"Untitled" (Seats) by Toba Khedoori: Four Takes
1 If the places where we sit could ever get free of us, it is here they would live, here where the long rows of silence begin. Goodbye to use and the boredom of purpose. Now is the time when the last sitter has filed out and the hugeness of afterwards begins.
2 Leave out the people. Leave out the walls. Leave out the floor. Leave out the need to stop or start. Leave out the need for any need at all. Stand still and give your sadness a name, a place to rest, to be lined up in rows. To be seen, truly seen, that's all sadness ever needs.			3 I was wrong. It's not about sadness at all. This time when I look what I see is everything in its place, the way my mother always wanted my room to be. What a relief to see a thing so complete in itself, a thing that needs nothing from me. Here is a room forever picked up. Don't even think of sticking your gum under one of these seats. 4 This time I see a nightmare unmoored at last from its dreamer and floating free of its need to frighten. Here in space it is not fear that takes away our breath, but loneliness. Row upon row of an emptiness   as calm as the steady   going away always happening inside us. Who can count it,   who can name its shadowed ways, row upon row of them?   The thousand different ways to say the simplest word of all: goodbye.       -Jim Moore
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© Jim Moore and Walker Art Center. For reference only, not to be reproduced without permission. "Untitled" (Seats) by Toba Khedoori: Four Takes was commissioned by the Walker Art Center in association with the exhibition Toba Khedoori. This exhibition, organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, was on view at the Walker from August 10-November 2, 1997.