November-December 2020
Sónia Almeida
Magnus Frederik Clausen
“Are all questions trick questions?”
“Who’s asking?”
*
-Barry Schwabsky
The Prodigal Beholder: Dialogues, Reflections, Parables
“I’ve built a house whose roof has tiny holes in it, each revealing a single star in the night sky. Just think! A house whose ceiling is the celestial darkness ablaze!”
“But don’t you get wet when it rains?”
“No, on rainy nights there are no stars to be seen, so there are also no holes.”
*
She sat with her back to him, writing a love letter. He couldn’t see what she wrote. The sounds of the pen scratching along the paper were the message he heard. Once he’d heard the message she’d written, she burned the letter.
*
“The colors you paint with brighten the room!”
“Really? But the ink you write with darkens thought.”
*
“He said, ‘I’ve finally made a painting I can stand behind.’ Yes, really. Literally. It wants no wall. He holds it upright while standing behind it, and the best part is, wherever you stand to look at it, he can hold it in front of you. You never see the artist, but he’s always there behind it.”
“Yes, but behind the artist, there’s something unseen holding him up too.”
*
Painter to poet: “I’ve memorized your poem. I know it be heart.”
Poet to painter: “Thank you! I remember your paintings. It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
*
The painting of the painting doesn’t stop when the painter stops painting: perpetual motion.
*
“Are all questions trick questions?”
“Who’s asking?”
*
Like walking around with a sharp, tiny pebble in your shoe—just so, there are irritating little thoughts that get under the sole of your brain.
*
“With this one little word ‘is’ I can make all the metaphors in the world. But painting lacks the word ‘is.’”
“No. It’s there but tacitly. It is understood.”
“Not by me.”
“In language, that ‘is’ of yours is an instrumentality for making metaphors, but it doesn’t function metaphorically itself. Painting shows what ‘is’ should be a metaphor for.”
*
The immobility of an artwork outruns time. Its volatility in perception unsettles space.
*
“Isn’t the critic rather like a dentist? Always full of words, words, incessant words, as he pokes his instruments around, his probes and little mirrors, his curettes, as if he really expected you to be able to respond, which his attentions make impossible!”
“… …”
*
Some poems follow you along as you go, like the moon. Paintings tend to stay in place; they wait for you to come back to them—the prodigal beholder.
*
“What, they want to participate in the work of art? As if the work would not exist without their little action or gesture?”
“No—as if they would not exist without this donation of self.”
*
Once, people used to say, “In the next life…” Apparently, this is it.
-Barry Schwabsky