CRog

On 25/05/06 12:08, “Robin G” wrote:

> hi christine –
>
> how have you been? where is your hotel in México?
> when is it opening? I have a ticket to go to México
> in october and early november. can you tell me
> something about your place, like what part of México
> it’s in and all.
>
> also i never saw the film from stamina. where was it
> shown? is it possible to see it? do i need to get in
> touch with agathe to see it?
>
> hope everythings going well.
>
> all best,
> robin
>
>
> Robin G > artgirls3000@——.com
>
> __________________________________________________
>

Yeah, the film is all in Agathe’s hands, has been since the day of the shooting. I’m not quite sure what she has in store for the footage; hopefully she’ll get to it eventually.

As for Mexico, its been a dream of mine for two years now, and after Stamina actually, I felt that my relationship with New York was due for a change, that a chapter here was closed and it was time for something new, but I wasn’t quite sure what that was.

I flew to LA late January/early Feb on an instinct that it was the place I needed to go to get a clear perspective on myself and my being in New York. However, LA really never feels right to me, and I left the next day in a white convertible and drove to San Diego to see my friend, Hugh.

The day after I arrive there, he suggests we go to Mexico. So we pack up and drive down to San Felipe where some of his friends have a modest cabin in the middle of nowhere, where the only electricity is a generator hooked up to a jambox, there are no waves, only still water that comes all the way up to the back porch of the cottage on high tide and really far out on low revealing these crazy linear patterns of sky, clouds, water, sand, rocks, shells and algae that are mesmerizing for hours on end. In front of the cabin is a desert and on the horizon a mountain range. We made a fire every night to stay warm, and slept in tune with the sun.

And after my third night there, I woke up and sat with a cup of coffee looking out at the water, and it all hit me. The time to do the hotel is now. Since its inception I thought, when I’m forty I’ll pursue this, but I want to be chilling at the hotel when I’m forty, not building it.

I’ve been accepted into a lot of “families” in my 5 years in New York, and I feel very connected to the energy and love generated by those people here. What those friends give and receive has a lot to do with New York itself, and New York has everything to do with these people who activate it.

I’ve learned a lot in my time here, a lot about myself and a lot about human nature. It’s such a radically different place from Austin Texas.

But now its time to leave, and I’m leaving to create a second home for my New York family in Mexico. Why Mexico? I’m not sure yet, it feels right.

And this home has to be near the surf.

I don’t surf, but I’ve tried. Those two days in Rincon PR, the effort and determination I put into just swimming out and sitting in the lineup transformed me. Physically I was strong and sore, relaxed and energized in a way I’d never felt before. It was a very empowering, super hero state of being. And when I was in the line-up sitting there, waiting for a wave looking at all the people doing the same thing and feeling this community of calm anticipation I felt like it was what I wanted to do forever, and eventually do it well, to be in communion with the ocean, not afraid or in conflict with it, but a part of it. And surfers understand what understanding the ocean means. Surfing is bigger than catching a wave, but as simple as this at the same time.

The people that my friend Melanie and I met on that first trip to Rincon two years ago, the trip that initially inspired all this, were exactly the type of people I want to continue to meet all my life. They were insane for waves and insane for life, they saw rideable waters in knots of wood and love in the sunset, which we would gather every day to watch hit the horizon and send a splash of neon green along the place where the sky and water met, for just a second.

There will be yoga at the hotel. It fits.

And of course a disco, because my life is completed by music, and it’s the same for my family. We need to hear, play, share and dance to edenic sounds, and how beautiful to do that after a day of surfing or yoga in the setting of México.

When my friend Hugh and I were in San Felipe this last February it was really crazy how the disco would just happen. As I said, we only had electricity for music. Hugh is a Dj and he does a great weekly podcast called h-track radio. It’s an hour long each week, and in New York, I always felt I didn’t have time to listen to it for whatever reason. So I had no idea what it was all about. For Hugh the shows become a conceptual journal for his life, but also a reflection of the moods and tides of his surroundings, which is first San Diego, then the world and then…

So I was in for something. Hugh brought almost a year’s worth of radio shows with us. And these provided the trip’s sound track. And in the setting of the water, the moon, the mountains, the desert, the emptiness as there was no one else around except the animals: sharks, pelicans, cranes and cayotes, it was the perfect soundscape.

We listened all day, but always after the sunset, we’d randomly select a show that made us dance, dance, dance ’til we fell a sleep, usually an hour or two later, depending on how many mushrooms we consumed that day. And I realized, the power of music, the disco, can happen anywhere and with as little as two or even one person.

And this realization gave me the strength, or courage rather, to leave New York. Up until San Felipe, I’d been chasing this same magical feeling created by those disco moments here, at the Rub ‘n’ Tug parties, and then Passerby, and now recently at David Mancuso’s Loft parties and in my friend Chris’s basement which has become a communal place for all the out and in-town djs.

The magic of the disco can happen anywhere.

And now, the right thing to do is to create the disco retirement home for my New York family. We will surf and do yoga to stay young and healthy in the heart and head, eat from the macrobiotic restaurant, and dance with each other until the end. The surf and word of the music will bring new like-minded people so that the family continues to grow.

So there you have it. Can’t wait for you to come down.

But specifically, to answer your questions, it’s not built yet, this is a scouting mission, but I’ll be there in October and November, so look me up.

All the best,
Christine Renée