Chrysanne Stathacos and Anne de Cybelle

AA Bronson

July 1995, New York

One night, a hot July night, just two weeks ago ... I was staying with

Chrysanne Stathacos in her tiny Little Italy apartment in the heart of

Manhattan... l was sleeping and in the midst of my sleep, in the midst of this

still heat. I heard water running. It was three in the morning and

Chrysanne was puffing on a cigar in the manner of her friend George Sand,

feverishly filling the squat porcelain bathtub which sat steaming in the middle

of her kitchen, a mere twenty feet from my head. I heard her lower herself

with a groan into the lavender-scented liquid and I felt the pressure of a

hyperactive spirit life as it coped with the steam, smoke and scent with which

Chrysanne was forcing it from the room. The water would remove the psychic

sludge which had attached itself to her, which had awakened her from her'

sleep to the alarm of finding the impression of another body lowering itself

onto her length, clinging to her breasts, her mound of Venus, her thighs.

Was this Anne de Cybelle herself melding with her twentieth century reincar-

nation? Was it Charles Baudelaire returning to the body of his beloved?

Or was it more likely some sinister ectoplasm,

come to devour the delicious tresses of the celebrated

Psychic d'Elle Arte?

In these days of heightened spirit presence, choose safety over stimulation.

Unless the presence is absolutely clear and benificent, light incense and

smudge sticks, drink the juice of fresh red roses, spit water over the hair of

your head, bathe in lavender oil, wave white silk scarves or white sheets over

your head and around your body, stamp your feet on bare ground. For the

next three days, be careful of damage to your feet. In these days of death and

dying, the accumulated spirit life of centuries has been amplified by the

'epidemics of the twentieth century. And they are not passing to the other side.

They are not passing to the other side. They remain with us still.

So I lay on my row of cushions on Chrysanne's floor, watching as the

variegated fog of angry spirits was dispelled by smoke, by scent, by water.

The Psychic d' Elle Arte lowered herself into the steaming bath of lavender.

The ectoplasm collapsed. Anne de Cybelle was safe once more.

————

AA Bronson is an artist living and working in Toronto and Berlin. AA Bronson’s work—as an artist, healer, curator, and educator—is dominated by the practice of collaboration and consensus. From his beginnings in a free school and commune, through his 25 years as one of the artists of General Idea, in his deep involvement with founding and developing collaborative and social structures such as Art Metropole, the NY Art Book Fair and AA Bronson’s School for Young Shamans, and through his current collaborations with younger generations, he has focused on the politics of decision-making and on living life radically as social sculpture.