Everyone looks different in mirrors
even to themself
When it’s raining,
I play a game.
I like the sound.
Rain.
The way it hits the glass,
the floor,
the cars,
the tent.
I like that it’s not me.
But maybe,
if I listen far enough away,
I can see where it lands.
So I close my eyes.
Not like I’m hiding from the monsters.
Real gentle,
like I’m about to sleep.
Then I listen.
I listen as far as I can.
First, close.
They’re easy.
Loud.
Present.
And then I jump from lily pad to lily pad,
drum skin to drum skin,
listening to each one
just long enough
to see where it is.
You get into a groove.
Where is it landing?
What is it landing on?
What’s this drop’s story?
Because when you listen for long enough,
you realise
they’re all carrying a message.
Each one feels alive.
If you listen to them,
you can hear their heartbeat.
They all have one.
They’re not all working together,
when you listen to all of them,
it’s incoherent.
It’s a mess.
But when you find one drop you like,
it’ll come back.
And if you listen for long enough,
you’ll hear it.
Nature’s beat.
Reflection in the puddle
We’re a lot like raindrops.
Repetitive.
Annoying to some.
Essential to others.
Each one convinced it’s the main character,
gone before it knows where it landed.
I love those games of scale,
when you imagine the size of molecules,
the way Feynman describes a single atom
as a world you could fall into forever.
Or the biggest stars.
UY Scuti,
1,700 times wider than our sun,1
and so far away that its light is already a memory
by the time it reaches you.
It gives me a sense of perspective.
That’s freeing.
But it’s fading.
It’s a difficult perspective to maintain.
Not in the macro sense of identity,
but in the micro,
within the interactions with others,
with the world.
Unfortunately, for all of us,
we have been defined.
To be undefined would mean we would not have survived.
The world we were born into was already too complex
to forego proper nouns.
So we amassed them
and became them.
They say you grow into your name.
They don’t.
I just said that.
But it’s true.
We all learn how we like it to be said,
and by whom.
Over time,
our language patterns attach adjectives to us too,
and eventually we grow into those.
But we have a choice.
I’ve had the good fortune to meet people
whose parents told them they could do anything,
that they were smart,
amazing,
incredible.
I’ve watched them walk into rooms
like it was built for them.
Eyes level.
Unstoppable.
Certain.
And I’ve watched people
who were told they were difficult
walk into those same rooms
and shrink.
So I know it works.
So why can’t we all have that?
Participants
The mirrors in my practice are bait. Their function on the street is attraction. They’re a marketing arm of my practice. But they began as a marketing trick with myself.
When I would travel for work, there was very little space for introspection. In the military, you don’t get a lot of time to yourself. And for me, that’s always been an important part of how I live. So I took advantage of the one privileged position I usually had access to: a bathroom with a mirror. I’d write all over it. Things I wanted to see in myself. Who I wanted to become. Who I didn’t want to lose.
I’ve got a friend who’s been doing the same thing for a long time, and it’s not an uncommon trick. But over time, I realised not everyone does this. Not everyone has found a way to talk to themselves in the mirror.
When we look in a mirror, we assume what we’re seeing is exact. But no mirror is exact. A friend came by the studio last week, and we talked about good and bad mirrors. They told me that when they go to dance classes, people come in early to get the good mirrors, looking at themselves for hours while reciting complex ballet routines. Watching yourself arch in pain for hours while having a compromising reflection of yourself can destroy your idea of self.
I started playing with mirrors on the street around 2023, partly because I wanted something I knew people would look at. Seeing a reflection of yourself is, at the very least, more recognisable than some novel object I’ve created. That evolved into hiding what I wanted to say to them on mirrors.
The Vogue installation was my way of trying to create the most beautiful mirror I could with the budget I had. A way of making the cost of beauty feel like zero, when the fashion and beauty industries place the cost of it so high, in terms of what we have to achieve physically and financially to get within its grasp.
But somewhere between making someone feel beautiful and deciding what they should feel, the line disappears.
If you gaze into the abyss long enough, the abyss gazes back.
-Nietzsche
The fact that I’m now positioning myself in a place of control, directing the viewer’s perspective, is benefiting me. And it wasn’t long before I realised that if I’m performing this role, I’m no better than those who’ve done it previously. Because, if I’m honest, what I was trying to do was gain attention.
Reflections
Coming to terms with that side of my practice, this push and pull of street interventions, this decision that I will make people participants in my work whether they’ve chosen to be or not, didn’t come for free. It pushed me to reflect on what other people in this position do. That’s where I came to the restrictions and censorship elements of the recent Reflections project.
On the surface, it’s a juvenile installation where you draw all over a box. Underneath, it’s a set of constrained boundaries layered on top of an object that’s been pre-censored so I get the visual aesthetic I want at the end. That’s not true for all four walls, but for two of the sides, for sure: the constraints almost prevent any participant’s individual view from being heard.
In the sound of all the raindrops landing on those panels, it’s the sound of the ground they’re hitting that defines the noise.
Mirrors are always going to be complex. But my understanding is simple.
Like me,
They change how you see yourself.
I love you loads
- R x
p.s My favourite mirror is still this one that I sent to Conde Nast legal counsel after they sent me a cease and desist. It’s a mirror, with their cease and desist on it. I specifically did not print their logo on this one. They did not reply.
Every human who has ever lived, standing arm to arm, couldn't reach around a third of it.