 |
Email PageL.A. Raeven: Kelly (a new film)
March 16, 2006- April 15, 2006
L.A. Raeven
LMAK projects
526 W 26th St L.A. Raeven video still from Kelly (2006) |  L.A. Raeven video still from Kelly (2006) |
The troubles start from the moment I wake up... I can’t understand how people just get out of their beds without thinking what to eat for breakfast. They just look at what’s in the fridge, or they simply eat toast with jam every morning. This is something that’s impossible for me to do. I feel so guilty about what I eat, that everything I finally do choose to eat has to be the result of some profound thinking and calculation; I always have to choose the best, freshest and most stylish foods. I don’t want to be like those ordinary people with bad taste.
But it is hard..thinking about it each morning tires me so much. I go to the grocery store with an empty stomach, wondering what to get. Sometimes I don’t even notice the cars rushing by me while I cross the street, it is a miracle I haven’t had an accident yet. Sometimes I notice that I am even talking to myself. In the supermarket, I check out the calories, and sugar and fat percentages in the nutrition facts charts on all the packages. I look for something new each morning just to make it even more difficult on myself to choose something. It’s not because I want to, I just can’t help it. The hardest thing is to choose the right bread. The bread must be absolutely the best, like the best baguette in Paris would be. In New York it means sticking to Dean and Deluca’s or Balducci’s bread. But I just need a small amount, and they usually sell it in large quantities. I would be making a fool out of myself if I asked for a smaller piece, and I can’t bring myself to throw some of this lovely bread away like other people would probably do. In any case, this bread is too expensive to eat each morning, so I end up just taking samples of it with me back home instead of getting into the mess of actually buying it. Maybe I’m just too scared finding myself eating all of it at once, being out of control.
All this takes so much time! I’m exhausted by the time I get back home with the stuff I got, but then I’m not even ready to start eating yet. I still have to go out again and look for the best coffee I can find. I run back home with the coffee in my hand as fast as I can, so it won’t get cold. I can’t drink it on the street because I must have it together with my breakfast. When I’m home again with my coffee, I start eating as quickly as possible because the coffee must be completely boiling-hot while I have it with my breakfast. I can’t stand to drink something lukewarm when it is supposed to be hot! I don’t even give myself time to breath while I eat, I hate that about myself! Why is food so important to me for God’s sake?
Living in New York is hard, you know, there are just too many food choices. I know every organic shop in my neighborhood. They have these salad bars where you can get free samples of fresh cold fruit soups and also regular hot soups. They are sooo delicious but there are just too many choices. I go there every day and try ALL of them. It is very convenient for me, this way I can have lunch without having to pay for it, so I don’t need to feel guilty about buying something wrong or too expensive. Of course, I can’t go to the same store every day, what do you think? They would surely kick me out if they noticed, and I would feel so ashamed! Of course I feel very uncomfortable when I do this and can feel people looking at me from behind. In those moments I fear that they recognize me from last time, but then if it gets too hot under my feet in there I just buy a little something and then it is ok. But I will still feel like a freak. I just can’t stop doing that, it has become a habit. It is too easy, especially when I know that the workers at those stores see so many customers passing through every day... of course it would have been different if everybody acted like me. Sometimes I do see other people doing what I do, and that is a big shock for me. In many cases they are really poor, and since they look like wanderers they usually get kicked out from the store, unlike me, who look like a regular person and therefore can stay. I know it isn’t fair, but at the same time I’m terrified of being identified with those people; I want to be seen as a sophisticated person.
If you look thin, it is like the people in the store know that you struggle with food, or just don’t eat much, and then they trust you when you mess around with the food samples, I think. But maybe they also believe that thin people compliment the elegance of their stylish stores. I don’t know, but what I do know is that someday someone will surely notice what I do in those stores and supermarkets, I just don’t know when. Maybe I’ll be glad when they do catch me because this behavior makes me feel very lonely. I don’t have many friends, and I’m tired of making excuses to them every time they invite me to come and have lunch with them. I have to be by myself all day long, because nobody is allowed to know what I’m doing!I’m watching other people to see what they eat, where they go, in which restaurants they dine, and how they look. I even try to look at their plates to see how much they eat. It is also very interesting to see what people who look sophisticated buy in the supermarket. What one buys in the supermarket categorizes them immediately, and when I watch a certain person, I sometimes copy her, just to try what she bought. One time I saw this beautiful model who bought chocolate soy milk. It is so unfair! she could drink this sort of thing without getting fat! In cases like these it is difficult for me the follow suite. This process takes so much time. Every day I have to look for the newest and hottest places. Then I usually arrive back home very late, empty handed and completely exhausted, with nothing in my fridge to eat for dinner. I have no clue at all WHAT to eat, I have seen too many different kinds of food I just don’t know what I fancy. I then wish I could go to a restaurant so I would’t have to prepare dinner myself and only have a limited number of items to choose from, but it’s crazy to go to a restaurant every day. Besides, I would be fooling myself because I would eat too many calories without noticing. Nothing is more pitiful than eating alone in a restaurant, but with friends it’s also difficult for me. I can easily identify a person with an eating disorder in a restaurant; when the waitress brings the food to the table, a "normal" person would first finish what he or she were saying before even looking at their plate, while a food-obsessed person would immediately react in a very unnatural way to the food. I, for example, stop talking all together when my order arrives to the table. I don’t even here anymore what the others at the table are saying, or what they’re talking about. I think I am bad company when I do that, and people and friends drift away from me very quickly.I don’t mind spending money in expensive restaurants, I just feel guilty if I make the wrong choice. It is easier to just grab something for free.
The hardest part in this lifestyle is to try to be honest about what I eat and what I do and don’t do. I really want to be honest with people but at the same time I’m scared of what they will think, or rather what I think. Although I know it is just my subconscious resistance to figuring out what to eat and why I don’t exercise, time after time I still find myself saying, shut up and starve!It makes me angry to read that the only things that trigger eating disorders are either physical abuse or supermodel images. Bullshit. Anything that messes your self esteem will trigger an eating disorder. Being constantly compared to your older sister who, apparently is perfect in every way, is not an easy thing for a young child to cope with, especially when that same sister resents you just for existing in the first place.No one can describe or understand the feelings that come with my freakish eating habits unless they practice it by themselves; Collecting the food, planning what to eat and in which order, browsing the supermarket’s shelves for that one magic item that will make it all go away, all those things are part of the disorder, of my sacred ritual. It’s the preparation, the calculation, the anticipation, the adrenaline rush when I find a free sample which I really like. But the one thing that never goes away is the guilt. But feeling guilty isn’t enough to stop me from doing all these things. I’ll still be collecting the food, hiding it, arranging it in front of me behind a locked door, sometimes having it hidden while I eat it, because what’s out of sight doesn’t have any calories or fat in it. I will be throwing the wraps away, and brushing the crumbs from my cloths, to eliminate all evidence of food. And in each and every of these little gestures there will always be this little girl in me feeling guilty, so guilty it brings tears to my eyes. But it never stops me from doing it, because after all, this is my comfort blanket. This is what gets me through the day.Sometimes I’ll relapse for a few days and force myself to buy food instead of collecting these free food samples, to make my own choices instead of taking what is available for free, but not as much as I used to anymore. Sometimes I’ll see my reflection in the mirror or a store window and feel repulsed by myself. Every now and again I’ll retreat into myself and curl up in a corner and hide away for days at a time.
All these common eating disorders you hear about in the media, neither of them resembles mine. I can’t imagine another person in the whole world with the same relationship with food as mine. No one can understand how it can destroy one’s life. My latest obsession is soup. I can live solely on soup, and this way I don’t have to think about what else to eat. I feel uncomfortable eating in company of others. I don’t want them to know I have this food obsession. But when eating soup samples I can’t avoid that, since I must have it completely hot. It is much easier to take raw food samples, because I can eat those at home. But I am also very fearful that sticking to raw foods is just another mechanism of control. Unlike soup I can eat those at home, where nobody can see, and my intention is to heal myself, body, mind, spirit and release some of the emotional pain that has caused the years of suffering with food. But I really like raw foods. So far I have been eating as much raw food as I can. Luckily I am in NYC which makes raw foods easily available. I am sugar sensitive so lots of fruits, as wonderful as they are, are not the best for me, mood wise. I try not to swing to any extremes because I find that it usually pushes me to do even more repulsive things.All my life I’ve had people telling me I should have a "healthy, balanced diet". It’s a phrase that used to numb my brain and send me rushing to the nearest supermarket. If I ate something fatty, I would wonder if a salad could take away that greasy feeling I had in my stomach. Why is sensible eating so difficult for me to practice? My mum and dad used to force me to eat "sensibly" when I lived with them, so I didn’t have a choice about food back then. But now I am responsible for my own diet, and it’s like I am rebelling and do all the forbidden things. The fact is, I actually don’t care about being healthy, or having a balanced diet. What I want is to be attractive and to be liked by people around me. Over the years, however, the realization has slowly dawned on me, that feeling attractive is half the way to being attractive. But if I don’t push myself to take care of myself, I will have to pay the price. I will have to accept that I will be hungry often, will not have much energy physically or mentally, my skin will be greyer, my hair more lifeless, and my muscles less toned. And if I will also be drinking a lot, sleeping little and doing no exercise, I know that soon I will feel seriously run down. I might even start feeling out of control. When run down, malnourished and out of control, my body and mind become fertile grounds for my obsessive thoughts and phobic feelings. I hate myself when I eat impetuously; it’s as disgusting as wasting money on things you don’t really need. My inability to relax, or not being stimulated by something and if only for a second, frustrates me. Eating distracts me from my awareness, my spiritual emptiness. I know I’m obsessed with the purity of what I put in my mouth. Food is as dangerous and anxiety provoking as sex is for me. I don’t know the rules of normal behavior. I have to make up my mind and make decisions about so many things, and tolerate all the anguish and uncertainty that go with this process. Even the smell of food frightens me.
My friend used to live above a Turkish bakery, and I couldn’t drink my coffee there. It was like I put sugar in it - the coffee tasted so sweet because of the sweet bread smell. I felt so guilty. After a while I really felt sick of that smell. I don’t understand how she could live there. I wonder if you take in calories when you smell something. Sometimes I visited the bakery when the sweet bread had just left the oven, it was such a lovely smell. I can enjoy the bread without having to eat it, but I still feel guilty when I do it. You never know for sure if you gain weight while smelling something fatty. I try to avoid doing that, I’m too afraid it will makes me fat.I'm full of contradictions.On the one hand, I care about what other people think of me and on the other hand, I don't.I go to a lot of opening receptions just to collect wine and food, not to talk to people or to socialize.I have the feeling they don't see me anyway, everybody is too busy with themselves.I don't know why I am doing this, I just have too. It bothers me if I don't, but I don't know why it bothers me. As soon as something is free to take, it feels like a missed opportunity if I don't take it. The difficulty is, that I don't know where to stop, I'll always look for something new.The shops keep inventing new things to attract new customers.You would think I would be excited about that, but I really don't feel they are doing me a favor.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
|
 | |||||||||||||||||
|
© 2005-2008 chelseaartgalleries.com | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
| Site Map |
