The Marina Abramovic Oracle

My Rome life fell into a rhythm.

In the morning, I would awake around 9, then make a coffee and sit at the computer at Bettie's house and write.

I wrote to whoever wrote to me—my many friends around the world and lovers too. It was the correspondence with the invisible that somehow opened my soul in ways real life did not.

I have led many correspondences with lovers in my life, often with the very relationship depending on the letters exchanged, sometimes even fueling the love to start in the first place, and at times, completely disguising that there was no love at all—just the opportunity to write, be open, and have evidence that the invisible recipient, who was glad and replied, existed. The writing would soothe my soul, and there I was, in silence.

This delicious little ritual was followed by walking down the steps and over the cobbled streets. If I had money, I would go get a cornetto with white chocolate at Mario's bar, a coffee, and a spremuta. If I was broke, I'd go straight into the gallery.

I was always either in joyful abundance or broke, and when the shifts would happen was unpredictable. When I would sell a painting—I had no idea when—but I knew I would sell a painting, I was sure of it, so each month I did. The collectors found me. Not the other way around.

I lived the life of an artist. I sustained myself by painting, and a lot of magic- that I just counted on.

So after breakfast, I would go around the corner to the cobbled street where Aka Gallery stood, and there I would paint most of my day. My working hours were so predictable that my friends would just swoop by and either stop for a chat with me in the gallery—where they would often become a muse for a painting, impromptu—or they would take me off somewhere for lunch.

Lunch was always around 2 p.m., often in a trattoria, always accompanied by delicious red wine in my case. I was always invited to lunch. I'm still not sure if it was because I was an artist and the Italians love art to the core, or because I was a young woman, or because I was a young woman who was an artist—but I was always invited. Gallerists, collectors, art lovers—they always invited me, and lunch, if I had it, was mostly for free. They always came to pick me up .it was rare that I had to look for or think about lunch. Lunch happened just like sales of paintings did.

After lunch, I would return to the gallery to spend many more hours painting—without sitting down, painting and dancing to music. People would always stop by, as the gallery was on the ground floor, so even surprise randoms would discover my work through the window, watching from outside. Then they would step inside. Then they would sit down and start talking to me.  And then the randoms would start stopping over more often and calling me over to their events, and they would bring over friends.

7 p.m. in Rome was the hour of the gallery openings. Or maybe it was at 7 that I began my voyage across eternal City. There were exhibition openings almost every night of the week, except Sundays. Someone would pick me up and drive me wherever in Rome this event was. I had a "casco" helmet in a "Freitag bag," ready to be driven around by the hive of art addicts, and someone always did. 

Raffa had an old Vespa that hadn't been registered for like nine years, which we drove around together on—often the wrong way down one-way streets—and were chased down by police on more than one occasion. But I do remember once when I finally got caught on a motorino by a policeman who made us stop because I had no helmet. He stopped us on the road. I asked him to let us go. He asked why he should let me go, and I replied, "Perché sono bella." He laughed and let us go—without a fine for all the other faults on the bike.

In Rome, I was cheeky, arrogant, felt young and indestructible, and I dared to go beyond proper manners or good behavior because the Italians not only endorsed this kind of behavior—they seemed to love it, love me even more—for every enfant terrible behavior I dared .

Mostly, Raffa loved me. The cheekier I was, the more Raffa applauded me with delight—and the scarier the ideas I had for art, the more she said, "Yes, yes, go!"

At the exhibition opening, we would walk around, see the work, drink wine, eat lasagna—as weird as that is. In Italy, often, there was actual real food at exhibition openings, upon which a lot of us relied for sustenance—because who had the time to think about food in reality, and often there was no money . The gods fed the young artists in this way.  Then we would pop over to the next exhibition.

There were many groups of art addicts haunting Rome. But almost like football leagues, where we would meet certain people was limited because there were leagues in the art game. The amount of exclusive parties gatecrashed seemed to give a good idea of the level of the players—journalists, gallerists, students, artists, collectors. 

At the most difficult parties to get into, there were fewer and fewer people, and those people who could enter any party always seemed to be the same faces. Gate-crashing Roman Cinema parties, appearing at some aristocrat collector's palace, or being at the Lorcan  gallery after-exhibition party dinner, filtered out those who could not. Those who did , made my circle of Romans, and closer still were a few artists, gallerists, writers, collectors—who among ourselves out of love called each other "La Familia," and on different days, it was of a different size.

One night, after we had done the exhibitions and possibly a dinner in a trattoria, Gabriele insisted we went over to his sister's house.

Of course, when you are completely new in Rome as I was, it takes a while to understand the subcurrents of who the big, old, wealthy families are that I was mixing with, for mostly, we were socializing on a first-name basis. It turns out that this was a "Bulgari" , party because the sister was now a Bulgari, and the legacy of Gabri's family, a central figure of La Familia, I only learned years after leaving Rome.

 We bashed in through the doors into a very elegant, low-lit penthouse, with middle-aged people drinking champagne quietly and someone playing on the piano. 

A movie set of pure elegance.

Of course, I rather suspect Gabri knew the tone of what he was to encounter within, which is why he pulled us into the apartment—italians love to jazz up the over dull and elegnant- by adding some youth to the mix, the younger, raw, wild, unrestrained, ready to dance and create some havoc, lift the energy up. We entered the scene and started a dancing .

Some time later, I noticed a beautiful woman. She was tall. Dressed in black velvet. Had long dark hair—she looked the way women in my family do. She was so elegant that I decided to go up and tell her so.

"You are so beautiful. I wanna be you when I grow up."

As she smiled at me, I recognized the face from the art history books.

"It's you," I continued, my eyes aglow. I recognized Marina Abramović, who had inspired me in a profound way with Balkan Baroque, which said something I could never put into words. Who represented me—being from the Balkans. Whose performance inspired me to enter performance art in the first place.

The first time I saw Marina's face was in Ms. Jude's art class, in an art book. And here I saw her from life, and she was mesmerizingly beautiful.

I was even more surprised later in Rome when we met by chance. Feeling her to somehow belong to me like family—as irrational as it is—I skipped over to say hi, and Marina Abramović introduced me just as familiar as "A little Sun." and than we'w never met since.

The day I will paint her from life and have that dialogue, that heart-to-heart ritual, is nearer now. 

When I have had it tough in my life, I have written to Marina and asked—like the ancients used to ask the Oracle—what should I do? 

And Marina Abramović always replies to me, in mystical, beautiful words, like the Oracle that, to me, she has become.

We later flew out of the Bulgari nest, and probably landed at some next dancing situation, where Nero editors where dj'ing and electronic music and vine in plastic was all the rage. 

Many nights I would dance till near dawn. Only to next day start all over again. Protagonists altering over lunch and mortorinos, the opening exhibitions where in different locations, we went to a different trattoria for diners and different houses for the afterparty. I was slim form all the dancing and would drop to sleep instantly every night.