Five Million Dollars

I did something terrible the other day. I needed to remember who I am, what I do. Why I do anything at all.

So I turned on my computer, cranked those little white speakers up and played Debussy. No low end, no soul, just plinking keys and soluble moods shattering like paint-filled water balloons. As that began to move through the room I turned on the surround system, connected my iPod. Found some experimental electronic music; Autechre. The first song sounded like the construction of an apartment complex in space, all cold austerity and mechanical articulation. The next track could have been brain surgery, maybe car repair in the rain, even less rhythmic but somehow organic. And oddly wet.

Then I turned on the TV, and hit 100 on the remote, a channel we don’t get.

Static.

All of it was building in the room. Tension. I lit a cigar just for effect. To fill the space with vapors. Not to smoke so much as to see the invisible currents of air colliding around the space. I turned off the lights so the smoke would be illuminated by the meaningless snow.

Bluish waves of French Impressionism undulated sensually but were severed by the relentless electronic pulsing of soulless, computer generated noise. The snowy static underscoring the meaninglessness of it all. White noise on white noise on white noise, embodied in smoke.

I poured a scotch, mainly to burn my throat, remind me that I’m alive. I threw my head back, emptied the glass and reached for the bottle. I threw my head back when I drank from the bottle, too. Once my head lightened up I walked around the room and reveled in the chaotic nonsense of it all. I was the only thing that made sense in the entire place,

It was all stupid. It was shit. It was modern art in all its nonsensical worthlessness. That’s what I think of modern art. The subversive for the shock value type of tripe that supposedly wows art critics these days.

Modern art is shit. It’s smoke filling a ridiculous vacuum. It’s noise pretending it has something to say about music. It’s pissing into the wind and smiling like you’re doing something original. It’s vomiting on history then putting it under glass so everyone can see how novel you think you are. There are those who would pay good money for something like that, to make them feel superior when they tell others how much their newly acquired puddle of vomit cost. They’ll adjust their track lighting to get the angle just right, with a dramatic little play of shadow. It’s the first thing you’ll see upon entering the atrium, across from their Monet copy, because they think it creates a really original sort of irony.

But you know what? I’d pay five million dollars for a good steak. I’d eat the entire thing alongside a loaded baked potato, then smoke a cigar and drink a bottle of whiskey. I’d listen to Debussy and Autechre and I’d even put that TV on static. I’d do anything that doesn’t make sense, make any difference at all, and I would do this because I know I could sell it to someone else in less than a week by calling it art. It doesn’t matter what end it would come out. One way or another, it’d be one of a kind. And after that initial five million dollar investment, Hell, I’d probably make money on the deal.

Anthony David Jacques – Excretions – Series I – Summer 2010 – Signed and numbered.

Of course I’d never do anything of the sort.

Instead, I write. Not because I want to make shit and dupe the masses into calling it gold. But because art matters. Words matter. Sunsets and insects and bench seats and ocean breezes matter. I write because so many people just string words together. They vomit trite sentences and vapid platitudes into their word processors, let spell checker catch whatever mistakes it’s programmed to notice and let everything else slide because they don’t even care enough about their words, their medium, to get it right. They don’t even know.

That’s why I write. Maybe it’s still shit in the end, in the long run, but at least I’m trying to make it something better. Maybe it won’t be worth a damn in twenty years, but at least I’m trying to separate myself from the minions of dullards out there who think that just because their dog died or their wife got breast cancer, that means they have a story to tell.

I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t make a difference. Maybe nothing I say matters. But I don’t get paid for this. I’m just trying to do something pure.

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© Anthony David Jacques MMX