Therapy?

Speak to your bedroom wall

When finished, tell it that it will never understand your pain

Ask it why you’re paying it an hourly rate

Take a photo of the wall

Send the photo to your parent or guardian

Call them once they’ve seen the photo, avoid talking about the photo

Inspiration

My inspiration for this score came mainly from two sources. The first were Yoko Ono’s own scores in Grapefruit which involved performing a fairly intimate personal action, then taking the results of that action and sharing them with someone, but not drawing attention to the action. One example is a score involving finding a stone roughly the size of yourself, grinding it down, and delivering the powder to a friend but not explaining what the powder is. The other source of inspiration came from my own experiences and observations that, while most people (arguably especially in college) could benefit from speaking with a therapist, most of those people either are too self-conscious to do so or refuse to for other personal reasons. Because of this many people in times of need look to their friends and/or family for support, however sometimes those conversations can feel as though you are speaking to a brick wall depending on how responsive your supporter is. So through these sources of inspiration, I formed the instructions of the score. I purposefully left the instructions on what to talk about with the wall and how long to talk to the wall open to allow participants to speak however long and about whatever subject they wanted. When I spoke to the wall it started fairly normally (as normally as speaking to a wall can be) but then eventually did become more personal. When I was satisfied I took a picture and sent it to my father. I waited a bit until I could see him starting to respond, then immediately called him to speak with him. He initially did not ask about the wall, but near the end he asked if I had meant to send the picture and I said I did, and he seemed confused and curious but I avoided a straight answer of what the wall meant. It definitely created a confusion and almost a tension in the conversation, but we made it through the whole call without directly speaking about it. The experience was interesting and I think was fairly successful for what I wanted it to inspire and simulate in terms of the awkward tension of avoiding a potentially serious topic hanging in the air. The photos attached show pictures of myself speaking to the wall, the picture of the wall I took, the message I sent to my father and the call I had with him.