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From: Siobhan
Date: 31 May 2001
Time: 00:10:51
Remote Name: 65.65.115.45
Hi, Jimmy -
This isn't a love letter. This is just what I thought of when I sat down to write this, and that's sort of how it came out. I'll probably write back and apologize later; I just came home from dinner with the Solteros and all of Wendy's friends and had about three glasses of Bordeaux with dinner, so I'm tired and weepy and emotional. But I have to write this down now, before the words leave me and I forget why I was sitting here feeling this way. Please bear with me.
I went to Wendy's graduation from Oxy today; her family and a ton of Dallas friends came out and watched Karen accept her diploma. I took twelve white balloons and handed them out to everyone in the front row; we attached little white stars that I brought and wrote the url of the website that the Solteros are maintaining in her memory, and on the other side of the cards, I wrote things like, "Undeniably Wendy - we miss you," and "Wendy, you are our star: shine brightly." When Wendy's name was called, the entire graduating class of five hundred stood for her and applauded. Karen took her diploma for her. We let the balloons go up into the air, wind carrying them away to where Wendy is now. I cried. A lot more than I thought I would. I didn't even realize how much it was going to hurt to be there when she couldn't be. I didn't have any idea how awful it would be to watch the torture that simply being there was for her family.
The senior art majors get to have their work shown on campus. Wendy's photography, drawing, and sculptures took up two entire galleries. Her professors also took a bunch of recordings of some of her writings, an audio project, some of her film projects, and footage from the funeral and spliced it all together into a reel that is playing in the main gallery on a continuous loop. There's the short she did at a bar here in Los Angeles called the Cat & Fiddle, and it's of Karen and Rebecca and Nikki interacting with various strangers over an evening. There's a collage of photos, some of Wendy, other of photos she took over her life. They're amazing, as I'm sure you know. In my ten years as a semiserious photographer, I haven't captured as much brilliance as what is sitting in that gallery at Oxy tonight. Much of it is either on the walls or stills were taken for the reel. There's also an audio recording of Wendy's father reading "Cool Chick," the piece that she wrote sitting in your bathroom in Denver at three in the morning sometime last summer.
One piece of that footage on the reel is of you. I was sitting there watching it, bawling, of course, and then you appeared on the screen. It's obviously some super-8 or 16-millimeter footage that she took of you somewhere in the world, probably that same trip to Denver that she wrote "Cool Chick" on, and you're standing next to a truck in what looks like a parking lot. There's no audio, but you're obviously talking to Wendy behind the lens. I don't know what project she was shooting you for, but I was surprised to see it. I simply didn't know that it was there.
You look so at ease. The wind was blowing, and your hair is everywhere, and you're talking and laughing. At one point near the end of the segment, you turned away from the camera, and I could see your tattoos poking out from below your shirtsleeves, and you looked back over your shoulder at the camera and you smiled, this huge, toothy grin, at Wendy, at whoever was going to see it eventually.
I have no idea what you were talking about. I don't even need to know, really. I just thought it was a really breathtaking moment, a moment where you look so happy and young and beautiful. It occurred to me that I've never even seen you in broad daylight; just in the rain the day of the funeral and in the dark outside later that night. It was an amazing sight. I'm so glad she was there to capture it.
I didn't know Wendy as well as you did; I knew her because I knew Karen. Impossible to know one and not the other, for sure. I was there mainly to support the Solteros and Karen on an excruciatingly painful day. I still can't help feeling as if I had no right to be there.
I thought of you today; more than I can possibly express. I took a lot of mental notes that have now escaped me because I thought you should know about today, since you weren't here to see it for yourself. My description here is addled by exhaustion and way too much wine, so I hope that at some point you get a chance to come out here see the whole thing before the exhibit comes down. If you don't make it here, I might be able to make you a copy of the reel, at least, once it's down.
I hope things are well with you and that you're still as beautiful as you are on that reel and in my memory.
Lots of love, Siobhan
posted on 5/20/2001 10:29:25 PM | [permanent link]