Nothing Matters

The apparent world is illusion. It's all in your head. There is no reality, just a consensus of opinion. A sorry base for action. Nothing makes any sense. Not to make too fine a point. And what you see is merely an altered image, not the thing itself, photo-shop, everything rearranged. Gotta learn to go back to sleep. Must have, for a little while, then up and off to the museum, to wait for the "Alice" show. Supposed to be between 10 and 12, finally arrives at 2:30. Ridiculous to pack 45 pieces in just three crates, one of them, the largest, weighs 303 lbs.and won't fit through a doorway. The other two fit through ok, had to take the monster down the alley, then up and in the loading dock; went next door to the bar and got Chris to help us get it inside and on a dolly. Pain in the gut. Should have been in maybe 9 crates. So we pop the lids and start pulling out art. They're much larger than we expected (we knew the size of the image, but weren't told the amount of matting and framing, image size is useless information) and it's a huge show. All 45 pieces hang on D rings, which is an excellent method of hanging, but the most pain-staking to install. There is no margin for error. It's after four before we get them all cheek to jowl around the perimeter. Some great images. Sara, D and I walk around, muttering. Sara will set the show tomorrow, I'll walk at least 20 miles. If I could get a single wall hung, I'd feel better about my prospects. Mostly, we'll hang the show on Wednesday, nothing I can't finish up on Thursday, and we'd still be safely within the margin. But it's asking too much, really, to hang this show in a day and a half. I have to paint the tops of all the pedestals where Steven's altered furniture resides, I have to clean the entire museum, I have to set up for the big fund-raiser, I have to fix the toilet in the basement, it's needs a new flapper valve. When you get right down to it, there aren't that many worker bees at the museum. Not a complaint, because mostly running a museum is about fund-raising and talking on the phone. Business. What I do, the nuts and bolts, is a small part. I had felt strongly that the show was sequential. I know the story. It's iconic. There's a narrative. Snow flurries on Friday. I'm not ready, this comes as something of a surprise. Then I realized I hadn't flipped the calendar page over, and it was now November, when we sometimes had snow, before the real cold kicked in just after Christmas. A bear of a show to hang. Three large prints, ten small, and 32 that are three-foot square. I'll need a good level (we just bought a new one, but D dropped it) and a string, AND a story pole: a stick, with marks where the D rings center. A show like this, the frames need to align perfectly. Not possible in the real world, because when you drill a hole in a plaster wall with a hammer drill, the surface texture controls the bit. I center my holes with a tool called a 'drift', a sharp pointed heavy punch, but I'm still at the mercy of wall texture. It's like walking on acorns, sliding on gravel, writing on an uneven surface, you don't have absolute control. Probably, if I can be within a 16th of an inch, I'll be ok. An 8th of inch you'd see from ten feet away, and it would bother your eye. I'm not really a perfectionist, but it's small things that affect (effect) what we see. I can do the math, which is complex enough, but it isn't enough, I need to sense exactly where things should go. The Installer's Paradox. I'm too stupid to assume the party line. Which would be a laser line. Straight across any affiliation. Life is more complex than that. What we're faced with is unspeakable, mountaintop removal. I have to go sleep. Good luck with the rest of it.