This spring Poetry Scores is working with the 1913 Gertrude Stein poem "Yet Dish".
On Saturday Nicky Rainey led a Poetry Scores float that scored the poem for moving "conceptual weirdness," as she predicted it'd appear, in The People's Joy Parade for Cinco de Mayo.
I wasn't able to make the parade but wanted to make some stuff to move with it, so I sketched and colored to a few phrases from the Gertrude Stein poem.
When rain threatened, Nicky asked if my work could get wet and I said it was all totally disposable, as you can see it is.
Trying to make this stuff to "Yet Dish," though, I did hit upon one idea, one conceptual art idea, that I think has lasting value.
The 27th numbered section (of the poem's 69 numbered sections) ends with a suggestive phrase.
XXVII
Nice oil pail.
No gold go at. Nice oil pail.
Near a paper lag sought.
What is an astonishing won door. A please spoon.
A please spoon! I thought of my friend Larry Krone and how I saw him write the title of the Dolly Parton song "And I will always love you" over and over and over and over again on the wall of a gallery.
So I took an old wooden spoon and wrote "Please" on it in a Sharpie over and over and over again.
The idea is then to give a please spoon to someone with an urgent request, please, which since it was a please spoon, they would have to honor.
Then they had the please spoon and could give it to anyone else with any other urgent request, please, which the other person would have to honor because it is a please spoon.
Our 2013 guest curator Heather Corley was really good to me for the past month, roadying for me so I could rehearse our house band Three Fried Men for a gig and enjoy a few glasses of wine while I was doing it. So I decided to give her a please spoon and I asked her to please take care of herself.
A please spoon. Anyone can make a please spoon. Any spoon will do.
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