Elegy

I want to see Marina Abramović's piece "The Artist is Present."  I've been reading most people who sit with her end up crying.  That, along with the below tid-bit makes sitting her with her a must do on my list:

"One of the first people to sit with Abramović was her former partner, the artist Ulay. They worked together for a dozen years, and the New Yorker's Judith Thurman gave this account of their last work together, which took place in 1988. They had begun planning a walk together on the Great Wall of China when they were a happy couple. By the time they had arranged the logistics permissions for the months-long trip, they no longer wanted to be together. So:


Their parting was wrenching for Abramović, whose nerves can defy almost any blow except for abandonment. She still believes in true love, and she dispenses affection with a lavishness as intense as her craving for it. But, she reflected, "people put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one." On March 30, 1988, they embarked on their last performance. She started walking the Great Wall of China from the East, where it rises in the Mountains, and Ulay set off from the West, where it ends in the desert. After three months, and thousands of miles, they met in the middle, and said goodbye.

This moment, right here, was the next time the two made art together. Although, of course, now Ulay is no longer Abramović's collaborator — he was instead a participant in her piece."