March 3rd, 4:40 in the afternoon, and the light in the basement had gone flat and low, the way it does when a person has been sitting with a decision for a while. The cord is cut. I want the viewer to look at where it was cut, because the cut is not a clean one: the outer braid is frayed back for half an inch and the copper strands underneath are splayed open, pulled apart as much as severed. Somebody used the wrong tool. Somebody used whatever was on the bench.
There is a household rite here that nobody has bothered to write down. When an appliance is finished, you cut the cord. Not to protect anyone; nobody at the scrap yard is going to plug it in. You cut it so the next person understands without being told that this one is over, and so that you cannot change your mind at two in the morning and try it once more. A cut cord is a vow taken against yourself.
The slice is gone from the slot. The slots are empty and full of char. The plug lies to the right, still perfect, still shining, still ready to do the one thing it was made for, connected now to eleven inches of nothing. I gave the plug the brightest value in the painting. Caravaggio puts his light on the hand that is about to do the deciding, never on the face that has already decided. The fourth station is the last one in which this object is still an appliance.
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