even more than before this year, to be honest. Between a sense of how I'm promising to be there for the couple and a deeper appreciation for what their commitment to each other entails, it's become a more profound occasion, and one whose core values I still love and believe in: committing to a process of ongoing work, of ongoing listening, and of mutual sacrifice and perpetual forgiveness. And also there is dancing. It's pretty groovy, you guys.

2) Manifesto is incredible. I did very little New Yorking aside from blitzing around to see friends I hadn't seen in forever, given the centrality of this wedding to my time there. And those friends were/are great! Hooray for friends! (Coming up next week: I will discuss how friends made this year... good??)

But I did get a second, even-more-whirlwind trip in a couple of weeks later, mostly to see a few friends I hadn't been able to catch my first go around, and had the ridiculous pleasure of getting into Manifesto at the Park Avenue Armory a few days before its official opening. That's the main impetus for this post, is to suggest that: if you are in New York while this is running, you must see it. A video installation featuring Cate Blanchett and using the text of dozens upon dozens of manifestos about art and by artists, it manages to simultaneously be a top-shelf set of short films, a collective meditation on artistic conviction, and a choral, musical, transcendent experience. (That last detail recurs about every ten minutes or so, and is the main reason I had no problem losing the better part of an afternoon in the installation.) It's good, gang, and so is art! Go ye forth and check it out.

So.

I'm saving my "holy crow what was this year" reflections for next week, but this wraps up most of my travel for this year. Next up: more travel! As I may have mentioned in this space (maybe not), it was actually cheaper to book a round-trip flight than a one-way when I returned from Europe, so I had a window of opportunity to return if I decided to take it and could find a budget that worked for a post-Christmas loop. One dirt-cheap mid-January Barcelona-to-Boston airfare later (almost as cheap as flying back from Chicago would have been!), I locked it in. And so there'll be a little mini-revival of this blog's ostensible purpose (photographing and videotaping random buildings in other geographies) as I return to Scotland to explore and write in the Highlands, revisit pals in Glasgow/Bristol, and see an old friend in Barcelona. Can't stop, as the younger generation is prone to say, but also most likely won't stop.

All that, and the realization that I am ending this year feeling grateful, loved, and lucky, coming up next week! Til then, have a Merry Christmas, whoever is reading this ol' dishrag, and tell the folk you love that you love 'em! They like it, I bet!