Will Chancellor - A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall

— Hey! No no no. Take a good look at the screen.

A man in a hood balanced on a cardboard box. Rigid woven plastic rose to a sharp fin. A snarl of exposed wires ran from the ceiling to the fingers of his outstretched arms. A tasseled blanket around his shoulders looked like a cut-up prayer shawl. The scene was violently overstaged, offered up to the world with the admission Hey, you’re all behind the hood . Owen chewed his cheek.

— Where is this from?

— Your prison. In Iraq.

— I’m Canadian.

— Don’t lie to my face, man. I saw your passport.

— That’s… that’s just plain fucking crazy. I’m sorry. But you think I voted for these guys? You think anybody you’ll ever see at a hostel in Berlin voted for these guys?

Owen walked away, positive that the man behind the desk was gesturing for him to fuck off.

— Do you want me to leave this door open?

— I want you to leave, but it’s not my hostel.

Owen passed four newsstands on his way to the Winerei. It’s a raw morning when the all-caps headline of every paper reads the same thing: FOLTER! He didn’t need to know what the word meant because from here on out, the word meant that .

A handful of morning coffee regulars at the Winerei would confront him, since they had already asked him to defend familiar evils like the dropping of bombs. By eleven, the two knitters and the flirtatious Brit who always sat at the round table with the Tiffany lamp had accused Owen of perpetuating the fraternal mentality that would allow these events to transpire. At five, the co-owner unwound his conspiracy theory of horrors: What must the CIA be hiding if they allowed this picture to leak?

That left pinball with Kurt Wagener and his sidekick, the two flippers who would bat Owen into the light show and then watch him roll into the drain. They would wait for the evening crush to gather before pulling the plunger.

Sure enough, the artist and his friend showed at nine. Owen had been apologizing all day. He fretted the cover of his passport until the gold-foil letters disappeared into the navy field. Apologies only. He was ready for Kurt. The artist rolled for Owen’s chair with two firm strokes of the push ring. He unstoppered a bottle of red with his teeth and filled Owen’s glass before taking a swig.

— Today couldn’t have been an easy day to be American. You’re fine?

— I’m not the one being tortured.

— Look, I understand what it means to suddenly lose degrees of freedom you previously took for granted. I understand what it means to be attacked. Unfortunately, in my case, it was a literal attack that put me in this chair.

Kurt and companion waited for Owen to respond. Kurt put the bottle back between his legs, locked the brakes, and shook Owen’s hand with his cut-fingered gloves.

— Kurt Wagener. This is Hal. And tonight we’ve got reason to celebrate.

Owen looked at the wine as if it might be drugged.

— What’re we drinking to?

Kurt raised the bottle and toasted loud:

— To another dashing American. Now the neighborhood has someone else to vilify.

— I assumed you guys were German.

— I’m Swiss, but I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. Hal’s Swedish.

— With a student visa that expired four years ago, but don’t tell anybody.

At arm’s length, Kurt poured the last drops of the bottle into his mouth. He looked around as if he might throw it, but settled with holding it aloft. After a minute, Hal replaced the bottle and then helped himself to a seat at Owen’s side. Owen glanced at the blue-green scribbles on Hal’s arms and the one professional tattoo of a tarot card: THE TOWER. A yellow lightning bolt struck the top of the inked-in tower, setting it ablaze and throwing two figures forward toward the ground.

— We saw you in the park yesterday.

— I go there in the mornings to write.

— You attract attention. Have you ever acted?

Owen studied the speaker. Eyes like faded denim, uneven and almost yellow in places. When Owen looked closer, he saw an erosion in Kurt’s eyes that suggested he had witnessed some horrible things and caused a few more. He wore his hair shaved at the sides and long on top, as did Hal. Hal looked up from the cigarette he was rolling on Owen’s father’s Loeb edition Odyssey , vol. I.

— Still reading that? You’d probably get more girls if it was in German.

— I read the verso. The Greek.

— What?

Kurt answered for Owen:

— He means he doesn’t borrow his opinions.

— My father’s sort of Greek.

— Americans are all “sort of” something, Hal muttered.

Owen thought of explaining that were it not for his mother’s intervention, he would have been named for a dictionary: Liddell Scott Burr. A moment’s hesitation, and Hal was up trailing a girl out the front door. Kurt rolled closer, until his face was inches from Owen’s.

— Hal pretends he’s an asshole sometimes.

Owen remembered their first encounter. The word stung.

— What else does he do?

Kurt pinched his nose a few times, sniffed.

— What does he do? Why divide who you are from what you do? That’s an American schizophrenia that’ll go away if you live in Berlin long enough. Berliners define themselves with verbs, not nouns. Hal plays music, but he’s not a musician. He throws parties, but he’s not a promoter. He takes pictures, but he’s not a photographer. Well, he would say he’s a photographer, but his real contribution is his presence, you know.

— He acts, Owen said.

— That’s closer to the truth. So who are you, Owen? Why are you in Berlin? What do you want to accomplish?

Owen finished his glass of wine, giving Kurt time to ask another question.

— Are you an artist?

— Yes. Well, I’m trying to be.

— Perfect. I’m looking for an outsider artist to collaborate with.

— What’s an outsider artist?

— In Berlin, anyone who asks that question!

Kurt laughed hard at his own joke and looked around for someone who might have heard it. Not finding anyone to connect with, he continued,

— A young outsider artist is someone who doesn’t have connections. If we’re talking about someone over forty, “outsider artist” is just a euphemism for “crazy person.” And you can’t really collaborate with those guys. They’ll bite your hand, literally, and sue for all sorts of made-up shit. But someone like you, if you’re any good, brings something new and vital to a project.

Owen squinted.

— Look, you can be another one of these mopey guys who has a “show” in a coffee shop, or you can get serious. Collaboration is the best way to make connections. It’s kind of the only way. No curator is going to include you in a group show until you have a platform. Unless wrinkled balls are your thing. In which case, I see the birth of a bright star.

Kurt smiled and hit Owen’s leg.

— So let’s talk alternatives. I’ve got a booth to myself at Art Basel.

Kurt saw that the name didn’t register.

— It’s like the Super Bowl. And I’ve got seats in the owner’s box. So. Are you in?

— I don’t have any real works yet, just some ideas.

— Let me explain. This is all brand-new work, not a bunch of shit that’s been touring London, New York, and Shanghai. I only do new. Anything that doesn’t sell at an opening gets destroyed. What I’m looking for is a collaborator who can make choices. There are going to be some difficult decisions, and I’ll need you to make those decisions. To a large extent, I want to be absent from the composition, or if not absent, only there in a reduced capacity — like an invisible hand.

— Yeah, but specifically…