Amy, Carol-Anne, Alex, Keturah, Lee, Skye. Photo by elise

Aah, these are the days I love most, a non-stop rushing about between elements of the project. Disembodied from 7am to midnight. That’s the most fulfilling thing in life. Here’s a blog entry I scrawled in a notebook first thing that morning:

“The big news this morning was a call from David, our primary builder, who did a cursory schedule for the build, that unfortunately lead him to the conclusion that on top of one week building in the gallery, we need two weeks planning and building in advance. David is one of the handful of people whose salaries are not deferred, so this presents a large problem.

This evening he and I will meet with Ted, Carson, Alex, Carol-Anne and Keturah for a build meeting to see where we are and what needs to be done and such.

Afterwards, he and I will meet separately to figure out how to move forward. Essentially I think David won’t be able to pre-fab the concession stand and bleachers, but instead will simply manage the seven day build in the gallery.

I suspect Carson and I, or Terry and I will build those. David will be entirely focused on the walls and ceiling.”

So, yeah, basically, that’s what happened. We met. David and I had a 9pm dinner and caught up, he’s wicked busy, and he told me he can’t do the pre-fab work. Fortunately I had been kind of expecting this, so I had someone else in mind to make those pieces. My sister’s partner, Terry is a fabulous fabricator, and had been wondering how he would be nepotized into this thing. He found out, he’s now pre-fabbing the bleachers, concession stand and light-up concession menus for the lobby.

Before David and I had our late dinner, we met with Carson, Alex, Carol-Anne and Keturah-Anne (Ted couldn’t make it). This was a great meeting. We concluded that we just could not create a movie screen that people could walk through. My original vision was an actual screen, slit up the center. But that was always going to be too expensive. So, we toyed with doors that might be hidden enough, but I was never satisfied with any of them. I don’t want a door-rectangle on the painted screen of a wall. A tear in the screen I could live with. So, we dropped the idea of the audience emerging from the screen. Sad. But it simplified the build immensely.

If there is no screen emergence, then there is no need for a stage or a stairway or a hallway. So, we re-imagined the space. First off, now we are building just one wall. It will have the concession stand dead center on it in the lobby. To either side will be a door which leads into the theater. The theater will just be the screen and the bleachers. Though, still playing with the idea of a theater, when you enter the theater you initially see not the screen, but the bleachers and other audience members.

This is a big change. But a good one. It takes a lot of weight off.

Also at the meeting, Carl-Anne and Keturah really explained the interior design to David and Carson and we all got on the same page about what the ceiling and other design elements will entail. David had drawn up plan for installing the ceiling and chandeliers. We are going to install a metal frame on the ceiling to support the weight of our design. The lathe and plaster ceiling just didn’t inspire confidence for hanging so much beauty over people’s heads.

Before the build meeting I met with Yosh Han , the amazing perfumer who worked with me on the Henry Wing. We created the new scent, Disembody, for this project. It is very different from Archival, our first scent. Disembody is a very sweet, flowery scent. A true perfume, as opposed to the smell of memory that Archival embodied. I think we’ll easily sell out of the 23 bottles of Disembody that will be available.

After my first call from David, I met with Skye and elise. We looked at some rough footage and talked about ideas for how to edit the film in such a short time. We talked about how we’ll need to keep all of the files hyper-organized, and develop with Amy and Marcella a very concise and direct method of logging.

Last weekend, well 9 or 8 days ago…

I spent the afternoon, evening, night, morning and afternoon with my amazing design crew, Keturah-Anne and Carol-Anne. And with my amazing producer, Alex. We drank. We went to a party at UCB. We got bored. We met for a few hours to talk about the details of the tech and build. That footage should go up in our library at the internet archive in the coming weeks. We didn’t have any breakthroughs. But we definitely cemented a number of technical issues, and Alex pointed out some electrical questions I still haven’t answered. Though I expect to answer them tomorrow.

The following day we woke late (they were still up partying when I crashed out at 5am). Had burritos for brunch in a park in some suburb part of Berkeley. Though, honestly, all of Berkeley is just a suburb, nothing more. The whole place is just kind of, well, as California has always bragged, Berkeley feels like the future, the uber-wealthy looking down their noses and bitching about how they know what is best for everyone, while surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of the impoverished.  The place makes my skin crawl.

Well, thanks to the incredible David Meckel, I got an appointment with an architectural model firm tomorrow. We’re going to talk budget and schedule. And we may yet have an architectural model for this show.

In other news, I just got back from Chicago where I met with Stel. He and I discussed the projection and audio system for the theater. I checked out the system he has installed in his house. We’re borrowing that projector. It is beautiful. Though we discovered that I had completely misunderstood him when he described its capacity to me earlier. So, a few weeks back the theater went from 16′ wide by 20′ deep to 16′ wide by 10′ deep (I mistakenly thought that was the maximum throw of the projector). However in meeting with Stel I discovered the throw is indeed fine at 20′, and so the theater magically grew back to 20′. I think this news may have given Carol, Keturah and Carson a heart attack.

As well, it looks like Stel may invest some money in the project, which is huge news.

I also met with Phil and Libby in Chicago. We went over the soundtrack and recording studio, which was assuring.

Last night I met with my sister and her partner. I meet with them again tomorrow evening to discuss their contributions to the show. I think Ali is going to make crew hoodies. I am so excited to be able to give something like that to all the amazing people who are making this art work.

Her partner Terry is a fabulous artist, working in wood and metal. I think he may make the concession price lists that are installed on the wall behind the counter folk in the lobby.

Finally, my friend Tiffiny took a few investor pamphlets to hand out to her clients. She is a high-end Chi Nei Tsang healer. She works with a lot of people who are supporters of the arts, and might be interested in this project.

still from Sedmikrasky (Daisies), 1966, Czechoslovakia

Kathryn finished the first hot pants yesterday, and Carol-Anne came over for a test run.

They are something else!