-Dreamscapes Fiction-

The Happening • Simon Walker

How about you, Daniel? What is art?

Finally, their instructor turned his face up to the class and said dramatically, predictably, "What is art?"
Daniel shrunk heavily against the hopeless debate that was bound to follow. The rest of the class, stirring somewhat despite themselves, made cautious, shifting glances around the room; this was, after all, the question, wasn’t it? The thing that made them different – the reason they were all here. The instructor smiled patiently to himself.
He reached for a gnarled, muddy-colored object on the shelf behind him. "This... sculpture," the class offered an obedient peal of quiet laughter, "no doubt finished late one night by a student from some other class according to the harsh confines of the parameters set by the assignment; his callused hands forcing themselves around the delicacy of the task at hand, his passion ruthlessly drained at the mercy of the midnight hour." All of this drama to the satisfactory murmur of amused commiseration from the class for their poor, anonymous, fellow art student. "Tick, tock, tick, tock..." he let the object fall an inch or two to his desk with a cheap clunk. "Is this art?"
"Yes."
Here we go, thought Daniel.
"Shel, tell me why?"
"It’s an expression of the artist’s identity."
Oh, God.
"I see. And that’s a definition – your definition – of art?"
"It‘s part of it. I mean, it’s inevitable, right? That the artist’s life experience is going to shape everything he or she touches, from clothing to books to handwriting... to art?"
"And you believe that was this student’s intention? To communicate a part of his identity through bent, colored wire? And not just to get a grade? Possibly a passing grade?" This again followed by a short submission of amusement from the group. "Does experience necessitate art? And if so, is it just a random, redundant outpouring of self-expression – or better yet, self-explanation – that simply complicates the natural, everyday expression of identity through hairstyle, clothing, speech? Or does it compliment those things?" Shel shrugged, sat down.
He’s leading us along.
The instructor laughed this time. "Okay Shel, thanks. So art is bound by the inescapable truths of our identities." Not a question, but a statement.
Bravo, Shel, he couldn’t have done it without you.
"So what about that fire-alarm handle on the wall?" he continued.
Of course. He’s steering us in every direction, but we’ll still end up back where we started: a collection of wayworn students wearily playing out the day’s lecture so that we can take the next assignment and return to our beds and TVs.
"The person who designed it might have thought so."
"Thanks, Ben, and why’s that?" Daniel knew the response before Ben had taken adequate breath to begin his delivery: form, function, necessity, all inseparably linked to the personal interpretation of the designer’s identity, shaped by the experience of his or her life. Shel had led the charge admirably.
"So you believe that was the designer’s intention? To create art from form, where form already followed function? To express his or herself out of the necessity for a fire-alarm?"
"I guess... I guess it wasn’t necessarily intended to be art. But considering all the subtle possibilities that were open to the designer when he created it, it could have ended up so many ways. I can look at it now, and I can appreciate it for its lines, the writing, the color..."
How noble of you.
The instructor let this one hang, but seemed pleased. Ben sat.
"Let’s make it easier for a second. How about..." he reached for a textbook and after some moments held it open to the class. The image on the page was of Edvard Munch’s "The Scream".
That’s beyond art, it’s a cliché. What’s he trying to prove? That everything is art, or that nothing is art simply because everything is in the same state of existence. Isn’t there a middle ground? It’s infuriating. Ask me what I think.
How about you, Daniel? What is art?

Daniel was alone in his dorm room, for once, drinking a beer and trying to lose himself in the freedom of a weekend alone. He put his feet up on his roommate’s now vacant chair and tried to concentrate on the mindless action of the movie on TV. But the debate that had taken place in class that day was, uncharacteristically, staying close by in his thoughts.
The instructor had been very clear (and at the same time necessarily vague) on the next assignment: present to the class a work of conceptual art that reflects your personal interpretation of art as a whole. A performance, a physical piece of art, or simply a written explanation of a conceptual work that the student would like to present, but perhaps doesn’t have the means to execute for the class. Anything goes.
"Anything goes," said Daniel. You’ve made that abundantly clear. Art as you understand it is crude, presumptuous. An expression of self-indulgence, whether in the eye of the creator or the beholder. It requires the acknowledgement of the term "art" in everything, that all things be judged against an equal standard. And if we can somehow force ourselves to make that assessment of every stimulus, we might just find God in the details.
Daniel always hated that phrase. If God‘s anywhere, he thought, He‘s in the big picture – the sum of the details. Or He’s nowhere at all.
He turned the TV off and settled back on his bed with his beer.
With his free hand flat on the bed, Daniel gently teased out a crease on the surface of his comforter. It had taken him a number of weeks to get used to the hard, decrepit dormitory mattress – with the help of an egg-crate sponge underneath – but it was to him now the most comfortable place he could think of, the object of frequent classroom daydreams. He let out a breath, drew his free hand back and placed it behind his head. Lifting his glass of beer to eye-level, Daniel noticed a pigeon leap and take flight from the ledge outside his window. It feathered and fussed intently for a moment against the glass as if trying to make more room for itself between ledge and window, before falling away to some new, roomier perch or passing current of air. Daniel smiled, and returned to his glass.
His beer, drained almost completely save for one last tope, had left a dense, brittle lace on the inside of the glass. Daniel turned the glass around, held it up, and measured the beer against the fading light of the window.
"Mahogany, with amber highlights." He smiled again, drew the glass to him, and engulfed the olfactory character of the ale.
His instructor, of course, would have called this art. The ale, the pigeon, the comforter: the whole moment. He swallowed the remainder of the beer.
"Ridiculous." Art may mirror life, but life isn’t art. The pleasure I take out of life is just a romance, a succession of romances. The story of an ale, the lacework of it's history and people, ending for the moment with the empty glass in my hand; the sudden framing of a distant tree-line between the conjoining arches of two bridges as I pass between them; a song, Van Morrison, remembering a rose in a church in Spanish Harlem, fading to its conclusion as I blaze the bare west Texas land between hometown and college, in rhythm with the setting sun (a cheap, pink-spined paperback romance, yes, but a romance nonetheless.) Romance isn’t a conscious choice or an evaluation, it’s a spontaneous quickening of emotions. It inflicts itself upon you without asking for validation or a grade, and you either leave it there where you find it, or take a piece of it with you.

His instructor’s definition of art cheapened Daniel’s life experience. It tagged and categorized every moment of his life, and that was something he simply couldn’t concede. There was a place for art, he was sure of that. But it had to have a worthier purpose – a purer outcome – than simply the distorted reflection of individual experience, priced and packaged for it‘s audience...
And there was something there. He sat up in the universal gesture of sudden clarity of thought. It was appalling and thrilling at once, and the impact of its arrival finally moved Daniel to his feet.
He laughed. It was ludicrous, pointless. He couldn’t really take it that far. It was vainer and more presumptuous than every poor excuse for relevant art he’d ever seen or heard of. But the pieces were falling unshakably together in synch with the pounding in his chest.
"I have to come up with something else." He grabbed his keys and went down to the cafeteria for dinner.
But there was nothing else. Daniel ate his food deliberately and with an almost foolish sense of self-consciousness, as if any unaccountable move on his part would instantly reveal his thoughts to those around him.
Over and over again the scene replayed itself in his head, becoming clearer and more vital with each retelling. He had read about the Happenings in one of his art history course books: a group of people would meet in a remote location, perform a rehearsed sequence of seemingly meaningless events, and return to their cars and head home. Meaning wasn’t to be taken from the physicality of the act or acts themselves, but from the fact that something had merely happened.
But they got it wrong, Daniel reflected. Their art form, just like everyone else’s, had been carefully documented and, ultimately, processed and filed.
The problem with art is that it demands a response. It searches and searches for that definitive purity, and just when it thinks it’s reached a pinnacle of cleanliness it holds it up to the dirt of the world and says "Here, what about this?"
Daniel’s Happening would serve no audience. He would perform alone, in as remote a destination as he could reasonably search out, but leave no trace of his passing. He would tell no-one of his plans, save no documentation of the performance, and tell no soul what had taken place. No friend, no parent, no wife. Ever. It would exist for a moment in time, untainted by assigned spiritual meaning or a need for personal catharsis. He would remain detached, an impartial participant in a ritual serving no purpose other than to exist – art for the sake of art. There was no other answer to the assignment he’d been given. It was the purest thought he’d ever entertained. He would take it to the grave.
The day had come, and Daniel was a little stunned to realize he’d maintained his resolve. His roommate paid him scant attention as he dressed and readied for the day, just like any other.
"I’m going out for a couple hours."
"Later."
Daniel drove, and digested the irony of the situation he was in. The assignment had been to render a work of conceptual art and to present it to the class, but his concept necessitated that he share nothing with them at all. If his performance was a success, he would fail the assignment. It rattled him, and he felt a momentary wave of silliness that almost had him turning the car to home, but his determination was proving almost irritatingly steadfast. His knuckles were white upon the steering wheel.

At last he reached a small strip of road that sidled off the main highway and up the bank to a small gravel parking space overlooking an abundant expanse of hill country. It was still fairly early on a Sunday, and there had been few cars to accompany him on his path that morning. He parked as far out of sight of the distant length of freeway as he could. Nobody would notice him up there: the emptiness of the world was his.
He stepped out of his car and made his way to the fence. At one point along its length an enormous tree-limb had urged the fence down, simultaneously providing Daniel a hand-hold to aid in his assent. He came down easily on the other side and strode anxiously, resolute, into the thicket ahead.
Now he was improvising. He’d made no conscious decision as to what he was looking for or where he would begin his casuistry, but he was determined not to falter for the sake of any rational, pre-conceived plan. Spontaneity would be the keeper of purity – the questions would resolve themselves.
He came to a minor clearing that exposed a sweep of brushy land to his right; a small, dirty platform upon which he felt a fleeting, detached urge to stop for the moment. Fighting the impulse to rush the situation and head back, Daniel knelt down and began to untie his laces. Impatience lead to self-consciousness. In fact, he’d never been so conscious of his actions in all his life. Every motion felt exact, fluid... choreographed.
He removed his socks, rolled them into his shoes, and re-extended himself upright. He dug his toes into the dirt and lifted off his T-shirt. He didn’t want to be completely naked, to give himself over to theatrics, but he knew he wanted to connect somehow with the air that lapped at his skin, just as his feet completed the circle of friction with the ground.
He began to perform a sequence of simple, rigid movements with his arms and feet, spinning slowly in order to make himself as tactile to the elements as possible. He shut his eyes. Even now he knew he wasn’t succumbing to some ancient, pagan rite of existence – he simply wanted his body to remember what it had done, how it had felt. The sky was becoming brighter with the passing of clouds, and the sounds of birds, leaves, dust, fought with each other to be heard.
Minutes passed, and Daniel realized something was happening.
"‘Is this art?’" he laughed, eyes still shut tight. But it was more than a realization of success that moved him now, and he tightened his jaw angrily against a sudden wave of emotion.
I didn’t come here for this, he thought. Still he continued to move, but a new sensation was taking the place of his elation. It wasn’t entirely unwelcome, but he’d been vehemently against any melodramatic expression of self-indulgence from the start.
It’s not about me.
Yet there it was; the cumulation of his experiences over the last few days were coming together with a clarity that was almost unbearable, and the full weight of his conceit and pride seemed simultaneously to be laid before him and swept away.
His movements slowed almost to a halt, and he felt the heat of his tears at first reluctantly, and finally with gladness. And at that moment, for the first and last time in all his life, Daniel knew he was not alone.

© Simon Walker 2003
Simon_Walker@gsdm.com

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