(in which I re-live my most recently-written fan letter)

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Hi. My name is Traci. I was at the artist talk at Project Row Houses and admire not only what you're making
(which is visceral, palpable, breathtaking) but what you're saying.

In fact, I wrote down a few phrases that are worth ten times their weight in poetry. "Half piñata, half funeral ornament," for instance. "You can cut a staircase out of your house to make yourself feel better." "I know what it means to pray while you work." "Rafters hold the floorboards together like your skeleton holds up your skin." "It's more interesting to think about honeycombs than some New England guy."

I'm not writing to inundate you with your own words, however profound (in their accuracy and poetic whimsy). I wanted to say thank you in person but was feeling shy.

I read this today in Agamben's book The Man Without Content:

In the past, "The subjectivity of the artist was identified so immediately with his material -- which constituted, not only for him but also for his fellow men, the innermost truth of consciousness -- that it would have appeared inconceivable to speak about the art as having value in itself [...]

[The viewer] had the aesthetic impression not that he was observing a work of art but rather that he was measuring, more concretely for him, the borders of his world. The wonderful was not yet an autonomous sentimental totality and the particular effect of the work of art, but an indistinct presence of the grace that, in the work, put man's activity in tune with the divine world of creation, and thus kept alive the echo of what art had been in its Greek beginnings: the wonderful and uncanny power of making being and the world appear, of producing them in the work."

No need to respond to this, I'm rambling. I was inspired by your flat refusal to engage purely on the non-material aspects of your material works (a request made twice by someone in the audience). Reading the Agamben today reminded me of you.

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 People are endlessly inspiring.

I am Traci's monstrous sense of awe.