6 a.m.: I’m taking a car-service to La Guardia; 6:40 plane to Akron.
6:20 a.m.: When I arrive at the airport, I find that the flight is canceled. The next flight is 9:30.
6:30-9:30 a.m.: I’m at the airport–pacing, sitting, eating–half falling asleep all the while. I didn’t sleep last night. Maybe you remember why. I was depending on the 6:40 plane ride to give me sleep: I would sleep on the plane. But there’s no plane now to sleep on. I can sleep on a plane–that’s where I get my sleep, most of the time–but I can’t sleep at an airport; I can’t sleep in the vulnerable position of being in the middle of swarms of people passing by (very different from one person, now and then, walking up the aisle of a plane). I’m thinking of the Akron project, of course. And I think: Our spiral is going around in circles–it’s our project that’s going around in circles–we’re going around in circles. So I try to change course, in my mind: Let’s make one last grasp at another direction for this project. I find a public fax machine; I start writing a fax to Luis and Sara. So I start thinking: No, we don’t want to have people on the traffic circle itself–but what if we use the traffic circle as only a start for a situation of having people around?–the traffic circle can hold a support for places for people around–a support-tower–a structure that reaches up into the air, with arms like a crane–the crane extends over the street, onto the sidewalk and over the sidewalk–hanging down from the crane are forms of seating places for people. I think we’re on to something. But the problem is: If you want a seat on the ground, what makes you support it from way on high?
9:30 a.m.: Get on the plane. Fall asleep immediately, I realize later the plane doesn’t leave for a while.
11:45 a.m.: The plane was supposed to arrive in Cleveland at 11 a.m. It’s late.
12-1 p.m.: Woman named Andrea is driving me to the university. She lives in Cleveland and drives to Akron every day. But this time she’s driving to Akron from the Cleveland airport; she doesn’t know the way; we’re going in the wrong direction. We turn around. It’s supposed to be a half-hour drive, she says–that’s what everybody has said.
1-3 p.m.: I give a talk on Acconci Studio work. It’s a good talk; I can feel people getting excited–the people on the committee for choosing this project, the students. The talk is the best thing that could have happened; I’m preparing people for the reception of our project. Now we have to get a project. (Maybe we have one, I think to myself, remembering the fax I sent from the airport.) One thing that comes up in the talk is something I always bring up: space as close-up–our projects as going counter to the Western culture tradition of the dominance of vision–our projects are spaces you’re in the middle of, not spaces you see from afar–when two people face each other at a social distance, 4 or 5 feet apart, each person sees the other’s whole person, whole body–each person in effect has “control” of the other person–but what if that distance dissipates?–what if those two people are now two inches apart, one inch apart?–suddenly you can’t depend on sight anymore, you have to resort to other senses hearing, smell, touch, taste … I’ve been used to saying: If anything happens in life, if anything changes in life, in the world, it changes at those moments–those moments when you can’t depend on vision and control, when you have to make do and resort to devices and instruments in yourself that you don’t know–vision is private, hearing is communal. I say something like that this time, in this talk; I hope each time I might be saying it at least a little differently, a little more expansively. But then later I think: Maybe it’s very simple why I need to talk against vision–maybe I talk against vision because I know, by this time, how ugly (or is it just “homely”?) I am–I better talk against vision, I better hope there’s something else, some other way to have a relationship–I remember Andrea Bum saying to me once: “If it wasn’t for your voice, you would have never fucked anybody.”
4 p.m.: Get to the airport for a 4:15 flight. Plane is delayed. Plane doesn’t leave till 5:30. I haven’t eaten; besides being sleepy, I’m starved. There’s a Pizza Hut at the airport; one pizza left in the stove/tray; I grab it, I’m about to pay the person at the cash register; she shakes her head and says, “Take it”; I’m confused, I ask her where do I pay, she says again: “Take it.” Do I look as bad as all that?
7:45 p.m.: I’m back at the studio. Luis and Sara are still here. I knew they would be. Luis leaves around 8:30. Sara stays until 11 p.m.; more and more I need her here. We talk about the possible new project–the crane, etc. Luis has introduced the element that makes the project work: There are a number of crane arms–the crane arms move, as on a real crane–so, of course, the furniture is held from on high, because the furniture moves–the furniture circles, very slowly, around this entrance area to the campus–the look of the campus constantly, very slowly, changes. Furniture is an instrument that traverses the area, as if surveying the area. Sara and I keep talking about the project; we’re talking around the project; we’re circling the project, the way the project itself would, on the grounds of the campus. I’ll tell you more tomorrow; I feel sure now that we’ll have more tomorrow.
