[cont.]
“Oh Cerberus. I’ve always adored Cerberus. Can’t you just see me walking down the street here with my three headed dog? Any critter capable of blocking the dead from escaping Hades could certainly allow me to walk safely around here at night. Do bullets kill him? I don’t think so either. Being able to kill him would defeat his purpose. Don’t you love the idea of being ferried across the river Styx? It’s such a striking metaphor for dying. The Greeks found poetry in every snippet of existence. That empty afterlife of theirs seems more potent than sitting on a cloud playing the harp. I mean, who wants to play the harp all day? That’s too much like work to be paradise.”
“Choosing being dead and spending eternity lamenting the loss of body and passions instead of being dead and celebrating with friends? I don’t know about that.”
“I guess I see your point. An afterlife of hanging out with the people you love does have more appeal than a submersion in endless ashes. But ashes are more poetic.”
“Afterlives are the equivalent of the fountain of youth. Both are about rewinding and restarting: myths we have developed to provide hope as we slog through life.”
“So you don’t believe in an afterlife?”
“Believe? I have fantasies but no firm belief system regarding death. I tend to agree with Paul Valery, ‘God made everything out of nothingness but the nothingness shows through.’ Personally, I would strongly prefer no afterlife, just evaporating into the universe.”
“No memories?”
“Especially no memories.”
“No memories at all? You are an odd one,” he said.
“Memories are such faulty tools under the best of conditions. Oh, oh, one second. One second. Here it is. I’m working on an essay and here’s the first draft of the first paragraph: ‘Most people romanticize their own past, altering it to fit a comfortable and flattering narrative, dismissing the events which don’t neatly reinforce their self image. No outsider can dispute their version with any weight of certainty. All witnesses are unreliable, after all. History, like memory, is more about omissions and evasions than facts, about the myth we wish to believe about ourselves as a group. What we do to our own small history, we magnify into our nation’s history, into our species’ history. Small acts become grandiose and normal behavior becomes exceptional. While we accept that individuals may be intelligent and caring and mobs are neither, no one willingly extrapolates to the next level: one individual can be noble and innovative but cultures are selfish and deceptive, wrapping themselves in delusions of superiority. Creating fictions is what humans do best.’”
“Email it to me, would you? I’m not sure if I agree or disagree. My ears are not properly connected to my brain at night.”
“I’m not sure if I fully agree with it either. I write these things to get started on papers, to test out ideas. This one will ultimately morph into a discussion of how paintings are like memories, designed for a purpose, to promote a specific narrative. Whether they literally depict science projects like John Wright’s or glorify kings or gods, paintings are a form of propaganda. Even abstract art is not immune. It got CIA funding to compete with Soviet socialist realism. All art has a narrative and these competing narratives are all based on flawed and self serving assumptions. And a flawed assumption was what got me onto this line of thinking. I ran into Madison at an art event and she pointed out that I was alone and would always be alone. What exists at one moment cannot be expanded to explain all future moments, right? But I wasn’t about to tell her that I have been waiting to date until I’m in school and can meet other women who aren’t artists using me to get a show in the gallery.”
“You have far more principles than I do. I don’t think I’d turn down offers because of ulterior motives.”
“Alex, I want intimacy, not a series of one nighters.”
Alex laughed, “You sound so conventional. I would have hopped on that bed with Barbara and her friend, had one last great fuck and then left. You know, I’m a pragmatist. I have a fun night, maybe three and then I move on. No muss, no fuss.”
“It’s not what I want. I want something meaningful. Otherwise, I’d rather be alone. I like keeping company with my thoughts.”
“So what you are saying is that you, my friend, are a victim of high standards and low social skills.”
“Gee thanks.”
“It’s a line from a TV show, dodo, and it applies to both of us.”
“Your social skills are fine.”
