(On Failure)
Dominika Hádělová
It is easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends.
(Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That, 1967)
I clearly remember the moment when I was at the airport in Scotland, it was the
twelfth of January, I had a ticket to Rio de Janeiro and I knew that I would spend
next five weeks surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. I was going on an expedition to
Tristan da Cunha, the remotest island in the world, and that was a certainty.
Except, couple weeks later I was standing in the middle of Los Angeles, six
thousand miles the other way, surrounded by desert. I cannot remember the exact
moment, the tipping point, when this turn happened - but looking back it all felt
so smooth as if I was being gently pulled to this other place all along.
prologue.
I wanted to go to this island to see – to see the massive active volcano, to see what the place was like, what it was like to live so far away from
another community. I did not have a specific reason. I think I just wanted to go.
On the plane I was sitting next to a Buddhist monk. What lingers with me the most about this encounter is his answer to many of my questions
about his childhood in Nepal. He would say: ‘I do not remember’. But this simple sentence was said with such an inner comfort. There was no hint
of regret or surprise; he was not trying hard to remember. He did not remember and he was fine with it.
ocean.
After I arrived to Brazil I joined nine other people – artists, journalists, one chef and captain, at a small schooner called Business. What a terrible
name, I thought. It was raining and we spent the first few days fixing the boat and stocking food – for five weeks and ten people, with no fridge and
water seeping through hidden cracks inside the boat.
I used to like the evenings a lot. The sunlight became softer, everything slowed down, we ate dinner on the deck together gathered around one
plastic table and there were the same songs like País Tropical playing in the background. On repeat. One time, the day after the full moon, we were
sitting on the deck and the sun was setting on one side, the moon was rising on the other, our boat was in between. I was looking at the moon then,
thinking of my friend Lauren in Scotland to whom when saying bye outside an underground bar in a drizzle I promised to think about when the
full moon would be up, and I found it really hard to relate to what life at home was like. It seemed so far away. But not just far away but really far
away. The fact that it was the middle of January, the temperatures were above 35 degrees and I was at a sailing boat in the seas of the Brazilian coast
made it impossible. It was a completely new world for me and every morning I woke up with absolute not knowing of what was going to happen,
everything was possible.
After couple of days it seemed that we were getting used to the boat. It was becoming part of us. I remember feeling that the city was slowly washing
off from me and every time we were on shore I felt like a visitor. I had somewhere else to go, to escape to. The boat often reminded me of times
spent at summer cottage and I felt so free. There was nowhere to go, not many choices to pick from, no aesthetic rules to adhere to. No need for
phone, no need for watch, no need for shoes. We would swim in the open sea, go to almost empty beaches, sleep on the deck, if we felt like it, and
wake up with the morning breeze and dew.
I asked our captain what is the ocean out-there like. He said: ‘ It’s like a friend; it’s always there. It’s so expansive, so vast. It’s like sky on the Earth’.
The sailing part I found incredibly frustrating - I did not know anything. Which rope to pull? What knot to tie? How to unwind the sail? How to
pull the anchor up? (Which we managed to lose – and retrieve!) I was totally overwhelmed by the enormous forces of wind, sun and water. There
was nowhere to hide from them, and after we started moving - everything started moving. Wooden doors creaking ajar; cups sliding, stacked clothes
falling, nets with fruits swinging, guts twisting and cutlery overboard. I have started to take things hour after hour, not trying to fight anything,
listening to the body reacting to the constant movement and the vastness. One morning a bird flew by and I felt really warmed by this – a visitor. I
started to see all this as running a marathon. I knew it would not be easy but maybe at the end there would be something rewarding.
But the end as we imagined never came – we never made it to the island, we never left Brazilian water and we never got to see the deep purple
colour of the ocean near Tristan that one captain told us about. It was a failure; a banal failure. The island remained only imagined, never actually
taking shape for us.
Now I can tell that the ending was coming for a while but then I could not see it, or believe it, maybe both. Or could I?
Later, after spending a few days without a boat and a captain, lying on a huge inflatable mattress (which grotesquely came to represent our island) in
the middle of embarrassingly dirty pool in a Surf Shanti Hostel in a town where apparently Brigit Bardot used to spend her holidays, I was standing
at the airport again, heading to Los Angeles.
desert.
This story had actually started about six months before I flew to Brazil.
The expedition was long planned for summer and then was suddenly called off. That time, I got stuck in France in Paris – and now it is a place I
call home. There one evening that summer, on the way from Palais de Tokyo, a friend of mine stopped to buy cigarettes and I bought a little booklet
with golden Bon Voyage written on the cover; it was the only copy in the shop. Through this amazing little book I got to know about a fantastic
bookshop in Le Marais and about two female artists, whose work I immediately connected to (and maybe was obsessing about a little). After the
expedition failed the second time and I was stranded in Brazil without any aim, return flight to Europe long ahead and the carnival starting, I
weighted the options and then on the spur of the moment decided to take a flee to Los Angeles. And there, in a city with four million inhabitants, I
bumped into those two artists under quite coincidental circumstances. Car park, yoga centre, juice bar. The time and space.
In Los Angeles I later went to a breath work class taught by one of these artists, Lauren Spencer King, and it was such an overwhelming, connecting
and opening experience for me; probably the strongest experience from the entire city. It was really special. Pink. Opaque. Round. It was in that
moment when I strongly felt that I was meant to come to that city to experience this, that I was in that place for reason – to understand, to see
differently, to be moved. The two cities of Paris and Los Angeles linked and things came full-circle.
During those five weeks away, I ate grapefruits in the most perfect shades of light yellows that were juicy and sour and made my tongue tingle. I
walked hundreds of meters in right angles, refusing the statement about the non-walkability of the place. I walked from Beverly Hills to Chinese
Theatre, from Runyon Canon Park to Beverly Hills, from Silver Lake Meadow to the end of Silver Lake Boulevard, up to Hollywood Boulevard
and then to Vine Street at Santa Monica, where I admitted the non-walkability as a statement of fact and took the bus. While walking, strangers
told me things like: ‘You are so beautiful, I saw you crossing the road, that was so inspirational’, not knowing if I should laugh or run away. One
morning I tried to climb through a tiny bathroom window in Silver Lake, helping two young guys in running shorts, who locked themselves out. I
also sat next to a woman with four bras on and a half-smoked cigarette in her hand on a bus to Santa Monica, wondering what was her story. I saw
monkeys with striped long fluffy tails, and missed seeing a dolphin that split in half; whose intestine exploded in the air in front of the eyes of
everyone on the boat but me, because I went to get coffee from under the deck. I could write about all these moments that are quirky, seem to
illustrate the journey and come handy when answering: ‘How was the trip?’ But it is not what I remember the journey for. To me, it was about
those things that could not be seen or touched, that can hardly be talked about in one sentence.
When I walked in the sand in the Joshua Tree Park or sat down in the Silver Lake Meadow, I felt something of a deep connection. The earth felt
special. Silver. Purple. Peach-pink. I recalled my friend talking about her trip to Israel, how she felt about the land. She found it hard to explain but
she said she understood why it was called Holy Land. Only now I fully understand what she was trying to say that time.
This journey left me wondering. I wonder how do we meet people? How do we end up in places? Are we being pulled by something else than just
our own intentions? There sure are forces that we cannot see yet we acknowledge their existence. For example: the moon’s gravity, causing masses of
water to sway from one side to the other, the forces that cause rocks to crack in half, the forces that cause tectonic plates move and shift shapes of
what we know so well. How much of what is around us we cannot see but we only feel? How does the moon make us feel? How does the sun make
us feel? Really; what do we feel? A Czech artist Adriena Simotova talked about a blind child who drew a turtle better than a person who could see.
Does our ability to see make us blind to what we can feel? If an artist has higher sensitivity and can express his feelings, is it then his task to make
the invisible visible, to show what is felt rather than seen? I also wonder about intuition. We feel when something is right or wrong. We feel when
pulled towards something. I started to believe that when we listen, the intuition grows stronger. I started to believe that deep inside of ourselves
there is much more wisdom than we at times acknowledge – I often look for answers outside, instead of looking for them within which would be
much more true.
epilogue.
Now when I look at sea – I see the space differently. I remember the salty wind and it is no longer something that is there, ahead of me. It is
something that used to be around me, wrapping me around, that was part of me, something I was trying to understand. It reminds me of this
journey, of the remotest island we tried to reach. Now, I see the island as a mysterious misty vessel that got us all moving - towards something, that
took me to two places that brought up a different side in me and let me meet incredibly loving and inspiring people from whom I learnt what I had
to understand. Journeys can take us on unintended paths but if we keep moving with our eyes open and keep trusting ourselves, they can take us to
places where we in fact really need to be.
So yes, it was a failure and I have never reached the island – but now I believe I was never meant to go to the island after all.
Photos: Gérard Bishop, Jeune fille en train de gonfier son matelas pneumatique.