When I meet the artist known formally as ninerevolutions, it is in the butt of a darkened bar on one of the first warmish evenings of this year’s hard-begotten spring. We have a friend in common, one of those effortlessly beautiful sprites living in an art-filled apartment in an edgy part of town, the type whose acquaintance makes me, for no justifiable reason, feel hip by association. Offhand references to an Argentine mum, Italian dad, Indian nanny, and Bahraini childhood ensconce nine rather suitably within the spritely creature’s crowd. What in dogs makes a mutt ends up being quite the pedigree for a person.
She’s droll and relaxed, in her element, amongst her peers. They are all finely bred, globally marketable products created by an assortment of influential families, elite boarding schools and multinational corporations. Understand: they are not twats, I like them, but when a thought is difficult to express in English, it comes out in French, or Arabic, and everyone understands. Plates are insouciantly ordered from the kitchen, dabbed at with forks, then pushed vaguely away. Cell phones thin as five business cards are flicked open and shut, trilled into in Spanish. Their mild, staccatoed accents are hybrids, instantly recognizable to those familiar with the inflection—from nowhere in particular, they are nevertheless telltale and revealing. ‘I come from everywhere,’ they say.
Another day and age would have seen our witty repartee over brandy and cigars and under a fantastic pair of antlers (or tusks, perhaps), but it’s 2007, so we are in a dim East Village dive vehemently drinking Stella, and eventually I have to head west, but not before I hand nine a card, explain the project, and invite her to lunch the next day.
O the distrust then! O the paranoia!
Let’s be clear, I say. I’m not hitting on you; I’m not a muckracking journalist. You seem interesting and you like to talk, right? If you’re up for it, call me tomorrow.
She calls me a few minutes later, up for it. “It’s not like I’ll ever read it or anything.”
