As International Art Rock Stars, Biennial Project Members live large. We dream large, we think large, we create large, and, of course, we vacation large. Never content to rest on our considerable laurels, Biennial Project Members are always out there living on the edge - trying new and exciting activities. seeking thrills, testing the limits of our body’s endurance - driven by an unquenchable thirst for new experience. Thus, one recent idyllic summer afternoon, when reason might have told us to remain in the hammock reading The Enquirer, we instead took up the considerable challenge of Rope Swinging. At first all went well. There was, after all, no need to be afraid -
The first plunge – an entrancing mix of grace and athleticism -
The second plunge – from even more fearsome heights -
Then, as it often does with those cursed with the need to ignore those voices that tell you when enough is enough, tragedy struck!
The results, documented fearlessly below, would have been enough to send any mere mortal running screaming to the refuge of the nearest ER!
But not someone born to that Band of Fratricidal Siblings known to the world as The Biennial Project! Oh We Few, We Happy Few! We know an opportunity for self promoting heroism when we see it! As Shakespeare put it (paraphrased and shortened a little of course – we don’t have all day, and that Old English thing gets irritating) -
If we are marked to die, we are now
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Anna, Eric, Laura-
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap,
etc, etc, more stuff about problems in England or France or something, you get the idea.
The point is that we are brave, really brave, and so instead of going to the hospital,
We took pictures! Lots of pictures! Brave, heroic pictures! Talk about your Triumph over Adversity!
We see a lifetime movie coming out of this!
Yours in Heroism,
THE BIENNIAL PROJECT