Master of the Undone

PIERRE DRANO

HALIFAX, NS · 2006

In My Father's House are Many Mansions

We see a man going down the street. He has taken another, a shiftless, helpless type under his wing. He seems to be saying, “Yes, yes, this way--the great tent is a big one. And when we get there, its riches fineless will astound you and provide assuagement for your grief.” They continue and run into another, a clarinet busker who's making no money. “Busking at the great tent is no busking, but rather a sinecure. Join us.” Which he does. By the time they reach his door (apartment, house, whatever) there might be another few, like the musicians of Bremen. He opens the door and waves them in.

“Enter, enter. The great tent. Please.” They file in happily, but the final two, as they step over the threshold, bid him farewell, and close the door after themselves, leaving him out in the hallway or street. He's a bit dumbfounded at this, but not too much, because it's one of those things that keeps happpening. He walks away pondering. At the corner a supplicant claws at his sleeve, apparently asking for something. He sighs, weighs the matter, and finally smiles and takes him in too.

The Hunt

We see a young woman standing and casually talking to some guy at a sidewalk cafe. Suddenly she looks up and notices something. The guy is still talking, but she ends the conversation with little ceremony and moves off purposefully. She is following someone, tying to get a good look, yet holding back. She moves rather hesitantly. She's a bit of a shrinking violet, actually, almost ready to blush if her pursuit is revealed. When her quarry stops at a window, she does, and pretends to be looking at something that is actually completely uninteresting, like an exhaust vent. He moves on, she follows. She loses sight of him briefly. She picks him up again, crossing the busy street. He is moving faster, no longer looking in shop windows, so she has to do likewise. Some people obstruct her, she hardly sees them and pushes past impatiently. She doesn't seem to be trying to catch him, though, as we have seen, because she hangs back when she gets close. Now he enters a revolving door. She peers in, then dashes in, because it's quite easy to lose him here. A bystander is in the way, counting his change and holding a shopping bag. She elbows him roughly aside like a linebacker. Where is he? Gone. How? She looks this way and that. She goes ahead a little. No. She retraces her steps. Did he turn off somewhere? No. Outside? Impossible, but she looks. No. It's hopeless. She's lost him. Wearily she goes home, glancing back once or twice. She gets to her house. Well, tomorrow is another day! She takes out her keys, opens her door. Boom! There he is, in the doorway, grinning creepily. She is horrified.

Retrospective

A blind man turns up at an art show. It's Tim's one-man show, hosted by Unassuming Enterprises, in which Tim has collected and displayed some of his work on colour, medium-sized watercolors of mozaics where he explores different-shaped areas of colour which either have coloured borders or are contiguous. He explains to uninterested visitors at the wine table that he is concerned with fencepost errors, whereby a number of spaces is confused with the number of borders between the spaces. If a fence is to be 100 yards with a fencepost every ten yards, how many fenceposts will there be? However, this elderly blind man turns up, almost tipping over the wine table, and nonplussed that he can't make out what the pictures are or even where they are.

“This one, for example—what is it? What's that supposed to be?” Tim pauses to absorb the absurdity, and then patiently describes the picture. “Ah, that's very interesting, when you explain it. It didn't look like much at first. You know, I don't know much about art, but I was at the Prada last year—Madrid, you know—and they had some significant works by Albacore—”

“—Albacore, yes, isn't that—”

“—and the young lady there, curator, I suppose you'd call her, gave me a fascinating rundown. He was using a lot of monochrome shapes, actually black with varying hints of blue and red.” The blind man turned a seaching, empty eye at Tim from behind his dark glasses, as if anticipating a look of illumination.

“Yes, but he was going in a different direction”, said Tim. “He started, as far as I recall, getting into geometrical problems, and I'm more thinking of definitions.”

“Yes, the algebra. Pity you never met him. An imposing-looking man, so they say. Though how would I know, ha ha. Now, are there some more pictures? I think there are. Describe them to me, Timmy.” And Tim spends the next forty minutes guiding him around the gallery.

Of course the show is unhelpful. Nothing gets sold. Looking at the future, Tim wonders what to do next.

He runs into the blind man at a fireworks display, and the blind man hires him as a secretary. He is rich and doesn't do anything besides talk business over the phone but he wants Tim to go about his business and then describe what everything he saw that day looked like. These evening sessions usually last two or three hours. At first it is easy as anything, but then it becomese harder. “What did it look like? I don't know. Non-descript. You know. Sort of boring-looking.” His descriptions become more and more inadequate. He wants to leave, but the blind man offers him more money and better conditions. Soon Tim starts making stuff up. Then he becomes angry and wants to kill his benefactor and get some of his money. Walking along thinking of his plan and smoldering, he gets hit by a truck. The driver helps him and says, “Jeez, you walked right into me. Didn't you see me, buddy?”

Insolence of a Camera

As the people prepare to enter the great hall, we see caterers whipping out champagne bottles and polishing glasses as their boss shouts orders at them. Young women dressed to the nines talking and firing glances around to see if Sophia Coppola is there. Weedy man in bowtie reading over the speech he is to give. Assorted people excitedly waiting to go in. Then, as the last few scramble into the hall, the camera also follows them but is prevented from entering by doormen. The doors close. The camera tries to see through the crack, no luck. Next the camera goes into a room next door to see if there is a connecting door. There is but it is locked. Next the camera goes back into the hallway and goes to the window at the far end and looks out, a tad wistfully perhaps. There is some traffic outside, other people. Then (after a suitable interval of all this) the doors burst open with all the people angrily coming out. One stops to denounce everything, shaking his fist and then exiting. Another joins him, as if to console him. Still another reels by, apparently the victim of some violence, bowtie untied. It seems over, but then some people catch sight of the camera and round on it, as if to thrash it. Pursuit. End.

Graffiti Men

A man approaches a large blank wall with a purpose. He seems to be an anarchist or something, carrying a canvas satchel. He takes out a can of spray paint and then considers his canvas, the great expanse of empty urban wall, which seems to call out for a slogan. He shakes the sparaycan, sketching in his mind's eye: perhaps here the symbol of our party, there the slogan of the current campaign—ow do you spell “corporate” again?—and at the lower right, my squiggle -- at that moment, however, a man enters the shot at the extreme right. A man in a blazer and grey trousers with a cellphone on his belt. He's just standing there, not looking at our guy, and he lights a cigarette. Is he security? Or just a doorman on a break? Or just some guy?

Spraycan guy pauses and puts the spraycan back in his satchel. He tries to work it out. Their eyes meet briefly, but nothing. What to do? Will blazer guy come over? He shuffles his feet. Maybe he'll go away if I'm not doing anything. He turns around and pretends to be looking off to the left, just hanging around. Blazer guy does nothing but smoke. Sometimes he looks to the left, sometimes to the right. Spraycan guy is getting impatient, because graffiti don't just write itself and there are other walls to get to. Maybe he'll take a chance, blazer guy looks harmless. But blazer guy shoots him a glance just as he is getting his spraycan. Stop. But he goes on smoking nonetheless.

At that moment a third man enters from the left, in a bit of a hurry. He, too, has a satchel and a spraycan, but he stops when he sees spraycan guy 1. Spraycan guy 1 and spraycan guy 2 check each other out. They decide not to get into it, although apparently they are from opposing parties. Then spraycan guy 1 gestures with a glance to blazer guy. Spraycan guy 2 notes blazer guy and appreciates the situtation. Nothing can be done for now. He pretends to be just a bystander, but he is waiting for spraycan guy 1 to lose interest and move on, which spraycan guy 1 might have done but for the arrival of spraycan guy 2.

Eventually spraycan guy 2 looks at his watch and decides to go to the next venue, whereever that is. Spraycan guy 1 realizes he is wasting time there, so he also leaves. A second later spraycan guy 2 reappears -- it was just a ruse! -- but a second after that, spraycan guy 1 reappears also, a little annoyed at the cheap trick. Spraycan guy 2 then leaves, abashed, as does spraycan guy 1, this time for good.

Now blazer guy finishes his cigarette, looks around and catches sight of the camera, or something behind it. He immediately whips out his cellphone and beings talking on it, even as he approaches us. He nods at what he hears, keeps talking and comes forward, looking intrigued. Within a few feet he puts the phone away and stops. His head looms. He looks searchingly into the lens, seeing each and every member of the audience, demanding to know their business.

An Evening at the Explorers' Club

“I wonder if Simon has anything prepared. You know—”

“Yes, if he'll come in with something to show up Alfred again.”

“Last week it was a good-looking girlfriend, this week, who knows?”

“Maybe he'll arrive by helicopter,” said Hogg, “That would be something.”

No one replied. After a moment's silence, Hogg looked around and said:

“I said, Maybe he'll arrive by helicopter. Anyone think he might do that?”

“No”, came the laconic and somewhat negative reply.

“I don't know,” continued Hogg. “Maybe in the future everyone will—”

“No.”

At that moment Alfred came in wearing a fine silk hat, to everyone's delight.

“Beautiful!” they said. “I haven't seen a tile like that since—”

“Me neither, where on earth did you find it?”

But before everyone could have his say, Simon made his entrance. On his head, a silk hat, almost identical to his rival's, but many times larger, at least four feet tall.

“I guess this contest is over,” said Simon, “and we'll have to think about our voyage to the centre of the earth. And this time let's be serious.”

The Price of Dave

“I wonder what we could get for Dave?” B. asks his estranged woman friend. “I mean if we sold him. What could we get? What would Dave realise, the market being what it is?”

“I should think the market is flooded with Daves just now. But it's not a bad idea, though.”

“To a collector he might be more precious than rubies, but to me he's just garbage.”

“Of course—we'd have to find out by having him appraised. Find out what he knows. What he can do. Maybe he has some skill sets we don't know about. Maybe he brings to the job a varied experience in dealing with the public on many different levels.”

“Don't forget he's a very nice man. Let's not forget that, that—that humanity of his,” says B.

“Myself, I like the way he scarfs poutine and looks around for more with grease on his chin.”

“Let's just enumerate his plus qualities:

“Well?”

“I've just been on the phone with the people. They've given us an appointment. They also wanted to know something about his provenance.”

“Are they coming over, or are we supposed to take him in?”

“No, they'll come here. What do we know about Dave's provenance? Didn't he always say ...”

“All lies, I believe."

“Oh yeah.”

“So we might have to hang fire for now.”

“Hang fire? what?”

“Hold off on this for now. Not sell him just yet. Until we know more.”

“We'll have to consider the whole thing carefully then.”

“Yes. Meanwhile—I'm going to ask you to get the bastard out of here before I break this piece of lumber over him.”

At The—

I am confronted with a roomful of wild canvases, one every three feet or so. I should like to be able to make something of them, of each one, I am eager to look and see. I so want this to be a happy occasion, matching the success of my haircut, clean shirt, and the perfectly-lit, high-ceilinged gallery in which I find myself. The first work is a smear of toothpaste on a background of tar. Okay, I'll come back to it. The next one is a painting of a doll with severe injuries. I would rather not look at that for too long. Next: a smear of something on an untreated canvas. This is interesting. What is that stuff? Has it been melted on? Next: a big smear on a big canvas. It is faintly s-shaped, like a meandering river of industrial waste through an indifferent wilderness. I suspect that polysaccharides have contributed to the very exciting texture. But once again we are confronted with the work.

A man behind me starts explaining the historical phonology of
Tibetan, making it all a bit clearer by citing some examples from Proto-Tibeto-Burman, and a few moments later I am smoking a cigarette outside somewhere.