Why Taxidermy? I just find the word strangely compelling, and it evokes something grand, awkward, epic, silent, funny, and just a bit creepy — all characteristics of this piece, in a way. The repeated phrase toward the end (“the detail of the pattern is movement”) is a little concept I love trying (and failing) to imagine. It comes from T.S. Eliot’s beautiful and perplexing “Burnt Norton” (from the Four Quartets), and I’ve used it before in other work — as a kind of whimsical existentialist mantra.

– Caroline Shaw