communion

my friend offered up to the guests gathered at his birthday dinner a clear glass canister filled with cellophane wrapped candies.  each candy had been collected by this friend from an installation by felix gonzalez torres.  i chose a candy with a shiny green wrapper, evidently from a candy installation produced by gonzalez torres titled ross in l. a.  it tasted like medicine.

body of christ.  amen.

this friend prepared his own birthday dinner for his friends, and then offered them candies from art installations by one of his favorite artists.  for those there at the dinner not familiar with gonzalez torres, we learned from rob that gonzalez torres would install these candy "spills" in galleries: large piles of wrapped candies, free for the taking by anyone who visited the installation.  the installed art fragments and disperses as participants take and ingest or cherish or dispose of the candies.

watching the death of his lover ross, felix gonzalez torres understood that a person disperses physically with time, age, infirmities, but also socially through conversation, memory, and legacy.  even if we're not all social butterflies, our relationships produce butterfly effects.  you capture the memory of me as a subject: the things i've said to you, the ways in which i have helped you, the particular gestures i make, the times i've made you laugh.

this is my body.  this is my blood.

by partaking of his body and blood, by ingesting his message and memory, we in turn act and love and talk and live - our bodies, our blood, our actions and sacrifices further dispersed and immortalized.  even if one were not aware that the candy spills by gonzalez torres correspond to the diminishing weight of the artist's lover as he died of aids, the ghost of ross continues to haunt us through felix gonzalez torres and his candy and our participation in this installation, this ritual.

i received a snapchat of my friend talking about felix gonzalez torres to us that night and i thought, i wish i could save this.  i wish i could have this always.  but i realized that i wouldn't need a video to remember this moment.  the memory would integrate itself into my consciousness, into my daily life, into dinner parties, and candies, and communion.