My Menagerie

Nice to get home to my little group of stump animals, they're so undemanding. Installation turning into a zoo. Gar head stinks, back to the bleach. Occupational hazards. Every group that comes in, to look at the Abstract Show, at least one person says, about the Red Color-field, that they could paint that with a roller in ten minutes. Painting probably took weeks or even months to do, must be forty layers. People don't look close enough nor long enough. A publicity photo shoot for the Wrack Show, a magazine article (OHIO, mag) but set for Monday next which means D and I work another extra day, on top of the extra days, AND we can't actually set up anything because The Turning Show is still installed. Sara finds a solution, move some things around, free up a wall section; D and I realize we can build a small wall section that can be used in the Show, hang something in the window, bring in two of my pets (the Calder and the Bull, I think), and compose a shot, a sort of miniature preview, call it good. I've started using the big office calendar at a note pad, a list divided into days. Need to ramp it up but ramp is at maximum rise already. Too soon, take care not to peak too soon. Theater mode. Kim mentioned doing Summer Stock, and I think about how those weeks progressed, peaking between late Saturday night and late Monday night, strike the previous show, set up the new show, tech the new show, dress the new show, and open the new show, get through the first show, getting all the cues correct and on time, go drink, smoke dope, and party. Tuesday off until evening performance. Wednesday, start building the next set, matinee performance, more building; Thursday the same. Friday, build all day, performance, Saturday the same and strike after, starting the cycle again. 10 weeks. Reading myself, the last couple of days, since Glenn left, it's like either facets or fragmenting, but what it reflects (I think) really is the way things, tasks, become discreet as they are identified. Becomes serious business when the installation is large. Occurs to me that I'm not so much the director of this installation as I am the stage manager. Old habits. I've never understood my abilities to do this, assemble a crew and accomplish a thing, whatever it was needed doing. I seem to get intensely interested in something and that, in and of itself, that I get intensely interested in something, seems to become magnetic: Kim, again, three crows in a line. We don't know what happens when the magnetic poles reverse, we weren't around the last time, but we know it happens. How does that make you feel? I'm interested but not scared, would like, at that moment, to be living on the equator, could go either way. When I go to get a drink I stop and look at the stumps, think about all the steps between finding something and presenting something. It's a kind of magic even though I don't believe in that shit, I'm a fucking empirisist, I want the sticks in front of me. Making sense of sticks, a runic thing, I occasionally throw the chicken bones, to see what comes next. The conversation must be about meaning, there is no other thing we could talk about, why else would you do this, fuck me, sorry to involve you, but could you go my bail?