ART!

Years ago Chris and I started collecting these plastic animal masks that you find at zoo gift shoppes, the now defunct Nature Company™, etc., etc. In our old flat on South St. in Jackson we hung them on the big vertical support timbers along with rosary beads, other masks and random ephemera. They looked cool. When we bought the house in Madison they lived in the laundry room. When we moved to "Allah"bama I displayed them around the top of my bath, off of the guest room. Well I've been thinking for a while that I need to trash them. They're just too old and moldy to keep. Instead of flipping them into the dumpster, I decided to set them free. Actually I've had this idea for some time... but today was the day to act on my artistic impulse. So I pulled them all down, pocketed the nails, a small hammer and leashed up my partner in crime Zoe. We hiked up "Black Bear Ridge" (power cut through about 5 blocks behind our apartment complex) and I found a good spot to retire my old buddies. It's sort of like Street Art... but it was in some woods... so that wouldn't be fitting. I can't call it performance art... because nailing them up was the only performance. Let's just call it art because I took some materials and did it. "That's half the battle G.I. Joe". On the way back down the hill Zoe got swept up in an artistic moment herself. Her "performance piece" was more on the natural side. She performed it in the middle of the hiking trail. She later told me that the name of this "piece" was "Angry, Coiled Cobra In Middle of Dirt Trail." I really couldn't have put a better tag on it. Truth in advertising. Damien HIrst would be proud.

P.S.

If I was a kid dicking around in the woods and came across a totem pole of plastic animal masks my mind would fucking run wild. Fingers crossed it's discovered by the right eyeballs. That could be some urban legend material right there.