Came to me in my sleep this morning around 6 am. About the "to be or not to be`` smoking issue. A compromise that could please everyone! Why not just have Joan's right arm draped along the back of the bench with her middle and index fingers close enough to hold a cig, without actually having a bronze one in place?. A bronze cigarette would be very tacky, I say, and people would probably stroke it for good luck! For those die-hards who insist on seeing a cigarette in her hands (and I fully understand, while not sharing that opinion), they could light one up and put a real one in place. It could be our little (perverse) joke...kinda like the way those people in Seattle dress up their bronze pedestrians in winter. And speaking of clothes, I see Joni wearing a shallow-brimmed hat (small enough to expose some of her face, but large enough to keep snow and pidgeon poop off it!) and long sleeves and slacks. Can't imagine a silk chiffon dress in minus 30 weather! I would also nix the idea of showing her playing music or singing or any movement, for that matter, as modern sculptural attempts to arrest motion in time often look amateurish at best (I think we lost that art - portraying motion, sometime after the Renaissance). IMHO, it would be more dignified to have her just sitting there, lost in her thoughts, pondering one of those bridges over the river, maybe the Broadway Bridge, where she played with Cherokee Louise as a young girl.
Michael in Quebec
