Plato’s Cave was no longer an idea. It was already taking up space.

The cave was forming inside the storefront window—layers of white Styrofoam rising, tightening, opening—still raw, still unfinished, still too clean. Above it, the neon was already lit, announcing itself to Broadway even as everything behind the glass remained in flux. The contrast was stark: declaration above, uncertainty below.

I was deep in the physical labor of it. Carving and fitting. Gluing the Amendments into hollows cut into the walls. Trying to solve a water circulation system that needed to be reliable, silent, and invisible. The cave was still white then, a blank form waiting to become something else. Soon it would have to look like rock. Soon it would have to feel inevitable.

At that stage, preparation didn’t mean isolation.

Eleanor Heartney had moved to New York the year before, and I was lucky to have her there. She was already beginning to establish herself as a respected art critic—smart, perceptive, and unflappable. We knew each other through Artpaper, and she had followed my work closely enough that I didn’t need to explain what I was trying to do while my hands were still covered in white dust. She understood the pressure of the moment.

At some point that week, Eleanor insisted—gently, but firmly—that I step away from the window for one evening. She took me to the Warhol–Basquiat exhibition. It was opening night.

The timing felt absurd. I had deadlines and material problems looping in my head, and suddenly I was standing in a room everyone else seemed to recognize as history while it was happening.

Eleanor introduced me to Andy Warhol.

I froze. The only thing I could think to say was something like, “Thank you for being you.”

It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t strategic. It was just honest—and probably a little awkward.

Warhol was polite, even kind. He handed us tickets to the Palladium, which felt very him: casual, generous, slightly sideways. Standing beside him was another artist—quiet, watchful. I didn’t register him at all. Years later, I would realize that was Jean-Michel Basquiat. At the time, he was simply part of the room.

Later that night, Eleanor and I went to the Palladium.

We drank too much. The place ran on momentum—music pounding, lights flashing, bodies everywhere. Eleanor moved through it with the delight of someone showing off her newly adopted city, while I followed along, trying to look like I understood what I was seeing. We scanned the room for famous faces, half-convinced we were missing something obvious. Slowly, it dawned on us that we were looking in the wrong direction.

We weren’t there to be seen yet.

We were just two people together in the middle of it—anonymous, exhilarated, overwhelmed by what New York looked like at full volume. Then the night passed, as nights like that always do.

What stayed with me wasn’t the proximity to celebrity. It was the pheromone.

I hadn’t come to New York to be absorbed into that room. I was already committed elsewhere—to a window, a deadline, a cave still laying down its trail. Seeing that exhibition clarified something important. Proximity wasn’t the goal. Responsibility was.

The next morning, I was back at the New Museum. White Styrofoam. Glue. Notes. The logic of the prototype running quietly in my head.

The glamour evaporated quickly.

What remained was work.

That suited me just fine.

I wasn’t there to arrive.
I was there to finish the cave.