Tomorrow

I have to completely reinvent myself tomorrow, this incarnation has failed in more ways than one. But it's late and I'm tired and I agree to a draw. Not that I admit defeat, or even position, but I'm bored with the posing. I'd rather throw a game, than stay up any later. Rain, when I wake, a uniform greyness. I can just see my other ridge across a fog-filled hollow. The phone is out, but I have electricity, and the quiet, except for the staccato beat of light rain on the metal roof, especially after I flip the breaker on the fridge, is total; the sense of solitude is overwhelming. No crows, which would complete the picture, but a ragged looking Pileated woodpecker arrives, during a lull in the rain, and works a dying hickory tree. He makes a few pecks, then cocks his head to listen for bugs beneath the bark. A lovely bird, always alone, most majestic in a stark winter landscape, when everything is black or white, with that brilliant flash of red. Nothing for it but to read all day, so I spend an hour looking through my stacks and settle of MFK Fisher's translation of Brillat-Savarin's "The Physiology Of Taste". A very good matching of styles between author and translator. Fisher is a plain, lucid (and beautiful) writer, an important influence on my work, and I've read her, over and over, for thirty years, and she does a wonderful job of keeping Brillat-Savarin clear. After a couple of hours though, I turn to my favorite current food writer, John Thorne. He writes in such a clean, relaxed prose, not unlike john McPhee, that it's not until later that you realize how much information has been transferred. I write so slowly that I don't even keep two fingers busy. I started this paragraph four hours ago, but I keep walking around the house looking out the windows, thinking about various things. Glad I called Glenn and Linda last night, before the phone went out; Linda was up to her elbows in butter and couldn't talk, but I had a nice chat with Glenn, about the Emily Project and life in general. He's my oldest friend, Hypo Clearing Agent, and I can't remember ever having a falling out with him. We shared some strange times, living together on Cape Cod, first in a de-sanctified church in Yarmouth Port, then in a house on the dump road in Brewster. I had spent a couple of hours reading myself, trying to pull a manuscript together, and I enlisted his aid, in trying to find some things I'd written. The leaf-rain is mesmerizing. The wind picked up. As Emily might have said " Trees stripped bare by their master---" and there's a finality to the sound and feel of it. With Ted Enslin, once, in Maine, before he moved to the coast, we listened to all of the Mahler symphonies in one day. He actually possessed the manuscript copy of the unfinished tenth symphony, and hummed it, dragging his finger across the page. Those last Beethoven quartets are heart-rending, Opus 131. How that feeling of sublime is generated by a piece of music, or looking at a piece of art, or reading a poem of Emily's embedded in a letter, is a mystery, but real nonetheless: there's a visceral response with no mediation. Religion is all about mediation. I tend to worship things that are extremely local and seasonal: a fox, a particular bird, the way water runs downhill, the patter on the roof; it's taken decades, but I've cleared the ways, only pay attention to what interests me. It's an arrogant attitude, and tends to isolate me, because no one wants to spend time with someone who watches tadpoles for hours at a time. But I'm not unhappy, is the point I think I was starting to make. Looking at the bilaterally symmetrical leaves on a sumac bush, or befriending a fox is more important, to me, than tweeting a friend that I was leaving Kroger. I might grow a bread because shaving is become bothersome. All I'd have to do in the morning is brush my teeth, no chance I'd cut my throat by accident. Tom The phone is still out, so I can't send, and it's easiest to just keep writing in the same file, whatever I called it. Today, tomorrow? I have to get out, the wind is blowing, and that's a good sign. Dries the surface moisture, and I just want to get to town, so we can do Emily, the only thing I care about right now. Then I'm taking a week off, assuming 'The Corpse Pose' on the living room floor and not moving a muscle. Drinking just juice. Doctor John, "Money honey..." Junior Wells, "Everybody's getting them some..." Bonny singing back-up, then Jimmy gone wild. Shake everything you got. Did I mention Zach is a genius? And Linda is beyond anything you could imagine, she nails Emily, in all the contradictions. Twice she makes me cry, and I don't even remember how to cry, a strangled choking, an embarrassed cough, but at the very beginning and then again, at the beginning of the fourth movement, I just weep. This is what art should do. This will be out of sequence, but I didn't want to throw it away. Tom Read more...

The Blues

Etta James. What a voice. She inhabits the songs she sings. I let it rain for an hour, to clean the roof, then quickly harvested 15 gallons of water. The cold front is here and the temperature plunged from 75 yesterday to 40 last night. I have a good fire going, a first grader's desk/chair from a construction dumpster at one of the schools, and the house is comfortable. After the Emily shows I'll collect the firewood I have strewn along the driveway into the woodshed. There's quite a bit of it, all of it found wood, pre-cuts, as Kim says, and I've made arrangements to buy a load of dry oak. I'm still going to buy one of those infrared heaters, to soften the heating curve. I can afford, now, to pay a back-up heating bill of $100 a month. D and I were talking about paper-making, and he said that the OU Papermaking Department planted a garden of fibrous vegetables from which to make paper; artichokes are good, as is okra, pumpkin, spaghetti squash, anything with a lot of fiber, but it does stink, rotting off the organic matter. New England is dotted with flax ponds, and it must have smelled to high heaven, but linen has always commanded a high price. Dusky dark, I walk out to the Jeep, to get a couple of gallons of drinking water and there's a batch of turkeys, ten or twelve, tearing up the mast near where I park. As soon as I hear them I stop, squat down to watch, the wind and falling leaves obscure any sound I make, and I'm able to duck-walk close enough to see them clearly. They're fat and beautiful, all females, and they must be roosting nearby, because it's getting late, and time for them to tree-up for the night. I have a perfect crossing shot, when two of them walk by each other, but I don't have a shotgun and don't want to kill anything. I want to get my water and get back to the house, so I finally just stand up and start walking. They panic, but like swans, they don't take to flight very easily, and just run off, into the underbrush. I get my water and head back home. Rain water for a bath heating on the cookstove, the sheep-watering trough pulled up close with another couple of gallons of water warmed to room temperature. I soak for awhile, listening to the rain and the leaves falling; then scrub down completely, until I'm pink and reborn, clean clothes, rock-climbing pants and a sweatshirt. Rock climbing pants are strange because the zipper runs the other way, down to up, and I don't know what that signifies. I had wanted an artichoke, and the papermaking talk reminded me, so I had bought one. While it steamed I made a nice garlicky mayonnaise. Anymore, when I have an artichoke, it's the whole meal, maybe a crust of bread. I like an Old Vines Zin with this, something huge, and I listen to The Cello Suites. It's an utter and complete transport. I know there's another world out there, television and movies, tweeting and texting, but a firm artichoke, steamed just right, with a home-made dipping sauce and The Cello Suites, is a tough act to follow. Read more...

Estimated Load

Fat people aren't nearly the weight of cast iron . Take a really fat person, 300 pounds, and they might weigh several tons in cast iron, if we were to cast them, which I'd love to do, cast fat people in either concrete or cast iron, and make a show of them. They fascinate me right now. I stopped at Kroger on the way home, wanted an artichoke, didn't need a basket, much less a manual shopping cart; one item, you can just toss it from hand to hand; and there were two fat people waiting for the next available electric mobile unit, so they didn't have to walk the aisles, and they were bitching that there weren't more units available. In certain situations I have little patience, and I wanted to kill both of them. Fuck a bunch of entitlement. I'm tired of people complaining. The Real World is fraught with complication, there are only so many electric carts, and a great many fat people, and other handicapped people that actually need a cart, and the occasional goofballs that specialize in knocking down displays. I avoid drawing attention to myself, I would never, for instance, wear a sash or a tiara, or make-up, for that matter; I prefer to stay below the radar. Also, if you're really fat, it's hard to hide. I find, being skinny, you can hide behind a tree; but if you're fat, you hang out on either side. I'd rather be invisible. Spent most of the day looking for Emily's desk and chair and finally found a couple of things that will work, a little table with two drawers and an old but serviceable chair. $50 for the pair. Came home an hour early as a front is moving in and I didn't want to get trapped in town. Wind, ahead of the front, had created a leaf-storm on Mackletree, that was perfectly beautiful in dappled slanting light. This weekend should see an end to most of the leaves on the ridge. The forest stripped bare. The sumac is lovely and I harvest a bag of the crimson seed-heads for making sun-tea next summer, black tea and a sumac head make a very hardly iced tea, slightly sweetened, with a splash of cream, it's a great summer beverage. For the weekend I have some great Louisiana sausage (wherever the French settled there is great sausage and great bread), the makings for a cream of squash soup (Lynne left me an butternut squash from the Sister Cities decorations), and the makings for a small lasagna, because I found a teflon bread pan (while looking for Emily's desk, and realized that with the new, pre-cooked, noodles, it wouldn't be a big deal to make a two or three serving (for one)), lasagna. Cast iron has a specific gravity of 7.21, weighs 450 pounds a cubic foot. How many cubic feet to the average person? I'm guessing a human body, mostly water, has a specific gravity of a little more than 1, so divide your weight by 40 and multiply the answer by 450. The math is sloppy, but in my case a cast iron copy would be about 1600 pounds. A solid presence. In lead (11.35 specific gravity, 708 pounds a cubic foot) maybe four thousand pounds. Not exactly the stir I wanted to cause, but not bad for a hillbilly. If I could cast you in gold, 19.29 specific gravity, 1204 pounds a cubic foot, you'd be really heavy. Even if you were skinny. Read more...

Wasted Time

Little or nothing, one thing other than another. I spend a couple of hours with the guy marking cables that run into the museum, trying to find where the phone line actually is. I know where it ends up, so we work both ways from Sunday and eventually find a place where he can hook his resistance meter over the active line (there are several generations of dead lines) and mark, on the surface of the alley, where the live line runs. Speaking of lines, I need to take the trap apart, that runs out of the kitchen sink, because there's an obstruction, probably a clog of hair (I wash my hair in that sink) and it's not draining correctly. It'll be a slimy mess, and I've put it off for weeks, but I have to do it tomorrow because the drain is completely clogged: all problems, as Glenn has maintained, are drainage problems. Something lodged in the elbow, who knows what, I probably won't be able to tell even when I see it, what it actually is. Shit accumulates. It's a fact of nature, right now it's leaves. I've never seen so many leaves. They're inches deep and the grader ditch is completely clogged, the two important catchments are completely filled. It's possible that a violent storm will clean them, but more likely that they'll have to mucked out too. One thing after another. I have to find Emily a desk and a chair. The combined arts are difficult because you rely on other people. I know, more or less, what I can do, but I have no idea what you're capable of. Let's assume we reached an agreement. Must have made fifteen trips in the elevator from the second floor to the basement, cleaning out the gallery, and getting the pottery show down near the back door. D got the cargo van at four and we loaded it for the return trip the Cleveland. Ray, the head elevator guy, arrived at four-thirty, to load 2500 pounds of cast iron weights (used to test the elevator) into his truck for the return to Cincy. Hot today but freezing temps by Sunday night. If it rains very much tomorrow (it might) I'd have to spend the night in town because of what I call 'Leaf Slippage' which is the phenomenon whereby leaves fill the ruts in the driveway COMPLETELY and a good rain makes them far slicker than new fallen snow. The upper part of the driveway, on the flat, is absolutely invisible, several inches of leaves, but it's easy to stay on course, there's no other way. I need to remember, I just went and wrote it down on the folded piece of paper I keep in my work shirt pocket, to pick up a gallon of de-scented lamp fuel. I could use kerosene, but I hate the smell, and trying to get the smell off my hands. I'm always looking for cheap utility candles, five or six to the box, five or six inches long, three/quarters of an inch in diameter, they burn for a long time. That's what I look for, in a candle, the longest duration of light. I could be construed as a romantic, but I'm actually just a functionalist. We occupy a small part of the spectrum, just below average, we make no waves, and try to remember where we live, everything else is up in the air, that juggling we all do. Read more...

Not Special

Nothing ventured. It's only by leaving yourself hanging by a thread that you advance the cause, the rest of the time, you're just filling a parking space; which is fine, most of the time, you don't want to dangle, as a matter of course. Sometimes though, you just waggle your ass, to see what stirs. Nothing gained. Pork loins are on sale and I get one to cure with salt and sugar, the various peppers, as a breakfast meat. These cure beautifully into something very close to expensive Italian deli meats that I can never afford. I use a curing mixture that's one part kosher salt to two parts brown sugar, and add four or five different ground chilies. Coat the loin completely, put it on a rack in a disposable roasting pan and put it in the fridge. You'll need to coat it again in just a couple of days, then as needed for two weeks. I cut the finished product (some times I lightly smoke it) into six inch pieces and freeze them. One will last me a couple of months, mostly for eating a large breakfast at dinner, which is my favorite time to eat a large breakfast. I rarely eat meat in the morning. A good start on the winter larder. The instant mashed potatoes I like (can't believe I'm saying that) were recently 10 packages for $10, so I bought 10. Ordered grits and rice to be sent to the museum. Getting an extremely floral Pecan Rice from Louisiana that is incredible, and stone-ground grits from Georgia. Ordered 10 pounds of pintos and 10 pounds of black beans from Dove Creek, Colorado Put a few pounds of cured hog jowls in the freezer, for cooking the beans, I can always carry in an onion and bread. I do need to address the liquid problem, lay in some juices. Water isn't a problem, I put out a 4x8 sheet of plywood on sawhorses, water freezes the surface, then snow falls and I can harvest it with a dust-pan, melt it into my pickle buckets and be good to go. It's basic life, but it works for me. I'm afraid the Jeep won't like the winter driveway, but I don't either. I can walk, do me good. I am getting an infra-red electric heater, to keep the house warm enough that I don't have to heat it from 40 degrees when I get home. High in the art of suffering. A Van Morrison line, actually, that I've always loved. Known so many people that were. I avoid depression by walking in the woods, over to the graveyard today, for the annual count, I got sixteen again, which is I think the number I got last year, my records are chaotic; because the hollows, where leaves collect, are depressions, where pine coffins have failed, " For worms, dear Percy...", and wet dirt, which can be very heavy, so you end up with these depressions, where leaves collect and rot, and you end up with a identifier, something that marks the spot, and a line of talk. Depressions in the ground and black rotting leaves, I can tell a grave now, I never used to pay any attention. Everything looks different, or is that just me? Read more...

Degree of Difficulty

The pilgrim's lament. Not that I pretend, any longer, to do things that I can't, I gave that up years ago. I'm like a turtle with a mission, or a snail on a quest. My skill set allows for survival in a variety of environments. I've learned to live with being uncomfortable for long periods of time, not scratching under the cast with a coat-hanger, accepting the itch as a fact of life. There was a kid at Janitor College, a nice kid, but immature and lazy, Bordon Wainwright; he was young, maybe 17, and he'd fucked up so often that his parents just wanted to put him somewhere. Janitor College as Trade School. It doesn't work that way, though; if you're raised in a penthouse, you don't want your name on your pocket; on the other hand, if you come up through the ranks, having your name on your pocket is pretty cool. I generally use the name Frank, it's a habit, more than anything else. A straight-forward name with little room for doubt; looking down I see KNARF, which confuses me for a moment, and then I realize how I'm looking, what I'm seeing, and everything falls into place. Right. I knew that. Bordon had a problem with alcohol, he'd drink antifreeze; took a header off Storm King thinking he could fly. My past is littered with failures, which is fine, success teaches you nothing. Now, I understand, there are glider suits with wings, that allow a limited flight, Bordon was not so lucky. If the pilgrim be serious, approaching the cave, he would genuflect and pray for salvation, maybe walk on his knees. Penthouse, by the way, is what elevator people call the elevator room on the roof. I was a little late for work, I gotten up at 3:30 and written for an hour, but we still got the print show hung below lunch, which is quite remarkable, even for us. I'll do the labels tomorrow, and we can light it when D's back on Thursday. Lunch was a hoot today. Barb had said yesterday that they'd have a couple of new items for us to sample. Soon as we came in the door, they called back to the kitchen that Tom and D were there and Billy cooked us up the new items. A variation on the Sheppard's Pie with chunked meat instead of ground beef. Very good. Then the new fish dish, which is a couple of fillets of pollack, greed beans with bacon bits, and roasted baby potatoes; I told Billy to try a smear of mayo on the fillets, a trick I learned from Marilyn. Barb and the staff hovered around us, as we tried the potatoes several ways. It was fun, a free lunch and a doggy bag for dinner. I have free food coming out of my ears. Lynne even left me a butternut squash, which I will turn into a cream soup. I'll peel it and core it and roast the seeds, eat them while steeping the chunks, salt and pepper, a goodly sweet onion, caramelized in butter, in chicken broth, add half a pint of cream and blenderize everything to a perfect consistency. I usually eat it with buttered saltines and an old vines Zin. To say I'm not picky hardly addresses the case, but this is very good, and so easy. I steal butternut squash almost into winter, before they rot, everyone with their fall displays. This year I target MacDonald, and the huge fall display at Tim Horton. Enough squash to last me through the winter. I just have a hole in the ground I cover with hay, none of it costs me anything but a few minutes of my time. I thought about Linda talking about eating cheaply. I have the same eight dollars in my wallet I had four days ago, and I haven't spent a cent on food. I will have to buy yogurt and juice. Found a rabbit on the way home, a perfect kill, run over on the head, and it was still warm, so I pulled over, to field-dress it, and one of the rangers stopped, to see what I was doing, they all know me now, which is a good thing, and he asked me how I was going to prepare it, and I told him just dredge it in sour milk and masa, fry it in walnut oil, and eat it with your fingers. Fuck a bunch of civilization. When you have the move down for skinning a rabbit, it's sweet to watch, like taking off a sock. I can skin and eviscerate a rabbit in two minutes, I usually take longer than that because I'm interested in the contents of the stomach and I have to get out a magnifying glass, and I separate out the heart and liver, to make gravy. It's interesting that I always carry a very sharp knife with me, so I can open up the stomach of any dead animal I find. I'm not sure it means anything. It'll be cool to see Glenn next week, for him to see what we've done with Emily. I think he'll approve, the way she pays attention to the music. He'll agree, I think, that the music is her subconscious. Read more...

Decisions

One of those days when the reap exceeds the sow. Living off the fat that doesn't exist. Any given year I plant more trees than I harvest, but any given day that might not be true. I grant myself certain days of indulgence, more often, as I get older and bags of cement seem to be heavier than they once were. Once I used to carry rocks (glacial till, they looked like African heads) for miles on a beach in West Tisbury, just to get home, so I could mount them on a stump and talk to them. Talking to a rock is a whole lot different from imagining spirits. I had a large quantity of composted shit from the outhouse and the composting toilet, and I'd ordered some morel spat from a place that advertised in the local electrical cooperative magazine. I get three magazines, that, the New Yorker, and the London Review Of Books, which I get second hand, from B. I'm so out of touch. I don't know who any of those entertainment people are, reading the news. Most of them should be shot, they're a bad example of what it's like to be human. Part of me would like to get my hands on those fake breasts, but the greater part prevails, and I read some essays about herding goats in Colorado. Blind turtles, as Howard said to god. Or an angel, which would be god, part of, anyway. I ask you, honestly, what was the pivotal moment in your life? I remember mine, I was walking the outer beach at Wellfleet and there was a large surf, hammering the shore. I felt something, that started at my feet and vibrated through my entire body, wow, I thought, it might be possible to write. Then I started paying attention. It's always in detail. Read more...

Getting Clean

Coming out of town, going west on the river road, there are a few thousand people at the dirt race track (it's not a quarter mile track, I understand it's three-eights of a mile) with campers and cars completely filling the floodplain where the Scioto falls into the Ohio. The noise is deafening. Five lap elimination heats in each of the half-dozen categories that will culminate in 100 lap finals on Sunday. It's a big deal, locally, bar business is booming, and four-wheelers are in a steady line going over the Second Street Bridge to the Carry-Out for more Bud Light. It's kind of cool, to see it, passing through, it's much neater to be shed of all that pollution and be embedded in the forest, miles to the west. I have a date with a fox, or I might see a bear. If I stepped on the resident timber rattler, she'd be so slow I could grab her behind the head before she could ever strike. Not a claim to fame, reptiles are sluggish in the fall. When I kill the breaker for the refrigerator, the house falls silent. I'm working at stripping down to basics. I get, essentially, no feed-back, Linda had asked, but I still imagine an audience. They would probably understand whatever leap. I surprise myself, what I say. What I don't say. I'd like to have a magic message, but there isn't one. The future is a dismal place and I'm glad to be dying. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, especially my daughters, but they're stuck with it. However pessimistic, I sound too casual, but I can build a bridge. The elevator guys completely rebuilt the elevator. It's slower but safer. We must be right at the dew point right now, because water is dripping off the roof. A wonderful percussive sound. Mickey Hart on the back-beat. I think he's the greatest drummer ever. I'm allowed my opinion, right? That's part of the deal. By dying, I mean merely that my body won't do some of the things it used to do. I'm in decent health, take no prescription drugs, haven't been to a doctor since the incident with a rattlesnake many years ago. Still, I smoke and drink, often skip meals when I have the notion to write. The slanted light of fall through yellow leaves stops me every time. The ridgetop and the drive in and out Mackletree, this time of year, is so beautiful, I become emotionally labile watching a squirrel skitter across the road. Walking the logging roads, there's this phenomena, where a tree will give up all of it's leaves at once, and if the wind isn't blowing, they'll collect under it, like a memorial to the season passed. This is the year that was, they seem to say. Sometimes the leaves make a perfect pile, reflecting the tree's branches, a mirror image; usually the edges are strewn, but occasionally there's a fractal duplication of what the tree says. I'm not into meta-physics, or any kind of spirituality, but that nature holds a sacred place. At this point in my life, I could live in a cave. I enjoy my interaction with other people, but they aren't strictly necessary. A public library and Kroger is all I really require; a good day, I can write a paragraph. Call it a conceit, but I can write about specific things quite (really) well, 'really' meaning in the real world, the one we share. The passion. I'm thinking about Emily here, the way she hears the voices, when she picks up the mallet or touches his piano, it shatters the wall; I love the way she turns away and disregards the audience. This is very cool theater. The Emily Show might be the best thing I've ever done. I disappear completely. It's Zack and Linda onstage, god bless their souls, and from the minute the lights come up, Linda is in control, the words drive the action. What I wanted, most of all, was that connection. She looks back at Zack, and he hits these complex chords, on pots and pans, and she continues about a garter snake in the grass. I know these poems better than you can imagine, every word and every mark of punctuation, I go over them in my sleep, to see if I've missed something, but the two of them, Zack and Linda, hit every note, it's a lovely thing, to put these people together. Being a director is just letting things happen. It's a treat for me, watching them interact. TR's music is very good and Linda is spectacular, what I do is just make things possible. Read more...

Waiting for Art

I do it all. It's not a matter of choice. Just that it falls on me to haul the garbage and scrub the toilets. Otherwise it won't get done. I don't even mind, it's just a job, after all, and hauling shit is something I understand. Most of yesterday spent cleaning, then setting up for the German Sister City. Got home to a cold house without electricity, started a fire, and bundled-up on the sofa with Otto Rank's "Art And Artists" until the house was warm enough and the stove hot enough to roast some root vegetables and fry a small steak. The right place at the right time: at Kroger I happened to be in the meat section, when one of the meat department people came out of the back with a cart of meat to be remaindered and in it were three bacon wrapped filets. I bought them all ($3 each), froze two and ate the third. Wish I'd gotten a bottle of wine, it was a great meal. There have been a couple of frosts in the bottoms and the parsnips and turnips have started converting starch to sugar and are fantastic. Texas toast, and the sauce. Slept like the dead until about four-thirty, when I had my recurring dream about being on a very rickety set of scaffolding, and had to get up, smoke a cigaret and have a scant shot of whiskey to settle my nerves. Finally got back to sleep and then was almost late for work; D was late and it all worked out. The ladies arrived to decorate the tables for the event, and they did a very nice job, a lovely set-up, dinner for a hundred, wine and beer in the back hall. The place will be a mess tomorrow, but I'm not going back in until Tuesday. When I really need to get right on hanging the print show because it opens on Thursday. We were given a painting by Guayasamin, we have the provenance and it's appraised at 25K, for the big fund-raiser auction. On canvas, but it was rolled up, needed to be re-stretched and framed. D spent half a day and $7 building the stretcher and frame. I don't like the painting but it looks a thousand times better than it used to. It'll probably sell for less than a thousand and if it does I'll buy it, and resell to a dealer in South America. I actually know enough about the art world, to turn a profit on it, which is weird and scary and a bit embarrassing. I'm Mister Green to most of the people I know, my carbon foot-print is very small, I actually disappear into the background. I have emission allotments I could sell. I choose not to, because I think of it as my stairway to heaven. Play a few notes in G, it's always the blues, nothing tugs at your heart-strings so strong. My next project, beyond the book I'm writing for Diana, is setting some of Walt Whitman to music. Not songs exactly. I'll probably have to do them, because I know the way they sound in my head. I can hear them. TR will do the music, with Zach hammering pots and pans in the background. The elevator guys call the control room, up on the roof, the penthouse, because they're above everyone else, and they have a certain power, I just think of it as the elevator room, but they call it the penthouse, and that's fine, it's good to have a name. Read more...

Later

I awoke from the nap. Was awakened, actually, by a couple of deer running through what passes for my yard. It's black powder season and they're seeking the tangles. Nice drive into work, heated leather seats. Because of the recent rains there is some fall color and it's quite lovely on the back roads and especially along the river. I was supposed to get the pottery show packed today, but kept getting called off task. The elevator guys are getting ready for a Friday inspection, and people were asking me questions all day about one thing or another. Then, in the afternoon, I took two groups through the portrait show and the Carter galleries, the day was suddenly over and my feet hurt. My left foot is the worst (the most broken toes) but, now, I don't have to use it on the clutch, so it's not so bad. I have to find Emily a desk, and a carpet for the open area, down stage center, so that her shoes don't compete with the music. TR's music is quite delicate. If someone's cell phone goes off, I'll probably kill them. There are times, during the performance, when sounds from the audience will be greater than sounds from the stage. Extremely delicate. And it absolutely can't be taken in in a single performance, not possible. Too much happening, though it's minimal in almost every way. Did I mention that Linda is brilliant? That Zack is a genius? That TR wrote a master's thesis? It's a great fucking, delicate, sweet, sweet, show that sweeps right along. Five movements, and the fourth and fifth, when the music changes, are fantastic. Instead of getting used to them, I'm moved more every time I hear them, and Linda brings down the lights, of course, with her tombstone "Dear Cousins, Called Back, Emily" and we go to black. It's very strong. Fair to say better than any of us imagined. If Ken gets down, from the Ohio Arts Council, he'll want this show to travel, and if the money was there, to pay Linda and Zack, and put them up in suitable lodging, we might be able to work something out. I'm an agent now, negotiating contracts. Linda and Zack are beautiful together. Glenn will agree, the fourth pass through. Read more...

The Wind

The wind wakes me, rustling brittle leaves. It sounds like the ocean. That first winter on Cape Cod when I lived right on the water, a narrowing inlet known as Lucy's Crotch that led to a kettle pond where rich people kept their boats in winter. I wrote a trashy Gothic novel, that I later burned, and walked the beaches. It spoiled me forever, the isolation; no TV, no telephone. I ate cod, clams, and potatoes, listened to the pounding surf off Nauset, and fed frozen eels to a harbor seal. A simple life. Played poker once a week with a local gang for chump change. The past, as it happens, adumbrates the future. Now, I consider time alone as a reward for having survived. LSD was still legal and I tripped often, listened to Bach in the morning (WGBH) and scoured the littoral for my next meal. It was an easy life, and I was unaware. I had a cat, and I told her everything, she was completely nonchalant, only demanded her share of whatever fish I was eating. A 'perfect relationship' except she was a cat and I was a human being. I hate this species specific shit. I'd rather a fox than most humans. TR allowed that Linda was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and Zack had said the same thing, that he couldn't believe he was working with this person. I merely, simply, allow things to happen. The phone has been out, and I usually wouldn't complain, but there was a Frontier repair truck where the line junctions and I stopped to ask him when I might have service, he said he was working tonight until it was restored. Elevator inspection tomorrow and the guys didn't work today, so they must feel ready. Two Cirque Halloween shows tomorrow night and I need the elevator to empty the theater of things that have accumulated while the re-build was happening. Finished packing the pottery show and D got back to the museum right at five with the next (prints) show. Got that unloaded into the back hall and headed home. Low Gap Hollow is lovely, all yellow and red , mercurochrome, iodine, and tokay. I picked up some frozen meatballs, a jar of Newman's sauce, and some of that fresh pasta that cooks in just a couple of minutes. I'm trying to increase my caloric intact. I stop at Kroger most mornings, to see if there's a protein smoothie discounted. A crab soup, at the pup today, that was quite good. Makes me think about doing a seafood stew. They'll have mussels soon at Kroger. When they do I'll caramelize a large chopped onion in olive oil, add a large diced potato and part of a bottle of clam juice, when the potato is cooked I add a can of diced roasted tomatoes with chilies, some roasted garlic, a can of crabmeat, some fillets of some firm white fish in bite size pieces, half a pound of shrimp, and the mussels, the rest of the bottle of clam juice and some white wine. This is a very fast dish and good. Way better than the some of its parts. Add a can of tuna fish (in oil) and serve it on egg noodles, you could feed a crowd. On Cape Cod, and then again on the Vineyard, I always had all the blue mussels, oysters, and scallops I could eat, the work of an afternoon, and I could keep them under seawater soaked seaweed for weeks. On the Cape I actually planted beds of mussels, to harvest a few years later. Me and my pirogue, haunting the estuaries. Read more...

Natural World

There's a picture of Faulkner holding a mare by the muzzle. He looks small, in comparison to the horse. A copy of the photo hangs over my desk, and I look at him every day. I printed some things for Square Books (one of the great book- stores) in Oxford Missip and stopped by Rowen Oak a few times. The bookstore bundled complete sets of his work, in cheap paperbacks, sold them for $20, and I read him completely, while I was there. B and I both have the habit of reading an author completely, in the order written. Just an observation. At lunch TR said he had a tidbit that would make my day, did I want to hear it, and of course I did. He has Seven as a piano student (her real name) and he was telling her about the Emily Project and she said she had some friends coming into town that weekend and they'd come. Seven is hot, married to a heart surgeon, and has a hip group of friends. I took them all on an after-hours tour of the museum, when the hospital was interviewing a new surgeon, and I was on my game. When I'm on my game, I'm both informative and funny, and I must have been on my game because one of Seven's friends is in love with me, she says, and despite the fact that she's a lesbian, wouldn't mind fucking me. How weird is that? I'd pretty much given up intimacy, as a matter of course; I'm dirty, and bind up my hernia with an Ace bandage and a safety pin. Going to bed with me would be a lot like one of those scenarios where someone unscrews a hand and foot and crawls under the covers. I don't want to be indecipherable, I'd rather be slightly off-putting. On the other hand, I see where keystrokes fall, and getting laid would probably be a good thing. Finally got all the paperwork done on the Jeep: insurance, registration, title, and D drove the almost dead truck out to Cole's Park. End of an era. I no longer drive a truck, I drive a Jeep Liberty, in which everything works. I have turn signals, parking brakes, and an idle left foot that can tap out the rhythm of whatever music I hear in my head. And the ride itself, on heated leather seat, with a suspension system meant for someone other than a construction worker. Break on through to the other side. I have to pack up the pottery show tomorrow (later today, actually; I seem to have taken a nap) and D picks up the print show on Thursday that I need to install next week. The Sister City thing on Saturday, but I don't see any problem with that, it's just another event. D told me that after the Emily Project, and the big fund-raiser, that I needed to take some time off, and I agreed. I have a book to write and beets to pickle. Fall, going into winter, and you don't know what to expect, ten days below zero or an ice-storm. Maybe Indian Summer, with light that knocks you off your feet. A world of possibility. Read more...

Wind and Leaves

No rain to speak of, but gusty wind, and the leaf-fall is reaching a critical mass. They collect in declivities, like the ruts of the driveway, or along the curbs in town. On Mackletree, they rooster-tail behind vehicles and pile up on the verge. There's a point in the Emily Show where Zack stirs a bowl of leaves with his hand and then throws lentils on a snare drum and a cymbal. Linda is crossing from the desk to a point down stage center, where she does most of the poems. It's an incredibly poignant moment and you can't help but watch the way legumes catch the light, bouncing off the floor, and off of Emily, as she makes her way toward a conclusion. It's so cool it makes me gasp. Rain wakes me later. I'd been over to Sara and Clay's apartment, where Linda was staying, so we could drink a couple of glasses of wine and talk about mundane things, our kids, what we were doing; and it struck me that we were still doing something, we weren't quite dead yet. For instance, I tell Zack I want something a little more quiet or that something needs to be louder and he knows what I'm talking about. The beauty of the combined arts is that people are working together. Becomes a dance, right? I'd rather work alone, late at night, controlling every nuance, but that isn't always the way things work out; sometimes you find yourself in a crowd, justifying something. Fuck a bunch of justification. That last run-through, where the pacing was almost perfect (and I had said, at the very beginning, that the flow was the critical aspect) was so close to perfect that it actually scared me. In the real world, you shouldn't be able to do things this well. I knew Linda was good, but I had no idea that Zack was a genius. TR's music spins a web. Emily comes in over the top. Had to go into the museum on a day off to be there for the elevator guys. TR was in for a while, between teaching gigs, and we talked about how well yesterday had gone. He's on a cloud. Saw Linda off. Talked with the elevator guys about the upcoming inspection. Busy few weeks coming up: change out the upstairs shows, the performances of Emily, then the big fund-raiser; another event next Saturday, a Sister City thing with a bunch of Germans, dinner in the main gallery, and a theater presentation of Celtic dance. I've got to find some things for Emily, a desk, mostly, and a black skirt for the table Zack uses for his pots, pans, trash cans, and to cover sundry cords for various pick-up mics and lamps. The man is obsessed with lamps and dried grain. I had never considered lentils as a musical instrument. At the end Zack is throwing them against the snare drum and the cymbal, some of them actually hit Emily as she crosses over for a beautiful ending, where she winds a music box, and says her last words. The music, coming into this, is terrific. It's a great hour, and an hour is nothing, 168 a week, certainly you could spare one. I love my new ride, and especially the heated seats, what a great idea, give that person an Oscar. A warm ass is sometimes just enough impetus to get on with the day. In the winter, when we smoke on the loading dock, which is cast concrete, I provide rigid-foam cushions that ameliorate the shift in temperature. I carry a block of ethafoam in my backpack, something to kneel on, might as well be comfortable, when it's necessary to watch something closely for a long period of time. Tadpoles, or a kind of ant you'd never noticed before. Read more...

Process

I was so tired when I got home last night that I was brain-dead. Blocked the show, then ran it through twice. Fell asleep within an hour of getting home, fully dressed, on the sofa, with my second drink untouched. Woke up this morning excited, with some ideas I had slept on. We all were like that. Ran the show through, stopping a few times to tweak some things, then lunch, then time to run-through twice more but we only did it one more time because they fucking nailed it. It's a very interesting presentation, the hour (between 55 minutes and an hour) verily flies by, and it builds so strongly at the end that it's like a brain-freeze that makes you cry. To say that we were pleased hardly expresses the point. Linda's interpretation of the text was spot on, letting the music support her rather than deferring to it. And Zack, what can I say, is great, I love the way he grimaces when he hits a sour note (which happens, when you're playing pots and pans) and I don't want him to lose that (which he said he was trying to do) because it lets the audience in on a secret. Several ways we've tried to break the proscenium barrier. What is striking to me is the way the connection has developed between Linda and Zack (Emily and her subconscious self), they never make eye contact, we didn't want that, but there's a connection and it's palpable. A very cool aspect of what's going on. The music is beautiful, and I keep hearing new things: like a poem, it requires many readings to fully reveal itself. I had known from the beginning that there was going to have be a tangible flow, and we found it, from birth, through sex, onto death. Pretty much all there. The text and music at the end is operatic. I'll send you a score. I'm pretty sure volume wins out over subtlety. You can be the judge. Read more...

Rehearsing Emily

Linda got in around 3:30 and we were rehearsing by four, completed the first run-through by five. The music is kind of strange and quite wonderful. Linda, TR and I were sitting in the second row, and Linda read the text from there, so that we all could get a feel for the music. Zack is excellent AND another redhead. We'll start blocking it tomorrow morning. We're all still a little incredulous that we're doing this. The script is mostly Emily poems with a few letters serving as bridges, and it's quite tight. We could all tell that by the end of the day Sunday we'd have a good flow to the whole thing. Afterwards we went to the pub for a drink and to compare notes, some interesting ideas, a few things that need adjusting in the music. Also, by the end of the rehearsal, Linda could read the arcane musical notation. We just stayed on at the pub for dinner and talked, the owner was politely courteous with us and the service was impeccable. Linda had the idea that she might turn upstage at some point and touch one of the instruments Zack had arrayed before him. On the way home I had the thought that I'd like for her to strike a single note from the score, at a nod from Zack, because it would help drive home the point that this music was in her head. Writing is such a solitary passion, I forget what it's like working with other people on a purely creative project. I thought Linda would key off Zack, but Zack actually keys off Linda. At one point we're actually talking about rubbing dried legumes on sandpaper. A pretty large leap for most people, but we're talking about it technically, as if it was a given that people did this. How do you make that sound? I defer to anyone who knows. Linda brought me a postcard from the Tate, Velazquez, the Rothky Venus, I mean, come on, it's one of the greatest paintings ever. Read more...

Something

I have to go to bed, but some thoughts first. Zack, the percussionist for the Emily Project, gets in tomorrow, to set-up the sound stage, and Linda on Friday. Whenever TR and I bump into each other, one of us has something to say about the project. I'm fully engaged. First open the Portrait Show. I've got to go sleep, my dogs are weary. Learning to go up and down the driveway in the Jeep, it's not the same. Chaos at the museum, the electrician and the electrical inspector; Kevin and Patrick, working to fine tune the elevator and get ready for inspection, Terry, the board member who has agreed to oversee the facility upgrades. We still have to get the signage on two walls and hang three pieces, D has three lights to adjust, I have to touch-up the three pedestal tops, there is a plethora of shit in the gallery, and the back hall is a disaster area. I also managed to clean and stock the bathrooms. We got it all done, it's what we do, getting it done. The opening, with Mark talking about his process, was interesting, I ate enough finger-food to qualify for dinner, the strawberries were succulent. God should have eaten these, he would have made comfort easier to find; if I'm allowed to say anything, and I don't have any prepared statement. Here's the key: identify the threat, protect your physical involvement in a situation. And eat. Fuck me and a grain of sand. Loose canons scare me to death. I turn down a free dinner at a decent restaurant because I want to get home before dark and start a small fire in the cookstove, settle back with a drink and a smoke in a dark house, and consider. A place of relative comfort, where I hang my hat. I project myself down the pike. It's just a way of doing business, flipping a coin for service. Noir cut to a back alley where one thing is exchanged for another. How do you feel about dying? Are you comfortable with the fact that you're finite? Emily always was. Read more...

Closing In

The Portrait Show (Faces In The Crowd) almost set to open tomorrow night. A few little things left to do, signage, and the pieces on the signage walls, put stuff away, a little more cleaning. I got all the labels up, and cleaned the residue from hammer-drilling concrete walls today; then got pigeon-holed into walking in circles with a couple of board members talking about facilities improvements. Linda gets in Friday afternoon and we'll probably do a run-through of the Emily piece, then Saturday and Sunday all day refining things. I can't wait to hear the music. The score/script is beautiful, physically, I mean I can't actually read the music, but the pages are lovely. The musical notation for brushing found cans, or dropping leaves, or pouring water from one container to another, is graphically interesting. TR is printing up copies and I'll figure out how to bind them, so that those of us involved would have a copy, and Glenn is going to video one of the performances, or all of them, I don't know, so there'll be a record. The best person in the Ohio Arts Council was down from Columbus, Ken, he'd bought a painting from the "Cream Of The Crop" show and hadn't picked it up yet. I wasn't there but TR said Sara was selling him the Emily Show, and he was buying. I can't believe anything I would do would have legs, go to other venues. I don't really remember how this happened, we were sitting around Clay and Sara's apartment, I seem to remember, just talking about Emily, and Linda said something about reciting poems as she ran. Clay was more than impressed by that. He'd been reading Emily too, as it happened. A given night, what do you want to do? Tom I heard there was this vitreous substrate, I'm not a geologist, a particular clay, maybe coal, maybe the merely imagined shadow of something you remembered. Occurred often enough that it didn't seem to be that odd. Then you have to name it. Now... Read more...

Nothing Ventured

I stay up late reading some paragraphs I wrote years ago. Pretty funny stuff. I have to meet the elevator guys at eight tomorrow morning so I asked TR to call me when he gets up (seven or so, he has to teach a class at the college) and just let the phone ring a couple of times. I'll probably be up anyway. I've gone for years without a clock. So many of the things we think are necessary are just smoke and mirrors. I can talk into my hand and look exactly like someone talking into a cell phone. I might get a burner, though, for my next road trip, and join Triple A, so I could get towed. The Jeep Liberty is not only not a truck, but has an automatic transmission. My left foot won't know what to do. I got everything I cared about out of the truck, and wiped down the interior, no reason to make things easy. Tomorrow's a holiday, but I should be able to get a title on Tuesday, after paying hundreds of dollars in taxes (are you with me here Mitt?) and securing the tags. I have a shit-load of work to do, painting the signage wall and making the labels for everything, and I needed to have worked yesterday, but I was tired, and I'm the only one who hasn't had a day off in several years. Suddenly it is tomorrow and I didn't realize how tired I was. Awoke a bit late (overcast days, it's difficult for me to gauge the light) then couldn't get the truck into gear because the cluck is almost completely gone, finally limped into town in third gear. Couldn't get the Jeep until today, so I stayed in town last night. I got the signage wall painted and all of the labels made and trimmed; I got the Jeep, with a dealer tag (which provides insurance) and Teno said not to worry about getting my truck out there until Friday, which is perfect because I have a couple of busy days in front of me. D calls, his late night with the elevator crew, to assure me we're on track and that I've done a great job, which is true, I have, but it's a quotidian thing, not anything special. I really like hanging shows. I could hang a show when mortar shells were exploding. Sara is getting into all this, what it takes to be a player. Read more...

Fair Game

Something cohesive and plausible. I was up most of the night, chasing an elusive thought, and when B came over at, like, ten in the morning, I'd just gone to bed. He always lets out a "Hey Uh" when he's a hundred feet from the back door, to tell me it's him, as I do when I visit him. It's what you do, in deep country, to keep from getting shot. It doesn't startle him at all, that I'd just gone to bed, he knew I'd been writing or reading or musing over some contradiction, because I looked like shit, wearing silly house-slippers and my hair standing straight up, like I'd just received electro-shock therapy. The rules change. It's not one thing or another. Despite what I said, there might be a third way. Odd numbers are always awkward. You're confused about where to focus your attention. It's hard to light a match when your hand is shaking. I don't have to get my act together, because I live alone and I don't have to explain my actions. The fact that I sometimes sit on the back stoop and shoot marbles, with a slingshot, at a particular tree. Grammar is the train, syntax is the track, just as B had said. I'm merely a passenger, third-class, below the radar, stowed away in the hold. Ten years without a TV or watching a single movie, I don't know who anyone is; I might recognize a particular arch of eyebrow, but I can't place a name. When it comes to modern culture I'm as dumb as a rock. Nonetheless, I put a kettle of water on the cookstove hours ago, because I wanted to shave, and it's still hot. I might as well shave. Read more...

A Perfect Vegan

Have you ever watched a goat eating blackberry leaves? Those sensitive lips avoiding all those thorns. Read more...

Half Baked

Completely mad, of course. Not careless, but crazed by the stupidity of squirrels and certain people, I retreat to a dictionary and look up words I've noted on a piece of paper I keep in my pocket. It's not arrogance that keeps me on a ridge in southern Ohio, miles from anyplace that sells anything, without a cell phone, without a television, nibbling on the leaves of plants I can't identify, to see if they make me sick. It's more a conscious choice to live in the world and see what comes to play. I'm not brave, by any standard, I'd probably be called a coward, if it came down to a physical confrontation, but I can still run very fast for a few hundred yards, which is enough, in this era of over-weight muggers. I know people who have lost a 100 pounds and are still fat. We should render them for power. The average fat person in Mississippi (the fattest state in the nation) could power a small town for several days. We should be able to convert the carbon residue into a useful protein. Fuck science if it can't dig us out of a hole. My high hat collapses under my own weight. I can't speak for you. You have this other life, not my life at all, a completely 'other' existence, and I respect that, but what I want to do is change the way we look at this. Not that I can change anything, but the idea of change is a comforting notion. I sent something last night, a message from just beyond the grave, I should be more careful in the future, not to give up secrets. But I've found that if I'm completely honest no one believes me anyway. An odd twist. I want Emily to listen to the music and then turn, speak directly to the audience, when she recites the letters. How do you reveal what a person is thinking? I've thought about this a lot, recently, and a small stage in the basement is a perfect venue for attempting the impossible. Linda does Emily with great deliberation, incredibly considered nuance. As it should be. TR said, today, and I agree, that she is the lead; what his music needs to do, is float her to the top, so that the spoken word becomes a transport. Opera is strange. A play with music requires considerable attention. Her hands, for instance, need to be perfect. I picture them as a lava flow. She steps back and allows the molten rock to form meaning. I have another whole day off, I can think about things, right? Not leap too lightly into the void. In my defense, I rarely do. For several hours I look at hands in paintings. I'm compulsive, I guess, when it comes to detail. Once I think about it, it becomes very important. Suddenly all I can see is hands. A language I've never understood. Read more...

Intermediary

Intermediary is not quite the right word, but I couldn't find anything closer, doing my internal word-search. The person or thing that mediates between you and the world. I got this show hung, busted my ass to get this show hung, as near perfect as you'd want to approach. Any closer, you'd scorch your fingers. Sara and D were both over the top in praise for the job I'd done, and it does look good. When I apply myself, I'm competent. No claim, other than that. There doesn't have to be. I do my job and you do yours. There are potatoes for all of us, the occasional road-kill, and mushrooms in the spring. Anything more would be too much. The clutch in the truck is dying, it needs rear tires, the hood release doesn't work, nor the radio, the turn signals have died, the wind-shield wipers don't work, the AC is dead. An endless list at work, but nothing pressing, so I take the afternoon off (everyone thought this was a good idea, because I'm the one that has to work Monday, when the museum is closed, and a holiday, so the elevator guys can stay on schedule. Library, tobacco store, Kroger, then I go look at a Jeep Liberty D had spotted at a lot where they do salvage re-builds. It's very nice, and everything works, I drive it, and it's cool, leather interior, and a comfortable ride. Thirty-five years in a pick-up truck jades your experience of what a ride could be. D had given me the quick lesson in buying a vehicle from a lot like this and his strategy worked perfectly. He (Teno) was asking 7 thousand and with the offer of cash and my truck I got him down to 54 hundred, which seemed like a deal. So I bought it, told him I'd pick it up Tuesday, left a deposit, stopped back by the museum, had a smoke with Sara and D, and went home to start cleaning out my truck. I wish I'd gotten some fill in the driveway, so I could drive the truck to the woodshed, a load of found wood and a few wooden chairs that fill the bed, stop at the house and empty the job-box, clean out the glove-compartment, shred the pile of papers that's accumulated on the seat. I wasn't aware that was a list, until I read back over. Life is, usually. Nothing you wouldn't expect. It's going to get colder now. How do you deal with that? Damn phone was out again. Good dinner of left-overs from the meeting of the board, Manicotti Florentine Cold enough this morning for a fire in the cookstove, burned another chair, beech, to take the chill out of the house. I needed a couple of days off to read and re-charge for next week. Read through a few issues of The London Review Of Books that B had brought over and started a book of essays by Sebastian Junger, walked over to B's for a chat, cleaned a couple of loads of stuff out of the truck. Then got an early drink and picked up where I stopped writing last night. My habit. Thinking about wardrobe. I have several neatly folded piles of clothes, three, actually. One set is clothes that will never be washed again, these are clothes that I'll crawl around under the house in, or muck out the outhouse, after which they go in the trash; I only wear cotton or wool, so they rot nicely. The second pile is clothes I wear to work, which is a spreadsheet ranging from a day that I'll be painting or hammer-drilling into concrete walls, to days that I might docent three groups through the Carter collection. And a third pile that is new or nearly new clothes I wear to someone's house for dinner or attend an opening at the museum. All of these piles are composed mostly of black tee-shirts, black jeans, and denim shirts. I keep a nice sport's coat at the museum. I haven't actually bought a new pair of jeans in 15 years. People give them to me or I find them at Goodwill. Clothes are just a bother. I know TR is at the museum, so I call and talk with him about the Emily Show, we agree about every salient point. I want her, Emily, to react to both Zach and the audience, I want her to completely destroy that fourth wall, no mediation at all, you and God, a fundamentalist Baptist preacher calling for no interference between what is said and what actually happens. For the sake of what happens, I have God in my pocket, a heat warmer I didn't use it last year. Fall is just a change in color. Burn a chair, fry an egg, nothing really happens. Some grease in a skillet, I prefer bacon fat, but you could use butter or olive oil, to simply fry an egg. The glare is too great. Nothing is simple any more. A pattern in the detritus. The fines, as I said, or the scum around the drain. Read more...

What You Know

I'm thinking about the way things fit together, one of those reveries where things seem to make sense, seem is the operative term, because I'm not sure any of this does. The waning Harvest Moon, still spectacular, behind thin cloud cover, is beautiful. TR and I spend some time talking about Emily. He has the music prepared, and Linda has the words, our job here is just to integrate. I see some things, hear some things is closer to the point. I think she looks at Zack, making music, as the sounds in her head, he nods. she turns back to the audience. We get a poem, and another, as if they were the most important thing in the world, which they are, and then she turns away. Not as if it was a smile or a smirk, but just that turning away is a natural response to something we don't want to face. Another seamless day, got to work early so I could finish hanging, and I work on that, hard, all day, by myself, as there are a great many other things going on and everyone else is otherwise entangled. If a painting is large and/or heavy I set the hardware then go get someone out of a meeting to help me for a scant minute to actually hang the piece. I save the largest, most valuable painting until last, when both TR and D are available, because it will take three of us to hang it (two taking the weight, and one making the attachment) after I've done all the preliminary work. I do the math three times and then set J-hooks on two anchors each, two feet apart, this after turning the painting so it faced the wall and I could see the back, to take measurements. The hardware was completely wrong, I took it all off and re-wired the damn thing, then had D check my work, and the three of us got it on the wall. It looks great. On its wall, where it hangs with the Carters, you can't get far enough away from it; in a larger space the perspective is much more apparent. It's a very good show and it's not even lighted it yet, and I have labels to make and mount, and I need to paint the signage wall and we have to do the signage. Doing a show is a big pull, uphill. Took a break to call Linda and touch base about Emily. She's going out to LA to do another performance, a more classical version, piano and a soprano, and hopes to send me a tape of that. After this, I swear, I'm done with the combined arts, the logistics are impossible. I work best alone. Read more...

Hanging Mom

All day hanging art, one of my favorite jobs. Sara changed a few things, she always does. We almost never start hanging a show the day that we 'set' it for that very reason. She visualizes (a curator has to be able to visualize) the walls after she gets home and has had a glass of wine, then, the next morning she knows exactly what she wants to change. Soon as we'd done that I started hanging. D teaches Monday and Wednesday at OU so I was on my own. Tricky front wall, seven pieces by Mark Chepp (The Seven Deadly Sins, all self-portraits) all exactly the same size; which, intuitively makes it sound simple, and the horizontal measurements are all the same, but the verticals have to be nearly perfect because they have to align. This is where you want D-rings, uniformly attached, and a laser level; but these were wired and required very precise measurement. I only had to re-hang two, which is actually quite good. Another aspect of hanging with D-rings, unless the piece is small, because you have to look behind, to see where the ring is, and where the anchored J-hook is located. If a painting is hung by a wire, which most of them are, you can hold the piece on bended knee with one hand, just reach around and conduct your business by feel. Both of the portraits of Carter's Mom are fairly large, life-size, and I get the hardware installed for one of them, but I need help hanging it, so I went upstairs to get Pegi, stuck my head in her door, and said that I needed help hanging Mom. A little preparator humor. A couple of other pieces I do the hardware for, but I don't want to hang them with anyone other than D or TR: too large, too awkward, too heavy, and too valuable. I got half the show hung, which ain't bad for an aging hippy janitor guy. The annual dinner board meeting is tomorrow night and D, who has to attend, had mentioned he would like to have the show hung, the show doesn't open until the end of next week, but never mind. It'll be hung. The mess of hanging a show will still be evident, which I think the board needs to see. What? Do these fucking shows spring fully-formed onto the walls? There are blankets and pieces of foam everywhere, cans of paint, roller trays, the detritus of reconstruction; blankets, pieces of cardboard, discreet piles of plaster dust. I can handle the hanging part of this, I am a hanging fool, after all. I love installing a show, it's so vibrant, it all falls together, I measure ten-thousand things. And leave the clean-up for later, there might have been a bar-fight, I was long gone, fuck a bunch of petty antagonism. I wouldn't be surprised if the alley ran thick with blood. Read more...

What's Real

Another flying squirrel, wrecking havoc. I get the tennis racket I use for bats and chase it around, counter-clockwise, until I can run it out the open back door. Fits and starts. I manage to not break anything and get the cute fucker out the door, but it's awkward timing because I'm fully awake when I should be asleep. Nothing for it but to get a drink and write you. I don't plan these things, mostly it's happenstance. One thing, then another. You get the flying squirrel out the door, then have a celebratory drink and roll a smoke. I wouldn't change a thing. That smirk on your face, when you realize you've outsmarted a rodent. One bright son-of-a-bitch. Harvesting water had gone well and I heated some, to shave and take a sponge bath. A small fire with just the slats from a pallet, plenty of heat to warm a pot of water. Back to basics, no claim that this was better than anything else, but it feels right, washing my hair with rainwater. I read part of a paragraph to B and he was struck with a particular word, how it opened into what I was talking about, directed the reader toward a certain conclusion. Guilty as charged. I do attempt to sway things on their moorings. A drone not unlike what you might establish with a bass or a dulcimer. Finally do fall back asleep, then make it to town with time to stop at the farmer's market. Sara wants the upstairs Carter galleries finished before we start the Portrait Show, so I make new labels, TR and I put them up. After lunch we brought "Let Us Give Thanks" downstairs, it's large (in the frame maybe 71 by 78 inches) and heavy. Barely fits down the front stairwell. Tomorrow we have to get three pedestals for some 3-D pieces. We set the show this afternoon, and I can start hanging it tomorrow. I enjoy hanging shows, and it'll be good to have art on the walls, after a hiatus. And seeing the Carter portraits in the larger space will be interesting. Every change changes everything. Even the particular off-white matte board makes a difference. Don't get me started on 'white noise'. I eat an avocado, with a spoon from the shell, a splash of balsamic vinegar and a squeeze of lime, a few twists of black pepper, it's so good I lick the spoon. I find avocados sexy, they smell like the back-seat of a 68' Chevy. That may be too personal. Suffice it to say, I mostly eat my avocados in private. Read more...

Making Sense

Matrix of sights. Rain all day and the woods are washed clean of dust and pollen. The Pawlonia, with its large leaves, is especially green. For several hours I wander around the house staring out the various windows, listening to the patter on the roof and watching water drip through the trees. The yearling squirrels are frisking about, despite the weather, in that wonderful way they have of mixing work and play. Between the bouts of drizzle and rain, a few birds scratch around on the forest floor (of which I can see some, now, after many months of green invisibility) but the bugs are silent. The frogs disappeared, because of the summer drought, but I suspect there's a contingency plan, as there usually is in nature. I remember that there's a package of frog legs in the freezer and get them out. Kroger had a bin of them a few months ago, and I bought several braces. Very large legs, two to a pack, from France. What would a frog farm look like? Like a Mississippi catfish farm? Discreet concrete pools with walkways between? Terraced pools, like rice patties in China? You could probably raise fine frogs in rice patties, using them as bug control. I'd picked up one of those raw vegetable platters, with the Ranch Dressing in the middle, that was reduced in price because the vegetables were a little wilted, but they make a fast and easy stir-fry; the frog legs I just saute in butter and olive oil, de-glaze the pan and pour that over them. A fine meal for a slightly dirty, unshaven hermit. I'm harvesting rainwater, as we speak, I'll wash up and shave later, but I'm comfortable right now, in the way I feel and smell. I read through the script for the Emily Project, and had some odd thoughts about Emily sitting at a piano, striking the odd discordant note. She turned on the bench and faced the audience directly, read from a letter, then turned back to the keyboard, glanced over to the musician behind her, and gave/gives us a poem. Phone is out again, so I don't know when I'll be able to send. The price I pay for watching leaves dance in the wind. A difficult afternoon, dealing with my inadequacies. A father, a mate, merely a diner, I struggle for position. I'm neither one thing nor another. I can hear rain before it falls, it's not a gift, but a curse. B comes over for a drink, we talk about Emily, and a few other poets, and he thinks I'm writing well. The fines move downhill. Read more...