Virtual Goddesses/
Where Language Meets Flesh

Now that I have parted ways with my classmates, art muses left me into the wonder world, I reflect on the virtual muse.

This for me came to pass when I came into virtual contact with a woman by the name of Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney. I was interning at the Eickholt Gallery in Soho. It was a night during a conference call when I spoke with Gaynor. She was at first unassuming, making jokes, but quite the smart woman. Our friendship started when I would come to work in the morning. The gallerist Lisa Eickholt had an international phone link which she didn't pay for, so Gaynor and I were able to chat. I would call her long distance. Soon enough our conversations reached intellectual heights.

It was the early 2000's, gender politics was the topic of the day, whether it was the young white femme having found growth and success in the business world, the flesh of the white female teenager viewed as pornographic, the strife and interchangeability between the male and female in the dating world, Madonna making way for Lady Gaga... It was a time when women took on multiple lovers as much as seven at a time. I know of this because in one relationship I was the third lover and in another I was the potential seventh.

Gaynor had set up a cultural initiative between New York and Liverpool. The link was the Eickholt Gallery where I worked. So our conversations drifted into topics such as my background, hers in Liverpool and our preparation for the Liverpool Biennial. Seemingly our morning conversations were a basis for a true friendship.

We, the artists, at the Eickholt Gallery were supposed to go to Liverpool but due to certain politics Gaynor was removed from her status which made the programme a failure. However she and I continued our dialogue. I continued to serve as the chief executive of Transvoyeur New York. Through our links she and I and another artist succeeded in setting up a virtual art project called Gender, Space, Art and Architecture. It featured me and a Polish artist living in Liverpool communicating on subjects such as our lineage. This project was a great success.

Facebook at this point and time was attracting a great amount of the general public. Soon enough I was invited by Gaynor to join. This became a playground for our inter-connectivity.

Gaynor had became a goddess to me. What was worship took on intellectual and philosophical boundaries which helped me start this blog.

But who are these virtual vixens? I was living under some stress at the time in a transitional apartment in the East Village. And so my interactions on Facebook was a deviance from my life at home. But who are these virtual vixens?

I studied under American photographer and artist Bill Beckley on the subject of semiotics. I delved into books by Roland Barthes, Nabokov, Andres Breton. This was pivotal in my upbringing because I favored the European woman. And I do come from colonialism and not slavery. The women I drifted towards on Facebook were the typical European art girls.

There was a Polish model who lived in Italy. On one afternoon I linked up in a conversation. This lead to what is known on Facebook as poking, where you alert another person of your availability and the other person does the same. It's more or less a game which summons a sexual drive. She and I went on and on. Soon enough it became the basis of a relationship where she would poke me and I would poke her.

The relevance of all of this is that these women on Facebook, more so there than any where else online, perpetuate a desire and fantasy. There are no circumstances which involve truth and friendship. Other women I have known become friends on Facebook and we never bother to communicate. They serve as profile pictures with a status update.

Gaynor and I are no longer friends on Facebook. Word has it she has drifted into another social media, Twitter. But as I reflect on who she was and how we served each other in a real but virtual relationship, I see now how there are no real means of communicating on Facebook. It becomes nothing more than pseudo politicizing, pseudo intellectualizing and the Facebook anti heroes who rule and their followers who subject themselves to these status updates.

Gaynor and I were friends first. As a British woman, she fit perfectly into my philosophical upbringing. Further investigation into this blog and earlier blogs will prove so.

I'm at a point now where I have certain connections with women on Facebook. We share intimate virtual moments instant messaging. They are polite. There is truth and innocence. There is a friendship be it virtual.

The greatest difficulty now is consider Gaynor a woman of my past. Move on. Understand the wherewithal to exist in normality, approach the virtual world as human. Not exist in a virtual world. But be able to counterpart this virtual reality while maintaining a true and profound life.