Night Report: Energy Exhibition

They said no photos in Soho House but we didn’t give half a fuck.

Follow me into the numinous future. Abandon your plans and your physics. The stars hang lower than you think… if you wanted, you could reach up and touch them. Shall I show you how?

1. J. and I strut into the canopy of LB and everyone turned to look at us. We heard a hundred hearts beating over the rhythmic pounding of the 808s. In the back by the couches and the boarded-up pool I swung my eyes around and the crowd recoiled: some turned away, blushing, and others were drawn in, glancing over, trying their best to be seen. It’s exhilarating to exert such influence. Wherever we go we summon compliments, admiration, appreciation. One powerful being is intimidating; two together is a rare exhibition, honey for saccharine-starved eyes.

2. Good luck trying to run away from this, I told her, my finger lifting her chin. You and I are connected now. It’s far too late to stop it. Her eyes are wide open, irises eclipsed by the brow, neck fully extended. (Once I look you in the eyes, like this, I possess you.)

3. They said no photos in Soho House but we didn’t give half a fuck, I told M. to shoot with flash and the three women at the table next to us watched and smiled with their teeth catching the light. A worker saw us and did nothing about it but flash a thumbs-up. I came here fresh off the airport and M. brought me in, no RSVP or membership, but the attendant at the desk nodded and directed us up to the 5th floor, where the art talk was happening, because she knew.

4. I booked my trip at the exact time of the EXPO art fair, somehow, just as I happened to find myself in Paris during the start of the Olympics. We got in without a worry here, too. M.’s connection to a gallery certainly helped, but when it came down to it, we strolled in with a purpose, that purpose being to live exceedingly, to manifest magnificence, and sure enough the world listened and learned from us. I spoke to multiple collectors and curators and acted as if I could afford a $12K painting to hang in my foyer.

Energy. Presence. Power. It is a kind of mysticism: to know, to reach, to see, to move, without use of your hands. A language which cannot be taught, only learned.

Pay attention and you can be like me too.

And you don’t need to be chiseled or jacked or tall or skinny in order to live with excession. Beauty is within and also it is worthless. I know, I’m the last one who should say this, but it’s true; it isn’t about what you look like. It isn’t how you dress. Nor how you style your hair. Mostly a presence comes down to how you let yourself be seen. If you allow your energy to radiate from you. Are you still afraid to take up space?

All of the obstacles are in your head. And so are the solutions. It doesn’t matter what we deserve. What matters is what we desire. I don’t say all this to brag or boast — rather this is the way I know how to teach, by example, simply sharing results I’ve accrued in the field. There will be setbacks. There will be those with negative, demoralizing things to say. But they can only stop you if you let them.

I won’t deceive you, it isn’t easy to cultivate your power. I can promise is that it will take work to hone it. Work and time and consistency. Your effort must be predictable. I don’t have anyone but myself keeping me accountable for these monthly articles, for example, nor is there a gun to my head forcing me to go out every weekend — but I do it anyway. And it shows. It took years of self-ruthlessness for my back to be this straight. Tears have strewn down my face time and time again so visibly when I wanted so desperately to hide but I wanted more to lift my chin in the air.

In fact I’m crying right now writing this in the magnificent lobby of the Chicago Athletic Association’s Hotel, shell-shocked by the space of a loss I’ve unwittingly wrought for myself. Yes, you will hurt someone you love, without surcease, again and again, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You will contradict yourself. There will be times when your power fails you. By the end of some night you will be rejected, by lovers and friends and literary journals, again and again and again and again. It will never ever stop. Right now there are a group of young men on the couches in front of me looking at me funny as I stumble through this, snickering to themselves, and we’re in front of the blazing fireplace so my nice shirt has visible sweat stains, but I promise you, I swear with all my soul, I won’t let this stop me from going forward. I promised you last time and I swore it to L. too all those years ago, before she hung herself, and years back I said the same to the ghost of X. who watched over me as a child when I was lonely, unkempt, unpopular, and small: I’ll never ever stop.

The city is crying too, tears of crimson fire all over the sky above me, as if to say, perhaps, The wind will bleed out our sorrows. A beautiful night approaches.