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May 30, 1988

I told Minnette that I was afraid that A Germ of Truth was sadistic-that it was sadistic to confront people with thoughts of death. But she said no, that it was reassuring for people to know that someone else shared their fears about death. It feels good to write in the journal. Regardless of whether the writing has any value aesthetically, it focuses me, helps me get in touch with myself. Like writing a letter to myself. Is that schizoid or what? Like Alice addressing her feet after she'd suddenly grown alarmingly larger in Alice in Wonderland. Why don't I do it more often? Or would that turn it into yet another addiction or obsessive activity?

May 2,1989

Vis a'vis Tableaux Vivants show [an exhibition curated by Tamblyn]: "Curiously, it is also reproduction that separates the living from the dead. Warhol, characteristically on both sides of the line, inhabited a posh netherworld, the 'velvet underground' of the living/dead vampire and the dead/living robot. His reproductive method (almost unknown in nature but the rule in Western art) was asexual cloning-male."

June 22, 1989

I visited John Muse's studio to pick out the work for the Tableaux Vivants show. He gave me some books about witchcraft-odd because of seeing that article at Shira's. It made me think of the voice I heard during my first acid trip-voice that said, "Lady, you're a witch on a horse of a different color."

I read an article-chosen at random in Artforum by Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom. It turned out to deal with the same themes as the Tableaux Vivants show-the icon of the female robot, which they traced in Lang's Metropolis and Donna Haraway's cyborg manifesto. They used this as a way of talking about leaving the body and leaving the earth (mother earth). Is there a way to leave the body without dying? Tableaux Vivants is about rehearsals for leaving the body.

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