Michigan. Clear skies and seventy-four degrees as we enter mid-November. Last night at the hotel, two middle-aged men in business attire conferred in the hallway while I waited for the elevator. “And that’s why I cried in your office,” said one. The other man smiled and said, “It was very important to me that you did that.” I squinted my ears, dying to gather some context for one man’s tears and another man’s pleasure. But my elevator arrived, and I had no excuse to linger.
C. and I spent the afternoon in a dark gallery, where we tested how our video reflected off different surfaces and considered how we might restage The Nightly News. The museum is a dramatic piece of contemporary architecture without any right angles. Strange how architecture that announces itself as futuristic often feels unsettling, even hostile. There’s no place to rest your eye. Sometimes you can’t find the door. Perhaps it becomes self-fulfilling to imagine the future as stern and forbidding.
We drove back to Ohio alongside a sunset streaked with vapor trails. “It looks like a Julie Mehretu painting,” C. said. There’s so much carnage along the roadside. Exploded deer. Smushed raccoons. Shredded tires. A shoe.
