Day 7

TEMPERATURE: 62 degrees

WEATHER: sunny

NUMBER of OTHER PEOPLE: 0

STEPS WALKED INSIDE THE BUILDING: 8,096

TOTAL TIME SPENT INSIDE INSTALLATION: 4.5 hours

 

1.

Turning into a night owl. Is it because I am avoiding the dark side? 

Days run together. 

Writing becomes more reliable than experience. 

Start to feel like I’m going to the office every day. 

Could be the corporate nature of the vestibule entrance to the building? 

I ignore certain pangs, indulge others. 

Have half a ham sandwich, talk to myself.

Everybody’s got a hungry heart

(Bruce as palette cleanser)

 

It’s gotten cloudy today and chilly. 

Late afternoon sun looks blue on the dark side. 

The rest appears as unnameable gray

Windows of light emerge like sentinels at sunset 

in this sound-swallowing space. 

Clouds outside appear to move more quickly than light but in reality, slower. 

A woman with braids bikes by and tries to get inside but it’s locked and I have checked the doors. 

 

2.

I had phone conversation with my father this morning who is an artist himself and has been thinking about this installation and my project in relation to it. He made the point that in some ways this work is representational. I didn’t follow. 

“Well it’s obviously a building,” he says. It clearly has entrances and exists. “And because of the tilt of those windows and the fact that they dug out the foundation so that it’s actually below ground level, your perception shifts.” It’s true. The ground unfolds at eye level going up and out and away from you. 

 

Dad mentions Vermeer. I remember a docent mentioning the paintings of the Dutch masters and how they altered perspective, how the windows here are meant to do something similar. Looking out the windows I become a belly-sliding creature (centipede? snake?) looking out and up. The ultimate purpose of life is not human life but rather life itself. When I’m in here I feel like a different species, or a non-species. Maybe a ghost. Maybe an ant. Those windows makes you actually look. They make it clear you’re not standing on the ground the way you thought you were, that you are, in fact, a point pinned between horizons.

 

“And instead of looking at the light in the painting, as in a Vermeer, you’re in the painting” Dad concludes. And I realize, he’s right.