Claude Lévi-Strauss: The procedure is somewhat reminiscent of the formation of crystals in a saturated liquid: from one branch emerge perpendicular twigs, then others, perpendicular to the first ones, until a sort of tree develops in various directions.
Jim Shaw: The stairs are more of that secret society initiation thing. I want there to be a lot of stuff to delve into, whether or not you uncover what I intended.
Lévi-Strauss: But should it apply to all phases of human becoming?
Shaw: Oh yeah, absolutely. Otherwise, I’d go crazy.
Lévi-Strauss: If you like. We’ll see.
•••
Shaw: Right now we’re suffering through an idea I had while working on the show: to have this column with a nest and a giant egg that lights up.
Lévi-Strauss: I think it’s largely due to surrealism.
Shaw: Right, right. I made a hydro mask baboon, a French poodle, a Siamese cat, a Jesus, and a Jeff Chandler mask.
Lévi-Strauss: The significance of honey translates a perpetual descent towards nature, that of tobacco an ascent towards the supernatural.
Shaw: At one point a raccoon invaded.
•••
Lévi-Strauss: Perhaps this is what, in the final analysis, through myths, we are confusedly trying to understand.
Shaw: You can subvert these theories with a lot of humor too. It’s usually dark humor.
Lévi-Strauss: Only between ethnologists and linguists.
Shaw: It’s vexing. But who knows what happens at the highest grades?
Lévi-Strauss: If you take a kaleidoscope and turn it for a long time, you will have the feeling that arrangements are made and unmade, but after a hundred shifts, the impression that, all in all, nothing has happened, despite the logical rigor of all these minute geneses.