Light, Tunnel

Hard rain on the metal roof all night. I'd been expected it, parked at the bottom of the hill and hiked in. Fall colors are happening, clean and vibrant in the drizzle. Enough of a fire in the cookstove to chase the damp and heat the oven enough to cook a halved acorn squash stuffed with homemade sausage (easy if you keep a jar of the spice mix, then catch the ground pork on sale) and that takes care of dinner for two nights. Slept well, with the droning roof, out early, to watch the creeks in spate and check the napp at the spillway. Thunderous, a sheet of water 42 feet wide, 10 inches thick, aerated in the fall, turning white, crashing against the curb at the bottom. Turkey Creek is roiling. Altogether an excellent thing. The sound is thrilling, and I always forget the way you can feel it in your feet, standing there. The word awesome comes to mind, and sublime, all of which was discussed today, at length, because of a paper D needs to write on Plato. Perfect museum day, though exhausting. D there, and Sara, an we finish what might be called the initial installation. Still some tweaking to do, some small brass supports to be fabricated, so all the toy animals can stand. The poor things, their joints are wallowed out. Actually light the show, and I didn't think we'd get there until tomorrow. We three have agreed to work again tomorrow. Having D for just two days a week, when we're installing a show, the A team needs to be together. In an Art Museum, the art is what it's all about. So, we have labels and mounts, and a huge clean-up yet ahead of us, but the show is there. Fucking magic. We flew the Monkey Aviators today, and it was no big deal, ropes through ring bolts. The ropes go all the way from the Richards gallery, upstairs, and tie off on cleats downstairs, on two pillars. Very cool, and it breaks the plane. It's striking, really, what it does; that particular attachment is elegant. I want to get some of the belly out of the top of the banner, and I see a way, using just a small screw-eye and a length of monofilament. I leave some details to the other two perparators who will install this show at other venues. Out of my control there, if I made notes it would probably only confuse them. I know my notes confuse me, they're a jumble of things I want to remember and things I need to do. I only keep one set of notes. I thought about only wearing shirts that had two pockets, so I could have two sets of notes, but that seemed ridiculous, who needs two sets of notes? Barnhart exempted, obvious reasons, no one. I rest my case against Plato on a faulty logic, but it's enough for me. We don't even understand, exactly, what he means by 'good', we don't understand what he meant by 'artist', I'm not a meta-thing person, but we have very little idea about what's being said. Plato would have liked Thoreau, I can see the two of them at the pub, imagine them telling stories. That's my level of engagement. I told Sara today, I'd done hundreds of shows, thousands of performances, but this show is special, it does something else, it brings memory into play. It's not just art, it's more than that, it's a record of a thing, a phenomenon. I'd feel ill-spent, if this show were viewed as only minor regionally important. My exhaustion is balanced by a certain hubris. I know I've installed this show really well, and I don't want to appear arrogant, or the usual asshole that appears to accept the award. You know you're better than that. We know that too. There's a thread through here somewhere. Right, right, what you thought they were thinking. that's a dead-end street, don't go there.