Founding Fathers

I met a lawyer from New York who works on disability violation cases. Everything's being eroded, he said, then he reached into his lawyer satchel and pulled out a document. I don't know why I brought this with me, he said. It was a home printed version of the U.S. Constitution. That's actually pretty forward thinking, I said. What if they get rid of the original? Then you're the guy. Then we started talking about other ways we could fight fascism here in Montreal. We'll need to set up a mirror universe version for everything, I said. Mirrors are on my mind because this morning my friends and I were ordering eggs and none of us knew how to say sunny side up. I suggested sun to the sky or something similar and the translator on someone's phone said something similar. Neither was correct. Those machines don't know anything, we agreed. Anyway we'll need to start with the governmental stuff. We can build a miniature D.C. in one of the parks here, I doubt anyone will notice or mind. The architect who designed a lot of those buildings was French, he said. I emphatically agreed. We were on our way to constructing a pretty successful resistance. I don't know enough Americans here to staff all of this, I confessed. We did some calculations on the back of the Constitution. Way I see it, he said, we can have one person in charge of most of the financial stuff, another to oversee the law enforcement agencies. The courts are going to be the toughest. You need smart people with a sense of justice for those. Sounds like you're volunteering I said. Hmm. I was thinking I'd be better at President. I spent the rest of the afternoon gaslighting him into not thinking about that anymore. America isn't ready for a smart president, I said. That made him feel better. Look we should be more Franklin-esque about this, I told him. He said I don't want to spend all my time in bathtubs or invent the glass harmonium. That's fair. Enlightened, even. But we need to elect people to these positions or however it works. You're the one with the document. There was a big question about what to do about monuments. We agreed we really didn't want to be bothered with that but there should be something, some symbols of patriotism. The national parks question was going to be tricky. What we really ought to do is try to replicate all the cultural achievements. I'll handle the movies and literature, I offered. He was happy with music and sports. When we met we were talking about Leonard Cohen. He's from here, though, I reminded him. It'd be cool if we could incorporate that big mural into things but not sure how we're going to justify it. Neither of us were big on sports so we figured we'd improvise that or maybe appropriate some local interests. Hockey should be bigger in our version, we agreed. It's faster and more violent than football. We should talk about what parts of the original country we don't want as well. Those lists got real long real quick. We realized we'd pretty much written all over the text of the Constitution at this point. I have a habit of drawing arrows all over the place and if you were looking around the 18th Amendment it looked like someone was trying to mathematically prove that everyone has a right to own their own kangaroos. Then we had to check with some local zoologists to confirm they even have those here. Turns out zoos only. This is why we can't do it all ourselves, he said. He was looking defeated. Maybe we can scale it down, I said. Let's just focus on the art for now but even that turned out to be an enormous project. We spent the rest of the evening arguing about whether to start with Beyonce or end with Beyonce. No two people should have to take on this much responsibility, we agreed. It was late and the park was getting dark but it was peaceful. This place is perfect, he said. We sat quietly. Maybe we should throw away the Constitution, I said. Just go live our lives. We sat some more. Okay, he said, but we have to recycle it.

Guest Artist Bio: