The Happiest Day of My Life

I can relate to this idea of liberating oneself from objects very well. Partially because i have moved around so much and things always seem to get lost in the shuffle. There was a particular incident when i was living in San Francisco-it was Halloween nite and agroup of us were fixin to venture to the Castro District for some rabble rousing. We were congregating at my place and i had candles burning in my room some how they caught the curtains on fire and my neighbor was franticly trying to alert me to this fact in spanish. When i got the message i ran to my room to find huge flames climbing toward the ceiling. I had photos strewn all over the window seat where the heart of the blaze was. For one instant i considered grabbing my camera to document the event but thought better of it since i was renting. i threw a vase of tuber roses on the blaze and in the fray managed to get pretty burned. The tops of my hands got burning plastic dripped on them from the curtain rods and my palms were blistered from patting out the smolder. Still went out and had a blast but will never forget the notion that at any moment all of my precious belongings could be destroyed. It was noteable to me that the artist logged in allthe items pre-destruction and that he chose a machine to destroy the objects. Also wonder why we feel like we are so defined by our things, consumer culture perhaps. I enjoy the notion of undoing oneself in order to recreate in a new and modified form.