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instructions.txt

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+Stop too soon or too late.
+Completed on the train or in line.
+A speculative future.
+Only an ambient memory of the original.
+The casual version.
+The exquisite corpse version.
+Make a log cabin quilt from the scraps.
+Leave it unfinished.
+Only mud, sticks, stones, grass.
+Consultation Piece: Finish someone else’s work.
+The simplest direction.
+Lots of changes and variations in the piece.
+Start by writing a manifesto.
+Use text only.
+Create a copy where no original ever existed.
+Create it only with discarded trash.
+Comfort piece: Ask a friend to help.
+Two versions.
+Monochrome.
+Create the shadows, ignore the object.
+Create the future digital ruins of the original idea.
+The cheapest version possible.
+Act as if in abundance.
+Only listening.
+Make a playlist not an album.
+Deconstruct it entirely and put it back together differently.
+A version that increases reverberation.
+A walk through the city but imagining the buildings aeons ago.
+Just your voice.
+You are a black box of hidden habits. Capture them down. Now process others’ work using your black box.
+Full Painting: Walk until the right restaurant or meal appears. Eat. Make two quick paintings.
+If you were your producer and not you, what could be done?
+Touch Piece: find a trunk to run your fingers along.
+Piece for Randomness: Search for a leaf falling until you find one mid-fall. Where the leaf lands, invent a civilization.
+The exact conditions where you last excelled are not now. Take a train trip in your mind. Do it without searching for it.
+Invent new grammars.
+Collapse a 300 page book into a 3 page story.
+Only screens.
+Only crayons and newsprint.
+Pencil and paper only.
+Only the ones you want.
+Invent a new tiny language.
+Make up a game to be played by someone else nearby using objects in the room. Don’t tell them the rules but observe their play.
+Pause for food.
+A field of grass as the blank page.
+Ignore the task at hand.
+Ultimate effort.
+Light a candle. Make a cup of tea. Sip the tea. Have the cup hold you. Have the tea sip you.
+Duet: Sing with the rain. Trio: Sing with the wind and the rain.
+Gather (milk?) crates and arrange in any configuration.
+Time Machine piece: Wait til you are old and tell them what you’ve seen.
+Make assumptions.
+State an important decision yet decided. Flip a coin. Act.
+Break it.
+All beards everything.
+Photocopier scanner to churn out readymades.
+Simplest you can make.
+Make the easiest alteration that will yield a new work.
+Performance II: start all the videos at the same time.
+Find the joy.
+Hide part of the work.
+Add iteratively til done.
+Drink more.
+Make it a ritual.
+Performance I: Observe a stranger from afar who does not know they are being watched.
+Dance 1: Tiptoe around.
+Return to the original idea.
+Use an outdated medium.
+Let it shape you.
+Make a small alteration.
+Consider quitting early.
+Invent a scent.
+Piece for two tissues: Weeping.
+Allow no input.
+Sleep on it.
+Accept and increase rupture.
+Only impractical ideas.
+Listen to what it would sound like.
+Can you remove it? 
+Self portrait in window frame: Stand looking out from a window until someone walks by and meets your gaze. Do not communicate with them. When they have left you may continue to wait.
+Pretend there are no longer any obstacles.
+Fade away gradually.
+Consider the plants, ignore the people.
+Channel sleep.
+Reframe change as stasis.
+Mutate.
+Double back.
+Be still.
+Reject satisfaction.
+Admit confusion.
+Piece for broadcast: Become a broadcaster. Send the sound of the earth at 3am. Send the sound of your favorite place.
+Maybe it’s enough.
+Trace the outline.
+Ask strangers to draw the map.
+Invent a people, their customs, their values, rituals, symbols, cuisine, language. Observe.
+Sing as long as you can.
+Dwell in a booth.
+Decide what to do tomorrow. Decide what to do yesterday.
+Piece for bell ringers: Acquire bells of all sizes and shapes and condition. Use your height as a score, or the shadows on the ground. Ring them in a group as long as you can.
+Try the fifth book.
+Remove extras and run again.
+Radiator piece: Place cold socks on warm radiator. Think about a cheese sandwich. Make something comfortable.
+Crickets piece: Listen to crickets.
+Detect piece: Detect sounds so small you can barely receive them. Call this music.
+Slather ink on a fish, then print a small edition.
+Sleep forever and ever. Then stop.
+Eat.
+Create songs with ABA, ABCD, and abcdefhijk.
+Destroy all royalty.
+Commit to nothing, but strive to be kind.
+Structure piece: Notice structures that displease you. Rub up against them. Test them. Stretch them. Smash them. Break them.
+Commit to ambiguity.
+Allow uncertainty.
+Wander, even if lost.
+Write a story for yourself, real or imagined, short or long.
+Feel sure. Feel it surround you.
+Piece for tablet: read the tablet, ignoring the words, but paying attention to its textures and patterns.
+Imagine the tree is the source of the lightning.
+Imagine you are tasting a new fruit both sour and sweet but differently from what you have tasted before. Picture its color, shape, texture, smell, feel. Consume its flesh in your mind.
+Smash piece: smash a lemon unmercilessly. But first squeeze it with mercy.
+Patches piece: Investigate any holes in your clothes and contemplate their losses. Sew on new patches.
+Sit by an unlit fireplace. Imagine listening to the sounds of the fire crackling. Imagine sitting there listening for 1000 years.
+Make hummus. Add olives or olive oil. Add lemon.
+Fax an image to someone expecting it or not expecting it.
+Work for one day. Work for two days. Don’t work for fifty years.
+Free yourself of all debts forever.
+Celebrate the destruction of your enemies. Mourn the destruction of your enemies. Wonder who are your enemies.
+Sing songs of childhood. Record them. Bottle them up. Listen to them every ten years. Sing new songs. Bottle them too.
+Memory piece: Remember grandma’s accent. Weave it into every conversation with your sister.
+Time piece: Imagine your life had it been 6000 years ago.
+Piece for Singer 2: Tell the story of the itinerant merchant’s ox.
+Piece for Singer 1: Imagine a goat, a wife,  brothers, a foolish trader, his friends, villagers. Tell that story. Tell it again but different.
+Read the Talmud (or Arcades Project, Ulysses, etc.) Stop when you must. Write your own commentaries.
+Proceed in the face of sure defeat.
+Make peace with your parents. Disagree anyway.
+Imagine your favorite sandwich. Now imagine eating that for lunch for 1000 years.
+Ask someone you love an important question. Disagree with their answer.
+Be still. Impossible.
+Think about fierce retribution. Let it dissolve into your pillow. Find it rise up in your conversations. Dissolve yourself into a pillow.
+Ignore the golem.
+Have friends from childhood. Grow old together. Switch directions. Grow young together.
+Stay up til 4am reading in bed. Listen for a rooster from the pale. Murmur wordless melodies as you drift into nothingness.
+Take your empty bread bag with its tiny crumbs. Or your muffin snarls. Or croissant flakes. Brush them from your lap into the alley, the street, subway platform or beside the stream where you sit. Remember tashlich.
+Lift lemons from the fruit bowl. Juggle them. Take a bite. Walk out your front door and find some place new.
+Imagine a lemon as a white noise machine. The lemon can be turned on. It plays softly, humming wordless melodies. All night.

motd.js

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+const fs = require('fs');
+const array = fs.readFileSync('instructions.txt').toString().split("\n");
+
+const msg = Math.floor(Math.random()*array.length);
+
+console.log( "\x1b[7m", 'Obscure Instruction:');
+console.log(array[msg]);