No.99. Four Frequencies. He was very anxious and needed desperately to calm down. To that end, he assembled his collection of buddhas in his studio and sat reverently before them. It was like watching four TVs at the same time--or listening to four radios, tuned to different stations.

No. 98. Water Lillies Now. It's been two years since he was in Paris--how quickly the time passes!! It was while browsing through the Musee de L'Orangerie, innocently enjoying the Derains and the Soutines that, almost by chance, he found himself descending the stairs into the museum's Monet Room 1 (Adorno called it a "mausoleum") and finding himself awash--almost against his will--in Monet's "Grandes Decorations," the Water Lillies. He rather wished it hadn't been quite so overwhelming an experience. Since returning home, he had always wanted to pay some sort of tribute to that epic body of work in his own practice, but had never found a way. Then, a few weeks ago, he noticed a frieze of violet water lillies splashed along the sides of a box of Royale tissues. They had been painted crudely, without conviction, against a listless green background. He set about copying them--on a vast, Monet-scale. Their cheapness, their downright tawdriness both fascinated him and rather disgusted him. Well, that's perfect, he thought.

No. 97. Tunisian Light. One day last week, he remembered--he just suddenly remembered--how much he loved the paintings of J.W. Morrice (1865-1924), and decided to paint a homage to him. Morrice had been born in Montreal and had died in his beloved Tunisia. His paintings were invariably small, but his own hero-worship painting was going to be as big as he could make it. He struggled with it and worried it (like a dog with a bone) and pushed it and scraped it and pummeled it and distressed it until--like squeezing a lemon--it finally gave out what he thought of as some real Tunisian light.

No. 96. The Weasel Monument. Six months ago, he received a commission to design a monument to the political process in America. Initially, he had no wish to be either satirical or (therefore) disrespectful, but as the sculpture progressed--he had decided to make a huge ceramic--all his restlessness and anxiety about the upcoming US presidential election came to the fore and he ended by making (it was as if the thing had a life of its own) a gigantic weasel. He felt sure his work would be rejected--and it was.