Dear Luxembourg (yours, bucktoothed grl)

“So this is an exhibition about nations?”

“Exactly.”

A while ago I had a conversation about the title of this exhibition. The artist I was talking with was a bit shaky on it, on the title of the exhibition, because someone from her past was a big fan of the Smiths. It was all a bit weird, because before that moment, I had not noticed that she had buckteeth, and I still don’t quite believe she does. During our conversation, I thought it would be rude to ask to see her teeth, so I didn’t. In bed, before I saw the exhibition, I wrote the whole text in my head, based entirely on a person from my past who’s friends would play the Smiths on cassette tape a lot. Recalling this part of my life was strange, because I did not realise at the time that all six of them were bucktoothed. One of these things happened in New Zealand and the other in Luxembourg. They are both useful places when writing a short text, for obvious reasons. I recently said in an interview that everybody in New Zealand was gay. It’s harder to tell lies about Britain because most people know how much it rains there. It rained a lot on the night of the opening of ‘Dear Luxembourg (yours, bucktoothed grl)’ but because most of the artists live in London, they didn’t mind. Sophie wore black velvet and Alice was in high-waisted jeans, Jenny was all dark, dark lipstick and tie-die and so was Alberto (and we all knew it was not about the socks, darling), but Jenny did not wear hers for the whole night. I kind of wish she had because it was a jumpsuit, a pastel-coloured tie-die jumpsuit, which was a gift from a friend. I am writing this from what many consider to be the tie-die capital. All the artists seemed to be dressed well, you could clearly tell what went where and when and everyone was very good-looking, although the performances started a bit late and the locals got apprehensive about that. Upstairs in the other exhibition I figured out who the artist’s girlfriend was pretty fast. She was very beautiful. I knew who Germaine was because she is Sophie’s grandmother and because her earrings were kind of like pieces of a collage, maybe a collage of the ocean when it gets very deep. I talked to all the artists who were there quite a bit, they are all very nice, but I did not talk to Germaine because I got the feeling that she spoke French and Luxembourgish, and maybe also German, but I cannot confirm that. Probably as many people speak Luxembourgish as auditioned to be extras in the Lord of the Rings movies. I don’t speak Luxembourgish but I did audition for Lord of the Rings. They asked me if I could ride a horse and shoot a bow and arrow, and maybe if I could do tricks, but don’t quote me on that last one. In the end, I didn’t get the part. I think it was because I am too short and when the people working in the digital effects department would shrink all the extras to be Hobbit-sized, I would have looked like a mini Hobbit. Also horses don’t like me at all. People in Europe seem to find that story really funny, but I felt pretty sad about it at the time. But New Zealand was renamed Middle Earth for the movie premiere, so I guess we were all part of it in the end. I was not supposed to talk about Winnipeg, but you should all know that in Winnipeg the cars have remote controls.