Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“I always forget that first name. What was it again?”

“Vechte.”

“Well, anyway, no one could ever explain the meaning of the piece in the bar. But that coin…”

“Mordecai found it especially funny. He said it was the only coin in the collection that wasn't worthless. That was his sense of humor.”

Another pause ensues. This one is less awkward, as we are both able to sip from our coffee without scalding ourselves.

“So why did he never come forward?”

“He liked the idea that he could talk to people about his work with honesty.”

“What do you mean?”

“People are rarely honest with an artist, especially when it concerns the artist's work.” He notices a look. “Yes, it was that simple; but, at the same time, this is far more complex than it appears. The primary point that you should keep in mind is this: He wanted the art to stand alone to be judged by critics and laymen alike. Perhaps 'laymen' is the wrong term, as it is carries a pejorative connotation. Regardless, he wanted to know if people appreciated his work. Everyone. And an artist cannot approach a man on the street with a canvas and ask for an evaluation. The artist, Mordecai felt, must remove himself from critical discourse. And, for the most part, he was successful in this.”

“And he never wanted anything for what he created? I mean, he could have been a very wealthy man.”

“How? Once something is put on a piece of canvas it becomes both art and a commodity. It can be appreciated, true, but it can also be bought, sold, exchanged. If a person creates something to hang in their home, it still has the potential to be taken and placed upon a different wall. Its environment is ( caesura ) interchangeable. However, if it becomes a part of the wall, it is given a more definitive context; it is a part of the environment or community. It can be scraped from the wall and it can be painted over, but it cannot be transplanted — unless, of course, one wishes to remove the portion of the wall that contains the illustration. This was something that Mordecai could never get around, but he felt it was an objection that failed to seriously draw away from the larger point he wished to make.”

“So he never wanted to be famous? He never wanted to be known as Coprolalia?”

“He would not have been able to accomplish as much had people known his identity. More importantly, he never would have been able to carry out his work without being constantly bothered. And he never wanted to have his art hung up in a gallery or a museum. His choice in medium was no accident.

“The oldest form of artistic expression, as well as the oldest form of written communication, is to be found on the walls of caves; and they express more than what they let on. While I may run the risk of overextending the importance of such illustrations, I do feel it necessary to point out that the Ten Commandments were not written upon papyrus; they were written on stone. Perhaps the creation of a mural is something similar — an expression of both art and communal values.”

“But Mordecai's work isn't a manifestation of some communal ethos. It's abstract and, to be honest, kind of esoteric. How do you create a sense of community by sharing something that means one thing to you, something completely different, sometimes even nothing, to someone else?”

“If you take out the you, then that leaves only the community.”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“You are over-anxious.”

“Yes, I am. I have been all over this city trying to find a dead man. And I have absolutely nothing to show for it.”

“Why did you do it?”

My own words resonate within me. “Dead man.” The trampoline is no longer there. The mats are gone, too. The gymnast is left floating. Forever. There's no longer any space, so there's no time; she is neither falling nor rising. She isn't even moving.

“Because I needed something to do.”

“You could have done anything, then. Even nothing is something.” I nod.

“So why do anything? There really isn't much of a reason to even get out of bed in the morning.”

“Of course there isn't if you expand what is meant by 'purpose' or 'meaning' to include the 'why' that existence is, to some, supposed to entail.” What? “Either it's all part of a divine plan, and there's no free will, or it's all meaningless acts of free-will. There's really no middle ground unless you focus. Our actions only have meaning when we remove ourselves from the grand stage of history, when we see ourselves as important to people close to us, to those with whom we share a community.”

“But isn't that a tragedy? Isn't it pathetic that virtually no one from our time will be remembered in a thousand years?”

“No. It's pathetic only if you're conceited and unreasonable. But you have to continue on anyway. You don't have a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I am able to address you as a conscious being, then you are alive. Even if you choose to die, such a choice is made by one who is living. To be or not to be, young man. All other questions are adjunctive to it. Is it not right there in the Declaration of Independence? Life. One cannot have anything unless one has life. Liberty.” He pauses. “What is liberty, my friend?”

I am silent for a moment. I see myself trying to look introspective. “No one really asks that, do they?”

“That is exactly how James Baldwin responded when asked the same question!” He takes pause to laugh. “But liberty; liberty is not simply freedom. Freedom is the pylon of liberty. But liberty is the acceptance of responsibility, the refusal to be little more than a ward. True reactionaries, traditionalists perhaps, have argued against this, and they have legitimized their claims in myriad ways. Men like Charles Loyseau and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet legitimized the rule of the French crown — while Sir Robert Filmer and those like him, though no one else specifically comes to mind at the moment, legitimized the English one — and the surrounding hierarchy by claiming that order is paramount to both the natural world and morality, that the practices of the ancien régime best embody the Will of God, and, therefore, that God desires certain men to lead and others to follow. Romans was quoted often, though I forget the exact passage.

“Regardless, the Revolution against this system, consequently, took on something of an atheistic, or — according to Anatole France — a deistic, tone. If a cruel system is the system of the Catholic God, then those suffering beneath it will certainly have less than kind thoughts about the nature of this God. Just look at Sade,” he laughs. “But this is a tangent, is it not? What I mean to say is that the fight for liberty is the fight for personal responsibility, for dignity, to cast off the chains of fate. Many people do not understand this. They see responsibility as something that is imposed, liberty as a relief from burden. But it is actually the opposite: Liberty is a burden because it lifts restrictions, thereby leaving man before the world with nothing more than his wits.

“Liberty is dangerous. It is dangerous because it is trust and personal responsibility. A society without trust, a society that believes all people are ultimately irresponsible, will not allow liberty. But we have been granted liberty here, in this country. In fact, if one looks to the words of the Bill of Rights, one realizes that trust is pervasive throughout it. This is a far cry from the days of David and Hammurabi. It is grounded on trust, trust in a people responsible enough to own a firearm, to speak without inciting riot, to write without advocating genocide. This trust, this liberty — it is beautiful. It is beautiful because it is messy, it is chaotic, and it has limitless potential. And this, this my boy, is where the pursuit of happiness comes in. How can one pursue happiness without liberty?”