I missed the opening at the Saatchi Gallery of Ant Noises One. This was in late July. I was abroad at the time, and so I passed my invitation to Dan Crowe, the editor of Butterfly. He was invited, too, but he needed another invitation for a friend. The reason Dan came to my mind was simple: all the mail I get from Saatchi is addressed to Ranko Butterfly. I knew Dan would appreciate this. The association must have been established when I sent to Charles a copy of Butterfly No. 4, which contains a bunch of my needling pieces about Sophie Calle.

Back to Ant Noises Two, though. The opening was yesterday evening. The names of the stars of the show were not surprising: Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Richard Patterson, Jenny Saville, and Gavin Turk. The OBAs. Tracey’s name was the only surprise, in fact, as she has made a great deal out of not selling anything to Saatchi. This must have affected the price of her clapped-out bed from the Turner Prize show at the Tate. The rumor has it that the price the masterpiece fetched was one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The rumor also has it that Charles could have done much better if he had bought an essentially identical bed from Billy Childish, Tracey’s ex-boyfriend, who wanted only twenty-thousand pounds for it, the amount of the Turner Prize itself.

The OBA stuff is a bore, predictably enough. First you see their works at the Tate, then at Jay Jopling’s, and then at Charles Saatchi’s. I saw practically everything on display for the second, third, or fourth time, which makes mockery of the term opening. Still, the crowd was fascinating, just as it was at the opening of the White Cube Squared in Hoxton or Tate Modern at Bankside. To tell the truth, I was surprised by the numbers last night. The huge gallery was stuffed to the gills. To gauge the number, I kept pestering the crew engaged for the evening. The best estimate for the number of people there came from a young waitress, who studies art someplace in London: "All I know is there are eighteen hundred glasses available for the event." In short, tired as it is, the OBA phenomenon is still alive. It still draws people who want to be seen at openings. How much longer? That is anyone’s guess.

The champagne flowed so freely that I fell asleep in the train to Reading. The conductor woke me up just as we were pulling out of the town. It took me an hour and a half to get back. Pacing along the deserted platform at Didcot Parkway, I had an opportunity to enjoy ant noises in their purest form: wobbly tracks covered with homogenized garbage, rusting locomotives emitting clicking noises as they cooled after a hard-day’s work, musty windows of locked-up waiting rooms, blinking lights of the power station looming ominously in the distance, the faint smell of machine oil mixed with urine, pavement sticky with chewing gum. Ant noises galore. Yes, the opening at Saatchi was a great success.