"There’s a likeness to reality even in the abstract": on the road
He gets a noise in his right ear, like a signal. Tinnitus: a hollow sound. He doesn’t hear it all the time: only when it’s quiet. That’s why he plays music in the studio: to shut it out.
His dealer imagines that would be nice. Like a little radio: like a song playing just for you.
He listens to music while he’s working. He starts in the top left corner of the canvas and works across, keeping the strokes even. Sometimes he stops and changes direction. But lately, he can’t.
“Why not?” his dealer says. “They’re all the same colour.”
It’s not that simple.
“They’re just squares. All you need to do is fill them in.”
But it’s not about that. And it’s not about the money, either. It’s about something else. Don’t ask him what.
His last piece, he got so bored he stopped halfway and went it over with a mop brush. That worked for a while. He liked the unevenness. The inconsistency lent it character. He left it leaning against the wall. Looking at it now, he’s not so sure.
Sometimes he thinks he’s about ready to call it quits.
“You’re imagining it,” his dealer says. “You always do the same thing. Trust me: I’ve been watching you for years. Just go do the same thing.”
It’s always the same thing. The canvas is the same and the paint’s the same: it’s you that’s different.
Brion Gysin made a dream machine with a light bulb and a piece of card and turntable set at 78rpm. The machine flashes at the same frequency as alpha waves in the brain. You watch it with your eyes closed: the patterns and colours are all in your head.
His dealer says Gysin’s notebooks are online: anyone can make a dream machine now.
He checked his phone: 936 friends, 6696 songs, 12,118 photographs, no messages.
*
The night was cold. He was walking along the shoulder with his back to the traffic. Each time a vehicle passed it presented his shadow gradually until he was standing in it and then it fell away behind him.
His shadow slowed. He glanced back at the car. As the driver lowered the window, music spilled out.
“You’re in the lane,” she said. “I could have run you over.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You want a ride?”
“Are you sure?”
“Why would I not be sure?”
“You’re driving by yourself.”
“You look alright.”
“How can you tell? You drove up behind me.”
“I can see your face now. Where are you going?”
“Winona.”
“No way I’m going that far.”
“Anywhere south is good.”
“Hop in.”
He slid the pack off his shoulder and popped the back door. Her child was wrapped up in a blanket on the back seat, his head lolling to one side, the seat belt strapped around him so he wouldn’t fall out. Next to him on the back seat was a pillowcase filled with clothes and a suitcase and another bag stuffed with shoes. Her drycleaning was on a hook above the rear passenger window. Francis put his pack on the back seat and closed the door so it didn’t crease her suit.
When he opened the front passenger door the interior light yellowed her. She was wearing a denim jacket over her summer dress, and a diamond wedding ring. Her sunglasses dangled from the mirror.
“I’m Jessie,” she said. “That’s Terence, my boy.”
“Francis.”
“Do people call you Frank?”
“Never.”
She flicked on the indicator and checked in the mirror before pulling out into the empty lane.
“Mind if I keep the heater on?”
“No problem.”
“It gets crazy cold this time of year. Turn up the music if you want.”
“Won’t it wake Terence?”
“Fat chance. He sleeps like a log. Have you got kids?”
“No.”
The GPS was beeping. When she tapped the screen the music paused. “Damn, I hate this thing.” She tapped it again and the the music restarted.
“I appreciate your stopping,” he said.
“What are you doing walking at this time of night?”
“I don’t have my licence.”
“You can’t drive?”
“My international licence.”
“I thought you had an accent. What is that you do?”
“I’m an artist.”
“What sort of art?”
“I paint.”
“Are you going to see art while you’re here?”
“I pretty much know what’s on. The galleries are online.”
“You going to meet other artists?” she said.
“Maybe.”
She laughed. “What does that face mean?”
“Artists don’t really talk about their work.”
“Then what do you talk about?”
“I don’t know. Anything but that.”
“Why – are you worried other artists will steal your ideas?”
“What’s worse is when they don’t. If someone’s working on the same thing as you but there’s no connection, that means the same thought will be on everyone’s mind, and you have to stop and start over.”
“Has that ever happened to you?”
“It will, one day. That’s why I travel, to get a different angle.” He scratched his nose. “And then I just go back into the studio and paint the same thing that I always paint. That’s what my dealer says I do, anyway. Maybe it looks like the same painting but it’s not.”
“Show me your work.”
He held his phone out and scrolled for her so she could looked at in between glancing back at the road.
“I can’t make that out,” she said.
“They’re not great photos.”
“No, I mean I don’t understand it. I like pictures that tell you something. Edward Hopper, do you like him? I like how you can look into his pictures and wonder about the people inside.”
“Hopper’s good.”
“You disagree?”
“Not at all. He’s a good painter.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“That tone in your voice – you’re holding back.” She wagged her finger. “Is that because Hopper’s representational?”
“There’s a likeness to reality even in the abstract.”
“So your art’s representational?”
“I didn’t say that.” He wiped his nose. “Art is triggered by what we experience. The difference is that abstract art isn’t bound by it. The abstract object has no obligation to reality. It’s untethered.”
“So what happens when the viewer pulls that trigger?”
“I don’t get you.”
“If the abstract image is untethered but it acquires meaning through the viewer’s association with the figurative, then that means, minus the viewer’s participation, that the image itself means nothing.”
“So you’re saying that without the viewer, the image is unseen?” He shrugged. “I mean, that’s a point of philosophy. It’s like the line about a tree falling in the forest.”
“What do the pictures you just showed me mean?”
“I don’t think of it them a pictures.”
“Then what are they, Francis?”
He made a face. “A record of marks I made on canvas, over a period of time.”
“So they’re a diary.”
“Why do you keep analogising?”
“Isn’t that what the audience is meant to do – to bring something to the art?”
“You could try just seeing it for what it is.”
“What – and have no associations whatsoever?” She adjusted her seatbelt, keeping her free hand on the wheel. “That would mean forgetting everything I’ve ever seen before.”
“Would that be so bad? A fresh experience might be enlightening.”
“Like a day spa?”
“There you go again.”
“You’re telling me to meditate on your art?”
“You can do what you want with it.”
“Well,” she said. “I just like looking at pictures.”
He nodded. “Pictures are good.”
“They don’t have to mean anything.”
“No, they don’t.”
“So we’re in agreement?”
“We are now.” He adjusted the side AC so it didn’t blow on his face. “So where are you headed, Jessie?”
“Terence and I are going to visit my sister.”
“You’re on holiday?”
“Mm-hmm.” She checked in the mirror. Listen to me talk.”
The highway was a straight line with no turns. The sat nav ticked off landmarks as they passed: a bridge, a church further across the plain, a fire station. Francis couldn’t see them out the window: they only appeared on the display, pixellated and bright.
Jessie guided the steering wheel with her fingertips.
“Say, Francis – you want to take over for a while?”
“I told you – I don’t have my licence.”
“You don’t need one. It’s not even a stick.”
She pulled over so they could change places. She showed him how to adjust the wheel and then walked around to the passenger side and got in. She buttoned up her denim jacket and put back her seat.
“Don’t worry, I won’t crush your luggage,” she said.
“Not a problem.”
She strapped herself in and turned on her side with her back to him and her arms folded across her chest.
He angled the mirror and then flicked on the indicator and pulled out.
“You want me to tell you which way you’re headed?” she said, still facing the window.
“I’m good.”
A minute later she started to snore.
The headlamps threw out a long beam. The music was still playing. He concentrated on the road.
They passed objects on the shoulder: white styrofoam cups, silver soda cans, white papers, white box flats. A sign came up: an orange arrow that said Quality For Less!
An oncoming truck flashed its lights. Francis checked the high beam was off. A second sign appeared, the same as the first: Quality For Less! For a moment it felt like he’d been driving in a circle.
Brion Gysin turned melancholy in his later years. After a life spent flitting between Paris and Tangiers and Morocco, he felt like he’d amounted to nothing. Fretting in the Beat Hotel, his dream machine spinning down, hurling patterns that never stuck.
Francis felt in his jacket for his phone. He was looking at the screen when the blue and red lights filled the cab.
A patrol car was behind him. The hailer squawked. He pulled over, the dry-cleaning swinging on the hook. The patrol car stopped behind them. The blue and red lights were still turning, the headlamps on full beam.
Jessie was still asleep on her side. Her dress had ridden up. He could see the marks across the backs of her legs where the seat had left an imprint on her skin.
He heard the patrolman get out. The light in the mirrors was dazzling. He knew to keep his hands on the wheel.
The torch beam wriggled across the sleeping boy and the bags of clothes and the back of Jessie’s head. The patrolman got Francis to lower the window and asked to see his licence and registration.
“This isn’t my car,” Francis said, squinting.
“Do you have a licence?”
“I have a licence, but not for here. She was giving me a lift.”
“Where to?”
“Winona.”
“You’re a tourist?”
“Yes.”
“You got insurance?”
“I have traveller’s insurance.”
“To drive?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“You’re pretty sure but you don’t know.”
“I have the form in my pack.”
“But you don’t have a licence.”
“I have a licence but not for here.”
The patrolman sighed like he had been handed a load.
“You were on the phone. That’s distracted driving.”
“I wasn’t calling anyone. I was moving it and it switched on.”
“You’re meant to keep your eyes on the road.”
“She was feeling sick. So I took over.”
“She been drinking?”
“No.”
“You been drinking?”
“Definitely not.”
“Winona.”
The beam flicked over Jessie, then Terence, then back in Francis’s face. They were both thinking the same thing. Arresting a tourist would mean paperwork.
“First place you see, you stop.”
*
The headlamps tailed him for a mile before the patrol car overtook them.
After it passed, Jessie sighed and turned over on her back. She lifted the seatbelt and straightened the bottom of her dress.
“We need to change places,” Francis said.
“We need to keep driving.”
“The patrolman said we have to stop.”
“He told you, not me.”
“You were awake?”
“For some of it.”
“You should have said something.”
“You handled it fine.”
She tucked her hands under her armpits, thumbing her wedding ring as she stared out the window. Outside it was still night.
*
Dawn came up cold. There were no awnings along the main street of the town. The only shelter was the shadows of the buildings and the blinds in the windows, the panes reflecting the other buildings.
Terence was awake now. Jessie checked in the mirror.
Francis pulled into the forecourt of the first motel they saw. He cut the engine and got out and Jessie took his place behind the wheel. Francis got his backpack out and lifted it on to his shoulders and bent down to speak into the window.
“Well, thanks again,” he said.
“Thank you for driving,” she said.
“You sure you aren’t going to stop?”
“We’d better get going. My cousin’s waiting.”
“I thought you were going to your sister’s.”
“It’s my cousin’s place, but my sister’s there.” Terence was kicking the back of the seat. “Don’t do that, Terence, honey.”
She was tapping her wedding ring on the steering wheel. Francis looked at the boy and then at her.
“Is there a problem?” he said.
“With what?”
“Are you in a situation?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Because I could help, if there was.”
That tickled her. “That’s very kind of you, Francis, but I don’t require any help.”
“If anyone wanted to find you, all they’d have to do is look up up the car.”
She took her sunglasses off the mirror and slipped them on.
“Enjoy your trip, Francis.”
The car got smaller as it drove away.
*
Music was playing inside the motel office. Check in was seven-thirty. The manager told Francis he had at least an hour.
Francis waited on the seat outside the office. A maid was pushing a trolley in front of the rooms. A big sedan pulled into the forecourt. The driver got out and went into the office. Francis looked at the car. He didn’t know American automobiles but it looked both old and brand-new.
The maid came out of one of the rooms with a trash bag. A few minutes later the driver came out of the office and got back in his car.
“What sort of car is that?” Francis said.
“1956 Buick Rivieria.”
“That’s some car.”
The driver was proud of it. “Complete engine rebuild.”
“Nice.”
“You a collector?”
“I’m an artist.”
“Abstract or figurative?”
“There’s a likeness to reality even in the abstract.”
The man nodded. “Where are you headed?”
“Which way are you going?”
“North.”
Francis picked up his backpack.
“North’s good.” Next week's short story is by the winner of the 2022 Sargeson Prize, announced on Wednesday, October 12.
