Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“A month ago I was celebrating. You know, I had just graduated. I was at some bar in Williamsburg — The Levee, if you know it,” nod, “planning to discover Coprolalia, worried that I never would, that I'd just end up with some dead-end job until giving up on the working world. I'd apply to grad schools and probably leave the city because of some opportunity. But, even then, even after the additional school, that doesn't guarantee anything. I'd still have to get a job — that, or else I could stay in academia. But, I don't know, it seems like I don't really want anything, but, at the same time, I know I can just kind of fit in anywhere, that I'm not necessary to any exact location. I know this sounds kind of juvenile, but ever since I've graduated I really feel that I can identify with the protagonist in the The Stranger or even Nausea . What's his name?”

“Mersault.”

“I know that. What's the protagonist's name in Nausea ?”

“Antoine,” Patrick responds. He then turns back to Andreas. “As I was saying, it's like something out of Salvian…”

“Yeah, so I feel like them. And, again, I know it's kind of juvenile. I mean, everyone relates to Mersault when they read The Stranger in high school. But suddenly it's all become relevant again. I feel like I'm just going through the motions until I realize I'm going through the motions. And, I mean, I always understood the whole Kierkegaard thing, where you go through the motions and laugh at their idiocy because you're beyond them. I always got that. There was never a time in the past five years when I didn't feel that way. But I now feel this burden. It's like I want to return, but at the same time I want something new. It's like I'm both exile and explorer.” I take a sip from the bottle of wine. “I don't know if that makes any sense to you. Maybe I'm just rambling.”

“You're rambling,” she laughs. “I get what you mean, though. You don't know your context — in the world or in relation to either your past or your future. The past is always going to be defined by the present, as opposed to what it really was. The future is…not based, but…”

“Contingent?”

“…Contingent!” with an emphatic finger in my direction. “It is contingent on a present you know you don't understand. The wine-dark sea,” she says absently.

“The what?”

“The present: The wine-dark sea.”

We are both quiet for a while. She lights another cigarette.

“Didn't you say you were a bass player?”

“Yeah, but I don't think you can make a living playing old jazz standards anymore.” Caesura . “There are exceptions, of course. But actually making it as a musician — I mean, that's just so rare. I don't want to be that guy at fifty who still wants to show you his demo.”

“You haven't gone to many open-mics, have you?”

“I have. That's why I have this fear.”

“Okay.”

“Look, it's not that I'm afraid of being a starving artist; it's just that I don't see how anyone can afford to be a starving artist in this city — unless they’re squatting up in the Bronx.” I pause. “Maybe it's the bourgeois mentality that I grew up with, but I don't see any glamour in poverty.”

“You're a quick one.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“As Gandhi said,”

In unison: “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

She smiles. “You know that one, too?”

“I never miss a Kingsley film, I guess.”

“Look, kiddo, I don't want to act like I'm an authority on poverty here, but I'll let you in on a little secret. While I haven't gone through the poverty of a kid on the streets of Calcutta, I have suffered a lot as a consequence of being poor. The only positive is that there is a sense of having no place to go besides up. So you are constantly optimistic. You can't afford not to be, even if you are constantly cut down. I don't want to bore you with my history, and I certainly don't want to put myself on the cross, but as a musician who has dedicated her life to an instrument, I can tell you that there were times when I had to choose between having gas for the month and having a meal for the night. That's luckily behind me. I may not make a lot of money, but I'm happy and secure enough to know that I'm not a paycheck away from being homeless.” She drags from her cigarette. “So here’s what I want to impart to you: The belief that there is any kind of beauty in suffering, in-itself, is bourgeois bullshit.”

“I always thought it to be Eastern.”

“You're misunderstanding me. What I mean to say is that the beauty of struggle and sacrifice relies on the reason why one struggles.” She takes another drag. “If one undergoes all of this simply to be authentic, then the art will not be authentic. If it is for justice or for integrity…well, that's a different story. To suffer for integrity — this is from where that sense of authenticity derives.”

“You sound like Mordecai's dad.”

“What?”

“No, it's not an insult. It's just…you sound different…different than how I remembered you.”

“But the point is valid, right?”

I nod. “I just don't think I could go through living in complete squalor for the sake of art.”

“Where do you live now?”

“Bushwick.”

She laughs. “You En Why You kids and your Bushwick. Which stop off the L are you?”

“I'm actually off the M train.” I name the stop.

Her brows go up. “So the bushy part of Bushwick.” She takes another drag. “I'm sorry for presuming…”

“It's okay. I mean, I would think the same thing if I were in your shoes.”

“It's not like it's a terrible spot. I used to live there a few years ago.”

“Yeah, it's okay. I don't know how long I plan on staying. The lease is up in September, and I don't think Jeff, my roommate, plans to renew. The good news, of course, is that the Coprolalia article will be published soon. Money shouldn't be a concern after that.” I laugh to myself. “I keep forgetting about that. I still feel like I'm about to be up shit's creek.”

“So you're going into journalism, I take it?”

“That seems to be the plan. I figure I should be able to freelance without too much of a problem. I don't mean to sound too conceited, but I have a feeling that this article's going to open up a lot of doors for me.”

She's quiet for a moment. She then smiles. “We should call you Wanderlust.”

“That's a fitting cognomen.”

“Again with your ten-dollar words,” she laughs.

Besides the references to Faye Dunaway, there is a certain energy that resides within her, the type of afflatus that I had imagined I would see surrounding Mordecai Adelstein, even in photographs. It is there, in her eyes, a silent 'yes' to some force that dwells within her.

“You're an eidolon,” I say to her.

“I am an acolyte, Wanderlust. That's the whole point.”

“What about the JOKE?”

“The JOKE is that we're still human.”

Yes, she speaks in riddles, contrivances perhaps.

“Crisis,” Patrick says with a fist on the table. This exterminates all other conversations. “Yes, I speak of crisis. I speak of yet another crisis, a great Gordian Knot that will prove to be a noose if it is not addressed soon. Now, I do not speak only of economic crisis; I speak, more importantly, of social crisis.”

“What? Are you a fucking LaRouche canvasser?”

“Tomas, that is another conversation for another evening.” The bottle in his hand becomes empty. “No, I speak of something far different. We exist in a state of vita minima , without direction, without knowledge of where we are going or where we've even been — what has been has become relativized, fabricated, fabulated, corrupted. We simply drift in a state of inertia. The absence of terra firma has become terra firma ; the abolition of morality has become a morality; the generation who sought to destroy now seeks to uphold. Yes, I speak of crisis. Our generation has produced a liturgy of banalities, which has lead so many of us to the steps of the Cynosarges.