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opthomastic · 1 year ago

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STATICITY

“Staticity is an illusion . . . energy . . . created nor destroyed. You feel like you're still in the moment . . . but stillness is an impossibility. The earth revolves beneath your feet, continuously, and the presence of . . . stillness invites only the figment of staticity, while our planet turns with us aboard . . . nothing truly stops, nothing comes to any end . . . outside theoretical temporal vacua, molecular . . . energies aren't bound to our perceptions of space and its limits, and no kinesis is subject to any such terminality rubric . . . there is no force stronger than motion-change in this cyclical universe—nothing comes to any end . . . and when something is thought to stop—can you feel it? The space you think you occupy in staticity . . . it exists no more or less than the moment of its genesis. The concept of space in your head, just a figment of relativity . . . and when one stops in perceived space, their energy continues unimpeded outside perception . . . the heart, the mind, the body, what does it take to turn these static? I'm not asking Arba, I'm asking . . . how do you determine staticity from a point of constant motion . . . how can you say anything's truly static . . . the heart, the mind, the body, the soul? . . . A star burns out . . . the star remains in motion—the light carries on . . . an endless journey of energy undestroyed . . . unimpeded . . . where does it go? If the body is no longer perceivable, it is not necessarily static . . . if the mind no longer transmits a signal . . . if the heart no longer beats . . . but the perception cannot be said to see cessation . . . while the light of the soul has yet to see termination—an energy existing as . . . infinitely as any other.”

John hears the rambling madman, but he doesn't listen. He sees the frantic arc of each brushstroke over the canvas, but he doesn't watch. He registers the inanity of holding audience to a solitary inmate, but doesn't move from the hall between windows. And yet, he does—he's always moving, actually, just as everything else is. After all, staticity is an illusion, and so on, and so forth. But no; he's standing still, leaning on the massive foot-thick pane of glass wall with the sprawling city a dozen stories below cast in pale sunlight over his shoulder. And who's to say his interpretation of stillness is at fault? Sane people know what it means. Though his heart still beats, relative to the sterile white hall and solid resin floor underneath his rooted feet, it stays in one place. He'd consider that static enough.

He'd only just noticed the other man's peroration slowing down by the time he made that observation. Across from him, through the second window-wall, the cell's sole occupant seemed to be granted a measure of lucidity amid his stochastic painting. Hunched forward at his canvas, the loose black robe hanging over those shoulders appeared exceptionally still indeed as only the head of inky curls turned, gradually, over the inmate's suspended painting arm.

John regarded him with all the measured indifference he'd grown accustomed to showing his partner in commiseration since the novelty of the painter's insanity wore off. And yet, there remained a shade to those dark eyes immeasurable; relative lucidity notwithstanding, the depth exuded sent the old paroxysmal twitch of the eyebrow into motion, turning indifference into doubt.

“Is the picture not coming out like you'd hoped?”

The man's steady gaze lingered before falling away, his brush-bearing arm falling with it. What its purpose was in sighting him through the glass, he couldn't begin to guess. As that dark sight settled back onto the canvas, so did John's seek it out, leaning aside from out in the hall to see past the deranged silhouette.

It was a . . . decent piece. If one were inclined toward senseless surrealism—one or many, such as Satre's abounding artistic society, bless their hearts—it could be considered one of the deeper cuts into artistic psyche. The strokes were as refined as they got under that monomaniacal brush, yet again confined to the palette of dunduckytimur grays after a bit of thorough, indiscriminate adulteration of the paints. Given some considerate work he might affect a coherent shape or two and add a semblance of representation, toss it to those bent on divining such a thing. That smear there: that could be the arm; that dribble a shadow.

“All done now?” John asked into the humming silence—an echoing distillation of air down the hall kept the tinnitus at bay, and once the madman fell torpid again it was awfully quiet otherwise. Regardless of the inmate's conversational skills, it felt refreshing to offer something sensible to the air.

“Nothing is done.” The hoarse whisper resounded off the canvas, the back of the cell, through the spartan space within, slipping through the vents in the glass wall between them. Though Oras spoke with rare clarity and purpose, his meaning remained tenebrous as ever.

John finally stepped away from the outer window, moving toward those circular cuts in the glass that lent the inmate a minor conduit to the outside world. “I know, Oras. But do you want to keep painting it?”

The rumpled form shifted back from the canvas—a fine piece of cotton duck put to dubious use as a madman's toy, though the results were hard to argue when all is said and done—and Oras situated himself off to the side of his cell, docile for the time being. John slipped his phone from his breast pocket to tap out a quick message. Within minutes there were two lab personnel sweeping through with their rubber gloves and slippers to maneuver the canvas out amid splatters of paint.

“I'll see to it momentarily,” said John, eyes staying on Oras while they carried it down the hall. Their steps receded around the corner of the curving passage, and he was left with the air conditioner to fill the silence once more.

“So what is this one?” John's gaze drifted away from the painter as he slowly stepped forward along the length of the glass. “I think you were saying something about stars, again. Is that a hint?” The edge of his mouth twitched despite a lack of substantial irony. “Or was it the planets? Excuse me—planet. Neither bring portraiture to mind, if I'm being honest. It was a portrait, right? Oh—maybe Mother Earth? But . . . no, that's ridiculous. The coloring leaves much to be desired in that vein.”

Oras sat against the graying wall, essentially just another stain among the rest of the spilled paint. The dark hair framing his face in dishevelment from chin to crown left his expression in shadow, but there was never much to tell from it either way.

“My best guess is my first one. But that always feels too easy. Besides, how do you even interpret 'static'? Unless we're talking about the other kind—that mess does resemble total signal loss.” He barked a laugh at that one, eyeing the mess in the cell: spots of black paint, sprinkled everywhere. The only place routinely cleaned anymore was that which was immediately around the easel. After the latest piece it was once more splotched with the leftover colors Oras had spilled while mixing them all together on the poor abused palette that lay at its feet.

“But I think you were mumbling 'staticity is impossible' during all that. Sure did capture the moment in something awfully static. If you want dynamic art, try animation. Now that doesn't stay still.” He reached the other end of the window and turned around, changing his mind on the spot. “Actually . . . Staticity sounds pretty poignant. I'll go with that. Much appreciated, as always, old pal.” His gratitude rang off the glass just as transparent and twice as vain. What ghosts of mordancy hanging dry as the oldest stains in the cell still haunted their banter left no illusion as to its sincerity. Not that it wanted for any.

John reversed course again to head for the hall the attendants left through—same one as the other way, really, just the shorter route to the elevator. “Let me know if you remember anything better, Oras. It could do with that old flair of yours.” He stopped at the edge of the cell, staring in. His reflection, framed in white sky, posed a more receptive counterpart than the huddled mass of rags it was in that light overlaying; eyes of boldest blue imposing upon the poor patient a sober lament unmet.

Or was it aimed at the reflection? Either way, commiseration loves company. John proceeded down the shadowed corridor of the circular hall, leaving the madman behind.

Delineate? No . . . Hint at a curve here? No, no, no . . . Too much work to maintain form that way—stretch as it was to term it such. He'd have to keep it subtle; nothing drastic or imposing, just an altering of the features already present. A shame. He liked curves.

“What do you see in it, Thea?”

There was a soft shift of paper or fabric, and he surmised the councilwoman to have looked up from her desk behind him in the pale room, imagining her steady turquoise stare in the less-steady image of what he hoped the painting could be. Nothing for it, it seemed.

“I see a man given to his impulses so irreversibly he doesn't put any thought to them anymore.” Her answer came as dry and indifferent as ever, that flat tone turning away with her attention, if the echoes in the broad space between them were to be trusted. “I see an incomplete result on the radiology test. But I imagine the paint's still resonant.”

John brought a knuckle to his lips, frowning at the muddy canvas before him. “Is it ever not? It's a good thing you're the only one with the means to test that, otherwise I daresay we'd have some pretty telling discrepancies.”

“As long as you do your job well, it's irrelevant.” Still sounding as if she were speaking to her desk, Thea drew in a lengthy breath, preparing herself to finally face the work before her. “Coal leaves room for license, but that of the artistic variety remains solely his own, if his critics are to be believed.”

His hand came away from his chin in a dismissive wave. “My critics wouldn't know this mess from a Pollock. It's like giving them the head chef's specialty after he's drunk his mind away for ten straight years and acting as if it's the same sapid soup. The least I can do is try to spice up the slop.”

Another soft shifting, and he guessed she was standing. The proceeding click of heels across terrazzo affirmed that, and while they were but three, he was doubtless the aim of her attention. He spared a glance over his shoulder to see it for himself.

She was gazing out the window, stoic as a statue.

“Have you had a closer look yet?” he asked, at last garnering a glance in kind. As John returned his eyes to the splattered square sheet, he listened to those clicking heels with some sated appetite for proximal conversation. “My first guess was a portrait, but . . .” His fine-featured face twisted in a savorless grimace. “. . . who can tell with him?”

“I don't know . . . a road?” She stood aside and behind a step, one hand on a hip that fit her pencil skirt with ease. “A wave? Honestly, interpretation has never been my strong suit. Unless we're talking about legal jargon.”

“He was going on about 'staticity' while he did it. Something about its impossibility. I suppose both those things play on the theme, but neither are striking my fancy.”

“Signal loss? I could see it.”

“That's what I said.”

Thea's lips pressed thin, remaining slightly pouty despite her drawn demeanor. “The asymmetry of that corner bothers me, but it's art either way. I'd say it's fine as-is.”

“I'll balance the corners. Just for you.” John gave her a smile, and she took her time turning those lips in like fashion, attention lingering on the painting. “It shouldn't be too hard. Adding spots of darkness up there should do it.” He slipped his watch from his wrist as he spoke, rolling up his sleeves to prepare for the task.

Click, click, as Thea walked back to her desk in the shared office, the wide windows behind her casting her long shadow his way. He watched it slide out of his field of vision along the pale resin floor, continuing to face the canvas propped before him.

“Whatever you do, make it tasteful,” she said. “The journals were rather piqued last year. But that event was sensationalist in and of itself, so I'm inclined to say a little excitement was inevitable.”

He adjusted the tuck of his shirt and slipped on a pair of gloves before grabbing a neatly folded smock off a corner table. “I'm not responsible for the public interpretation of this stuff.” His implements sat upon the table: a brush, a knife, a palette, and an array of paints. Oras used a similar allotment, if one less tidy.

“You're half-responsible,” echoed Thea's plain-spoken reply. “And only more so as his form deteriorates. The harder it is to make it look like it should, the greater your hand in its reception. Not to mention the presentation work. Your presence doesn't exactly dissuade their baser notions.”

“I maintain that my lack of control over pareidolia itself is grounds enough for irresponsibility. But I'll admit I have a . . . presence.” He deliberately struck a posture of poise that affected coquettish irresponsibility as well as any. A sidelong glimpse of Thea caught her stealing a glance, and he un-cocked his hip as he resumed his preparations.

Once things were set, he began the work of turning the mess upon the canvas into art as defined by the fanatics of Oras Coal himself: those attentive followers of his early work that knew his telltale signature by heart, eager for another chapter in that ruined legacy. Would John be counted among them? Undoubtedly. Should he be? His transcendence belied the notion into arrant absurdity.

Sure, beforehand, he fell into the category like any other Coal connoisseur. Personal experience with the artist changed that, though. And the more personal they became, the easier it was to see just how high the bar sat. They lauded his work as ever-avant-garde, subtly imploring upon the eyes of its beholder a connection to the world outside oneself. Or so his critics raved. The apex of that work, to the John who surpassed the bar and could see even higher, was not the stratosphere they said it was. Troposphere, maybe. But art is not something one can trap in a bubble and subsist off the atmosphere of in isolation. Bubbles pop, and fresh air grants breath anew.

That was a lesson Coal taught him. He'd never understood it before his transcendence. But the strata below that bar posed a poor coign of vantage on the matter, and now that he'd seen past it he could glean its meaning with a new perspective. What made art “art” was a quality acquitting broader dynamics than one bubble can boast. From up here, he could play to all their eager strata with the vantage of a Master's Master.

He feathered the brush, not so much limning as eliding definition. The strokes were delicate and deliberate, favoring the corner in need of aesthetic equilibrium by means of congregation therein, a methodical chiaroscuro which Coal was known for best. The technique Oras employed never failed to bear his particular mark, and John had spent long hours at the canvas practicing the very balance it took to do so.

It was a damn shame he was its only extant executor.

The farrago of paint at hand bore hints of that technique, yes, but only to his well-trained eye. And to that eye it was painfully apparent how much it was missing—the finesse once found in Oras' masterpieces was now but a drudging smear of struggle upon his canvas. He supposed degradation was to be expected, though. If the mindless madness wasn't enough alone, the achromatopsia acquired on top of it was what broke the poor painter irreversibly.

It wasn't clear what Oras was envisioning while he put paint to canvas—not by the results, at least. What was notable was that the form it took, or lack thereof, posed a wildly insensate contrast to the work that earned him his relative fame on Satre. The evidence that his loss of color vision rendered his skill with the brush all but dead was the only clear thing to be gleaned. The rambling as he attempted it? Equally absurd.

Not that his art monopolized his renown. To the contrary, he might have never grown to be a professional artist had his employment not garnered him notice beforehand. But Oras had just as well screwed himself over on that front, if not more so. Now John was left to clean up the mess.

The painting eventually leaned away from abstract and toward a hint of description. By his judgment, as the hand behind the brush, it described reparation: a chaos being sewn together into uniform lines. The lines had to amalgamate into something darker and denser, but it delivered the balance Thea remarked upon a lack of, and so the added distinction served to sate the eye twofold. His eye, at least. Surely her's as well. He lowered his brush with a silent respiration, stepping aside with a backward look.

“How about now?”

She cast a belated glance up from a glowing tablet, sparing the artwork a blank review before rising from her desk. Whatever it meant to be visually sated, he searched for it in her expression as she moved in for a closer look. The eyes told him nothing, but the body language read contemplation as she held an elbow in one hand, the second curled back at her shoulder.

“It's good. The piece seems to have some movement from corner to corner, now, not weighing too much on either side. It could even pass for his old stuff.”

“Eh, hardly.” He didn't blame her for the presumption—though he suspected she was just trying to flatter him—given the difference in expertise. “But it's close enough. They'll find the same charm they always find. And you'll get the same price.” As he walked away from the easel, he pulled off his smock and gloves, letting them fall to the floor. He'd been clean enough not to mind it. He then made his way over to a short marble counter hugging the curve of the inner wall, wrapping his naked hand around the neck of a tall bottle of vintage red waiting there.

“Care to join me in celebrating the occasion?” John took the stem of a glass between his fingers, snatching it from the end of the row standing neatly against the wall. With both hands full, he deigned to sink his teeth into the bottle's cork, twisting in squeaky increments until it came loose. When all that filled the quiet was that rubbery pop, he relented to the side-eyed scrutiny that she was wont to drive him to. Pivoting around on his heel, he leaned against the counter, pouring wine into his glass and watching Thea tap at her screens with a lean that eschewed sitting as much as it retained his gaze. He made an expectant noise around the cork, setting the bottle down again to pull it from between his canines. “Any takers?” he asked the stark and lonely room.

“Not today,” she answered at last. Her posture put upright, she tucked the tablet under her arm, making her way toward the far door, click, click. “I'll have the painting tended to after another scan. You should see if he has anything more to say about it in the meantime.”

John swirled the wine in his glass; not to mix it, not to aerate it. Just to swirl it. She walked out, and he turned half his attention to the rocking fluid, trying to tip it in time with her gait. Click, click, swish, swish. She closed the door behind her; it regained its equilibrium, and he took a sip, sucking the residue from his upper lip with an indolent discontent. He rolled the dentally dented cork between his fingers before tamping it back into the bottle, leaving it and the painting behind without a second glance.

Oras was the same as when John left him last. They had brought him food, and it seemed someone made an attempt at cleaning him and his cell, but for all his surroundings differed, the madman himself remained awfully . . . static.

As he stepped up to the window surveying Jove's overcast metropolis, John took another sip of wine, then delicately tugged his sleeves back down along his arms, careful not to spill. His cufflinks flashed with a pallid gleam, their ruby-diamond bevel refracting the city below: a distant network of stochastic action, like hives of intersecting impetus indistinguishable from one another. It could be hard to imagine such a thing coming to any stop. In a photo, maybe; one can render an apparent stillness, yet the world would remain in motion past the picture. There was something to be said for the beauty of stillness, though. In the mind's eye, a moment can stay gripped in an imaginary stasis for the relish of its captor, unchanging no matter which way the earth turns without.

“She said it resembles your old stuff,” John spoke into the silence. He turned a blasé smile toward his drink, indifferent to whether Oras was aware of him. “Though what does she know, eh? She has 'Standing On Triumph' framed in her penthouse, but it was bought with vanity before taste. To her credit, she's accrued some since, but we both know I'm a better judge than her on these things.

“Not that she's wrong, exactly. It's just anyone familiar with your work could tell there was a resemblance. Anyone intimately familiar can tell what a mess you made of it. It'll pass, but at what cost? The last one went for a little under ten grand. Two years ago it was lucky to go for twelve. If that's not a sign of your decline, then what is? Oh, right, the mess itself. Hard to miss that part.

“I guess the bright side is they're not duds yet. Whatever you're doing to them, it's sticking. Then again, she said the results were 'inconclusive'. Any idea why that would be?” He waited for a reply, not deigning to look back, nor wait too long. “You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? No, not even that silver lining can be discerned by your eyes. Well, I gave it my own touch, anyway. It'll serve as a fetching piece somewhere on the island, I'm sure.”

He sipped through a pensive lull boasting a digestive purgatory, where it was unknown whether the words were but sounds in the air to Oras, or if they registered in his haywire head as anything sensible. The prisoner could hear, but did he listen? It was hard to tell sans reaction.

John turned around to face the cell, approaching it with lilting steps. “Does the name 'Staticity' still work? My improvements gave it a new shape, but it's roughly the same au fond.” Oras remained a miserable heap against the wall, head hung low. “I know you're not able to see for yourself, but you never did give me any feedback on that bit. It was your idea, really. What does 'staticity' mean to you, anyway?”

The tangled pile of coiled ink enshrouding his face rose with deliberate slowness, giving preview to a dark eye languishing behind one long curl. It was an indirect stare, empty of even a contrite twinkle. Any situational awareness left to the man seemed haphazard in the best of times; in others, it almost seemed cruel to keep him locked away like this. Almost.

“Is it stopping?” rasped the painter, a nail stained to the bed drawn forth to rake through his unruly beard. “Is this going to be suspended? Would that be . . . static?”

John offered his usual regard. “Does it mean coming to a stop? I guess staticity has no meaning without motion to oppose.”

“Is this even progress?” It sounded as though Oras paid his response no mind. “Have I moved forward? Am I not in suspense here? It's not a damn riddle—I have nowhere to go. What is staticity? A thing of perspective. True staticity is an illusion . . . was I saying that already? Is that why you're asking?” His empty gaze continued to wander, as unbound as his point.

“Yes, it was your spiel while painting. 'Nothing comes to any end,' and all that.”

“Nothing comes to any end.” It was spoken with the weight of clear conviction behind it, those vacant eyes—no, not of vacuity, but a far-sighted castaway—fixed on him until it forced the old twitch into John's brow, then sank back into listlessness.

“I can think of a few things off the top of my head,” murmured John, glass at his lips. He supposed the madman employed a more philosophical colligation toward his point, however, as the mad often do. “What does that have to do with the painting, though?”

What he could see of those eyes flicked across the empty easel. “Staticity . . .” Oras whispered, lips continuing to squirm soundlessly through his torpor.

“It doesn't, does it? You just rambled through the process, same as always. Your inspiration is as screwed up as the rest of your mind, and it's only a thoughtless impulse.” He spoke softly, yes; no acerbity on his tongue past the bored drawl, yet his dispassionate regard sharpened one critical degree. “Far be it from me to look for sense in it anymore. I'd need eyes as ruined as yours to glean something of your old art in that debasement. I can see ghosts of it, if I squint. SOLACE can tell, but it's a computer's vapid datum connecting one gray dot to another. They find those 'golden spots' all over the city—it's nothing special by itself. Yaods wash up by the bucketful every day, rock after useless rock. I'm sure if your paintings still brought in the same audience they'd attract more than an old otiose stone or two. But I guess we can't all get what we wish for, eh? You're stuck with mediocre art, and I'm stuck with the unenviable task of turning its fading glory into tangible results.

“Of course you have nowhere to go—you're a virtual prisoner. Stagnation, staticity; whatever you call it, you're done. I have it on good authority you're in a state of decline. Maybe regression is better than stasis—backwards is a direction, after all. If you're so determined not to come to any end, then drag your sorry brush back to the canvas with the prowess of old, otherwise that once-bright future will continue to wither until your light's snuffed out for good, and all you'll have to show for it is a few fine relics representing a stained legacy and a pool of spilled paint that more than hammers the metaphor home.

“Not even she can figure out what's missing. I know it is—I can see the paucity in the paint—but each piece is its own beast. Bless her stubborn heart, she's trying every test out there, and having new ones researched just for the cause. If anyone can manufacture a miracle, it's her. It sure would help if you made an effort, though.”

John let his jaded castigation abate, aware of Oras' abstracted attention while his own thoughts drifted back along a certain curve that came to mind. “She does her best for you, you know. For both of us. A virtual prisoner . . . and am I any better off? Hard to ask for a finer warden, I guess.” He laughed, the sound echoing through the hall verging on hollow. “Sure, she parades me around on her leash, but only because I have enough wit about myself to keep from biting the hand that feeds me. Can't say the same for you.” His steely gaze bored through the glass, down toward the inmate with a cold, cold focus.

Reacting as if it were a palpable weight, Oras turned up to meet his eyes, the glint of a fractured star caught in those abyssal orbs in the full light. Nothing of it said recognition; there was no semblance of sanity tying the madman to his past. Guilt seemed a nebulous thing to him, mimicked in ignorance, only to let slip through indifferent fingers once the next whisper of madness had his ear ensnared.

“Is whatever went missing from your brush gone for good?” John held his stare steady, a sober lament perhaps met halfway. “Has your signature touch waned completely? Did it meet its end with your muse?”

He searched those eyes incisively for the man he once knew. He'd expected his questions to arouse . . . something in them. A light, or a fire. What he saw was black coal in white ash, cold as his own still pools of blue. He found himself focusing instead on his reflection in the glass, dimly aware of the fact that to Oras, his eyes were just as colorless. The twitch recurred, and he wasn't able to continue facing the cell. He stepped toward the window once again, tossing back the last of his wine.

He couldn't tell who was more troubled by the exchange, Oras looking as lost for answers as he was. It was stress; he'd spent too long on this floor, and his mood was suffering the climatic melancholy of the painter's sequestration. Without a hint as to the inner workings of the process, he figured his welcome was overstayed.

“Maybe next time, eh?” John said, looking out at the gray horizon. A gap in the clouds revealed the faint form of the full moon, a ghost in the afternoon sky. He spoke under his breath, “A cycle of commiseration . . . surely this has an end to come to. Maybe being stuck here really is an illusion.”

He turned a droll smile over his shoulder before heading for the elevator. “If you'll excuse me, I've got a painting to sell. I'm sure people will find the name just pompous enough for the show. Thanks again, old pal.” He raised his empty glass in the cell's direction, steps echoing through the bare hall. “Staticity . . .”

A chapter from my WIP novel that I wrote ahead of itself. More art of the characters can be found on my deviantart page (and other characters here, too.)

#character art #writing #scifi #deviantart #digital art #fantasy #story #excerpt

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