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WHEN ONE GOES OUT

Cindy Maddera

The Nelson Atkins Museum currently has an installation from Felix Gonzales-Torres. It’s a very simple piece of two light bulbs hanging on the wall. If you knew nothing about art or Felix Gonzales-Torres, you might even walk by, overlooking it as art. Felix Gonzales-Torres is, was, the kind of visual artist that would make my brother groan because of lack of actual paint and canvas.

Cuban-born artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s sculptural installations are imbued with details of his life. On March 5, 1991, he lost his partner Ross Laycock to an AIDS-related death. In this work, Gonzales-Torres conjures a couple through a pair of gradually extinguishing lightbulbs, an artwork that quietly commemorates his partner’s passing and makes a larger reference to the AIDS epidemic. Gonzalez-Torres’s own premature death due to AIDS five years later adds an additional narrative dimension to the work: viewers bear witness to both artist and partners’ lives and losses through the two nestling bulbs hanging from entwined cords.

The last time I was there, both bulbs were blinding in their brightness. On December sixteenth, one of the lights went out and when I saw the posting, I sobbed at my desk. I remember looking at the two lit bulbs long enough to give myself vision twinkles and believing with my whole heart that the instillation would come down before any of the bulbs burned out. I wanted to believe this was all an artistic hoax and someone just replaces the bulbs before the museum opens for the day so we would never know. I wanted both bulbs to stay bright and shining forever.

It’s hard being the bulb that’s still on.

There was an episode recently of Somebody Somewhere where the character Tricia was upset because she had forgotten their sister’s birthday. Sam and Tricia play sisters and their other sister passed away from cancer. That’s the lead in to season one of the series. Sam was trying to calm her sister Tricia and said to her that is was okay and that there were some days she didn’t even think about about their lost sister. It was a well done scene on the various ways we handle loss and grief. I wondered if there would ever be a day when I just didn’t think about Chris. I don’t know what that would even feel like. I know Michael said in the very beginning that Chris never goes away, but I wonder how long he’s going to stick to that. When does he eventually say something like “yeah…I know I said that, but maybe it’s time you let go of Chris completely”?

My answer will always be never.

Michael has a coworker who announced that their wife has terminal cancer. It’s the long, slow, kill you kind of cancer. Michael has talked about this fairly young family often now since the announcement. In his most recent conversation about his coworker, Michael brought up the conversation we had all those years ago. He admitted that sometimes it feels like he’s living with a ghost and one he’ll never be able to live up to. Yet he still insists that Chris never goes away. I should just tell Michael even, though he won’t actually listen, that he shouldn’t try to live up to as much as he should try to live a life. Stop projecting your feelings and start truly hearing what is being said. But it is true; he will never live up to the ghost. Blessing. Curse. Catch 22. I will never be free of this book.

I went back to the Nelson to see the Gonzales-Torres piece. I was on a girl date with Melissa and I was telling her all about the piece as we approached it, but the bulb was no longer burned out. It had been replaced with a new bulb and I was outraged. I was furious. How dare they replace the bulb and wreck the message of this art! Rage filled my body and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I had to know why someone would do that. Why would someone just go in and wreck this completely emotional work of art? So we stopped at the information desk on our way out where we were told that the bulbs are replaced when both go out. So at some point, without posting, the second bulb went out. They were just resetting the piece. Which….maybe…that’s what I have done. That’s what we all do. When bulbs go out, we replace them with new bulbs. Wattage may be different from the last bulb, but it’s still a light source.

There’s a lot of weight attached to being the last light one, a lot of responsibility. It takes a lot of energy to be the only light left in the room, always compensating for the light that’s been lost. Sometimes a room needs more light than just one bulb can provide. I don’t like sitting in the dark unless it’s at the movies. The dark is for sleeping or gazing at the night sky until you are sleeping. I prefer the light. Even when it is so bright it makes your vision twinkle.