You know how sometimes you're just sittin' there, building a dome and whatnot, or you're telling your kid the same bedtime story for the bajillionth time, and to keep it fresh, you gradually transmogrify Goldilocks and the Three Bears into a lecturer and her inquisitors perched on the four points of a pyramid, discussing the tetrahedral essence of the Universe as it permeates geometry, history, sociology, physics, chemistry, and architecture, and how the kid systems are gonna take over the management of earthian affairs from the adult systems if the adult systems can't stop obsessing over money and politics, and you suddenly stop and ask yourself, "Whoa, am I Buckminster Fuller or what?"
Fortunately, you can apply this simple test to find out:
1) Did you publish your version of Goldilocks and The Three Bears on giant triangular pages bound together as a limited edition 43-foot-long tetrascroll, which was acquired by MoMA and many other museums? and
2) Did you then republish it as a good old-fashioned, square-ish book a few years later?
If you answered yes, then you are, in fact, Buckminster Fuller. Congratulations.
If you answered no to either question however, not only are you not Buckminster Fuller, you have been on bedtime duty for far too long. You should probably swap out for a couple of weeks to give yourself a break.
Fairy Tale Geometry: Unfolding Buckminster Fuller's Tetrascroll [artonpaper.com]
Buy old trade copies of Buckminster Fuller's Tetrascroll: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, A Cosmic Fairy Tale on Amazon, $9-112 [amazon]
The Whitney's Buckminster Fuller retrospective is on view at the MCA Chicago through July 5 [mcachicago.org]
