Richard Serra

We were talking about the space we were both in now, and I said how it was now possible for me to walk into a room for a piece of lemon cake, forgetting, at the very moment I entered the room, what I'd come into the room for.

It's a special time in our lives, you said, when one memory needs another memory so that what we've forgotten can be remembered.

The equation goes something like this, I said: I've forgotten what I've come into the room for, therefore I stop right where I've entered, having forgotten, and retrace the footsteps of the thinking that brought me here.

At first it's overwhelming, a whole wall or two of silence, a complete disconnection from the forces that caused me to enter the room at all, and no one like you to bounce things off of in the hopes of coming to a satisfactory conclusion.

But little by little, without the slow panic of self condemnation, the reason I came into the room in the first place comes back to me and I cut a slice of lemon cake.