Fascinating Authors

Chapter 15: Stoned nude stumbles down the staircase looking for the light

“Remember Giant Jane,” says Carlotta, sitting on the corner of my desk in black jeans, a black blouse, and white snake skin boots. She wears a long blonde wig with a black lace choker around her neck.

“Do I ever! She was unforgettable at six foot five. You remember her look obviously and it was more than twenty years ago.”

“Carlotta never forgets. In honor I am dressed like her.  She always dressed in black. That is how you and I knew her.”

“Too bad you didn’t appear in her dominatrix costume. That would have been more interesting.”

“I’ll save the appearance of giant Jane dominatrix for later. Have you been reading about her?”

“I was just reading about her in my journal. Where is that book?”

“It’s the third one from the bottom of your pile.”

“Do you have to pretend you know everything?”

“I do know everything. Read to me about her and the best conversation you ever had until it got weird.  You were stoned at the time. In those years, you lived stoned every day.”

“I was drunk too, but that doesn’t matter. It was a great dialogue. Like the great masters had in Paris in the 1880’s and 90’s: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Cezanne, Balla, and Picasso. They were all drinking Absinthe, the narcotic drink of the day. It didn’t affect their work.”

“Ha, Van Gogh was a madman.”

“If only I could be a madman as good as he.”  I rummage through my books.  “Here is the book. I shall read to you. I am not always preoccupied with death.”
***
Giant Jane takes a drag on the joint, kicks her white cowgirl boots up on a diagonal chair and rolls her head back. Her eyes scan the silver foil covering the loft ceiling; her long straight blonde hair cascades down the back of the plywood and tube steel chair. She exhales and leans sideways. Her extended right arm drapes across the square butcher-block table and dangles the joint in front of the elbows supporting my head. I move the right hand forward slowly and take the joint from her fingertips.

“Don’t Bogart the joint this time,” she says swiping up her glass of tequila in long pale fingers with fingernails like blood red talons.

“I won’t this time. I promise.”

“That’s really good stuff we’re smoking, and you always forget you have the joint. By the time you remember it’s in your hand, the joint’s a roach.”

“OK. Here I am taking my hit- (inhale deeply, hold it) – and handing it back to you. (Exhale). Are you happy now?”

“Let’s put it out for now and save some of this very fine Sensemilla for later after we have killed the worm.” Jane puts the joint in the crevice of the Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas glass ashtray. “What were we talking about?”

“Light! We were talking about light. The light in Vermeer’s paintings. The cold clear light the Dutch seemed to catch in their best work.”

“You were talking about Dutch painters. I was trying to put in the occasional word.”
“You were starting to speak of Rembrandt before we got distracted by the joint.”

“OK. What about Rembrandt? The light in his paintings wasn’t cold and clear. It is warm, almost hot. Take that butchered cow.  You can almost feel its slaughtered life. You showed me a picture of that painting once.”

“Rembrandt is an exception. He became too Italian. Give me some of that Tequila so I can formulate a response to your challenge.” I reach for the bottle of Cuervo with the worm at the bottom and pour a shot in my glass.

“Ha! I’ve shut you up for once,” Jane says.
I gulp down the shot. “Whew!..woff! That Tequila is good!  Never! Never! Rembrandt is the master of shadow. He comes at light from its opposite, the world of darkness and shade. I bet he got depressed a lot. He does not even try to capture the elusive essence of the ineluctable.”

“The what?”

“The ineluctable.”

“There you go again throwing out one of those big fat words that nobody understands.  I bet you don’t even know what it means.”

“Ineluctable. It means you can’t completely understand its fundamental …er….nature.”

“Bullshit! You are feeding me a whole lot of hooey”

“No, no. I’ m not. I’m on a roll now. Light up that joint and let have a couple of more hits.” Jane takes the half-smoked joint from the ashtray on the dining room table outside the kitchen construction by the stairs that goes nowhere, takes a deep drag, and hands the joint to me. I inhale deeply.

“Trying to understand… (Exhale)… the nature of light visually wouldn’t happen until much later … (exhale)… when artists like Van Gogh would paint the sky as little dashes of paint.  Maybe it was Seurat who did it first with his Pointillism, or it could have been one of the Impressionists like Cezanne, certainly not that sentimentalist Renoir, or who, I can’t think. The head’s a little foggy here. No. It wasn’t the Impressionists. It was the guys that were all making these little dabs of paint like light broken up into particles just like the physicists were theorizing. The Futurists, that’s who!”

“You’re too stoned.”

“Give me a break. I’m super high and on a roll. Along comes Balla and paints an electric light bulb the same way you see light coming off light bulbs as little particles of energy. This is true because you can really see the light emanating from a bulb as little particles of light if you look at it carefully.”

“I’ve never seen that painting and I don’t think you can see light coming off a bulb as little particles.”

“No, it’s true. Turn around in your chair look at the light coming off the fluorescent light bulbs in my studio. Can’t you see the light energy coming from the bulbs?”

“I need another shot of tequila.”

“Come on Jane. Turn your head and look at the fluorescent light.”

“It’s bullshit.”

“Come on Jane, you’re an artist! Can’t you see it? Can’t you see the light energy flowing from the fluorescent light bulbs onto the wood floor and bouncing back up? Can’t you see the light energy reflecting off the silver foil ceiling?”

“You are totally stoned!”

“I don’t deny it, but the weed only increases my sensitivity to what is actually happening. The light rays are coming from the bulbs, filling the studio, and bouncing off every surface. You have seen the Futurist paintings by Umberto Boccioni haven’t you?

“Who?”

“Boccioni, Italian futurist painter at the turn of the 20th Century, he painted these paintings that showed the modern city of the time as this cacophony of lines of force, color, and light. Very powerful. The best one was called “The City Rises,” I think. He was probably stoned on absinthe when he did them.”

“I’m not into historical painting.”

“Not even Van Gogh! How about his painting of the wheat fields where the sun is shown emanating all these rays of force as dashes of bright yellow color?”

“I don’t remember it,” says Jane leaning back in her chair and laughing.

“I remember showing you that painting. Well if you don’t like my art comparisons, how about if I compare this all to music? The lights are giving off rays of energy just like musical instruments are giving off waves of sound. If you were sensitive enough you could see it.”

“I can feel the waves, but I can’t see them.”

“It’s just the same. If we were sensitive enough we could see or feel all the forces traveling around us. We could see the electricity traveling in the conduit in the walls. We could see all the energy waves traveling all around us, the microwaves, the radio waves, and the solar rays to name just a few.”

“Now you’re going to tell me you have X-Ray vision.”

“Perhaps I do,” I say with a big broad smile.

“Wait a minute! I may not see electricity in the wall, but I can tell you when I see that it is raining in your kitchen.”

“What?”

“Turn around and look behind you. It’s raining down through your silver foil over your stove and refrigerator.”

“Goddamn that Zorba! He taking a shower again and has never waterproofed his shower stall properly! I’m going to kill him!”

I run into the back of my studio and begin rummaging in a pile of things against the far wall.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m getting my baseball bat and I am going to go beat on his floor.”
I charge back across the studio, toss my dining chair aside and run half way up the stair that goes no where. I begin to swing my bat and bang on the floor of the studio above.
“Zorba! This is the last warning. One more time you rain on me in my studio and I am going to shoot you through the floor. DO YOU HEAR ME ZORBA?”

“Carlton settle down.”

“No, Jane I have had it with this asshole. He did his own plumbing and he doesn’t know crap. He has rained on me more times than I can count on two hands.”

We can hear him creeping across the floor above.

“DO YOU HEAR ME ZORBA? I AM GOING TO SHOOT YOU THROUGH THE FLOOR!”

“Carlton, the rain has stopped.”

I stumble down the stairs knocking the small sculpture of a nude in front of me. It tumbles down six steps to the floor. My collection of postcards propped against the risers tumble with the sculpture.  I step on my favorite postcard.

“Damn it! Goddamn it! I just stepped on Duchamp’s Nude Descending the Staircase!”

“Calm down Carlton. It’s only a postcard, and it’s only water.”

“No it isn’t! It is darkness invading my life! I’m in the light now and I intend to stay there. DO YOU HEAR ME ZORBA?  I AM GOING TO SHOOT YOU THROUGH THE FLOOR!”

“I’m leaving Carlton, if you don’t give it up and calm down.  Let’s go out to the Zero,
Zero.”

“OK, OK. OK, as soon as I have mopped up this mess.”