photo diaries with paul: chinese new years eve

it was 6:16 am the morning of chinese new years eve and my mother called me from my grandfather’s deathbed from the town of my birth and i told him 爷爷，我爱你 like an important message i had to deliver so that he could carry it with him to the other side - wherever that place is that people go when they die. 没事，没事 my mother said, because people always die. and then I did this shoot with Paul

and I asked him, when you “shoot,” what if it’s like you actually “shoot” me — like with a camera like a gun, hundreds and thousands of times and each time I die a beautiful death and I ask him: will one day I be too old and wrinkly for you to want to shoot me and will I still glow when we meet in person and he giggled and thought that was all very funny. we talked about memory games and I said: when you are old, do you

just become a vessel for holding memories (and when you die, where do those memories go?) do you become a lonely prisoner of your own mind, does your memory get worse over time. no, he said, you just get memories mixed up sometimes because you have so many of them and he tells me about his bird calls and all the birds that he befriends and I think to myself how I am really in the mood for birds right now and I don’t know why. we talk of course about new york city

and when will I go back and how the rent is going down but still too expensive for me to want to live there, how when I met him I felt like that was my reason for being in New York City — to be inpsired by artist friends with a life like an archive of memories and he said, you really good, actually, and I said, yes, I am sad this morning but overall I am truly very happy because I’m in love and you know what I realized — that I only want friends and loves in my life who are UNAFRAID OF THE DARK, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we

are friends, I said. he said, I decided to live life like the pandemic was going to last forever. I said, that’s a great approach, I will do that too. he told me about all fo this journals and I felt super inspired by that — organized by collection — but I am going to start NOW so that I don’t have a mountain to sort through when I am old. then after the shoot I felt so emotionally exhausted from life and death and thinking about my grandfather I took a long walk through Berlin ice and snow and spent 4 hours cooking a feast dinner for Chinese New Years, then ate cake with F & M slept wishing him a peaceful, smooth journey to the next world…