this piece of art must be approached constantly from so many angles -- regarding logistics, materials, funding, philosophy, political science, history, conditioning, space, design, support, etc. this is what i love about the process. however, the chunks of time that i carve out during the week never seem to be quite enough.
it seems that every person i know has some contribution to make in moving 800,000 nails forward. on monday, two friends well-versed in politics and fundraising reviewed my letter for nail donations. throughout the rest of the week, i found time to reshape the letter and the focus of those whom i wish to contact for the nails, which i have to get out by no later than tuesday of this coming week.
Martin Luther King day brought a beautiful development. The kids and i went down near the santa monica pier to walk around with our neighbors. the sun broke through brewing rain clouds and everyone seemed to be soaking up the afternoon break in our winter storms. even the birds. i had a long moment to lean on the pier railings and watch, very closely, the gliding wings of seagulls. how they expand open, take shape, hold and soar. i got to thinking about the wing.
that night, i studied more images of birds wings and sketched a design that i think will really work, while listening to some incredible music of politics, protest and love. it was as if the feelings in the music went into my ears, down inside me and back out through my pencil onto the birds wing sketch: reinforcing my belief that one pure expression of art can inspire another pure expression of art, of an idea. and so on.
Later in the week, I scaled it out, figured out that (30) 4 x 8 panels need to be constructed and this will be done in March. I'm going to host a "wing-raising" in the tradition of an old-fashioned barn raising. except, this will happen over 3 days, not one.
The rest of the week involved more brainstorming thoughts over fundraising, more wood collecting, conversations on structure and reading current news of rwanda. not bad, considering monday was a holiday and tues/wed, cooper was home with a fever.
i did get out to kickbox twice. this is very important conditioning now. i used to kickbox for anger, when i started two years ago. now, i box the bag for fun and power. the class forces me to spread my strength and stamina out evenly over an hour, so that i don't crash midway. i counted as best i could and figured that i hit the bag at least 1500-2000 times in an hour. i think of hitting 800 nails/hour for 10 hours a day and know that i will need to meditatively spread my strength out over each 10 hour period. i also know that...i will do it.
