A Drink To Us (When We're Both Dead)

A Drink To Us (When We're Both Dead): a sapele wood box, a contract to claim the spirit in one hundred years time and a map of the warehouse where the barrel is buried, is now available in an edition of 25 copies, from Glenfiddich in the UK and from MKG127 in North America.

Now Magazine

Jon Sasaki, dressed as a lion, is on the cover of today's NOW magazine to promote his excellent piece in Nuit Blanche this weekend. The story can be found here, and his website here.

Like Tom Hanks in The Terminal

I'm at Heathrow airport, getting kicked by a sleeping man taking up the rest of the long bench that I'm sitting on. I have 12 hours in between flights, for some reason, in an all-but -closed airport. I can't yet check my (three heavy) bags so I am forced to wait here in this holding cell - a long corridor with only one television set, which inexplicably faces an escalator that reads NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. I try to watch it at awkward angle, but can't make out anything. The sound is too low to hear clearly, but just loud enough to make reading annoying. Beeping floor-cleaning machines circle around like bumper cars. I have several films loaded onto the laptop but worry that the battery will give up on me, as I can't find an outlet. I'd be willing to pay.

I actually did just pay for an hour of internet access (at a price which would get me a week and a half at home) but it doesn't seem to work. And of course there's no recourse if you can't get online to report the problem. A clever scam.

I turn down the brightness of my screen to gain an extra 30 minutes of battery time and to make my eyes sting more than they already do. I wonder if I'd be able to load up movies onto my camera, allowing me a third battery -powered toy (alongside the ipod and laptop) to entertain me on long flights. So I never have to watch another romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant again.

I've finished the one magazine I was able to buy and expect to spend the next 8 hours staring into space. I've done the calculation, and in the last four days my ratio of hours awake to hours asleep is 6:1. I suppose it will prepare me for Nuit Blanche next week. Michel de Broin arrives from Montreal this week, and Matt Suib from Philadelphia. There's still quite a lot of work to be done. It's going to be a hectic four days, and then I'll sleep like the unemployed bum I'll be.

Barrel burial

The burial of the cask went swimmingly today, by which I mean it overflowed and erupted into a huge fountain, dousing warehouse manager Eric Stephen. Despite there being five photographers there, no one got a picture of this. But other than this slight miscalculation (the barrel used to transport the spirit was a little larger than the one we buried) everything was seamless. The hole was lined with the stones from the riverbed and the barrel was lowered in via forklift, bung-hole up. The barrel from the filling station (with uncut spirit, to help ensure a strong enough level of alcohol in a hundred years) was rolled in and a large pump was used to move the liquid from one to the other. We had a long green garden hose on hand in case it didn't work, and we had to siphon the old-fashioned way. The time capsule was added and the hole was filled with the remaining stones. We also underestimated how many of these we'd need, so Andy and Michael rushed off to the 'beach' to collect more in the truck.

One of the staff who was assisting us was a guy named Denis. He has an incredible accent, and a great way with words ("if someone needed help, ya just mucked in"). I knew that he was retiring this year so I asked him when his last day would be. Turns out it's today. "Oh", I said. "How long have you worked here?" He answered "Fifty years". Fifty fucking years. He asked if he could place one of the stones in the hole, and it felt like he was burying and saying goodbye to the larger part of his life. It was an unexpected poignant moment.

Eric is also leaving at the end of this year, after working for Glenfiddich for forty-five years. He started the year Andy was born. It was Eric's horse that we visited several times (pics on Flickr here) and he was the one who dug the hole for me, after I had returned home the first time. I am hugely indebted to him.

Despite a few local big news stories that day, we had a decent press turnout, all of whom sent photographers. I find doing press and being photographed fairly humiliating, especially with friends around. It's akin to having an objective bystander observe you flirting - it's kinda ugly. Plus I had to endure a series of photographer's requests like "hold up a glass like you're toasting the camera" or "just lean naturally against the barrel". Is it even possible to lean naturally against a barrel?






I really hate to leave Dufftown. It was bad enough leaving three weeks ago, but then I knew I was returning. There's something really calming about northern Scotland, and everyone is so incredibly sweet. Strangers wave to you as they drive by in their car. No one steals yer bike.

Luckily it was too busy a day to get sentimental. Michael Sanzone has an exhibition of the work he created during the residency this November, in NYC. Andy has plans to travel down to see it, and I'm hoping I can make it too. He was really prolific over the summer, and it'll be nice to see all the works together, and great to see them both again.

Today, tomorrow

In between bursts of rain, I am spending the day painting the barrel hopes with a rust-proof paint and loading up stones into the GF truck. And affixing labels to boxes. Tomorrow morning we'll drive the rocks to the warehouse and line the bottom of the hole. The barrel will be lowered in before it is filled, which we'll do from another cask. So we might find ourselves siphoning with a garden hose. The time capsule will be added and the final stones on top. Then I'm rushed off to the airport to make my flight, saying a final sad farewell to Dufftown.

Back in Dufftown

I am overjoyed to be back in Dufftown. Beyond missing everyone and wanting to finalize everything, there's something intangibly amazing about the place. The final exhibition of year opens in an hour, and the editions arrived just in time. I am very pleased with the way they turned out, and very happy to see the coverage in today's paper (which is weekly, so it's the one we'll bury on Monday).

Short piece about my projects for Lola