From dreams we will awake, and there they will be.... the lawyers.
Hundreds of them, leaping and dancing on the heads of pins, their buckets full of splash cold water, crying their wicked cry,
“wake up! wake up!”
“This world is built not of dreams, but of money, necessity, work and sweat. Steel is cold and hard, and it will be heavy to lift.”
“Face the music. Wake up and face the day …
Reality awaits.”
Now let me ground you with a simple, concise, explanation of all this.
I recently finished a large commission in a park in Albuquerque. The project lasted a good six or seven years. Much of that time was spent wrangling with the city over various minor problems.
Then a difficult problem arose. Would my project and that of another artist ever be constructed ? It appeared not.
The sculpture project of a third artist (a boat) sailed right on through the process, (perhaps I should have stuck with boats).
After God knows how many years of being what I thought was nice and reasonable, there came a point where I got mad …
and then I got a lawyer.
Lawyers, you may know, are friends for life, if you don’t run out of money.
Here I will condense the story.
My friendly lawyer and I won ... at least I think we won ... more than we lost anyway.
Both projects would proceed and be completed.
What is the title of my project?
It is called “El Bosque de los Sueños” which, hopefully, is Spanish for:
“Forest Of Dreams”.
Irony of ironies … it took a lawyer to get the Dreams built.
No doubt Reality and lawyers have their place … perhaps in an empty room somewhere.
After all, even the finest plans built of air have to land somewhere (often with a thud).
And at the end of a show,or a concert, the work and equiptment must be lugged out the door and driven off in a truck to the next stop. Reality is in the mix somewhere.
Once on track again, the REAL question for my Dreams became: where?
Sadly it was a Very Real question.
Where to put them? the sculptures?
They did not belong … at least someone, somewhere, did not plan for them.
They simply had forgotten.
Six or Seven years in the making and the city did not know where to install my sculptures once they were completed.
I thought surely I would have a voice in the placement.
Soon, however, it was taken out of my hands. And these important decisions (about where to put the pieces) were made in less than an hour by an ad-hoc committee.
The lawyers were of little help at that point.
And the cold Reality, what was left of it, drifted slowly in the empty room, infecting all of us, and leading us astray.
But then again the dreams got made.