Again, in a tavern, my friend Juan Tabagwang and I drank over four bottles of "agua de pataranta," a drink. This time we talked about the most absurd thing ever. The absurdity was compounded many times over by the effect of the "agua."
Anyway, after drinking many glasses of "agua de pataranta," my tipsy friend casually asked, "What's your best work, your masterpiece?"
It so happened I was carrying a canvas. I slowly raised it and showed it to him. "This is my masterpiece!" I answered with great air.
My friend looked at it. He was speechless with an incredulous look on his face. "Where is it?" he inquired.
"It is already exposed. You just can't see it," I replied. "Also, the medium is undefined and the dimensions cannot be measured. The canvas is unworthy to contain it."
Juan was really bewildered. He asked again, "That's your masterpiece!?"
"Yes, this blank is my masterpiece," I responded. "Human eyes are unworthy to behold it. Even the mind is baffled by its simplicity. It is the essence of all colors."
"But, there's nothing there!" my friend exclaimed.
"I know," I said. "It's nothing."
Suddenly, a very drunk guy butted into our discussion and looked at my empty canvas. He blurted out, "F-fantastic! I-I am blank with admiration. W-what can I say? Wow!" Then he went into a discourse. "However, do we have to look at beautiful colors and composition to appreciate art? Sometimes, our eyes deceive and manipulate us, and we can see only up to the surface of the canvas. On the other hand, our mind is not limited by the canvas. If there is nothing on the canvas to distract the mind, it can range to infinity and can reach the far reaches of all conceivable realms. It can even perceive divine beauty and perfection." He paused and then glanced at me with a mischievous look in his eyes. As he turned away he said, "Your blank gives me that opportunity. M-marvelous! Best work I've NEVER seen!"
Maria D'kapri, our pretty waitress friend, picked up the empty bottles of "agua de pataranta." Then she said, "You two are not only wasting your time drinking, you're also wasting your time discussing foolish things."
As Maria is about to leave, I said, "But it's the best use of our negative time." She ignored me and I turned to my friend, asking him, "What do you think of my masterpiece?"
Juan still looked perplexed, he scratched his head and responded, "I ... I have no words. Really, I have no words, none with your blank-nothing." But my friend regained his wits and he then asked, "What's your point?"
"Well, I was invited to give a lecture on art," I explained. "One of the art students asked me how he could become a creative painter. So, I put up a big piece of white paper on the board and asked him what he saw. He said he saw nothing, just a plain white piece of paper. In answer I told him that he could only paint what he could see and nothing extraordinary would come out of it. But another artist told me some incredible things that he imagined from the white paper. I told him that he would become a very creative and extraordinary painter."
"Are you implying that I have no future as a comics illustrator because I did not see anything in your canvas?" my concerned friend Juan inquired.
"Most artists have the same reaction as you," I said to assure him, "and some become great creative artists later on because they learned their lesson to be perceptive."
Suddenly, from a dark corner of the tavern, another drunk shouted at me, "Hey man!"
I turned toward him and retorted, "What!?"
"No offense," he said, "but I think it’s a little overworked. I happened to know that your entire non-piece idea was similar to Salvador Ukalili's, when he was a lad at an art institute."
"It's different!" I shouted back. "My BLANK, my NOTHING is the essence of ‘everything.’ In other words, the ‘everything’ exists only because of the NOTHING. Ukalili's nothing is simply nothing. And my NOTHING is in capital letters, and Ukalili's nothing is in small letters. Also, NOTHING = O and nothing = o. Obviously, O > o; that is, NOTHING > nothing." Then I sarcastically chuckled.
Juan laughed and remarked," I love your tortured logic."
"I know," I said, agreeing with Juan. "It will take him a while to figure it out."
"Your logic aside ... your blank, your nothing set the standard for the philosophy of art," Juan said amusingly. "It defines one's perception and creativity."
Then we both made hearty, loud laughs.
"Confusingly, I mean s-seriously," I said, "my blank, my nothing is a philosophical and artistic idea that tickles the mind and draws out anybody's innermost latent creative abilities. It can test the depth and range of anyone's perception, from blank to infinity."
"Heh, heh .... It can even separate the extraordinary from the ordinary," my friend added. "I think we already drank enough. It is time to go!"
"Yes," Maria said from behind us. "You two are too drunk. You waste your time talking idiotic things. Go home!"
"Do we really waste our time talking nonsense, Maria?" I asked her, not expecting an answer. Then I turned toward the other drunks in the tavern and asked, "Do we really waste our time talking nonsense?"
"No!" the drunks roared. "We love your nonsense!"
We left the tavern, and along the darkened street we sang our rambling song again, accompanied by the howling of dogs and the meowing of cats. But we ducked, because as we sang, empty bottles and cans flew toward us amid the sound of angry cursing and shouting.
"You people! Sing with us! Sing our blanks, our nothings, the greatest masterpieces of the world! La, la, la..."
No comments:
Post a Comment