Anne-Marie
I am the deconditioned husk of a once moderately marvelous narwhal. I lay here at the bottom of the sea, apathetically observing the algae slime forming on my tusk. The very same tusk where once magic would shoot forth. Now there’s just a slow stream of bubbles. Like sad underwater farts. Unicorn of the sea, they used to call me.
You see, I used up all my magic to survive this goddamning pandemic. The incessant daily emails with constantly changing information, the intricate and complex ritual of donning and doffing protective equipment, the wondering if the equipment would run out, the really sick and sometimes dying patients aerosolizing their covid spittle onto my scrubs and visor. The fear of death. Theirs and mine. Of the ones I love.
I would save up what little bit of magic I had left for my children so that I could make rainbow-themed crafts with them or plan elaborate socially distanced children’s birthday parties that distracted from the lack of normalcy. But when the adrenaline of apocalypse started wearing off, I found myself slowly sinking to the bottom of the sea. The construction paper rainbow in our window became sun-bleached and saggy. The occasional corpses of deflated birthday balloons continued to litter our backyard. And here I lay, passively observing the decay of these last bursts of creativity from the bottom of the sea, wondering when the magic will come back again. The energy for creating beautiful things instead of just surviving ugly ones. But I can see that I am certainly not alone. I lazily look around me and I see the sea floor covered with other burned out casualties of the pandemic. Alive but not entirely intact.
Consider that my excuse and apology, Anne-Marie, for not having written about your lovely apartment sooner.
Anne-Marie is my designer friend, but I consider her to be a normal human as well. By which I mean she makes accessible design. She can take grey paint to a cinder block wall, add an oversized ball of yarn and a Japanese sex mask and make it look like goddamned art. I challenge you to leave her in any space with a can of paint and a few random objects. You will come home to find design magic. The kind that forces you to stop and look around in awe at how a new atmosphere was born of simple creativity and well curated objects.
Perhaps I particularly admire her brand of magic because it stands in such clear opposition to my hoarder’s design aesthetic. The one where I have about 20 unedited ideas at any given point and I can’t bear to part with any one of them so I just use them all and they have to greedily vie for the observer’s attention. Hers is a lovely form of minimalism that still manages to bring warmth and life to each of the individual components of the design. She has set the stage for each object so that it can be properly contemplated and appreciated. These objects are living their best life with Anne-Marie.
So follows how Anne-Marie designs herself and how she herself was designed. Rounded cheekbones, wide brown eyes and the perfectly lipsticked lips of a vintage movie starlet. Add some sculptural black clothing, a subtle linear tattoo on her ear that she then dangles art from in the form of earrings. Even when she wears sweatpants, it looks design.
In fact, the first kernels of an idea for this blog were formed from the experience of walking into Anne-Marie’s apartment for the first time. I remember thinking that I loved seeing the magic that real people were able to create in real spaces and that somebody should definitely make a blog about that because it’s all I really want to see.
So, Anne-Marie, as I lay here on the sea-floor decomposing and wallowing in the tragedy of our times, I know that it is in the celebration of the magic such as you are able to create in our imaginations that I will once again find the inspiration to get my sorry ass up and swim again. Maybe even make magic.
Until then...
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