Overcoming Inertia

Meet at the museum, go below the floodwall with two trucks and a chainsaw, walk the 1st terrace pretty much all the way from the marina to the mouth of the Scioto. A wonderland. The largest wrack field is probably half-an-acre, a jumble of sticks from whole large trees to twigs. We high-grade and still fill both trucks. We're over-buying here, so we can pick and choose when we do the actual installation. D insists he needs a particular stump, a complex double root-ball, a kind of siamese thing, maybe a Slippery Elm, looks like two seeds or samaras grew together and it's one piece but we can tell it wants to split, two trunks right from the root(s), one of which yields a crotched post. Heavy and awkward fucker, but we get it loaded. Three other crotched posts and we agree we need to find some more, maybe four more, because they will aid the assembly enormously. Crotched posts, I think, fill an early and important niche in building simple shelters. A spray of acorns on the shed roof (gusty wind) sounded like firecrackers. Startling. Found more parts for the bed, two very clean-edged post-modern root-balls, smallish. Four very nice stump pedestals. A great morning scrounging and we stop at the pub for a bowl of soup, Jim stands us to bottles of his best Scottish Ale, excellent, and we talk about the Beer Tasting Fund Raiser that is the opening of the Wrack Show. On the ridge, we unload at the shed, take both trucks back out to the printshop, bring all the wrack-sticks to the shed, have a beer and a smoke, then back out to the shed. Talk about the show and pry off bark with pocket knifes. At one point D looks up, we hadn't spoken for a while, both of us debarking, and he says -what the fuck are we doing?- -It doesn't mean anything- I tell him. -It merely is- Glenn was on this, when we talked the other day, about how theory is bullshit, the sticks tangibly exist. The key here, is that it needs to look interesting, be interesting, and, if I had a theory, it would be that the materials are inherently interesting. That would be my Artist Statement. I've grown more interested in natural forms. Three birds go into a bar: a crow, a parrot, and a sparrow; what I actually am is a cartoonist who can't draw, a composer who doesn't read music, and someone who can't resolve a single fucking thought. A failure by any standard except the one that counts. I can't say what that is, I'm too close to it, what I see is a step away, the product, not the process, I do because I have to. I'd rather be a surfer. Really, you know, when you consider everything. Live someplace where the surf was always good and you could live in the moment. And never read Emily or Cormac McCarthy, never dig your muscles into the world, no deadlines, no sudden last-minute changes. They'd probably have Health Care and Retirement Packages, and you might be swayed, as well you should, a guarantee that they care about the workers, but there was a thread that I was following, what was it? Something about substance. Fill in the blanks. I'd rather do this than that. I'd much rather report the ducks than make something up, but I constantly have to make things up, because reality can't keep pace. Where were you September 17th?