Some things do.

Your choice.

“I thought some parts were good,” I replied with intentional ambiguity.

“Like a big slab of rotting meat?” she asked.

“Yes,” I agreed, “but with fewer maggots.”

Halsted sometimes broadcasts a live photograph of her bedroom over the Internet, so I decided to have a look this afternoon. I was surprised to see her sitting on her bed typing on her laptop computer. I felt a little guilty, as if I was spying on her even though she publicizes her camera piece. (I was viewer number 22,812.)

I guess I don’t have what it takes to be a voyeur. Or, maybe I do, because I kept watching. After Halsted left, Tazendra hopped on the bed, pranced over to the computer, and read what she’d written. I wonder if Halsted knows about Tazendra’s snooping? I suppose she does now.

The Internet is a curious medium, and Tazendra is a curious cat. Curious. Nice.

I came prepared with a number of “Pranks canceled” signs. I put them up at the main entrance where they remained throughout the evening. As soon as I taped up the first sign, a couple of men glanced at my announcement, muttered an expletive or two, and walked away.

“The party’s on gents,” I shouted. “I think someone put that up as a prank.”

I sneaked into the event through a side door. After all, what self-respecting person would pay to get into a pranks party? Once inside, I taped a “Pranks canceled” sign on Vale’s back. The sign stayed there until we all emptied out onto Sixteenth Street to watch Mark fire up his V1 rocket engine.

It was just that sort of night.

Emily said she liked Eno’s futuristic views in the context of preserving art. I responded that I’m not too concerned about what happens after I’m dead, especially when it comes to art. I told her that I liked Marcel Duchamp’s analysis of the relationship between art and time.

No painting has an active life of more than 30 or 40 years—that’s another little idea of mine. I don’t care if it’s true, it helps me to make that distinction between living art and art history. After 30 or 40 years, the painting dies, loses its aura, its emanation, whatever you want to call it. And then it is either forgotten or else it enters the purgatory of art history.

“I think they’re ificial,” I said.

“Tell me why you describe them as official,” Meredith demanded.

“I didn’t,” I explained, “I said they were ificial. Artificial, but without the art.”