The new layout of my bookshelf stars Buratino. It’s completely transformed since I began selling off much of my library. There are few enough that I can face the ones with the best covers.

The bookshelf paintings have always had a stage-like aspect to them. The strong horizontals of the wooden (or particle board) slats suggest a floor and the multi-colored verticals of paperbacks and hardcovers are either set-decoration or characters, depending on how you want to see it.

The newly-emptied and partly-refilled shelves are a chance for me to write a new play. Of course the players and background workers are the same they’ve always been. I haven’t entirely started over and can only use the tools and methods I know. Still, there are definitely differences.

For instance, the piece below started as two separate paintings that I realized, after looking at them on the wall for weeks, were each missing something. Cut up a bit and taped together they make a new whole that’s greater than its two parts. This kind of editing/reworking would not have been possible had I not been making collages the last four years.

Buratino is of course the Soviet reworking of Pinocchio. There’s only so many stories that people have. Everyone cribs from somewhere else. The hope is to add some new wrinkle or at least a different perspective that will distinguish your thing from whatever helped inspire it.

This current return to the bookshelf makes me think of other old motifs to re-plunder. But there’s no way back up some roadways. I have an ink painting of my 24th Street apartment up in my bedroom at the moment. It was made almost twenty years ago. I study it out of the corner of my eye while watching TV sometimes. I try to imagine attempting something similar now and just can’t see that I could pull it off.

Some ships sail, never to be seen again.