Dear Count Blogula,

I’m still trying to figure out what we were trying to say last time.  Something about the Invisible Man and mirrors. Good reading. I figure we should keep going with this.

More new things percolating since we last wrote. At this point we are reevaluating what the sculpture will look like and what it means within the larger context of the project as a whole. The original conception for the piece, a 40ish-foot climbing tower suspended about 12 feet of the ground, has been expanded to include handholds that are cast from our team members’ grips, and indeed the decision to suspend or not suspend the tower has come into question.

We are back to having it in the ground and accessible to those who want to touch and climb it, and then we’re back again to the suspended version with all its visual impact and conceptual tickle. We will be discussing what all this means with the Team and we hope this could influence the direction the sculpture takes. In the end, we might have the sculpture suspended for one year and then renew the piece and give it new meaning by lowering it onto the ground for another year. So the question remains: what does it mean to build the tower and suspend it and what does it mean for it to rest on the ground?

One connection jumped out at me: the Tower of Babel allegory. Babel was the first city built after the Flood, and the tower was built as a tribute to the human endurance that allowed the city to flourish. Forget the fact that God destroyed it and fractured the population into multiple languages as punishment for building such a monument to themselves and not to him… I am mostly interested in how the Tower was the first utopian gesture, how it was a bold manifestation of the Life Drive and an assertion that the community can grow, survive, and improve itself without limits. As it turns out, God didn’t like that idea and neither did Freud. (I made drawings of our sculpture in a way that strongly referenced the Tower of Babel, but it made the thing look like some Meso-American shrine. Looks aaaall wrong. Scrapped that idea.)

So there we were, minding our own business when a certain curator who shall remain nameless came along and dropped Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents in our lap. This is the first I’ve read of Freud and I am completely blown away by the ideas he offers and their relevance to our project. I write this blog entry from within a prankster-socialist family camp somewhere near East Noseblow West Virginia, and was able to get you on the pay phone for a few moments today to express my enthusiasm for said ideas. It seems these are all familiar to you, dare I say old hat, so no need to spell everything out for you. But in the interest of our gentle readers, Mr. Smarty McShrinkpants, I will lay it down as I see it. Everyone, stick with me here. It’s gonna get a bit stuffy in here. I’ve only read only the introduction and am already wanting to bring in the ideas presented. Let’s see what happens when I read the actual book.

For those who want the brief version of my conclusions: the suspended tower expresses the unattainability of balanced society and the absurdity of monuments built to honor that ideal. The grounded tower introduces the element of risk (to an inferred or real climber) and as such becomes a device that can be used to confront our primal desire to destroy ourselves, which manifests as a fear of bodily harm and death. This confrontation of our primal Death Drive is what ultimately makes the use of the high course in Experiential Education so powerful and effective. We negotiate our own primal desire/fear of death to grow and perhaps realize that we all are driven to die but go on living thanks to the Life Drive, a striving towards that unattainable ideal of an inner and outer growth and, ultimately, utopia.

I’ve been going on about the idea of Recapitulation(ism) for years, and it seems Freud was into that idea as well. In terms of biology, the idea is that as the human fetus develops, it reenacts key stages in the evolution of life, from single-cell creatures to amphibians to primitive mammals, etc. What this means is that developmental evolution is scalable: the path taken by life at a macro level can be scaled to apply to the path taken by one organism in its development process, and conversely, can be scaled up to apply to the evolution of civilizations and cultures and communities.  Stages of the psychological challenge and growth that individuals face are reflected in the growth of societies. Understand the person and you’ll understand the community. Seems like there is some relevance here to the Project.

The neuroses of the individual and how s/he negotiates them can be scaled up to societies at large. Since the collaborative process is at heart a functioning within a society or a community, we are indeed a community of two. As part of the Team Building project we are inviting others to create a larger community and as such it’s worth examining how community is created and how it can succeed or fail. Louis Menand in his introduction to Civilization and Its Discontents says that humans can’t help but create a culture wherever they are, that “humans beings produce culture in the same sense that they produce carbon monoxide: they can’t help it.” (I think he meant “carbon dioxide”, that culture is a natural byproduct of our existence. I doubt he’s referring to internal combustion engines.)

But where do the individual’s and society’s neuroses and anxieties come from?

Another idea that Freud embraced was Lamarckianism, which proposes that a creature’s behavior can create traits which are genetically passed down. This idea is somewhat at odds with Natural Selection in that it proposes that there is an ideal towards which every species is striving, rather than Natural Selection’s hit-or-miss stumble towards better reproductive success. As it applies to Freud, the idea is that the traumas of our ancestors are somehow carried down the generations for us to struggle with. We still not only feel the repercussions of the Fall from Eden and the murder of Abel (or our crazy great-grandfather Sid who killed his wife with an ax); we have to find our own way to actively negotiate their consequences. Freud believes that everything comes back to the Oedipal struggle. As Menand puts it, “civilization began when the young men of the tribe ganged up and murdered the father-figure, the tribal leader who had appropriated all the women for his own sexual use. The guilt they experienced (since hatred is ambivalent: they loved their leader, too), is the origin of the Über-Ich – the superego – and of the repression that makes culture possible.” The idea is that we’ve been paying for this ever since, that this primal guilt is what redirects that violent urge inward towards self-destruction and destruction of societies, or can be displaced to focus on others. Masochism is primal urge; sadism is that same urge redirected. Most importantly, society and culture cannot exist without this primal guilt, and it is this guilt that lies at the root of anxiety and depression.

Freud originally proposed that humans have two primal drives: the Sexual, or libido which is a Pleasure Principle, and the Ego, which is the Reality principle. These drives, he proposed, are always in conflict. But when it comes to narcissism, the theory breaks down. Lust for self has no place within this original system. So he revised his thinking to describe these two primal drive: the Life Drive, or “Eros”, which is the drive to reproduce and the assemble organic substances into larger entities, such as culture and civilizations. This is in conflict with, and can only exist because of the struggle with, the Death Drive. This is the legacy of our father-killing guilt and is a primal drive towards a suicidal penance for that crime. This energy can be redirected towards others in an effort to allow ourselves to live a bit longer and control the circumstances of our own death.  We do not fear death so much as loss of control as it pertains to the timing and manner of our own death.

And so enter the high elements on the challenge course.

In short, tension is central to the meaning of the Team Building project and the sculpture, and I believe that this tension is between the creative and the destructive.

OK, I’m worn out from this. I am fully prepared for you to blow holes all through this if need be, and surrender control of this blogfest into your capable, Lacanian hands. Lacan was, after all, a strong believer in Freud.

Yours in over-thinking everything,
Blogwin

Rubber Baby Bloggy Bumper,

Okaaaaaaay.

I’m not going to attempt to blow holes in this because I’m not that up on my Freud. And, I’m not reading the copy of Civilization and it’s Discontents that you so graciously sent to me. It’s sitting on my desk just looking like I read it, right next to my very tattered copy of the latest GQ (you deal with what theory goes into our heads; i’ll worry about what styling product goes onto them).

Anyhoo, what you wrote is intense and well considered. It’s also more of a lecture than a dialog. And, that’s both welcome and needed. Just makes a response a bit tougher. I was going to go through it and respond paragraph by paragraph but rejected that method. Figure I’ll just jump in with thoughts about where the project is and where it appears to be going.

First, I’m writing this before our third Team Building session coming up next week. It’s amazing how quickly the time in between our meetings has passed. It’s welcome though. This project needs a forward momentum. Without it, we’d lose energy and, truth be told, interest.  Experiential education has a half life. The effects do last but tend to fade as does all experience. Real life, as they say, creeps back in. Throwing oneself back into the experience is both beneficial and necessary. I can honestly say that the time spent away from the project becomes tinged with a certain longing for both a return to team building as well as an end to the whole thing. Kinda like “Should we include the Wiggle Waggle initiative?” vs. “If I have to say ‘Wiggle Waggle initiative’ one more time, I’m gonna lose it!” There’s a desire to hold on to the profundity that can accompany Experiential Education (as with art). Isn’t that what brings me/us/everyone back to it again and again? It is motivation. At the same time, there’s a desire to just have it be over, to let the artwork be complete. Ah, there’s our beloved tension.

How do we address the idea that we want this project to be over, that we want to move on to the next thing, when the experience and growth we’ve encountered through it has been unprecedented? Our entire working process has changed. We’ve always wanted to challenge notions of what we could be as artists. We attempted to do this at first by always making stuff that looked different from other stuff we made. At some point, we let ourselves play with concepts that were different as well. But, With Team Building, it’s moved to a whole new level. We have chosen a medium that does not have an end like a painting or a sculpture or a video has. Oddly enough, it can also have an amorphous beginning since all experience preceding the team building plays a role in whatever happens. The opportunity to relinquish defining the parameters of the artwork is unique, at least for us. We hope it is for both the team members and anyone else who is following the project. That level of collaborative uncertainty helps to propel. It’s real life that tends to drag its heels in this kind of situation.

Heading back to Indy for the third session, I am very interested in how the team will respond to a new challenges, including low course and high course elements. We’ve seen how the team can both unify and we’ve seen how they can remain fragmented. That’s the nature of such a diverse group. The next session will bring a level of individual challenge heretofore unaddressed. Yay! It’s exciting and, of course, anxiety provoking for everyone involved. It’s the biggest challenge yet.

During this next session, we will, as you mentioned, discuss the sculptural element with the team in a direct manner that will call for participation and engagement in the creative process. We’ve already broached this subject but in a more indirect manner. We’ve referenced the sculpture for the park but not necessarily the decision making process that goes into making it, the realm usually reserved for the artist(s) proper. The questions surrounding the handholds and the tower’s suspension will be addressed as will others that will arise throughout the team’s time together. The discussion and results will make it official: we are truly collaborating with the team. It’s necessary for the project to culminate and, then, end. And isn’t that what we all want, a satisfying resolution? I know I do.

In suspending the tower, we end the Team Building project. The tower becomes a symbol of what we did, at least for those that did it. Like a photograph, it could remind someone of something, but it’d be hard pressed to offer up a new experience other than viewing it as art.  On the ground, the tower offers more experience. You could actually climb it. Team Building continues. Not sure I’m ready for that. As mentioned, I want an ending, something definitive.  So, I’m up for the one-two punch of suspending it and then lowering it after a designated period of time. That way, Team Building ends and we get all the good stuff that comes along with that (and a big, sexy sculpture to boot).  Lowering it in the future will be a way to revisit what we and others have done as well as start something anew. Now, I’m not saying that we should go back and teambuild new people on that tower. I’d be happy to have someone else determine how the tower will be used, to let it live on without us.

The best I can do to connect these ideas with what you wrote is to acknowledge that in realizing the Team Building project, we’ve engaged in Recapitulation that follows our own ten-year-old, artmaking relationship. Team Building began by focusing on conflict (Type A vs. IMA); it’s evolved to true collaboration (Type A hearts IMA). This is how it happened with us. This is cool. In this sense all the Life/Death drive of which you speak exists for The Team in the project as well as for us behind the scenes. You and I have pushed and pulled with our ego and the attempt to subvert it. We are dealing with our own pleasure but also with our own death. We are both the fathers and the sons who want to kill them. No wonder we’re so guilty. In any
case, we are definitely dealing with the primal urge to control our own demise.

On that note, let’s make sure that our harnesses are secure when we’re up in the high elements.

AA

Hey MC Blogmaster 5000,

Here I am again, getting back in the writing groove. Funny enough, just read a story in the last New York Times Magazine (August 3rd) about a group of internet pranksters that generally call themselves “trolls.” Seems they like to nuke web sites and mess with people very aggressively. One of them is quoted as saying that he “wants everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed.” Guy seems like a real party. Too much free time, if you ask me.

But back to the arts.

The project has evolved significantly since we last exchanged thoughts this way. We’ve completed our first two-day workshop with everyone in the Team Building project and have been talking about what it all means ever since. Right after the second day concluded we went out with Lisa (Freiman) to discuss where this was going and exchanged some really interesting ideas.

Type A has always made work that respects the idea first and the medium second. Ultimately the medium we choose for a project must be in response to the concept driving that project, and, in fact, the medium ideally helps to inform and reinforce the concept. Different media can do different things well, and we would never choose video to do what a photograph can do, nor would we choose to make photographs when the weight and authority of a sculpture is what’s called for. In the end, then, the medium is simply a conduit and is chosen for its ability to channel the idea properly. Reveling in the medium makes sense only when it’s functioning as a good conduit. Once that purpose has been fulfilled, we can roll around in the formal glory of whatever medium we happen to be working in. In the end, the medium should practically disappear.

This is a way of working which has been liberating for us because it means we are free to use whatever path is best suited to the concept and can focus completely on developing that concept. Although we’ve always loved the OBJECT in art, whatever that object may be, in the end it is disposable and is in fact not the art itself. This is where the Team Building project comes in.

When challenged with developing a piece for the Art and Nature Park, we realized early on in the process that an object-oriented piece would never be able to achieve what we wanted. We are too concerned these days with the shortcomings of art-as-commodity and the dangers of institutionalized mediation and intimidation messing with the experiencing of art by the public at large. Object-oriented art reinforces this, with the aura of the object being preserved and augmented through access control, provenance, market fluctuations and an accretion of expertise that a very small community of people continues to guard as their own. In short, it is often intimidating for people to go into a museum and restrictions on how one can understand art are inferred at every turn. This can be reinforced by an institution or it can be challenged. There are now significant discussions at the IMA to lead things towards a more open way which encourages a sense of entitlement in how the community can access and experience art, and we are privileged to be a part of that.

You and I decided that we wanted to create a gesture as well as an object and that the gesture is the primary component of the project. The medium we chose is Experiential Education, one which has no physical result (other than minor injuries) and which is direct and unfiltered by the history or art or any other discipline other than its own. The Team Building project can’t be touched or held or bought or sold. It can be experienced, either as a participant or as a viewer. It has an presence beyond what happens within the core team of participants, but defining that is as elusive as defining an invisible man. You can only see his shape when something is draped on him, when some piece of fabric or a mattress or a bathtub full of water betrays his outline and weight and movement. In a sense we have done away with the object and the medium altogether and instead have started a relationship with a cross section of people at the institution which has invited us to make work. What happens within that group is the piece itself, the draped fabric that gives this invisible man shape. The work we do is based on a set of principles and ideas that’s constantly changing, but has a foundation in trust, respect, inquiry, playfulness and honesty.

The project does have an object-oriented component as well, and how. It’s going to be a huge sculpture (we think) and, as such, will function as a counterpoint to the experiences we are sharing as a group. At this point we are feeling an increasing need for the group to have a hand in the design and fabrication of the piece and that will play out in the weeks to come. Having a huge sculpture is arguably the complete flip side of the principles that inform the intangible, performative heart of the project. But is it incompatible? Are we having our cake and eating it too? Seems pretty clear that the answer is yes, but is that so bad? Don’t these two components complement each other and in doing so set the issues in relief?

There’s a lot to consider. This has been an amazing experience so far and we’ve got a long way to go.

Yours in rubber chickens,
Blogwin

Dear B-Lo (again with a new name, this one with a trendy feel),

“Trolls” going onto the Internets to get everyone off the Internets? Hmmm, irony can be pretty ironic.

Anyhoo, it has been a while since our last blog-fession. What’s the penance for that? I’m guessing it has something to do with getting on Facebook.

So, in the last three weeks, much has happened, as you mentioned, with the Team Building project. The blog has the potential to be a place to expand our conversations, to continue to leave residue. I say “potential” mainly because we haven’t exactly… written. Instead, the ideas stayed where, I guess, they are more comfortable: in the ether just above our head waiting to be referenced. Holding the concept to be primary and leaving it formally undefined is a way to avoid losing it. Trying to contain ideas by writing them down, for example, can be a foolproof way of having the concept become slippery, more evasive. At the same time, I want to get some of this stuff down on paper (or, at least, on The Internets). The idea that things cannot be defined is a nice bit of theoretical play but winds up creating paralysis. Sure, no one can know exactly what I am trying to convey. So what? Trying is a noble failure.

So, on to the residue or, more specifically, the Invisible Man (I like to capitalize this as a proper noun since I prefer to believe he actually exists). He’s wrapped in bandages in order for his shape to be seen (he also wore those funny, goggle-like glasses and, if memory serves, a dashing smoking jacket). In order to be identified as a human, these “drapings” were necessary. Sure, no one could tell exactly what he actually looked like, but they could tell where he was and what the hell was holding that pipe up in mid-air (By the way, if he smoked or drank, wouldn’t we see the substance ingested? I mean, the invisibility didn’t extend to external objects, right?) From there, we realized that the “drapings,” or residue, can initially be acknowledged as a need for everyone else to know where the Invisible Man was at all time. Otherwise, he would be undefined, undetectable and, at some point, able to see them naked. Though the residue was for the protection of the visible, we soon realized that they were much more important for the Invisible Man himself. Without it, he would not know where he was. And that would be maddening (not in an irksome way but in a loony-bin way).

Without a sense of self, without the ability to have some identifiable aspect shown to someone or, more importantly, reflected back to oneself, there can be no sense of self. Sure, the reflection can only approximate and is inaccurate (Check this out), but they are somewhat beneficial reference points. And don’t get me started on Lacan’s Mirror Stage (You have read your Lacan, haven’t you?). Inaccurate reflections may create anxiety that sends us to analysis, but they do provide for some psychological stability. The alternative would be much worse. In art, we need our concepts to have a physical or psychological remnant. In a cynical way, art can be too interested in the physical object. People can use their knowledge of what the object “means” and what someone may or may not understand about it to create a culture of intimidation. The residue can, and often does, end up in the hands of someone with an agenda. This happens quite often when the artist is unreachable or, more so, dead. When the gap between artist idea/experience and audience is so vast, some feel the need to create authority in order to tell people when they are experiencing art. Perpetuating the myth that people need to be led through art in one way or another is a way to keep a lot of people employed (art consultants, anyone?). This has gotten us a bit P.O.’d. We’ve been around too many people who make such a point of being told what to see and, more specifically, what to buy. Now, we are definitely calling for a egalitarian, non-commodified, peace, love and understanding hippie like art world. But, we’d like to see a bit more direct experience as the rule, not the exception, right? This has been the driving force behind Team Building. Give some people some direct experience and see what happens. Let the art be made from that.

So, the project needs the residue. Without it, it could not be identified. More importantly, without it, we could not identify what we’re doing. We set up situations and then leave a lot to chance. But, the residue has become a prominent point for us to reevaluate and understand our need to get some of the ideas down. Without it, we would not be able to point to what we’re doing. And, without that, we would not be able to point to ourselves.

As for the sculptural element, this “big tower” that we’re constantly referring to, it is as necessary as we want it to be. It can be the largest bit of residue that our involvement with the IMA could produce. I’ve been struggling with the “having the cake and eating it to” thing as well. It’s always seemed like the Team Building and Tower endeavors were separate but connected. After our last meeting with The Group (capitalized for the same reasons), we’ve become much more focused on how the tower cannot be discrete from the experiential education. Each part keeps seeping into the other; and while it’s akin to osmosis to maintain homeostasis, the environment keeps changing. So, we continue to attempt to bring the various elements into balance while acknowledging that tension is necessary in art as it is in life. So, these seemingly antithetical elements maintain a stress but also provide a release. I have to believe that we have internalized Experiential Education’s message of self-challenge to such an extent that we are seeking out struggle as a choice to expand our lives and, by extension, grow. The two components don’t have to be resolved; that would be improbable, unrealistic and just plain misguided.

Our goal now is to continue to push to find ourselves in new situations providing new experience, tension and all. We can then offer ourselves and others the opportunity to drape something. To not do so would be insane.

AA

Dear Co-Blogger Dude,

And so it begins, writing for IMA blog. Never blogged before, and I’m not quite sure what to write about. I think it comes down to two possibilities: our Team Building project at the Art & Nature Park or music. I’m gonna choose a combination of the two.

Although our tastes in music differ quite a bit, there’s quite a lot of crossover. Shared music includes Clutch, Secret Machines, Radiohead, Dragonforce, Vast, Sugar, Sigur Rus, The Good The Bad and The Queen, and host of others. My most recent purchase is by “Battles.” It might end up on heavy rotation at the studio. (*)

I grew up with classical music as much as you did with rock. While I was being taken to Symphony Hall in Boston you were being taken to hear Zeppelin or the Eagles or the Stones. I think you got the much better deal. In any case, I ended up with a love of classical music that surfaces from time to time, and last week was one of those times. On Friday I took Gaby to hear Emmanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic perform Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. It’s a piece that’s moody and masculine, moving through thunderous and aggressive passages into delicate intricacy, and back again. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music and it was the first time I had a chance to hear it live. I was blown away. What I took away wasn’t measurable, wasn’t tangible. In fact the music itself doesn’t really exist except in the performance. The score isn’t the piece, a recording of the piece isn’t the piece either. The piece exists only when a group of people agree to do what it takes to perform it. This got me thinking about a word that came up recently regarding our work: “residue.”

The project we’re doing for the Art & Nature Park involves working with a team of 26 people from a wide variety of departments within the museum. Working within the basic methods of Experiential Education, or Team Building, we’ll play games and solve problems and talk about work and art and taking chances and respect over the course of several meetings in the months to come. In the end we are hoping that the group will be better positioned to successfully open the inaugural show of the park, and we will have collectively shifted the culture of the museum for the better. We were describing this project during a recent studio visit with John Hanhardt and he was trying to understand what tangible artifacts will remain after this project, what the “residue” will be. The fact that there will be not measurable residue seemed to fascinate him and defined the project for him as completely contemporary. Being at that concert last week gave this assessment a completely new meaning.

Lack of residue in art is nothing new. While the traditional parameters of art and criticism emphasize the presence of the object and consequentially the artist’s hand, music is one medium in which these two are not necessarily connected. We would no sooner represent the Team Building project with our notes and documentary photographs than a composer would present a score as the complete work and leave it at that.

What did the audience leave with last week? How did they represent the effect they experienced from the concerto? How did that experience influence them socially, if at all? If culture is defined by ideas and experiences, rather than objects, what is the role of monuments? How does that define the role of the sculpture we are building for the park? The tangible, the intangible, and the role of the artist’s hand — and consequentially the audience’s touch or lack thereof — is where the project rests right now. It’s a lot to think about.

Yeah, so I wrote about our work. Dammit. I thought I’d write about anything but, but… I couldn’t help myself.
Later,

Bordo

(*) REVISION: Since hearing Battles for the first time two days ago, it seems there’s no way in hell this will happen.

Dear Clogger (thought I’d create a hybrid term for us),

Music is the perfect place to start. Experience and preference regarding the medium are not only intensely personal but also largely intangible. You can tell so much about someone by how they regard their music collection. And if they don’t have one…God help them.

When you write of the concert you attended, it is completely understandable. And not in the “I understand what you mean” way but in the “I understand it” way. We’ve always talked about art’s ability to affect an audience as being located in the intensity and focus put into the art and not in the content. That’s why if someone makes art about a grand, sweeping idea like Love, for example, it’s easy to get lost and remain unattached to the potential of that subject matter. Too vague. If someone makes art about a particular idea like love of angora sweaters (as Ed Wood did), then we, the audience, have a much better shot of relating to it. It’s the obsession, the intensity that binds us (whether you like angora or not). So, you saw a performance of a classical piece. To someone who doesn’t like such music or just isn’t familiar with it, that may sound like a snooze. But the emotional response, that’s where that person comes in. When you mention the aggression and the intricacy that was conveyed, I immediately think of the Testament show I caught a few months back. For those not in the know, Testament is an 80s Bay area thrash band. Aggressive and intricate it certainly was. Classical…less. So the content is not as essential as is the passion to convey and connect. And it’s at this point of connection that the idea of residue begins.

Yes, there can be much documentation or proof that something occurred. But residue? That is trickier. With Team Building, we are seeing through a gesture that began with our desire to connect with and affect people. We want people to experience something and have that experience lead somewhere. Where? We don’t know. That’s up to the person doing the experiencing. There doesn’t need to be a physical or tangible manifestation of the experience. In fact, there can’t be. So the residue from the project will be unquantifiable. We know there is the potential for it but cannot, or will not, try to control it. The people involved will hold on to it in whatever way they want. Some may not hold on to anything. If any residue exists, it will seep into people’s minds and, perhaps, into their lives.

We, as artists and performers, will give to the audience. We will get back whatever energy they give and whatever experience they afford. It’s a bit of a dance. The effects of it are sent out to influence in any way that it might. Can culture be affected? Yes. Will it? That’s not the point. Or at least our point. Our goals are to create an experience not determine an outcome unless that outcome is to create a desire to experience more.

Therein lies the connection with music and live performances. We put on a show. The audience comes to see us. We give and get. They give and get. When it’s over, it’s over. Until the next concert.

You can, however, buy a t-shirt on the way out.

AA