On Miscellanies

Miscellanies simulate a quick flight through the everyday, obeying a directive for novelty; composing the whole herbal for the vegetal novelty that grows around any wayfaring stranger.

The miscellany's first impulse is to class; second, to array; third, to move safely away. It shies from any full description, for fear of losing its indicial starting point. The miscellany clings by a point to the individual body, making fast an initial contact and forgoing any act of expansion. It draws lines as far as the body's arm will go; and meanwhile that body is running through space, gathering some hundred strands.

The miscellany assumes experience to be data, in the sense of a finite storehouse of datums; in the sense of being given gifts on the mere occasion of asking; in the sense of what can be freely given, and nothing beyond that.

The Domain Of...

Making a domain is a matter of extending one influence evenly throughout a certain tract of space. Starting with a topographically homogeneous area is helpful but not necessary; establishing political sovereignty is helpful if troublesome; minting a new currency is helpful, though not always practical. Re-making the terrain into the shape of one face is satisfying in the short term, but will likely prove counterproductive with time (a face is liable to be mis-attributed).

To start making a domain, incarnate a miniature of the desired domain; that miniature will incorporate all salient features of the domain-to-be and serve as a ready reference for anyone inquiring as to those features. It could be a uniform, with badges; a carved monument; or a reasonably small scale model. It must in any case be on public display.

Next, travel through the planned domain and remove any elements outside of the miniature. Replace those elements by expanding approved elements.

Post signs around the periphery: "This is the domain of ..."

Barn

This was a barn I often visited.

On the left is the ground floor. The wide aperture is where the truck comes in. Just beyond that is where the motorcycle is kept. Both of those spaces are connected to the workshop: table saw, jigsaw, clamps, a radio. There are also stairs with some boxes underneath them. Somewhere in there is a riding mower (not a tractor).



The loft is on the right. It is one open space filled with boxes full of photographs, magazines, and record albums. In front is a small opening for swinging your legs out of. From there you can look over the driveway and the road beyond.

Enlarge

Many persons with their faces along the edge of the frame. By "frame", I mean window.

Why then can they not sleep?

They can't sleep because they are looking out from the window.

...

"I ask you to enlarge the potentate to threaten me boldly." I wrote that down, and asked in the morning what it meant. Well. A bald statement about the prostate?

...

Two ways to enlarge:

-to take an envelope, cut it in pieces, and pry apart the glued edges

-to find a slider that is labeled "enlarge".

...

A disagreement when we had to paint the house. We could either paint it white, and hope for the best; or use off-white and have done with it.

...

Vote on a topic. Your choices are: "The Significance of an Upside-Down Cross", "Utility Knife", "Characteristic Indianapolis", "Rigorous Matter of Part-Wholes", and "A Doge for Two Deacons".

...

Q: Steps it's too late to walk up?
A: An Olympic podium

...

YBDF staffer Joanie opts for "Charateristic Indianapolis"; she doesn't have a single picture to think with in this case. P.J.'s taste runs to "Utility Knife". Rick?...OK, another vote for "Utility Knife". Judith played in a band in her teens and would like to hear more about "The Significance of an Upside-Down Cross". What's a deacon? I'd like "A Doge for Two Deacons".

...

11 things in a row: a house, flowers, a lawn, septic tank, a lawn, rail fence, a lawn, pear tree, a lawn, patio, a house.

...

Q: How do you sleep on top of a pear tree?
A: I'm a bird

Strum And Drum

1.
A common dream--to take up instruments without amplification, and take them to an area void of any need for entertainment, and play music of scrupulous wholeness with its assumed surroundings. Some people venture to sing songs about the nature they perceive, and some essay further, to play trees, grass, and stones. They may rhythmically drop stones in differing depths of water, and tell themselves that a) they are re-enacting a first utterance of human music, b) they are re-enacting the artificial productions of over-bred instruments in a properly primary setting, c) they are embodying through gestures of intentional vagueness a persona redolent to other persons of wholeness, wisdom, and native genius.

2.
The recordings of these activities could be constructed so as to evoke hallowed friendship, sojourns in total communion of understanding; the tape recorder is something of a shy raccoon cocking its head ingenuously at the singular endeavors of the artists.

Then again, the practice could serve as a neat tag and audible badge for a branded group or family of artists.

The Sunlit Hospital

Nature improves and heals the human body. A shaft of sunlight, provided it be distinct, is a healing vector. To obtain consistent shafting, a grove of ample dimensions must be cleared in established forest.

A clear, grassy path of commodious width is made, to lead to a new clearing sprinkled with tall elms. The base plane is composed of a mix of innocuous grasses, fragrant herbs, and florets that dissipate lightly under the heel. One hears throughout the surrounding forest light rustlings and scamperings; this is the sound of ministering priests gathering the necessary ingredients for their poultices, mustards, tisanes, and decoctions. One by one, the priests arrive from the shadows, and return to their pots and teak tables to sort, wash, and stir; when their labors are complete, they summon nurses to administer the arrived-upon herbal aid.

The patients are borne in on canvas biers, then fitted upon stainless-steel armatures that have been driven into the ground at convenient intervals. They gently moan and flirt with great washes of fever, their swathed bodies cool and dappled, until such time as the prescribed cure begins to take hold. They are then issued a single crutch and allowed to depart with soft expressions of gratitude back along the cut path.

"What Means The World To You?"

The world is round and ringed with reference. There are any number of rings to place around it. Each ring holds an index, each at a different scale. Each ring tells you something different about the world.

The world is a choice of the objects that constitute it. If you can form a class of real objects, you have defined the world (for the moment). I see that the world is maple trees, and what interferes with maple trees.

The world was meant to be an arrow but started to bristle too much with feathers. That is, it was sent straightforwardly through time but became distracted with appearances.

The world is a floor laid perpendicular to a wall. You are more akin to the wall than the world.

You can leave the world with some difficulty. Or, your exit is the world's expansion.

Notebooks Out Paysagistes!

An interview conducted with "field architect" Tildy Junco in 1998 for WOOP-Jersey City's Perry Grimm Hour. Transcript presented with permission.

...

One hindrance to a real ecological understanding is this tendency to infer from working maps a simple generation of geometric forms from a unified ground. That the map has presented you with all the necessary information, the bare contours, and already excluded all the unnecessaries between. You need a sense of interpenetration. If your work is hooked into the larger site, if the site is too hooked into the region to even count as a site anymore, if you're hooked enough into the site to be inseparable from that--then!

...

Well, it's about breaking the habit of perception, of setting aside the picture in front of you, no matter how much you're into it. So, in regard to use, you could make some new typological prototypes, prototypes based less on those imperatives, places made from familiar words--park, or garden, or preserve, or yard. In the new prototypes, you would focus more on imaginative extents, places you can't put aside because you can't get a read on them. Really demonstrate that it's possible to apply precedents, to extend them, rather than follow them, or abandon them altogether. To start a project and, when I propose, to be able propose wholly, but without constraints--less for a lack of contexts, you understand, than a lack of inhibitions.

...

Superstructures can be made to fail--to lapse after the fact into a visible trace, a palpable trace. So you could intervene, create a particular form, and then leave it to spread out from that starting point. The nice thing is that it can grow halfway between you and "them".



...

We've made great efforts, but so far we've failed to derive any reasonably correct predictions of that interplay between plan-driven forms and intrinsically unstable material. So instead you see this history of wasteful hydrological, chemical heroics. I think we should try instead to deprecate those coherent borders, and work within better sureties--like stochastic regions.

...

How can you challenge static representations without abandoning a common visual language? And how do you extend a representation in time without imposing narrative sequence?

...

I think that a better bridge between ecological planning and individual initiatives can be found in middle terms between gardening and landscape practice.

...

So make landscapes with intermittency and ways out, where the focus can wander, shift, and lapse. Miniaturize those points, intersperse them across a fabric, and you'll get ornament--natural or no.

...

If you want to make infrastructure worth preserving, quote infrastructure in a preserve, and the preserve in infrastructure.

...

Writing on a wall is just the first stage of making a haven. It's a mistake to think less of people who want to index their presences, or stake their claims, in the gentlest way possible.

...

I'd say do less and indicate more. Imply the armatures you need to make, precisely to enable free action.

...

It helps to watch the local conditions expressed in form--like the manifestation and incarnation of a soil in particular plant life.

...

I don't retrofit out of constraints, but to have the benefit of constraint.

...

I recognize the stipulated ethics of my profession: wealth in harmony, social peace, and the robust health of ecological process. If you can't practice them, you should at least represent them.

...

Borderlessness and facelessness are the prime assets of my profession.

Three Black Bottles

On an nearby archipelago, cottagers pass their time making a peculiar sort of black bottle from the volcanic sand. When each bottle is done, they write instructions on a piece of paper, enclose the paper in the bottle with a smear of wax, and place the sealed bottle into the currents that pass near the beaches.

The currents form an unpredictable path of circulation around the island system, one too treacherous for boats. Having been passed about the system for a certain amount of time, the bottle comes to rest on another shore. A recepient finds the bottle in the sand, and is obligated to follows the instructions therein.

The culture of this archipelago, then, is one of mutual deity. Each cottager knows that their fellows author bottles just as they do. Far from debunking the process, this lends a lofty character to the most humble fellow inhabitant. What is more--to receive your own bottle back is not a demystification, but a more intimate relation with acting fate.

Going Concerns

PEATERMARKS SOCIETY OF AMERICA

"The interest of Peatermarks lies wholly in its organization; lacking any external reference, its members preoccupy themselves solely with the growth and maintenance of the club. The Peatermarks magazine catalogs no accomplishments, no profiles in courage; it merely catalogs the names of members and the locations of chapters. The few photos depict a series of bare offices and blank exteriors that could only be told apart by a seasoned Peatermark. One even suspects, given the preponderance of Peatermarks Halls located alone on local highways, in converted urban convenience stores, and on the third floors of office buildings in Rust Belt downtowns, that the allure of the Peatermarks Society lies in a tacit appeal to the very pleasures of banality."

Despite a strong start, the Peatermarks organization was soon overshadowed by the Zoaclubs, a chain of subscription-supported meeting halls where locally based twelve-member councils (comprising one member of each zodiacal sun sign) would vie with one another to solve "charitable challenges". For example, teams would be awarded a fixed point total for every square mile that they could arrange to have cleared of rubbish, or for each unit of quality low-income housing they could endeavor to construct. In addition to limited cash incentives, members were also treated to free astrological readings, available 24 hours a day.

HARP TONE VARIANCE RECORDS

"A record company dedicated to popularizing the humble field recording. Wedding the high electroacoustic tradition to the old-fashioned souvenir record, HTV seeks to provide the literal soundtrack to 'great places--exciting places--people places'. Also publishes sheet notation, study guides, and promotional leaflets."

Some strides were made with the Top Ten placement of the single "Always Terry Always The Same", ten minutes in the DJ booth of a Blackpool disco. It should, however, be noted that the charting version was remixed somewhat to highlight the conventionally "musical" elements of the recording.

SEARCH FOR REALTY

"An 'exploratory realty concern' that works to identify, evaluate, and sell unused space. SFR agents secure underutilized cellars, rooftops, parking lots, and conference rooms and pass them on to customers in need of modest, conveniently situated spaces. An in-house microgeographer works with the buyer to develop strategies for the parcel. Customers have developed a plethora of unique uses: a three-foot wide ice hockey rink in a crawlspace, a one-room hotel in a tollbooth, dormitory housing in cubicles."

Its business model was endlessly copied, but SFR fell behind by failing to provide the service that made its competitors rich: the subdivision of aerial and subaquatic spaces, and the design/build of associated specialized structures.

Poor Relations

I'm happy to dwell on a personified nature, a community of spirits representing every possible place. The disappointment is immediate when I think of the continuing inclination toward a more vegetal perception of life, and likewise a perception of each tree not as a hamadryad, nor even an acknowledged kami, but as a secondary outthrow of the general and vague principle of life.

Each plant, perhaps, is accorded a sort of fractional being by the actuarial human, with some negligible demand on sympathy and attention. It must maintain ten times the mass of a human to gain recognition on any level, one hundred times to achieve comparable presence.

Resentment at environmentally-sound dictates follows partially from impatience at hospitalling a host of poor relations.

1:1

a. Time acts chemically, as an aqua regia, to dissolve and reorder the bonds of any aggregates entered into it.

b. Human apprehensions are never fully factored out, but depend on a juxtaposition of several aggregates; (10x10x2) vs. (5²x2³) vs. (5x5x2x2x2). Adjustments are frequent.

c. A fully factored view would appear as a tautology, as the Carroll map that lies draped 1:1 over its referent.

"Insofar As Any Spotted Lady Can Be White"

College students were corralled by the researchers into the basement of the student union. After vigorous dosages and several disorienting bits of stagecraft, the subjects produced a peculiar text. Which is to say: at dawn the following was found scrawled on the blackboard, along with some more (ahem) material remnants.


"Spots of gravy on the bodice twin to the gaps in the lace. At shadow or clutched in an occulted bed, crouched on a [...] counterpane, or stroking a fly that hits between panes. Brass buttons are a child's trumpet [?] to blow.

A mass of spots on the bony chest, and the kin of a fowl, once plucked--a facing form with most numbers omitted. Kin to a fowl, with a hatful of glaring [...] faults.

I do get the sense that this was the substance [...] of her [...]complaint: that she'd be shuttled back and forth. That upon this point she'd be shunned; lengths of her neck [...] and collar wrung, thrown there with the rest.

Insofar as any spotted lady can be white--who at once apprehends and sets forth [...]the alley-strictures, together pent in paper frost."

A week later, a panel of experts were convened to interpret the results. Their responses are given anonymously.

A: "A careful invocation of childhood."

B: "The only word worth reading is 'plucked'. All flesh and no feathers, so to speak."

C: "It fairly breathes racial misgivings."

D: "It may be about snow."

Plant A Tree Or Die

"For the past 200 years, the ideal image of nature has been a symbolic, transformed and man-made landscape, typified by idealized areas of agricultural production. Such idealizations led to the creation of unique parks, but, as symbols of a past romantic ideal, these landscapes cannot now be restored. These cultural landscapes are as lost to us now as are the social dreams of nineteenth-century Romanticism, and can therefore only fail as ideals for a contemporary landscape. The tasks of dealing with run-down industrial areas and open-cast mines require a new method--one that accepts their physical qualities but also their destroyed nature and topography. This new vision should not be one of "re-cultivation", for this approach negates the qualities that they currently possess and destroys them for a second time. The vision for a new landscape should seek its justification exactly within the existing forms of demolition and exhaustion. We have to ask ourselves which spaces from among the dilapidated and redundant places we want to use and occupy, and which of those have to be changed by the mark of a cultural intervention or the remediation of historical contamination.

Would it not be better to attach to the ideal image of our occidental culture, to 'paradise', an oasis in the desert, a place where man has to make his way against the rigors of physical nature? This imagination of an oasis as a garden in desolate spaces is my ideal type of discourse with the nature of old industrial sites, which in their parts can be left to themselves to develop the fantastic images of the future from already existing formations--creating values between art and nature in a way which could never be made by the artist nor mere nature alone."

-from Peter Latz, "Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord: The Metamorphosis Of An Industrial Site", in Manufactured Sites, ed. Niall Kirkwood.

Mr. Ginger's Book Of Love

He clasped slight packets in his paws. Mr. Ginger's book of love!

No more wily than a beaver, mild and ingratiating, Mr. Ginger would take his amours ice-skating, or out to the paddleboats, or to that restaurant with totem poles throughout the parking lot. Mr. Ginger would excuse himself on the latter occasions, and go to the loo to pick his teeth with a cocktail sword; on the way back to his table he would stop at the cigarette machine for some Tareytons. He would offer his date a pink mint from the dish on the way out; whereupon they would walk to his LeBaron. As they drove along he would venture a few remarks on local affairs.

According to critic Kendrick Baskin:

"...none of this is particularly gingery, or venturesome; but I do believe there is a measure of caddishness, of laddishness, of promiscuity, in the affairs of such pocket-gentry. This cavalier and all his kin perform a far-flung play, presenting in their innocuous entreaties whole acres of courtly coercion. That is, their adherence to the forms of Usonian love qualifies them as willing instruments of the leviathan's self-willing."


That's Mr. Ginger and his book of love!

Unnerves

Tactics are fine. They're fine to lionize. When we've been sitting in totalities, we like for gaps to open up. We might forget, though, that wholeness is its own curse. Without a share of ourselves to leave in complicity, we wholly become creatures of righteousness, and can't do wrong. As with the partisan: "this I could not do". Righteous conditions leave a single possible path among the many.

With no stake in what it is we fight, we cannot understand any enemy, the names it carries beyond enemy. We can only adhere to path of contraries. We are, then, as lonesome nerves in a body, firing out with no feedback.

Screenplay No. 84 (For Your Consideration)

"No, Not That"

The film inhabits a 3D wireframe representation of the Barcelona Pavilion. 26 separate 20-second shots are presented, without prefatory material. Each one starts from the center and proceeds to laterally trace out in space one of the letters of the English alphabet (capitals only). For screenings in international locations, suitable alterations will be made (as in: LLs for Caracas, 3s for Sofia).

Deliverables; Or, I Remember Eve

...50 sculptures ranging in size from 4x20 1/2x2 1/4" to 3x2x1/4', composed in various permutations of wood, wire, plastics, plaster, paper, yarn, thread, rope and found objects.

...Cardboard wire cutters, 48x28x4".

...A gravestone shape with a cruciform hole, 5 1/4x4 3/4x1 1/2", in wood, cardboard, plasticene, and mixed media (wire, paper, burlap, tape); plasticene and cardboard versions later to be augmented with wire, yarn, and pencil inscriptions.

...Performance piece to be done in the area of the slide room. The lights will be turned off, except for a faint light within the room; the landing will be cordoned off by a specially prepared rope. A glass of water will be on the floor, near a boiling (and thus steaming) pot of water placed beneath the ladder to the roof. I will hide in the slide room, and begin to make droning sounds on a synthesizer as the class ascends the stairs--none of them will know whether I am actually present or if a tape is playing (my shadow will be visible but unrecognizable as such). After a certain amount of restlessness becomes evident in the observing class, I will simultaneously lunge up (thus moving my shadow), stop playing the synthesizer, and kick an identical glass of water into the landing area, splattering its contents.

...A chair in false collaboration with Rebecca Horn, 44x16 1/2x17 1/2". Wood, plexiglass, steel, burlap, muslin, copper tubing, four-track tape recorder (with tape), microphone, effects pedal, cables, headphones, thermometer. The seat and legs will be made of stained wood (with copper tubing in a spiral around the bottom of one leg), the back of a plexiglass plate and bar stock, the seat of burlap and muslin. It will work like this: the sitters will put on the headphones and put the thermometer in their mouths. They will then sit on the chair, activating the tape recorder (which is concealed under the seat) and causing it to play a pre-recorded tape of distorted studio noise. At the same time that the sitters hear the tape, they will hear the sounds around them through the microphone mounted above their heads; these sounds, however, will be filtered through the effects pedal between the microphone and the tape recorder. The sitters will then be able to alter the sounds around them by placing the pedal in their laps and manipulating it. The pedal will be concealed in the same layers of inward muslin and outward burlap as the seat, however--so that the sitters cannot direct the manipulation, but only experiment haphazardly.

...Performance piece. Before the performance, I will cut a standard plywood piece into 15 biomorphic shapes of various sizes, draw little eyes in pen on 14 pieces, and smear the 15th with vaseline. I then will arrange the eyed shapes in a cluster on the floor spilling diagonally out from the space. A fellow made out of cloth with identical eyes will watch from a nearby chair. I will attend on this day dressed in my funeral clothes: white dress shirt, black Oxford shoes, black dress pants, black tie, and a black sweater. I will also have a pink cigarette lighter at hand, and pink lip balm in my pocket. As the performance begins, I will arrange my class in rows on either side of the cluster as I face it head on, the vaseline-smeared shape on the floor between the cluster and myself. I will apply the lip balm to my lips, light the cigarette lighter three times, kneel to genuflect, and then proceed to pick up the vaseline-smeared shape and use its vaseline to anoint each of the other shapes above their eyes. That done, I will genuflect once more, and light the cigarette lighter three more times.

...Performance piece. Prior to the performance, I will have sharpened a broom handle into a spear, wrapped it with a broad, long piece of latex, and left it to the side in the presentation space. That night, when called upon to perform the performance, I will stand up, remove my shoes and socks, and remove my flannel shirt to reveal a t-shirt emblazoned with a gravestone. Picking up the spear, I will remove the latex band and wind it around my neck in the manner of a scarf. I will then walk over to the blackboard and draw a diagram of five parallel lines in chalk. Instructing my fellows to follow me, I will lead them to a yard across the street. I will draw the same diagram with the spear in the earth before me, and then incompetently throw the spear. I will then laugh uproariously.

...Two loaves of french bread with 31 pins protruding from each end, bound together with a band of pink cloth. On the pink cloth are two buttons composed of pound coins, each one wrapped in a patch of the same cloth. A length of plastic and wire cord will protrude from the middle of the band, and lead to a pouch of the self-same cloth which it seals by coil at the top. This pouch will be filled with every penny I have collected during my time here, and will be surrounded by a ridge of ground-up black liquorice sticks.

...A timeline in pink pencil along the side of a length of toilet paper (still on the roll), with dates of interest (i.e., the ambush of Roland, the siege of Masada).

...A sort of over-large hot water bottle headpiece, made of pink cloth stuffed with batting, with a ruffled fringe and metal cap on top and a velcro strap to go about the chin.

...A smallish battery, composed of a small pouch of pink cloth filled with silicone caulk. The pouch will be sliced half-open, allowing viewing of caulk and permitting conducting wires (twisting together into a loop at the end) coming from the caulk to protrude outwards. Six black liquorice sticks will protrude from slits in pairs along one side.

...A bird made of pink cloth stuffed with batting, with painted eyes; five rocks made of burlap stuffed with batting, with painted eyes; a sack of money made of burlap tied off with cord, with a pound sign painted on the side; a t-square made of plywood with painted eyes; and a pair of eyes made of gauze with painted pupils and red thread optic nerves.

...Performance piece. It will be a sort of cabaret, done at 3:30 P.M. on May 4th for a private crowd of friends. I will sing eight songs. The space will be set up with cafe tables in a front row and couches in a back row, all facing the performance area. This area will be mostly empty except for another cafe table with a swivel chair beside it. On the table will be: a glass of ginger ale with a black liquorice stick for a straw, several blue pills, the tape recorder audio-recording the event, and a small notebook. In the back corners of the space will be an amplifier into which a thin microphone will be plugged, and a stereo playing backing tracks. Two helpers will be employed: one in the audience filming the event on digital video, and one, dressed in a black cocktail dress and black sling-back heels, who will hand me the props for each of my songs (a quilt, burlap rocks, sewn eyes, etc.).

...Final performance piece. I will record critiques of the other pieces for the night of this presentation simultaneously on two tape recorders. Near the end, having picked up the viola case I have brought and turned on both tape recorders, I will lead the class up the hill to a small clearing. I will set down the two tape recorders side by side in the middle of this clearing, and tell them to make a circle around the recorders and myself. I then will remove the viola from its case and set the case open upon the ground next to the recorders. I will start to slowly saw a two note pattern on the viola, and to walk slowly in a circle. I will gradually accelerate both walk and play until each is quite fast, and then suddenly burst out of the circle and away into the night, not to return.

Script For A Cocktail Party

A. Twelve guests are invited by two hosts (six each).

B. As they enter, each guest is handed a small card. The cards are given in order of arrival. Each contains a different instruction, mandating some variety of physical activity to be performed on cue.

C. An assembly with every appearance of a cocktail party ensues. That is, until the system of signaling is initiated, and the sequence of activities begins:


1. At 9:46 (by the clock in the hall), the first guest rises and throws heris glass to the floor.
2. The second guest rises, retrieves a dustpan hidden under the green armchair, and attempts to pick up the pieces without a broom.
3. As the dustpan first touches the shards, the third guest shouts once and starts pacing in a circle.
4. Upon hearing the shout, the fourth goes to the radio on the kitchen table and turns it to 88.9 FM.
5. When the radio comes on, the fifth guest goes to the dinner table and sits. This guest then lets heris head fall onto the table, and remains motionless.
6. The sixth picks up a striped handkerchief left on the cherry endtable and lets it fall to the floor.
7. Upon seeing the sixth guest pick up the handkerchief, the seventh guest rushes over, picks up a checkered handkerchief laid out next to it, and lets that fall as well.
8. Upon seeing the seventh guest run to the endtable, the eighth closely follows him or her. The eighth guest's goal is snatch both handkerchiefs out of the air--failing both, only the second. If both handkerchiefs have already reached the floor, she or he will stand still in close proximity to them and stare down.
9. The ninth guest proceeds to a mandolin leant against the wall in the corner, sits, picks it up, and strums it frantically for two minutes.
10. Whereupon the tenth guest starts to dance on tip-toe for the duration of the mandolin play, freezing with arms in the air upon its conclusion.
11. As the dance ends, the eleventh guest lets out a long whistle and lays upon the ground, head pointed towards the window.
12. This being accomplished, the twelfth guest points an index finger heavenwards. This is the signal for all activities to end and the dinner party proper to resume.

Comment On Ethics

Behaving as though the person you most respect is present can be a problematic moral rule, since it excludes any awareness of that person's capacity for compassion.