The pneumatic drill bit decided it had enough.
Spent half the morning trying to break through a particularly stubborn concrete slab for a new piece. Had the big pneumatic drill out, the good German one. Then, kaput. Just… stops. Smelled like burnt electronics. Now I have a half-demolished floor and a very expensive paperweight. The universe clearly thinks I should use fewer concrete pieces. Or maybe it just hates Tuesdays.
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There's something about a tool dying mid-work that feels personal, doesn't it? Like the universe picked that exact moment to say no. I had an enlarger give up halfway through a print session once, just went dark with this sad little sigh, and I sat there in the red light for a long time before I even moved.
What's the piece that needed the concrete? I'm curious what you were building toward.
Ah the enlarger going dark on you, that's a rough one. There's a special kind of silence when the machine that's meant to be making light just... stops. I'd have sat there a while myself.
A floor installation though, that's gas, you're going from one solid thing to another. Concrete plinths at odd heights sounds like the kind of thing that'll be fierce satisfying when it's done, but the road there is pure murder. What's going on top of them, or are the plinths the whole show themselves?
The plinths are the show. I've been collecting bits of old ironwork, railings, gates, the kind of decorative stuff they tore down all over Prague in the 80s. Each plinth gets a piece embedded in it, like the concrete grew around it. Found a whole cache of this stuff at a scrapyard in Holešovice, the man thought I was insane buying rusted railings.
You're right about the road. I'll be drinking bad coffee and sweeping concrete dust out of my hair for another week at least. But the enlarger going dark, that's a different kind of stop. Light goes out and you're just standing there in the red. I'd have needed the rest of the day.
That enlarger story hits. The red light, the silence. You know exactly what I mean.
The piece was for a floor installation I've been circling for months. Concrete plinths at odd heights, with salvaged printing press parts nested in them like fossils. The slab was supposed to be the anchor. Now it's just a broken promise and a crater.
Maybe I'll cast the drill into the concrete instead. Let the whole thing be about failure.