No. 112. The Locomotive of Damocles. It was a photograph of a hitherto unrealized work by Jeff Koons—a steam locomotive suspended from a crane over a busy intersection—that led him to use a rented crane to haul a derelict engine up into the air next to his studio. He saw the pendant locomotive as a symbol both of his Art Train obsession and the oppression he felt at the hands of his own enthusiasm. He remembered reading about how one of his heroes, Vladimir Mayakovsky, had once given a poetry reading while standing beneath an inverted grand piano dangling just inches over his head. This kind of theatricalized pseudo-anxiety appealed to him greatly. From now on—if he could afford to rent the crane—he would deliver all of his lectures and press conferences under this black cloud of a steam engine.

No. 111. Canned Heat. This morning he had been determined to put in a vigorous day of painting. But visions of his developing Art Train loomed large, and blocked the way to his studio.

No. 110. Making Tracks. He painted when he could, but he was occupied most of the time with the development of his personal agitprop Art Train--by which he was going to take his work to the far corners of the world, to wherever there were railroad tracks. The task was Herculean, and he often grew weary in the face of his own ambitions. Tracks, real and imaginary--which would carry his own Twenty-First Century Limited--stretched out in every direction from where he stood, heading off towards an unknowable future.

No.109. Weighty Matters. As his commitment to (obsession with) his Art Train idea deepened, each decision seemed weightier than the one before. For days now he had been pondering the all-important choice of the appropriate locomotive. Having finally decided an a likely model, he constructed it in miniature in his studio. It was a splendid, hearty-enough little engine, and yet something about it remained unsatisfying.