I used to sling cappuccinos at Cafe Limbo in the East Village, NYC. It closed long ago. Josy would sit there working furiously in her journals, tearing pages apart then stitching them back together. Pasting in random bits and pieces of things she had found, things important to her. Photographs, shells, leaves, pieces of cloth, scraps of flyers, hair. Anything. She told me she was an artist and did performance art sometimes. Even her clothes were covered with paintings she had done. We became friends. She would disappear often, and return with bewildering stories of her travels. She’d couch-surf, sometimes stay in a squat, and work odd jobs. One autumn day she did a performance at one of those community gardens in Alphabet City. She had built a small fire next to a boombox on the ground and people were standing in a semi circle around her. She put her Deep Forest disc in, hit play, and stood up. She stood perfectly still, facing forward, eyes closed, breathing. She took her time, then started dancing. Staring at one spot on the ground, but it was clear to everyone she was looking right through the earth, to another dimension. She had gone somewhere else. I'd never seen anything like it before. Her feet were mostly planted, but everything else was pure liquid channeling. Some expression entirely of her own primal creation. I cannot possibly describe the effect that her performance that day had on me.
She was the realest, and most alive person I’ve ever known. Utterly possessed and driven by, according to her, the one thing that she lived for - making art. People like her often pay a price for their gift. Josy certainly had her demons. We kind of lost touch after a couple years, but she’s in my thoughts. I think of her with gratitude and awe. This one’s for you, Josy.
