art in a vacuum

the author and audience are buried in the same grave

falling star - witold pruszkowski

i. the author is dead

We know this already. The author has been dead since 1967, her body buried so far underground even her ghost cannot haunt the narrative. There is no creator so there is no God and there is no God so there is no holy word to guide the masses. And what is a creator but the root of the tree? And what is a root of a tree to its descendants centuries down the line? The original apple is gone, the original seed is gone, the original creator is gone and we are left to piece together history from the bones left behind.

An archaeologist digs up a bone and draws a dinosaur. An archaeologist digs up a bone and, briefly, longma are real. An archaeologist walks through time and discovers truth is a vector, not scalar. An archaeologist walks through time and discovers even vectors are not the end of the line: there are dimensions we cannot yet see. Truth becomes precariously balanced: truth is a vector of time, truth is a vector of belief. Under the eyes of a human, truth and belief become synonymous. Under the eyes of a longma, there is a fourth dimension guiding it.

But longma are not real — at least not real in human dimensions — and so truth and belief are still synonymous. The author is still dead. Only the artwork remains, encased in dichroic glass. Two museum-goers argue over the color of the art while standing on opposite sides of the room at opposite times of day. Truth becomes precariously balanced: the glass is red at dawn and blue at night, the glass is green to the man in the corner and yellow to the woman staring straight at it. Belief guides the hand of truth. Longma are still not real.

ii. death of the audience

An essay is buried in a graveyard. An essay is buried, but the words grow legs and find a village; the words are raised by the village. The words become so far detached from origin they no longer recognize their mother. The essay is translated. The essay is spoken out loud. The essay is changed in miniscule increments, first sentence by sentence, then word by word, finally letter by letter. The essay becomes a ship of Theseus. Is the essay still the same when all the words are changed? Is the essay still the same if it is no longer living?

A mother tries to bury her child, but the child comes back to life. The child outgrows the mother, finds a village, is persecuted by a village. A child is no longer a child, but the mother still cries when the villagers chase him out of the village. With pitchforks and torches, the child is beaten until bloody, beaten until unrecognizable, beaten until even a mother cannot love its face. The mother is crying this child is not for you but the village echoes back and who are you to decide? The village mistakes a mother for a doctor, looks at a human and sees only Frankenstein.

A mother looks at a child and sees only her own face. The child is dead for the second time; is the mother still a mother? The eyes of the village watch this Schrödinger’s mother leave the box; the eyes of the village are heavy enough to crush a mother-not-mother to nothing. The child is dead but the mother’s womb remains. The mother’s womb is dead but the child stays proof of the mother’s name. The village says mother but the word is different than how the mother says mother. How can a word be the same but mean something else? The village demands give us another child. The mother echoes back the first was never yours to take.

iii. art in a vacuum

All that is left are the words, but there is nothing to write about because there is nothing. The vacuum loses its definition when the art falls into it; the abyss stops being an abyss and becomes a mirror. The art is reflective: this is a truth. The art reflects only from certain angles: this is a belief. The mirror can only be held by a human; longma remain fictional and the mirror reflects only those who choose to look into it.

A physicist looks God in the eye and demands an explanation for genesis; God says nothing. God creates atoms and emotions and nothingness, but there is no one to experience it so God creates physicists. A physicist creates theories and proofs and experiments and denies God. The atoms remain without the hand of divinity. The physicist can only see three dimensions, so the emotions become a vector of belief. Nothingness becomes a mirror. The physicist looks into the abyss and asks God: why did you create this? God says nothing.

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This post has an additional On Writing.

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