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he turned the painting around, picked up a brush and painted a large red
cross across the bear's head. "are you ruining it?" i asked, "or worse? are
you ruining history?" he looked up at me with a distant gaze, and said:
"i'm not ruining anything." he checked the painting once more, nodded to
himself and put the brush back in its tray. "my art," he said, "is
dynamic."
i thought about what he had said, and wondered: would it be possible
to turn this energy of violence into a mathematical logic? he
squirmed in his chair and added: "i dreamed of travel, and
of
the full blossom of a severed head. it could have been your
idea, all along, the way you breathe fire
into the slightest detail
of
abstract ideas and diseases." i laughed for a second, but apparently
he wasn't joking, so i broke the
laughter and remained smiling,
instead.
"i am impressed with the way you handled that," he said, smirking.
blue smoke whistling from the holes in his cheek. "i am
destroying art, now," i admitted, reluctantly, and he
buried his face in my notes. "i can smell you on them,"
he hurried to say, perhaps in an attempt at excusing his behavior.
"don't you think you're just a little bit
pretentious?"
i nodded: "i can't help it. it's
evil idealism after all."
the ropes hanging from the ceiling seemed out of place now, and the dust on the
cabinet spelled out poems about some pre-historic war. this whole room
is a work of art, i realized, and, sadly, no one will ever visit it.
he stood up from his chair and
undressed. "so you're
researching your evil idea of
writing without context?" he asked
as he carefully organized his clothes in geometrical patterns on the
floor. i nodded, again. "it has been done," he gloated,
pausing his creative mode for a second to observe my reaction.
"it has only been done by crazy people," i retorted, and he
smiled. "put an infinite number of crazy people in a room with
a typewriter, and they'll paint the mona lisa," i added. he was
completely naked now, his erection a sign; either that he enjoyed my
company, or that
his body didn't even acknowledge my presence.
"i've read
headlines in tabloid newspapers that better
illustrate your concept than the garbage inside your head," he is
trying to scare me, i thought, looking at the arrangement of clothing
as he was adjusting it meticulously. the world doesn't swing his way
anymore. he finally stood up and aligned his camera with the axises
in his creation, the insects feeding on his blood dancing in the
shadows created by his toned muscles. He
snapped a picture and turned to me: "your artwork is
nothing but pornography. can you really pretend that is without context?
or does the evil have its own heartbeat,
now?" evil has always
been the ideal, i thought, context is a given, sometimes.
"what, really, then, do you hope to achieve, with all your
philosophy?"
i enjoyed the phrasing of his question, first, and forgot for a second
to listen. it was as if delicate lines appeared in the structure of
his sentences, as if the entire conversation had been written in a
context-free environment. "it's a science of
textures and forms," i finally replied. "i will give
the world meaning through
words and ideas that have none." he
cut off his ear, and gave it to me.
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