Maya Dardel Page #2

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in a modern art museum.

The first is a pot-bellied

father of four from

Kentucky or provincial France

or middle Russia somewhere.

He's a tourist, he only

likes landscapes and nudes

and paintings of

battles and ships.

He's the guy who looks the

Jackson pollock the same

way he looks at your generation's

latest abstract knockoff

and he says to himself

about both, Christ,

what a con-job,

my kid can paint this.

- Hm.

Right, my kid can paint this.

- Now imagine a second

person in the museum.

This is you, this is

an educated person.

He's visiting the museum in

an anxious, critical capacity.

He goes into the room the

tourist father just left,

and looks at the pollock

and looks at the knockoff,

and because the knockoff

was painted very recently,

it gets his attention,

and he stands there wondering

if it's better than his

own mysterious canvases

full of similar random

shreds of form and color.

- This is me?

- This is you.

- I think it's always better not

to arbitrarily stereotype a...

- now, imagine a third

person in the museum.

This is me, I'll look at the

pollock and the knockoff.

I like the pollock for its

rhythm and originality.

The knockoff has some

qualities I like,

but it's half a century too

late, it's not original.

And the longer I look at it,

the less I like it, why?

Because I hear a little

voice inside me saying,

Christ, my kid could paint this.

And then I hear another voice

inside me saying, you don't

have a kid, and you sound

like a tourist from Kentucky.

You're not part

of the cool crowd.

Other people get it,

not you though.

And then I hear a

third voice in my head.

No, Maya, it's

okay, you do get it,

this really is a

mediocre painting.

This really could've

been painted

by a kid or even a cimputer.

And then the people in

my head start arguing.

- Are you saying

that my work is...

- sh*t?

Not quite, it's more like

chewed but undigested food.

You're young,

there's hope for you.

- In the back corner.

That piece.

Do you consider that good art?

- That's a different

story, that's not paint.

That's blood and

human brain matter.

Isn't that terrible?

But hey, you like cerebral art.

She had lung cancer.

That was her very last

painting, a perverse friend

of mine bought it at an auction

for my birthday last year.

- Hm, I think what you

and your museum-going self

and your third self are missing

is a purposeful negation.

This is apparently

counterintuitive.

Okay.

Purposefulness would seem to

have a positive component, yes?

It positively is negation.

But here's where I might

take issue with my own poem.

Negation positively is negation,

but only within

a conceptual system,

the perhaps a priori system

of logical coherence.

So what I'm doing

isn't really writing,

but unwriting, you see?

My negation has no positive

aspect, it simply isn't.

- That's marvelous.

- Thank you.

- Did you really say my negation

has no positive aspect to me?

- Yes.

Yeah, I think it's blatant

at the third line, apacity.

- Do you have a wife?

Or a girlfriend?

- No, no, not exactly.

- Are you able to carry out

a difficult task from

beginning to end?

It's no good, just get in

there and roughen it up.

Cut was not finished,

you need to cut.

Jesuit priest, what

were you thinking?

It's actually in

very poor taste.

- Just give me two

seconds, one, two, three...

- why don't you go home

and rewrite this and

come back, all right?

- 21, 22.

23, 24.

- Everything is turning sharper.

This is called being old.

It turns sharp for a moment

before it turns blurry,

everything does,

at a certain age.

What is this species

of thought that is not

a memory because it never

happened, but so memory-like?

This thought of

myself at 40 maybe.

Holding a baby.

- There's such a strange green.

Amphibian green in this view.

- I like your sweater,

where'd you buy it?

- This?

- Mm.

I don't, I don't remember.

- Come on, don't tell

me you don't remember.

That's a $400 sweater.

- What kind of tree is this?

- Horse Chestnut.

- Chest nut.

Chest...

- what?

- What?

You have a lot of glass.

Are these all filled with glass?

- I have a lot of

porcelain and stemware.

- Stemware.

Don't you like how all these

anglo-Saxon words?

- What's this?

- That's when they

crush into each other.

- Mm.

- Chestnut, stemware.

Foxfire.

Footstool.

- Outhouse.

Rat hole.

Hm, rat hole.

- Mouthwash.

Are you trying to

ingratiate yourself

by playing language games?

- What?

No.

I was...

- it's okay.

I like the word,

Chestnut, hummingbird.

Nightmare.

- Of course you do.

I know, you use it

as an adjective in...

- please, don't quote me to me.

- Okay.

- Are you gay?

- What?

I was just, um.

Rat hole.

I know about porcelain.

- What?

- I know about the colors.

- What does this mean,

you know about porcelain.

- You probably

already know this,

but there were these

chemists in Vincennes.

These chemists they would

um, grind the colors.

Then they started to experiment.

I think they first had

some success with yellow.

And then Lapis blue, like,

Lapis blue like in

this piece here.

You already know that.

- Tell me.

- Well, then, in 1750-something

they, they discovered green.

And then blue Celeste.

And then they discovered

the rose colors last.

And then they killed

the king and queen

and some of the

porcelain makers.

Also I was in Chicago.

And the porcelain collection

at the art institute,

there's this plate,

or a serving platter,

and on it is a

scene of what they

call peasant life,

or pastoral life.

It's a green and rose design,

and written around the rim

the platter's rim,

pensent-ils Au raisin?

- Are they

thinking about the grapes?

- Yes.

And I was with my friend

Marie at the time.

And she saw the plate first

and translated the caption,

and somehow I misheard

her, and I thought

that she'd said are they

thinking about the Greeks?

- Where are you going with this?

- I'm not going anywhere, um.

I just thought it was

beautiful that there

could be some people on

a plate and then some other

people eating off the

plate in the 18th century,

just some people in the

18th century in France

being asked by a plate if

maybe the people they were

eating off of might be

thinking about the Greeks?

- Are you responsible?

- Responsible?

- Do you pay

all your bills on time?

Do you respond to emails?

- I don't, I don't

really have that many bills.

- Why are you living in Texas?

- I don't know.

My mother lives there.

- Are you one of these,

codependent with your mother?

- So this is silicon valley?

- You're on top of the

south wall of silicon valley.

- Kevin said you grow grapes?

- Top acre.

I don't do it, a company

does it and gives me a cut.

- Why are you

going to kill yourself?

You could write five more books

like the Monday metaphysics.

- Is that your

favorite book of mine?

- Maybe.

- I was 31 when I wrote that.

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