Monthly Statement:
March 2006

March comes in like a Doppelganger and out like a Doppelganger…
In the beginning of March, I finally finished my monthly statement for January, in which I transcribed the saga of Doppelganger Jill in all its uncanny glory.

Throughout March, I was preoccupied with, or rather, in a constant state of manic frenzy on account of, a temporary public installation I was working on. The piece was commissioned by a Philadelphia organization in with many functions, among which is maintaining a staff of foot soldiers who sweep up trash in Philly’s central business district. The installation, on display for a week in the atrium of Philly’s Liberty Place, celebrated the organization’s 15th anniversary, and highlighted the fact that since its inception, the initiative had rid the area of thousands of tons of litter. So for the month of March, my focus switched from a 1-year accumulation of soap slivers to a 15-year accumulation of trash—a study in scale and contrasts, if you will.

The evening of February 28, I sent out an email blast to practically every address in my lengthy directory to generate a new flow of donations. One of the recipients, Matthew Jones, was an interesting musician whom I had met on a train to Philly several months earlier. On March 1, I, as well as everyone else on my email distribution list, received the following response:

“Is this the Jill I met at the Tabard Inn bar during a blind date attempt a few months back?
Matt”

And with this, he instantly scored three strikes in my Social Ineptitude Register: the first, for hitting the “reply” button and sharing his ever-so-suave response with my entire distribution list; the second for not remembering a pleasant conversation with a witty and charming young thing like myself; and the third, for being so slick as to take a wild guess at my identity and be dead wrong!!! Taken aback, I responded, feigning uncertainty as to who he was:

“Hmmmmmm---You're the musician from DC, I met on the train eons ago---with that CD, right?.....[I must have] put you on my Gonzo Art distribution list---who bothers updating these things?”
Then I gave his nuts a little twist:
“Ummmm, if I were that Jill from the Tabard Inn bar, I probably would think your message highly unsmooth. But then again, that might've been the intent.”
Shortly thereafter, I got an apologetic reply from him. He redeemed himself by proving, with his detailed response, that he had carefully read all of my monthly statements on the AP site. He then continued:
“perhaps you can help me with suggestions for a domestic idea I had that's kind of doing the opposite of your project... I'd like to find a "soap press" that would allow me to compress a lot of small soap slivers into one larger, racially integrated soap bar.”

Well, Matt, from what I’ve heard there’s one sitting unused in the basement of the Milwaukee County Jail. (see 11/05.)

On March 9, I got an interesting email from a stranger named Anthony L. Long II, which read as follows:

“Jill,
First of all, I only pray that this is actually your email address, and that this actually finds you. I can’t help be completely be amazed and I stand in awe when I look at your images. The first time ever saw your work was in Digital Photo Pro. I saw the cover image, of the magazine, and I decided to buy it. While looking at your images in the magazine, I decided to google your name and try and find your website. I look at it at least once a week to see any updated images.
I have been shooting since I graduated in 1999, and I shoot every single day. I can’t understand how you get your images to look like that. I have tried, and tried, but mine never come close. I know that you said, it was really not that big of a trick, but, you use a lot masking. And, I’m sure it’s a lighting technique to do the shiny stuff.

Anyway, it works for you, and I enjoy viewing your work. If there are any pointers, or advice, that you could give me, I would greatly appreciate it.
Anthony Long”

Doppelganger Jill strikes again!!! So I emailed Anthony back and referred him to the portion of my January statement on the AP website entitled “A Tale of Three Jill Gs.” (see 1/06) I asked him to check back with me afterward, but he never did. Hah----he’s probably a wimpy “body wash” user anyway. I keep him on my Accumulation Project email blast list in case he decides to come back to the real thing, and someday produces a sliver of credulity.

Receiving this misdirected fan email was a nagging reminder of the longest- standing item on my to do list: nearly fifteen years ago I made a note to write to Doppelganger Jill.

Later in March, I got a bill from my health insurance company requesting payment for an office visit I didn’t have with a doctor that I didn’t know. But sure enough, the name on the bill was my own. Whaaaaa? You mean now I have a Doppelganger Jill lurking within my health insurance coverage area?

And to top it off, throughout March, I got several barely intelligible phone messages from a woman with a sandpaper voice who identified herself as Rita, and who kept asking me to call her about the “catering plans”, or something like that. Anyway, one day Rita caught me at home, and asked me some question about the food service that I had absolutely no idea how to answer, so I told her I thought she might have the wrong person. She persisted: “Aren’t you the Jill Greenberg who’s married to Rick Gellin?” Nope. Try dialing “D” for Doppelganger. In hindsight, I regret not getting more information from this woman so I could figure out more about the Doppelganger population in my local calling area.
Out of the blue on March 24, I got the following email from a woman named Arianne Gelardin:

“Hi Jill,
My friend and I are starting an artist-run online radio program based in Brooklyn. Our first show is on the subject of collectors and collecting, and I found your soap collection particularly fascinating. I would love to meet and discuss the possibility of using your story as part of our program. We are interested in not just the activity of collecting as a hobby, but the psychology that initiates it, the inter-relationships that it forms, and the tangential occurrences and stories that it sparks.
We are starting our conversations next week, so if this is something you think you would be interested in, please email me and we can set up a time.
Very best,
Arianne”

By this point I was beginning to wonder if these soap slivers I’ve collected for 6 months exerted some supernatural power to draw out the like-named and the like-minded.

I was planning to be in Philly a few days later, since the organization I did the Liberty Place installation for had hired me to photograph the weekday lunch-time activity in front of the display, so I suggested that Arianne and Agnes meet me there. They arrived a bit early, so I photographed them at the organization’s information table.

Then I showed A and A to the vacant Casual Corner that had served my work space while I constructed the display. Because the acoustics were better, they conducted the interview within the cozy walls of a dressing room. They seemed most intrigued by the Jeffrey Gaidosh, AKA “Ass Soap Deputy,” story as well as that of Doppelganger Jill (see 11/05 for both). They asked me to read parts of my monthly statements that involved these people, particularly the transcriptions of the email exchanges that transpired within their stories. They mentioned that they’d like to conduct phone interviews with Jeff G and Doppelganger Jill, and I replied that I had been meaning to write a letter to Doppelganger Jill for years now to break the ice-- just hadn’t gotten around to it, but I promised I’d “get to it real soon.” Over the next couple of months Arianne and Agnes politely inquired, in several follow-up emails, whether I had heard back from Doppelganger Jill, until I had no choice but to finally get off my ass and write the letter that I didn’t know how to begin.Other Significant Developments in March:

One day Amazing April, my Superhero supervisor at work surprised me with a package containing several brand new bars of handmade natural soap from LUSH, a company that, at first glance at its wittily written newsletter, the LUSH TIMES, appears to be a pleasantly quirky, family run business. It features lots of snapshots of employees dressed in goofy costumes and of their little kids in the bathtub. (I was surprised to learn, after perusing their website, www.lush.com, that it is an international company.) The soaps had funny names like “Demon in the Dark,” and “Honey I Washed the Kids.” So far I have used the “Sea Vegetable” soap, which is lavender and lime scented, with a layer of sea salt and a funky little “afro” of seaweed on one of the small ends. The lather felt really smooth on my skin and it smelled fresh and sort of masculine, like a good men’s cologne, but subtler. I also enjoyed “Red Rooster” a spicy yellow bar scented with orange juice, cinnamon and cloves. The bar actually has spiky little cloves embedded in it, and when the soap wore down and they began to surface, showering became a sort of S and M experience—the cloves were prickly, but I delighted in the soap’s screamingly perky scent! Unfortunately, one day it fell in that really grody spot behind the toilet, and I felt I needed to give it a month or so to de-nastify before I used it again.

Feel free to email me at jillgreenberg27@hotmail.com if you wish to contribute soap slivers to the project or to send a comment.

Washington Post article available here.

Process: I will be accumulating remnants of used bars of soap by soliciting contributions through networks of friends and acquaintances. I am also looking into receiving donations through local hotels and collection boxes set up in various locales.