How many maps, in the descriptive or geographical sense, might be needed to deal exhaustively with a given space, to code and decode all its meanings and contents? It is doubtful whether a finite number can ever be given in answer to this sort of question. What we are most likely confronted with here is a sort of instant infinity. -Henri Lefebvre
In summer of 2020, I began taking roadtrips cross-country with the intention of placing my body inside a body of water each day. My constraints: stop driving only once you’ve reached a body of water, sleep only in the car or outside, meet friends only at a body of water, do not enter houses. Geographically, the Great Lakes would be the apex of my journey - my birthplace and 85% of the fresh water of the United States. I was starting from a place which, mired in a 10-year drought, had almost none. Over four weeks, I wended my way east from Oakland, California, ultimately reaching New Hampshire, before turning around and slowly making my way back west.
I had never driven across the country alone. I’d intended to connect with the fearless part of myself, to shed my persistent fear of strange men, and to experience water as much as possible, even in places like Nevada. If there was water, I would find it. And then to swim on my own terms; alone, naked. I wanted to embody a feeling other than vigilance, and I didn’t know what that feeling would be.
As I swam, I collected water in whatever container I happened to find. I noted the time and place and some other aspects of what I was thinking, how I was feeling. What did the water and sky look like?
What emerged was an internalized map of my body in water within the so-called United States - the current seat of hegemony. Where, within this visibly and invisibly connected complex had I put my body into water? Where did the water come from and where was it going? What would it touch? Much of I’d taken for granted became monumental. The most obvious is that every drop of water east of the Mississippi eventually joins the Atlantic Ocean. I had learned this without actually understanding, or particularly believing it. Now I knew that this was true and it astonished me.
What does it feel like when truth moves through your body?
I have completed this journey four times, modifying the route each time. My relationship with water and being alone in public has changed significantly over these four trips. I have become a stronger swimmer. I have learned to how to sleep well in a car and live happily on canned sardines, coffee, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Once, at dawn in Lake Huron, I swam so far from shore, I felt the eerie temptation to disappear into the cosmos.
I will conclude this project with my final water trip in Summer ’24.
My media is my body and water. The materialized form is essence. The essence remains in the contained waters.
Yes, I documented with journal, a film camera, numerous iPhone shots and videos of the surface of the water. Some black and white images taken inside the water, on high speed film. Other than the containers of water, these black and white photos have kept my interest. Enlarged at 4’ x 6’, they suggest that by peering into surrounding water one is peering into the cosmos.
This hits an important aspect of how I experienced water : to dive alone naked into water is to surrender to the cosmos.
Now that I possess over 100 containers of water, some growing algae, some clear, some red with clay, some with pebbles or sand settled in the bottom, I am considering how to share this. I would like participants to handle the containers, to feel whatever there is to be felt by holding them, and I would like to stage a performance. I will need to put my body in these waters one last time in order to obliterate them.
