But Is It Art?

by Benway

Riding around in GP's car, soaring above the clouds in his balloon, zooming through the sky in his aeroplane or diving under the water in Hammy's diving bell, there's never a dull moment as each story unfolds.

The stories are highly entertaining, non-violent, and full of fun, music, and song. They show that the animals are concerned with the environment and have a healthy respect for the world around them and for each other.

Hammy proves you can have a lot of fun without hitting anybody!

from the Hammy the Hamster website

I was tired and ill-I stood looking out across the fjord-the
sun was setting-the clouds were coloured red-like blood-I
felt as though a scream went through nature-I thought I
heard a scream-I painted this picture-painted the clouds
like real blood. The colours were screaming.

        Edvard Munch describing the genesis
        of his painting, The Scream [1893]

She sits in a red leather overstuffed chair. It's old, and the leather has split near some of the seams. It's the sort of chair that no-one would put in a public place anymore. Nonetheless, it is very comfortable.

The chair is in a very large room. It is at Cornell University. She knows this because there is a huge seal mounted on the wall in front of her. Around the seal is a band of lettering. It has written upon it:

        Cornell University: Founded by Joseph Cornell, 1903.

She is puzzled by this, as she is sure that Cornell's first name was something out of the Torah, and that the university was founded in the 19th century.

The room may be part of a student centre, even though she's not all that sure that the people around her are students. The ones sitting in the other red armchairs along the walls look to be feeling the same distress that she is. It's a feeling that something isn't quite right, that something's not like it used to be. She looks out a window but sees no airplanes falling out of the sky, so she knows that she's not dreaming.

She looks to her right. There's a large group of ballroom dancers there, circling to Strauss. The couples strike her as slightly unusual, as they are all pairs of men who seem to be very musical. Suddenly, the band ups the tempo and starts into a tango. The crowd splits apart, revealing a single couple who look suspiciously like Drake and Lebeau. Drake has the rose between his teeth. She looks away so as not to laugh. They are her friends, after all.

On her left, it is much quieter. There is a dais there with a tall stool. The stool is surrounded by loudspeakers. There is a broadcast-quality videocamera pointed at the stool, which sits in a pool of light. A figure walks up to the chair. A woman, maybe 16, maybe 32, wearing a t-shirt and jeans and a blue print scarf wrapped around her hair.

"Is it OK?" says the woman, nervous-seeming.

"Please, sit down," says the androgynous, electronically modulated voice of God from THX 1138. "Are you hurt?"

"Yes," says the woman.

"Do you seek comfort?" asks the voice.

"Yes," says the woman.

"Then speak," says the voice.

"Well," says the woman. "My hamster. His name's Hammy. Kind of stupid, but I really liked that show. Anyways, I was playing with Hammy, and pretending he was Superman, flying around, and he kind of crapped in my hand and I went Ew and I kind of dropped him and he hit the metal frame of my bed. I know that because it went clang, kind of. So, I find Hammy on the floor and he's fallen asleep, so I put him back in his cage and go to work and when I came back there was this really bad smell because I don't have air conditioning. I tried to flush him, but he got stuck in the bend and I can't get him out and now I can't use the toilet because I'll have to tell the super all about it."

The woman is weeping now, in real distress. Voices come from the speakers. You poor thing. I feel for you. Exactly the same thing happened to me. The voices are soothing, the voices of women. A male voice breaks in, suggesting that she get her act together since this is nothing compared to the time that his beloved mother and father died. He had not shed a tear for them, as there was life to get on with. There is an awkward silence.

"It wasn't all bad," says the woman. "I had a stat test that afternoon, so I went to the prof, told him my Grandma had died, and then thought of Hammy and got all upset. He got all upset and told me how his Grandma died and told me it wouldn't count."

Cries of joy erupt from the loudspeakers. You go girl! Wahoo! I always hated statistics! The woman now descends from the stool and exits the room, grinning.

She stares after the woman in wonder, then turns back to the dancers. The music is lower now, more Caribbean. The one who looks like Drake is limboing down, cheered on by the surrounding men, who on second glance all appear to women dressed in tuxedos with greased-back hair in the finest Weimar-era tradition. The one who looks like Remy is definitely a man. His trousers are down around his ankles, and no man besides Remy Lebeau is that small when erect.

She decides that it is all much too disturbing, and goes to look for the Art. She has to cross the room to do that. She looks up at the great seal on the wall. In the centre is the MGM lion, eyeing her hungrily. It roars, a sound that sounds surprisingly like one of Logan's more epic belches. She passes through the glass door of the gallery which announces that she is entering the Singer Collection.

In the entry hall to the gallery, there is a single large picture, taking up an entire wall. It is of a domestic scene. There are two cars stopped in front of a suburban house. A black man with a headscarf and a shirt buttoned only at the neck is taking garbage bags full of clothing and toys from the side door of the house and is placing them at the curb. An older black man in a baseball cap and work shirt looks on, sadly, from the porch of the house. In one of the cars, a black woman with a beehive hairdo glares at them angrily, while a pensive friend looks on from the passenger seat. In the second car, an SUV, an older black woman in a bright green business suit is simultaneously talking into a celphone and addressing the younger woman in the car. In between the cars and the house, a white cyclist passes, oblivious. It is all too disturbing, and she wonders somehow, given the house, if they didn't print the negative. She feels a bit guilty, having had that thought. She looks at the caption. It says:

        Corner of Lewisdale & Chapman,
        Prince Georges County MD,
        18h37, May 18 2000

It's just a little too real. It's not what she needs the art for. She ventures further in.

The first room isn't what she needs, either. The walls are bleached oak, white noise against the shrieking canvases screwed to them. Most seem to be Bacon, who was always more up Pete's alley. On the floor is Greek letter pi made from Springer-Grundlehren-sized lumps of accumulated ear wax. The rancid smell reminds her of a bad movie about mathematicians made by someone who'd never been one, so she heads into the next room.

The second room is older, its walls 40-year-old yellowing masonite gamely attempting to look something like wood. The pictures on the wall are all pop art, dated from the moment they were made, whose finest points can only be appreciated when stoned on the finest Turkish hashish. In the centre of the room is a ceramic urinal with an imprint of Mick Jagger's lips in purple lipstick on the rim made by an artist who knew nothing of chess. In a temper, she heads into the third gallery.

The walls here are brown, and the paint is peeling. The art here looks like it spent a long time near the window at the back of a garage with a leaky roof. It is so simple, so crude, from a time when the media was so primitive that there had to be imagination. She is a child of a more advanced age and has no time for this, so she enters the corridor to which an arrow points her. It is a long corridor, and very narrow. If she were not so small, she would have had to turn sideways. There is a 90-degree turn that does not lead into another room, but into another even narrower corridor. There is another stool there, with a small hand-written sign on it. Sit here, it says. She walks towards it, unable to help herself. She takes the note off the seat and sits on it.

Before her, where the had been wall, a curtain is whipped away to reveal a giant man upside down. At that moment, the walls come together, crushing her flat. There is no pain, she does not die. She feels reduced to something less, an essence in clear lines. Although she cannot move her eyes to see, she knows that she is wearing navy tights and her old black leather jacket and that she is 16 again. She knows that she is smiling the smile that makes people like her, at least at first. She remembers that Logan once told her that a smile for a stranger is a natural survival reflex. She has no choice, so stares through the glass at the giant in front of her.

It's dark, so she doesn't quite make everything out. It's either very large, or she's very small. The giant is non-descript, but for his size. If he were to vanish, she would not recall a single distinguishing feature. She watches a giant hand place an hourglass almost as tall as she is up somewhere above her. Another hand approaches, bearing a huge hammer and giant spikes. The hammer swings up into the darkness. The earth moves, it shakes, it jars. It happens four times. When it's done, she can barely think. When her head clears, she looks up and sees an hourglass hanging from the sky at one side. Two giant hands appear and the world turns right side up. The sand starts to fall in the hourglass. A man stands back, grinning. His face is a picture of pure happiness that no other soul ever sees. She knows this. A hand approaches bearing giant sheet of sandpaper. There is a sound of an avalanche, then all is still.

"Not ready yet," says the man.

He picks her up. She sees a workbench swing by below. She sees books rescued from dumpsters against one wall, old boxes filled with ancient maps and newspapers beneath. The shelf comes into view. A dozen wooden boxes sit on it, lined up like soldiers. There is a place for her there. She wants to scream, to beg to be free, to see the sun. The box slides into place. There is no light. Grinning helplessly in the darkness, she knows that she is trapped, perhaps forever, in the Utopia of another.

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