Mostly Done

Cold morning, so I go to work early where I can clean up and wash my hair with hot running water. A treat. When D gets there we go to Market Street for free coffee and our monster breakfast burrito. D wraps the last of the dolls. We store the work of four of those artists in the board room. Three or four elevator loads of stuff to the basement: bubble wrap, the packing for the "Wet Paint" show, all the packing blankets (we line them in front of the walls so the paintings aren't resting on the hard tile floor), tools, extension cords, vast quantities of hanging hardware. I have to clean up the concrete and plaster dust from where I've set plastic anchors. It gets everywhere. Finish lighting the show. Labels on Tuesday will take half the day. Linda arrives right at five, Sara is there, Charlie Dodds arrives with the vinyl signage, and we need to see it up, because D has tried a new technique where the letters are actually formed from some of the painted water in the show. It works very well. Looks great. White letter-parts with a deep blue background (the color of the signage wall right now, I didn't have time to repaint it) and the words Wet Paint look like they're painted with water. TR, Linda and I head over to the pub, D joins us a bit later, pub chat, though we do talk about Emily and whatever the hell we might be doing. Linda likes poultry and TR's family is heavy into varietal birds, so there's quite a bit of conversation about chickens. D has to go but we stay and eat dinner, talk some more about staging. I wish we could stay longer, but I had to get home and start a fire; it's supposed to get warmer tomorrow. Sunday we worked on Emily, making selections from the poems and letters all day long, then timed a rough run-through, and we had 27 minutes without music and the five little bridges we need to build to get from section to section. It's a treat, working well with others. I don't do many collective projects, because I value my time so highly, but this project interests me. Sara and Clay wined and dined us, came over to the museum at closing time for lay to see the "Wet Paint" show, and to then lead us in through the security system. Lovely evening, cocktails, fine dinner, and wonderful conversation. TR impressed with how well we all connected on so many levels, and by the apartment, which is a magnificent space, well and truly appointed. A sense of order. TR, Linda and I go back to the museum and listen to some of TR's music, and we can tell, at that point, that this project is going to work. Too late to write. Back in at 8:30, reading poems and letters, because we need a few more. Linda arrives AND EATS A DONUT, she resisted yesterday, couldn't today. She starts compiling an actual script, we're hovering and chatting, reading poems out loud. Linda flew. By early afternoon a draft, then another; Sara came in, quietly, at around three, and we were running through the text. It's quite good, the blend of letters and poems, Linda reads/does Emily very well indeed. Back to work on the museum show tomorrow, 25 pages of text to turn into labels, then trim them all, then mount them; a boring job, which will be good, right now, me being brain-dead and all. Loosened up at the end of the day, a Happy Hour drink at the pub and dinner at an uninspired Italian restaurant, and great conversation. Great conversation is one of the most important things. I've always had it, and expect it. Conversation is at heart of these paragraphs. I looked, for years, for how to write my speaking voice, after I worked out all the histrionics and angst, and I found it finally, alone in the woods, living a spare life. It is true, that if you play the guitar, for three or four hours a day, for ten years, you'll get better. Only a savant can bypass that step. There are savants, which is scary, the two books John Barth wrote when he was 24, James Pratt, that Indian guy who can recite pi out into infinity; but the rest of us have to work at it. I hate the fact that someone could see the answer without doing the work. I have a modest ability, I can see two moves ahead in chess, I can build a staircase, and I can fix dinner. Close enough to Plastic Man, or whatever Superhero. Beam me in Scotty. I fear you'll misunderstand. That me, that I project, might not be exactly me.