Paper Prayers and Jewelry Empires
On Paper Prayers, Cartier, a lost Guerrilla Girls Polaroid, and the things we spend a lifetime trying to keep.
I woke up this morning and got a telephone call from my sister at 6:30 a.m.
I was asleep, which is revolutionary because I’m never asleep at that hour. I’m usually up writing, getting ready to go to a meeting, or I’m up because I’ve just been up.
I’m definitely a morning person, and this morning I chose to sleep in. But I did not choose to shut off my phone, which, unfortunately, I love when I get phone calls early in the morning.
But this morning I’m still achy.
I’m drinking my coffee in my little corner chair and writing because I can’t sit on the balcony at this hour of the morning in the summer. It is bright, bright hot sunshine pouring right on me
Poor me, right? Not.
It’s literally too bright and hot to sit out there. I was thinking: I love early morning telephone calls.
Call me at 5 o’clock in the morning.
Call me at 6 o’clock in the morning.
I am your Chatty Cathy.
But this morning I was NOT, because I’ve just been achy.
I’ve had this headache.
I mean, I have a headache.
I’ve had a headache since October 28, 2023.
My fucking God, I can’t believe I just wrote that out loud.
It’s called New Daily Persistent Headache Disorder. 1 ( Ha. I just typed New Daily Persistent Headache Disaster. I’m leaving that here because it might be the most honest description I’ve come up with yet. )
Yeah, it sucks.
You pretty much remember the exact date you got the headache that didn’t stop, and you’ve had it every single day since.
So what is that? Three years now? Ultimately, with this headache, I have a headache every day.
No, it’s NOT a migraine.
Those are different.
And yes, I get those too.
But this headache is just with me.
It’s my little fucker of a friend.
A rare disorder that, apparently, primarily goes away on its own.
The catch is that no one knows why it comes. And no one knows why it goes.
One of the defining features of NDPH is that people often remember the exact date it began.
Trust me.
We do.
But some days it’s just really bad, and I actually notice it.
This morning I woke up with it.
And no, I’m not dehydrated.
It’s just there.
Some days it’s worse than others.
And yes, I’m going to drink my electrolytes and do all the other stuff.
But sometimes it’s just beyond all of that.
It’s just the headache.
So I wasn’t in the mood to talk this morning.
Thank you.
I’m glad my sister understood that.
But I do love telephone calls in the morning.
I’m sitting here in my little corner, and what woke up my brain this morning was Paper Prayers.
What I was thinking about—and I had to draw it because back in the day when I was in art school, yes, I am an art school nerd.
I am a ‘90s art school kid.Yay. We are very fucking cool.
They had this thing in Boston and it was called Paper Prayers.
If nobody knows, December 1 is World AIDS Day, I believe.
Or maybe it’s like World Black Out Your Walls, Do Not Make Art, Do Not Think About Art because of all the people in the art world that passed away from AIDS.
I don’t know.
Sadly, it’s not a big thing anymore.
Gladly, AIDS is not killing massive amounts of people the way it was back then.
But when it was, they actually honored people and paid attention.
They had this thing in Boston, called Paper Prayers.
You could purchase art at a certain price, and it was really inexpensive, and everyone was encouraged to make a Paper Prayer
I can’t remember if it was at the museum that we got them, or if they were installed there, or if they were at the ICA.
I really can’t remember.
The ICA is here in Miami.
Maybe there’s an ICA in Boston too.
It’s the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Or it could be the ICP, which is the Institute of Contemporary Photography. Nope that is NYC.
All right, guys, I’m still here in the morning.
Not fully coffee’d.
Let’s get back to Paper Prayers.
I bought one that year and I loved it.
It was a Paper Prayer by the Guerrilla Girls.
Now, if you don’t know who the Guerrilla Girls are, here’s your homework.
They are the feminists of the art world.
And I had a Guerrilla Girls Paper Prayer.
And I say had.
This is sad.
I had it.
It is no longer.
Yes, it is no longer.
I think about this piece of art far too much, and I know I need to let it go.
It was a Polaroid, with a head shot and a shot-at-the-art-world phrase, by TheGuerrillaGirls.
It was signed.
It was a beautiful, beautiful Paper Prayer.
It was a gorgeous, fit-in-your-hand-or-a-book, piece of art.
It was probably one of the first pieces of art that I bought.
And it is somewhere out in the world.
Go ahead and go find it.
When I moved in 2000—I don’t know what number, one of the times I moved—all of my things were accidentally thrown away.
No accusations.
No, you assholes.
It was an accident.
But the accident, unfortunately, because of my own inability at the time to go through things, and also because I assumed—and when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me—I thought they were in my parents’ attic.
They were not.
I had boxes and boxes and boxes.
Pretty much all of 1990s art school. Very cool. But here’s the uncool part.
It all disappeared.
Got thrown away.
And there are certain things—and we all go through it—when we move, we lose things.
I lost a Paper Prayer.
l lost sixteen boxes.
And I don’t know why I always remember the number, but sixteen boxes of art books, photography books, painting books and all of my literally literary memories.
Novels. Everything that I was reading.
Now I don’t buy that many books.
I read, I read, I read, I read.
I look, I look, I look.
I look at them like objects in museums.
And when I read something that I think, oh my goodness, that was incredible, then I buy it.
One of the things that I recently purchased—recently within the past five years—was The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire by Francesca Cartier Brickell
One of the Cartier women found—and this is also in the book.
She found, in—I don’t remember this second if she’s the cousin or the niece, but she’s related (I got the book down off the shelf; she is the great-granddaughter of the youngest brother, Jean-Jacques Cartier) —a trunk somewhere in France filled with the history of the Cartier family.
Letters.
Records.
Photographs.
Documentation
The stories.
The decisions.
The beginnings of what would eventually become Cartier.
All of it tucked away in this magical trunk, waiting to be discovered decades later.
I have to reread it.
Because the history of the family, and what they did as marketing people, and what they did as a jewelry house, and how they started—it was fascinating.
Who knows, maybe my things will appear one day.
If you made it all the way to the end, thank you.
Maybe you’ve lost a few boxes of your own.
Maybe you’ve spent years thinking about an object you no longer have.
Or maybe you’re just here for the strange stories.
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
For those of you who found me through the stories, Jewelry One of a KIND is where the objects live.
Medically Reviewed.Last updated on 08/31/2022.
New daily persistent headache (NDPH) is a rare disorder that happens unpredictably and for unknown reasons. People with NDPH have a headache that won’t stop and doesn’t get better with common treatments. For some people, the headache can last years or never goes away. Treatment options are available but aren’t always successful.
I always enjoy your writing. And that picture is unbelievably insightful.