BRONZE IS NOT A METAL!

It was a hotel building sort of, large and square, the dissimilarities between hotels and hospital buildings is insignificant, pack the greatest amount of beds in the most sterile environment; charge as much as possible to reach ninety percent plus occupancy, and keep out those that can’t afford to pay. The building I was in sort of reflected that ambience only more so, to be very frank I have never seen the outside of the building, I have a nice room, a very but I mean very comfortable bed, better than a feathered bed, I have never truly slept on a feathered bed but mine is better than that. The art in my room is trite, a boat house of originality, pastel cubism as expressed by a non follower of the art, a porcelain dog that was chlorine white. I don’t even know what kind of a dog it was, I always had mutts, but somehow whenever they make porcelain animals they have to be the kind that you have to get expensive papers to own them in real life. I once had a friend that operated a forgery ring that sold fake papers to owners that had irrecoverably lost them or simply wanted their, almost not a mutt, dogs to have some dignified title. Racism in most cultures is best expressed in titled dog owners. It is sort of the baby soft side of racism. But titled dog owners also represent the mature side of genetics engineering. Dog breeders and their customers have created such an artificial blood line that they do not have dogs that are real, rather they have dogs that are show dogs. Show dogs are dogs that nature wouldn’t bear, their appearance is noted by characteristics that humans prefer as opposed to characteristics that dogs, evolution or nature would prefer.

As I was saying I had one of these engineered porcelain dogs that was probably bought at an art fair by an artistic soul that thought, that because there was an art fair, there was art in it. Art fairs being those gatherings of community artists and artisans, I think there is a difference between artists and artisans, so I use them as separate terms if they are. This is where the local creative talent is put to good uses and they produce generally what is considered art by an aesthetically impoverish populace. The objective of these art fairs appears to be to imitate, as much as possible, the goings of the art world. So it is not uncommon to find a piece of art that is equally representative of a piece of art at the museum of modern art, or impressionist paintings or whatever art has been accepted by the poor misunderstood artist as original and replicable. When I speak of these art festivals, I actually speak with a learned tongue. I don’t know much about cockroaches, though I know for a fact that a cockroach can live for three days with its head chopped off, and get this it does not die of pain; I am not sure that roaches have the capacity to feel pain, I certainly can feel pain, fact is I have had many pain-deaths, and by a pain-death I don’t mean a long excruciating torture session at the arms of the Grand Inquisitor, or say being mangled to death, rather I mean a pain-death where the heart dies; where you feel that your entire being has died and that you are still alive, so you have no choice but to reconstruct another character self of heart and mind that can sustain you until you do die. A mother losing her child experiences a pain-death, a boy losing his father experiences a pain-death, but a cockroach after three days of being without a head does not die of pain or a pain-death instead it starves to death!

But as I tell you that I speak with a learned tongue when it comes to the subject of art I don’t mean that I am a connoisseur of art nor an art critic; I could say something nasty about art critics but it is gentlemanly to avoid sitting ducks; but I know art and art fairs from personal experience. In all of my lives, the ones that I lived and died, and including this one which I haven’t yet died in, there is even a chance that I won’t die in this one but that is another calculation that we won’t try to make here, but in all those lives I have been to three art fairs. Enough to make an expert out of anyone. All art fairs have two lives in their particular existence; the aesthetically possible and the aesthetically impossible. When a local group of artists, of any town, feels underrepresented in the larger spectrum of the art cosmocosm, they form a little community support group that convinces the local town major to huddle the city council so as to designate a date and place for an Art Festival; up until this very point all art fairs are aesthetically possible, beyond this point they are aesthetically impossible. Of course the participating artists at this point begin making a meager living from the Art Festival so it becomes impossible to convince them that they are being aesthetically impracticable. When an art festival reaches aesthetic impracticality they have to acquire sponsors and to maintain and increase demand, they have to source artists from other towns to feed their local art hungry public, plus the growing number of tourists, which despite being tourists or maybe because of it, are somehow attracted to art expositions. They all attend these so that they can decorate their houses with art that is cheap enough, but yet may be famous someday. Guests artists from all over the country or world fly in, and very soon the art booth is reserved years in advanced, voiding fresh local talent from ripening in, and before you know it all the pottery in the world and all the water and oil paintings, begin to appear similar because the booth globe trotting artists are flying everywhere to meet the demand for their art services. You can travel to Quito Ecuador to pick up some local wool blankets or you can go to your local art festival. It is now a problem to compete with xenophobic neighbors that have never traveled abroad and yet still posses the same collection as the one that you collected in Africa and Asia. You may, if you wish, blame the easing of international restrictions on tariffs for the import and export of art; but the harsh reality is that in this particular category of art, governments have already banned the import or export of art that is real art, so what you get in your living room is really not Italy’s greatest treasures. While price and governments can keep you away from what might be real art, the truth is that art festivals have increasingly grown another objection, that is they have grown expensive. This is the problem with all aesthetically impossible art, is that it is also expensive! The flowering virtuous product of an affordable class of artists, that have become traders in their craft are possibly artists. What most art festival connoisseur consumers feel is art of course is not art! Fortunately they are only punishing themselves, art festival are a sort of sensitivity quotient, in other words when you put two insensitive things together you get an art festival. I had an art festival in my room. I didn’t decorate my room, it had been furnished when I moved in, and I had never seen the exterior of the building though one can construct the externals of a building by feeling its insides, and to be truthful I had never marched beyond my room, I was self contained, I had a shower, never did have the patience for grimy baths. A shower I had, and I had a heater and an air conditioner, but out of my window I did not have three seasons, no severe rain, nor snow, and I don’t ever remember turning anything on or off, maybe it was automatically climatized, regardless I was worry free, which I really was worry free, but you can see how an architect might design the internals of my room much the same as the externals so my not having seen them did not impede my perceiving the exterior, something about the architect, a rather dull unimaginative person from my angle, and something about the inhabitants of the building, which were obviously system people, this was a system owned and operated building.

There was a light gray phone on my night table, I had never used it to call anyone. There was nothing in the room to produce music except my ears, and I had no television, I did not seem to miss these things though at some primitive level I was aware of their existence; maybe a little music would have been good, but I am not even sure about that. Food was provided to me, very bland food, rice, poorly cooked, nothing like Chinese rice, corn yellowed swimming in a sea of sugar, a piece of bread equal to a piece of bread only in looks, much like a certified dog isn’t a dog, and then a piece of meat that tasted refrigerated cold and dank; you walk the earth and cry to yourself when you eat like that, but I did not care about food, it was not something I remembered from a French or Italian perspective, more like a British subject, food is something you eat to stay alive, you can have culture without a cuisine. I didn’t really know if England had culture as much as it had cultures, again I was in this room, this room, that is where I was, maybe you should not take anything I say seriously. And then again maybe I am in this room because I have something serious to say and you are out there because….

Before I continue telling you about my existence in this room, I must tell you about an artist that I met at an art festival. He had opened his house for the art fair, a very common practice, uncommon here in that the artists would welcome you into their personal museum like homes. I was rather fascinated with this artistic field trip, my friend Monica charted out the course, based on our artistic desires; I made it a point to avoid pottery, its just never been done like the Egyptians did it; but we still went to a few of those. I would tell you about the pottery process because these artisans are technicians, and what they do, spin and bake and color, bake again, that sort of thing, you can make a descent living doing; unfortunately, except for one creative fellow that had a wild peacock living in the area near the baking oven, have to ponder how this potter fellow could resist not throwing the obviously arrogant peacock into the oven, except for that I don’t remember any of how or why anyone would want to work with clay. But what was most interesting about this, visiting of artiste’s homes, is that I was expecting to meet starving artists in dingy homes that would be happy to take twenty dollars from me as the highest payment for their pottery; but instead they all lived in beautiful houses, much better than my own, and not only were they not starving but they were doing craftily very well. The pot that I thought ought be worth twenty dollars and fifteen with my, art admirer discount, was actually two-hundred and twenty-five dollars, certainly forget even asking for a deal, the price was baked on, if I didn’t buy it somebody else surely would.

But my favorite horror house artist on the trip was one belonging to a sculptor who I must hesitantly agree did indeed impress me with only one of his bronze sculpted pieces, and this was the one piece not for sale. He was more of an engineer than an artist, so all of his sculptures were massive, you would need cranes and trucks and more slaves than it took to build the pyramids in order to acquire and secure anything of his. When we first arrived at the retired barn house, we were assaulted by a continuous furnace of riveting operatic music; then this hefty jolly graying character with an incessantly blushing face, rambunctiously steps out to greet us. The first words out of his skinny lips, “Alright who knows which opera that is?” set up for the kill we were sure prey, Monica didn’t motion a reply, I don’t know anything about Opera, I like words that start with the letter O, Ojos, Ohm, Olga, Octagon, but I don’t like Opera. I am told it is the most expensive art form in the world, you don’t write Operas because you are a good story teller you write Operas because you know how to retell the same old story over and over again in just such a flagrantly overdosed of cochina opulence that the who’s who of all societies will fly and drive and overcome all personal obstacles to be enchanted by your version 1098.002 of Carmen. There are, as you must imagine, impossible operas and possible operas. I have very good friends that love Opera and have even gotten to stand on stage in custom, I have friends that have contributed more to Opera than you and I will ever make in our life times, out of respect for their love of this overly masticated art form I shall refrain from further comment.

Enough about art festivals I was telling you that I could not guess the name of the tedious Operatic screeching, I say guess because back in those days, and they are long gone, back in those days whenever I did not know something I took a wild guess and much to my amazement, I was often either right or the only one to have guessed right. There is a difference between being right and guessing right, and it is not to my advantage to explain it now. So Dr. Opera Lover lances the correct answer, thus substantially impressing himself and what is the understanding of operatic drama without the appreciation of fermented mashed grapes; so he, apologetically, offers us some cheap wine; ah back then that was the secret to my heart, wine, cheap or rich I loved it all. I could wine and drive at the same time, I could talk for endless hours into the night with only wine by my side, wine was my perpetual fuel, Dr. Opera hit a chord. We accepted his kind offer. The wine we were offered was cheap. We get beyond the opera and wine, and are then able to begin our review of Dr. Opera’s monolithic sculptures.

Again he was more of an engineer, we are thus assaulted not by heavenly magical sculptures but rather menacing sculptures done in bronze disfigured with tubing and cement and steel cabling and iron spikes and barbed-wire. Just as breathlessly nauseating as it sounds. He was a masculine sculptor, everything was solid and big and a brutal attack on humanity, the cosmic, a sort of harsh implosion of all substance. It either looked like a weapon or something that could chisel-cut your heart out; or something that could equally quarter divide you into four body parts traveling undesirable directions. The bronze, a beautiful and gorgeous and adorable metal by any measure, a metal that does not require molding to be a sculpture, a metal that lingers and rings the soul of the universe, this very bronze was here twisted and molded in just such a spectacularly contrived and coerced manner that it looked piercingly ugly. He had managed an artistic defeat of Bronze! It was to this horror that my eyes fell victim, to the twisted torture of Bronze, moribund frozen in such hideous insular endeavors that my soul was propelled from this place with insurmountable energy; I cringed, fisting my soul, wailing coils within, all the while maintaining congruent ambient appearances. There was enough spectacle here to keep the historians of human atrocities occupied for centuries. Dr. Opera had mangled and paralyzed the most gorgeous metal in the universe, I was spinning mindlessly inside of myself, bathing untamed furies, arduously keeping myself together hearing bloodied sentences such as “…this is how I force this shape into being..” or graphic this one, “…much like the virtues found in artillery equipment you can see the same principles subscribed to here…” and, “functions define the form and harmonizes….” Followed by the fatal pseudo-philosophical stance, “….the appendages of the metal have been harnessed so that the you can see the fundamental art of measure, the art of trajectory, the art…” The art was the art of mutilation and destruction. Call it the Hitler collection. We had managed to avoid Hitler entering his spectacle of horrors into the realm of art, kept instead in the natural horror found in military and political enterprises; but Dr. Opera had gotten through the broken bottles of glass cemented upside down on our souls as our only defense against the sinful wickedness of bondage horror.

And then as I was getting another glass of wine, tumultuously urging the alcohol to seduce me while overtly yet covertly urging that we retreat from this museum of horrors, when I stumbled into this most beautiful and seductive piece that was stupefyingly magnificent, simply magnificent, and my mind went whacked! My soul could not comprehend how this piece of spiritual bounty could be here, in this very place, before me, part of me wanted to weep aloud, part of me wanted to kneel in worship, part of me just wanted to perish everything else, and in violent rage destroy it all! I walked up to this phenomenal monument, and I touched it and I sangre christened it. Bronze on bronze on bronze, about eight feet tall, a wealth of aesthetic dedications composing a sort of guardian essence which I could not discern as related to anything here. Much soul so much soul I had never seen in anything or anyone, even god does not have this much soul! I commenced to babble and compose multiple poetic stances, washing my eyes in the dark tarnished golden black pearl hues, the emotions of these Centurian begun to touch me and caress me and I was trying to deduce for my own discomfort how it was that Dr. Opera could have sculpted this masterpiece? Asked the question he responded: “It is my guardian.” Now I was really more confused, this Bronze on bronze of bronze magnificence did seem like a supra guardian entity, a guardian angel, mind you it did not have the figure of an angel or anything remotely like a person, it was a division of soul and a composition of souls, a sort of grand canyon, reaching extremeness of high and low intensity while simmering a boisterous menace that was soothing to the observer, eight feet tall, no more in varying dimensions than three feet wide and two and a half deep, rounded in parts, gently sharp in others, there were some consistencies, but only if you measure consistency under a dimensional five square inches, once your eyes traveled outside of those five square inches you were in alien territory and if your eyes tried to make the trip back to the previous five square inches the previous conception of that squared area was all gone and once again you would need your cartographic mind to step up the mapping process. Was this a bronze sarcophagus for many dead souls that seemed to inhabit it like a bee hive? Souls from where? Each square five inches a soul chamber for each, and all were so beautifully distinct and yet continual of constitution?

It was while painfully infiltrating with my eyes the sculptor, and triangulating with his scattered spasmodic creations then circling back to Centurian that lucidity gave me a stroke, neurons popped in my head, like electrical wires blasting surrender to their lightning bolt, my amygdala froze me like a deer locks in place when faced with up and coming headlights from a car; play dead and they will just keep going, they do keep going; clash! My neurons were triggering fuses that were set to disconnect should I over extenuate my brain, and while in this stasis of mental paralysis I was able to feel with my gut the concerning triangulation. Dr. Opera had indeed tortured the spirit out of all those bronze boulders; the Bronze had suffered a pain-death here in his torture chamber, playing the opera so loud so as to drown the spiritual agonies cried by all these Bronzes in their insufferable carnage; he had however gradually sculpted over the many years, Centurian. Naming it his personal guardian, so much he felt that this was the case that he refused to sell it, even though I insisted multiple times despite of the exorbitant and unknown, to me, value of bronze; and aside from my typical state of being jobless and broke; he refused to even consider a price for what he called his, “Protector..” I squeezed my nervous fingers dragon’s blood while explaining to him that I was in love with this monumental piece, I noted what an outstanding artist he was for sculpting Centurian; and while his vanity rose with ease to the kiss my ass podium, he persisted in denying me any possibility of possessing Centurian. But the triangulation spoke to me clearly, every soul from the bronze that had been tortured into an arsenic and petrified existence, had quietly migrated and sculpted itself, individually, into Centurian, Dr. Opera had not a thing to do with it; the spirit of Bronze from all the petrified tortured bronzes had sculpted itself, into every chambered squared five inch density of Centurian. Indeed he had been working upon Centurian all of his life, slowly and magnificently through the many Bronzes divined guidance, unknowingly, while endeavoring for his presumed safety, as projected by the divine bronze, so as to save every bronze soul from perdition in those horrid hands. And each aggregate soul grafting itself into the enigmatic magnificence of Centurian, of the Angel, of their bronze Guardian Angel.

A sadist Dr. Opera had no concept of pain, sadist don’t comprehend pain, they don’t truly feel it, which is why they pursue it with such vigor and adoration, what you can not have, what you can not really feel; in so being the Doctor had caused such excruciating dragon pain to the bronze, that this very bronze carved an escape sanctuary for itself. Centurian was where all the bronze had gone in refuge. Using the hands that bronze painfully understood too well, the bronze had sculpted itself a sacred palace.

It was when my amygdala released me back into the torture chamber that I understood why I had been blindly guided to this repulsive menace. I climbed quickly into myself, I went and grabbed the very gas flame thrower that had been used against my bronze, and with flaming torch infested hands I caught Dr. Opera with that kind of fiery phenomena which all drama lovers love; carnally gauzed with my blue spirited flame he rushed away from me, and tellingly not towards Centurian; propelled was he by more fears than I felt possible. I was limited in my liberating reach by a straining red hose, but was able to increase the breathing nozzle fire length by turning a simple valve to maximum, able thus to scorch his flesh where his amygdala felt compelled to freeze him from the global shock, and might I fade away if he played dead; but I was empowered by the agonies of bronze, he could never be so silent and dead that I might not hear such wailing; where upon I danced like a good Indian dancing for rain only spewing out more and more glorious fire. My eyes vivid blue from the gas flame, ah the smell of scorching human flesh, I had felt that smell before in other lives, I didn’t like it then but now I was excited smelling roasted skin, very excited. Dr. Opera became so fusible that he melted away from all his excitement. All that was left of him, that is after I was emptied of gas, was not more than his charcoal soul, I leaned my head to kiss my Centurian friend, who had led me to rescue all of these souls under his guardian essence; I was smiling like a princess by the lake seeing her lover blossom on a gorgeous spring day.

Monica a once dear friend, one that I had admired with all heart, especially because she was private with her expression of emotions, only to unleash them with her boisterously artistic choice of socks, socks intended to sabotage the system with their blistering brightness or arrogant cuteness, this very Dark Queen of the sock realm, did me very wrong. Monica did not halt to question why I was rescuing these bronze souls; instead she had used her cellular phone to call every police unit in the county that had a license to carry a weapon made of iron and not of bronze, for bronze would never shoot its hero. The blind authorities of course thought I was a nut case, I can’t imagine that the picture of me hugging Centurian while engorging smiles would inspire them to understand what actually took place. A SWAT team sniper, loaded a rifle with a tranquilizer used on lions and tigers and bears and shot me! And a lot of me has been sleeping since that tranquilizer shot splattered in me. You just don’t ever really wake up from that.

Then… what I was I telling you, oh about my room, yea it was a nice room, sort of my award for rescuing all that bronze, everything is simply taken care of for me.

Only just the other day, I was, as was my custom, sleeping quietly, when banging sounds were coming from outside my window. Amygdala paralyzed me with fear on the bed again and then promptly released me. Perhaps Amygdala had memorized that I know very well how to handle myself in stressful situations and indeed released control of my physical anatomy back to me. At which point I got up, wearing my maroon and white pin stripped pajamas, I still felt it necessary to put on my checkered blue and white robe, and went pulled the chord to draw the curtain, oh the sight I caught was of such disproportional grievous horror that my amygdala again grabbed control of my body functions; I tried to fight her but she wouldn’t release me, so I stood there helplessly watching as Dr. Opera, now bold in the head was smashing his cranium right into my window, breaking it with his skull. I was not aware, and apparently neither was he, that for my own security, and maybe more his, my window was not only bullet proof but also crash resistant, and so Dr. Opera kept banging his head uselessly cutting himself up. It was then that it occurred to me that that wasn’t Dr. Opera because I had after all melted him away with that gas gun. My Amygdala, always quick to spy my thoughts, released me again so that I could move, and I did what any sane person would do, I dove into the bed reached for the phone; only there was no tone, and then to my horror there weren’t any number keys to punch! The phone was not a real phone, I hanged up mad! And passed out from pure fury!

Strangely, the following day the curtains were closed; no matter, my breakfast arrived on schedule, I ate my scrambled eggs and an English muffin, I have always loved English muffins they are very comforting. After finishing my decaffeinated coffee, I casually pulled the curtains to see below a severely cracked window smeared with blood. I decided to sleep the rest of the day, dreaming with my truth that Bronze is not a metal.