Setting The Show

Whereby you shuffle everything until it makes a kind of sense. There is no theme, merely the best from a given sample. It's a crap shoot, really, and we need to install it, so we move everything around, searching for a certain harmony. Sara is the diva of this, she could put a show together from house-hold trash. At the end of the day we have everything where it goes, sitting on the floor. Tomorrow we start the actual installation, hanging everything centered at 57 inches, equally spaced, a nightmare of simple math and instant solutions for particular problems. 133 pieces by 77 artists in three days, we need to do 45 pieces a day for three days, six or seven an hour until time runs out. It's not an option to fail; I actually look forward to this, working with D, counting off the numbers. In my preparator mode I have to leave my janitor mode behind. I trust someone will mop the floor. I hate placing my faith in amateurs. Meaning only I know how to mop and brook no failure. I'd rather mop than teach mopping because I'm not a very good teacher. I'd rather mop the fucking floor than try and explain a theory of mopping. I was bogged down in meaning and a pileated woodpecker flew into the scene. Looking for bugs, a simple mandate, I watched him for an hour, the way he listened. Half of all conversation is just listening, what's being said, what you might respond to. Usually I duck below the radar, pray I won't be recognized, sometimes I make a fuss, often I just stay quiet. D and I communicate in a series of grunts, we're done, toast. We've talked through the next sequence of steps and see a way through. We can do it, but right now we're all in, go back upstairs and tell Sara we're done for the day. Long and winding road. Tomorrow is another day. As we're leaving we meet Anthony at the back door, decide to go for a beer at the pub, where Holly, after a call, agrees to an early Happy Hour. There are only a couple of other patrons and we're loud and very funny, one of the owners gets a beer and listens from the end of the bar, agrees to sponsor our Curling Team, which will compete in the alley, after we steal a car and smash a fire hydrant, mid-winter, such that the surface will be a sheet of ice. We'll compete, sliding those concrete geese that are lawn furniture locally, using the neck as handle, sweeping the path with Swifters. The few patrons in the bar were crying with laughter. Even exhausted, we're the best act in town. I could hang this show no matter what. Posit your end-of-world scene, a pig's ass or sheep in the mist. It's nothing if not interesting.