Why Do Things Get in a Muddle Come On Petunia (1984)

This tape is the first of Hills works for which he deliberately wrote a screenplay The title defines the pieces starting point Alice in Wonderland asks her omniscient father why things get in a muddle They then talk on a metalinguistic level A glimpse through the looking glass reveals an inversion of the customary order of things The father ingests the smoke from his pipe Alice does not so much blink her eyelids momentarily open as stare wideeyed and the playing cards fall out of the air in an orderly manner into the girls hand Gary Hill Selected Works and catalogue raisonné edited by Holger Broeker