by Lee, Edward
More things opposite that are also the same.
Do you see?
Evil exploits weakness. When one weakness is strengthened, another weakness is sought.
Yes, the poet is the piece. I didn’t need to follow him. Instead, his vision found me.
He is the convoluted cardboard cut-out destined to fill the puzzle’s final gap.
FIFTEEN
Transpositions
(i)
“But what is art, really?” Lethe asked. “To myself, as a layman, I feel urged to collect it because it occurs to me that I’m collecting the ultimate in the human pursuit to create that which is beautiful.”
Locke disagreed but was too busy getting used to the idea that he had ten grand in his pocket. He was also too busy sampling the next wine—a Charoliase bottled in 1760. That’s good vinegar, he thought. After a luscious desert of Pots de Creme Javanaise (oven-baked coffee custards), Locke had retreated with his host to a dark, richly paneled parlor adorned with original oil paintings from the Rococo Period and an array of display-cased pepperbox pistols and match-locks. A Montaigne cocktail table separated the two men; yew-wood sconces supported hand-forged silver candlesticks. The thin candles themselves were flax wicks hand-dipped into beeswax, which tinted the small parlor with a sweet, licorice scent. Locke was working on a good buzz now; the wine helped him get some of his doubts behind him. All right, Lethe’s eccentric, he’s an art collector, and he likes rare things. That doesn’t mean he’s a crackpot.
Correction, an art collector and a patron. Lethe’s indulgences were Locke’s good luck. And to keep that at his own side, he supposed he better indulge the host. The guy just put ten large in my hand. The least I can do is talk some poet talk. In truth, Lethe was probably nothing much more than a rich, lonely old man pining for someone to gratify his interests. Locke decided to gratify him.
“That’s more of a populist definition, I’d say,” Locke remarked to the comment.
“And why is that?”
“Because art isn’t always beautiful. Art is the product of an introspective resource, don’t you think? But it’s a rare resource because it demands the total truth of its creator. Sometimes truth is ugly.”
Lethe wanted conversation, that’s all. He respected Locke’s work, and now he wanted to hear about it. This could even be fun: parlor-talk with a millionaire…and some really good wine.
The elegant man nodded. “All right, and if that’s the case—and I don’t mean to quote Pilate—then what is truth?”
“Truth is nothing more than reality. The artist’s job is to communicate that reality—the vision in his head—by re-creating it with the tools of his or her art. When Monet looked at those haystacks, he painted them in the truth of what he saw. It’s all abstraction, sure, but that abstraction is more important than the paint, or in my case, the ink in my typewriter ribbon. If you don’t do it honestly, then it’s not art—it’s a lie, and a lie is the artist’s worst enemy.”
“But didn’t Nietzsche postulate—in his doctrine of nihilism—that there is no objective basis for truth?”
“Yes, he did,” Locke agreed.
“And conversely, didn’t Sartre assert that truth—though only and specifically via the individual’s acknowledgment of his or her place in the universe—was very real?”
“Yes, he did.”
Lethe ran a finger down his face. “These are clearly two of the most paramount intellectuals of your time, perhaps of all human history.”
“Yes. They are.”
“So…how do you explain the contradiction?”
“That’s easy,” Locke said. “Nietzsche was schizophrenic, and Sartre was wrong.”
Lethe nodded through a smile, sipped the wine and seemed to stare at Locke’s words as though they might be smoke rings or moths. “Such a pompous claim, but a claim full of what? Conviction?”
“I’ll take that,” Locke said.
“So what you’re actually hinting at is something spiritual? Motivation?”
“Yes, you could call it that, but I prefer to think of it as—”
“Passion,” Lethe intoned.
Locke stalled in his half-drunk rant. “Yes. Passion. I guess that’s why Monet painted canvases instead of houses. Back then he’d have made more money painting houses.” Locke knew he was talking about himself, but he eluded that self-acknowledgment.
There were ten thousand reasons.
“As we mentioned earlier,” Lethe said. “The passion of the true artist may well be part of the same mechanism that fuels the passion of a Peter Kurten, a Gilles de Rais, or a Jack the Ripper.”
“Well, that or insanity.”
Lethe gave a slight laugh.
“It’s also the most selfish thing in the world,” Locke ventured.
“Selfish? I would think the exact opposite. The notion of sacrifice for the sake of the muse.”
“No. The true artist doesn’t care what anyone thinks of his muse. He does it anyway, because he has to.”
“Just as J.S. Bach knew the Court of Brandenburg would abhor the fifth concerto, he composed it just the same.”
“Because he had no choice. To write something more palatable simply to please his audience—that would’ve been like sticking a knife in himself,” Locke elaborated, hoping he was correctly following Lethe’s observation. He knew virtually nothing of Bach, nor the said concerto. “That’s where the artist finds the truth—and, on the same hand, his art. In my field, in poetry, I can’t allow myself to write a word or an image unless I’ve felt the reality of it. To me, poetry is the ultimate creative distillation, and, not to sound egotistical—”
“But please do!” Lethe insisted behind a chuckle.
“—and it’s also the ultimate art form. Poets have a secret. We believe that poetry is the truest way in which mankind defines itself. How’s that for egotistical?”
“Splendid!”
“No pretty paints to swirl around on a canvas in neat brushstrokes, no skillful carvings to fashion into the marble. Is that a truly aesthetic design, or just a technical skill for hire? Does the artist define the moment of his muse, or does the moment define the artist? It’s one or the other, it’s either the truth, or it’s a lie—the worst kind of lie—at least if you’re a person like me. Selling the lie to yourself. No different from the faith-healing charlatans selling hope to the hopeless, no different from the used-car dealer trying for all he’s worth to fix you up in that lemon.” Locke’s head tipped back as he finished his glass. When he was drunk, at least he knew he was speaking from the heart. “No, sir, in my opinion, the truth of art can only exist in its bare words.”
Lethe sat still as if very impressed, but then a lip turned up. “So the world must simply take the artist’s word for it.”
“Word for what?” Locke didn’t follow.
“That what they’re getting is indeed the truth instead of a lie. That what they’re looking at or reading is not merely a ‘technical skill for hire’ but the artist’s genuine passion.”
Locke’s big mouth had dug a hole, and suddenly he was being pushed in. Money obviously meant nothing to Lethe—he probably spent more on the wheelcovers of his Rolls than he’d just paid Locke for the book. Fuck, Locke thought. He was being challenged. Walk it like you talk it, he avowed. Never write a check with your mouth that you can’t cash with your ass. At least if he walked out of this house without a penny, he’d still have his word.
“Did, uh, did Bach give his commission back to the Court of Brandenburg?” Locke asked.
Lethe’s smile was one of pure amusement. “Why, no, he didn’t.”
“Well then he was a phony schmuck. Let’s face it, Mr. Lethe, the real reason you invited me here was probably to check me out a little, right?”
Lethe leaned back in the great elm wing-chair. “Perhaps… just a little.”
“And you’ve just given me a lot of money. I’ll admit, I need this money. I’m a poor man, but—”
Locke
lapsed. What was he doing? His life had turned to shit, and now here he was about to take another handful. The ideal that had once driven him—his passion—he could only see now through the palest fog. This morning an auditory hallucination of a dead man had told him over the phone not to even come here. This was obviously just some remnant of Locke’s former inner-self, his brain playing a symbolic trick reminding him of what he used to believe in to the very core of his being.
Don’t be a whore, he thought. Be stupid instead. Be real.
“You were saying?” Lethe goaded.
Locke opened his eyes—he didn’t remember closing them, just thinking as he gnawed the inside of his lip. “I was saying that I’m a poor man, but I can’t do this.” Now he let it go. So what? “My girlfriend dumped me for a lawyer. Yesterday my best friend got killed. So I just said to hell with it, I’m gonna be like everyone else.”
Lethe leaned forward at what was happening, his chin propped up by steepled fingers. “But if there’s one thing I sense most clearly, Mr. Locke—you’re not like everyone else. You don’t want to be.”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“But your point has escaped me…”
“My point?” Locke chuckled because he didn’t want to cry. “All men have their price…but not me.” He put the envelope full of cash on the shining cocktail table, slid it across to Lethe.
“I’ll write the book for free,” Locke said.
Lethe picked up the money, eyeing Locke. “You’re not testing me, are you? You’re quite serious.”
“Yeah,” Locke said. And stupid. “I can’t take money for my work.”
“You’ve probably been able to ascertain that I am quite financially solvent. You’re sure about this?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lethe looked dismayed. “Mr. Locke, you’ve proven your resolve. It isn’t necessary to return the money.”
“I have to,” Locke said.
“I won’t doubt your sincerity at all—you can change your mind.”
“No,” Locke said. “I can’t. I’ll write the book for free.”
“But…there are certainly quite a few legal considerations. Limited-edition rights, sub-rights, paperback rights—”
Locke waved a half-drunk hand. “I’m just a poet, and pardon my language, but I don’t give a shit about any of that. You can print this book and sell it to paperback for six figures and I don’t care. I can’t take money for my work. You want to pay me to wash your car, fine, I’ll do it and I’ll take your cash. Need your lawn mowed, call me. But that’s it. My work is my heart, and my heart ain’t for sale.”
Lethe’s brow arched. “You’re absolutely sure about this?”
“Yes.”
Lethe’s mouth turned into a line of puzzlement. “So be it, then. I’d be taking advantage of you to insist. At least sleep on it. Perhaps your decision has been spurred by the wine. It’s deceptively strong.”
“Nope,” Locke said. “Drunk or sober, I can’t take money.” Then he feebly tried to joke. “Just do a good job printing the hardcover.”
“Oh, you can rest assured I will.”
Locke nodded in silence, watched Lethe give the money back to the absurd, masked driver. A funny thing, though… I’m poor again, but I feel… good.
Lethe spake curt orders to the driver, “Mr. Locke has made a decision, Jason—”
Jason! Locke thought. I finally know the guy’s name!
“Have the girl bring the bottle of Medoc—the Mistival 1774. And the Alsace snifters.”
Hmm, Locke thought. The girl? He must mean the maid he’d seen earlier, getting out of the Daimler.
Lethe turned enthused to Locke. “It’s my oldest bottle, I suspect it will be very good. Have you liked the wine thus far?”
“Yes, it’s been great.”
Footsteps clattered from a recessed room; voices murmured, then a door clicked shut. More footsteps barely registered to Locke’s ear—they seemed to be descending. A trip to the wine cellar, he presumed. But at once, Locke felt dissolute. This had nothing to do with re-asserting his artistic motives by refusing Lethe’s money, a snap-decision rooted to personal subjectivities; it felt more cored instead to the machinery of whatever creative skills he possessed.
Broken machinery.
Somewhere a gear had been stripped, a cam-bolt shorn. Returning to his poetical ethics was fine but that would not repair the broken cogs. A bust of Euripides gazed off from a high ensconcement in the corner; Locke thought bizarrely of the “epitasis” of the Greek playwrights, the structural moment in which the plot accelerates. Locke knew his own career should be at the moment right now.
But it’s not, he realized in a quickening glumness. I missed the final act. The play’s over…
“You seem disconsolate.” Lethe’s rich voice, however quiet, resonated across the table.
“All of a sudden…I am,” Locke admitted. “And I don’t know why.”
“Such are the hazards of your… Well, I shouldn’t say your profession, since you refuse all profits from your talents. Your ambitions, then. The force which drives you. Wasn’t it Van Gogh who attested that all artists are paranoid? The more stridently they seek to see their muse, the less they see in their own truth? Or what did Sophocles give emblem to with Teiresias?”
Strange that Lethe would make reference to a Greek play. “The prophet never sees his full potential until he’s blind.”
“And artists, of course, are prophets too.”
Not me, Locke thought.
“Truths change,” Lethe said. “Perhaps you haven’t changed with yours.”
Why abstract over this wreckage? Why psychologize over a writer’s block? Locke didn’t want to think about it anymore, he just wanted to drink. But then Lethe continued: “In truth, what is an ending, really?”
“A beginning,” came Locke’s dismal answer.
“How fine. Then it seems your work is at hand.”
Locke looked up. Jason, still wearing the piped eyemask, had returned and was stiffly pouring the Medoc into wide glasses. Locke cleared his head. “What do you mean my work is—”
“You’re a poet, correct? Poets create. So do that. Create.”
Create, Locke thought blandly.
“I sense you were quite a bit at odds over the temptation to take money for your work, correct?”
“Yes,” Locke droned.
“But you’ve made your decision, and that’s behind you now. And at the heart of that decision you’ve taken a part of yourself from one place to another. You’ve created an end which can only lead to a beginning. Correct?”
Locke shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” He supposed he could justify Lethe’s notion aesthetically. Every end is a beginning. I’ve gone from one place to another place. So…what’s the other place?
Lethe raised an erudite finger as if he’d read Locke’s thoughts. “You can only find the other place by acknowledging, by…doing what poets do. By creating with words. You can only find the place of new beginnings by first creating the previous door, so to speak.”
Locke felt befuddled, annoyed even. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t speak for your muse, Mr. Locke, but if I were you, based on what you’ve told me tonight, I’d use my creative powers to build the… Well, let me think of the proper word…” Lethe’s index finger came to his lip. His eyes closed momentarily. Then he said, “Something to give structure to…the act of your going out. The creative means by which you’ve made your exit. But I can’t quite think of the word—”
“Egress,” Locke said.
“Yes!” Lethe nearly clapped within the exclamation. “The egress! That, Mr. Locke, is what you must create of your own. The path by which your muse will leave the old place and emerge into the new.”
Locke wanted to sputter. He hated this dilettante art-school babble.
“An exit from the place you don’t want to be, to the entryway to another place. The place you truly do want to be.”
; It sounded like foolishness to Locke but… He thinks I should write a poem about an egress, an exit point. Several seconds passed in the contemplation.
“Oh, my!”
Locke looked up. Lethe had just taken his first sip of the Medoc, and now his eyes beamed.
“What?” Locke asked.
“This wine is absolutely perfect. Do try it.”
“Now that I can do,” Locke said and swished a sip of the red Bordeaux through his mouth.
(ii)
Ten grand lost but, even in this drunken idealism, he felt better than he had in months. He felt real.
So that was something, wasn’t it?
After they’d finished the Medoc—not dark but plush, semi-tart with no after-taste till it was past the back of your throat, a strong bouquet—Jason, the masked double-duty driver, showed Locke to his quarters which, to his surprise was a nice cottage in the enclosed back yard. Just a squat stucco job, one of four in a row before the high hedges that lined the back brick fence. Some small imported trees had been planted, and several neatly formed gardens spiraled off. Nice digs, he thought but at once heard a high-pitched, jovial squeal, then some laughter.