MJCwriting.htm

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Crossmann leaves the building and steps out into the night.

It is cold and dark.

Crossmmann feels alone in a big dark city. He looks for Jim. He looks both directions. He recognizes no one.

He hails a taxi.

Several go by.

Finally one stops.

"Where to?" the driver asks.

"MOMA," Crossmann replies.

"Ok. You could have walked there, you know. It's not that far," the driver says. "And traffic tonight is pretty nuts...!"

"It's too cold to walk," Crossmann says.

"Too cold? Oh, a tourist, huh?" the driver asks.

"Yeah, sort of."

"Here on business?"

"Yes," Crossmann says.

"Ok."

The taxi pulls away from the curb and starts south down a crowded street.

"I am God's lonely man," the driver says, under his breath.

"What?" Crossmann says.

"What? Are you talking to me...?"

"I thought you said something..."

"No, I didn't say something. Did you say something...?"

Crossmann now sees the driver's head and face in profile. The driver has a mohawk haircut. He is wearing a faded green military jacket, similar to Crossmann's. He seems to be agitated.

He drives up to the end of the block: red light.

Crossmann looks out the window. Wall to wall canary taxis. A few linousines. People stumbling along the sidewalks, beautiful people, out celebrating the New Millennium. Drunk. The biggest party of the century...

"Drunks!" the taxi-driver says, reading Crossmann's mind. "Drunks all over this town tonight! I hope they aren't driving...!"

The driver takes a right at the light.

Crossmann thought the MOMA was the other direction.

"Short-cut," the driver says, again reading Crossmann's mind. "Too much traffic here. I know a short-cut..."

Heading up the dark streets under street lights wafting in the wind. Light patterns lurching drunkenly on the street.

Another stop light.

Two women cross the street, dressed in short-skirts, short coats.

One of the women, a black woman, large, slams her hand on the front hood of the taxi.

"Boys, want some action?" she asks.

The other woman with her is just a girl, fifteen or less. Reddish hair.

"That's a crime," the driver says. "She's just a baby..."

The driver rrolls down his window and yells at them: "Let that baby go home to her mother. You're old enough to do what you want -- but she's just a baby...!"

The young girl laughs. She pulls up her dress to show the driver. She isn't wearing any underwear.

"This baby'd grind you down to nothin', taxi man!" the black woman calls back.

"She's a fucking man!" the taxi driver says to himself and Crossmann. "Did you hear that voice! That was a man's voice...!"

"You fucking....transvestite!" he yells at the black woman. "You're a disgrace! You call yourself a man...!"

"No, I call myself a woman!" the black woman cries.

Both women are giving the taxi driver the finger.

The light changes.

I should have walked, Crossmann thinks.

"I told you you should have walked," the driver says. "Be a lot damn easier on you...! Fate is what Fate is though...!"

"What?" Crossmann asks.

"Fate."

"What about Fate?"

"Fate is what Fate is," the driver repeats.

He takes a right and is heading north.

Crossmann tries to read the street signs, to get some sense of where they are. But the windows are fogging up. He wipes them clean.

To his right is a dirty-movie theatre. "Sometime Sweet Susan" is playing. Also the "Swedish Marriage Manual". And "Anita Nymphette". Prostitues in winter coats but showing leg in front of the theatre.

"The animals come out at night," the taxi driver says. "Whores, skunk-pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies. Sick. Venal. Some day a real rain is going to come along and wash all this scum off the streets...!"

Crossmann says nothing.

The light changes.

The taxi moves again.

"I go all over," the driver says. "I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem. Some won't stop for the spooks. But it really doesn't matter to me, I'll take anyone...!"

The streets are getting darker and narrower.

"Why are we going north?" Crossmann asks. "I thought I said the MOMA...!"

The driver looks Crossmann in the eye through the rear-view mirror.

"I seen you on television, haven't I?" the driver asks. "Yes. That's it. I knew there was something about you that was familiar... The Jerry Springer Show. That as it...!"

"I don't think so," Crossmann says.

"Oh, yeah, that was you," the driver says. "You and your wife. She told you she had been having an affair with some... I don't remember his name... Marshall Felton. That was it."

How did he know that? Crossmann says nothing.

"Fenton," Crossmann says finally.

"What?"

"Fenton, not Felton," Crossmann says.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," the driver says. "But that was you, alright..."

"When did you see this show?" Crossmann ask.

"It was on tonight. I saw it tonight," the driver says.

Crossmann is silent.

"Why are we going north?" Crossmann asks again.

"I thought you might want to see your friend, Jim."

"What?"

"You didn't hear me?" the driver asks.

"What do you know about Jim?" Crossmann asks.

"Jim deals junk, man! Don't you know about that?"

Crossmann says nothing.

"Jim has taken a few rides in my cab. Jim sells junk, man. And he's in trouble in Harlem because he tried to fuck somone over..."

"I don't believe you," Crossmann says.

"You don't believe me. Why would I lie to you? What does it matter to me...?"

Crossmann says nothing.

Into the darker side of town. Fewer lights. Older cars parked on the curbs. Some cars burned out. Some buildings burned out. Four or five black teenagers run out of the shadows and pelt the taxi with empty beer cans, a milk carton. There is milk on the windshield. The driver turns on the wipers to eliminate the milk.

"Animals!" the driver says under his breath.

They drive on.

"What's your name?" Crossmann asks the driver.

"What?"

"What is your name?"

"Oh, I thought that was what you said. Henry Krinkle...."

"Kinkel, did you say?" Crossmann asks.

"Krinkle. K-R-I-N-K-L-E. Fairlawn, New Jersey. I live in Fairlawn, New Jersey..."

"I don't know anything about New Jersey," Crossmann replies.

"Of course you don't," the driver says. "You have a very narrow spectrum of experience, Michael..."

"Ok. How did you know my name?"

The driver is smiling, his head tipped back as he smiles in the mirror, his mohawk haircut dancing in the streetlights rushing in to the cab. There is something monstrous about the man. And something attractive. Crossmann notices his right hand on the steering wheel. The fingernail of his little finger is very large. It seems perverse to Crossmann.

"I told you. I saw you on Springer," he says, laughing.

"What's this about Jim?" Crossmann continues.

"Double-crossed another blood and now they're both packing, looking to do some damage," the driver says. "Hey, you gonna need a gun while you're in New York? I can get you one...I have a friend -- Doughboy -- he knows a guy named Easy Andy. Easy Andy can get you anthing you need while you're here, guns, dope, weed, uppers and downers....but you got a gun already. You got a .38 in your coat pocket right now, ain't that right, Mister C...?"

"How do you know that?" Crossmann asks.

"I've been watching you on tv, friend."

"Are you some kind of all-knowing being?" Crossmann asks.

"No. Only the dead know everything. Then they forget everything, right before they're born again..."

"Do you believe in reincarnation then?" Crossmann asks.

"Nah. I've been watching your show. The Michael Crossmann Hour..."

He is laughing. A slightly malicious laugh.

"You know something else about your friend Jim," the driver says. "Jim is that kid on the bus to Salt Lake that you and your brother helped. The one you two raised money for, to help him get to New York. Jim is that very kid..."

"That's crazy!"

"Everything's crazy here, Mister C. This is Millennium Eve -- or had you forgotten...?"

Deeper into the night they go.

"I gotta get in shape now," the driver says to himself. "I've been sitting too much; my body's been taking too much abuse. No more pills, no more bad food. From now on it will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight..."

The taxi turns right on a dark street.

"There's your boy, Mister C, going into that alley..."

"That's where I met him," Crossmann says. "He was sitting on that stoop over there..."

"I know. I've seen the film," the driver says. "Man on a Tightrope. I've seen it all. That's why I know so much about you. I turned off that last part, the Charlie Rose part. You almost lost me there, doc. Too many words. What were you thinking? Nobody's going to vote for an egghead in this country. Shit! Whose managing you anyway? Adlai Stephenson? Jimmy Carter...?"

Crossmann watches Jim turn into the alley.

Crossmann tries to open the door. The door is locked.

"Hey! No, sir, you can't intervene!" the driver says. "You can just watch."

"I need to help him!" Crossmann says.

"You can only watch. Those are the rules."

Then the shooting begins.

Crossmann hears the guns explode, sees the flashes of light. Maybe six or seven flashes.

He tries the door again. The door won't open.

The cab pulls away.

"Stop this cab," Crossmann yells. "I need to help him...!"

"You'll see him again. It's no big deal," the driver says. "Niggers get killed in this town day and night! It's a regular arcade around here. No matter what they say in the papers. I need to get you back into town..."

He turns on the radio, low, barely audible.

Crossmann recognizes Jackson Browne:

Awake again, I can't pretend

And I know I'm alone

And close to the end

Of the feelings we've known.

How long have I been sleeping?

How long have I been drifting

Alone through the night?

How long have I bee running

For that morning flight

Through the whispered promises

And the changing light

Of the bed where we both lie

Late for the sky...

"You're glad to get out of Harlem, aren't you?" the driver says, smiling.

Crossmann was listening to the music.

"What?"

"You don't like it much here in Harlem, do you, MC?"

"Not much," Crossmann replies.

"Feel threatened?"

"Yeah."

"That's good," the driver says. "You are threatened up here. It's no place for you. They'll kill you where you stand if you got a white face up here. Unless you're Clinton or someone like that. Some celebrity. Revenge. Revenge is in their hearts up here. That's why Jim was looking out for you. Jim's been looking out for you the whole time you been here..."

"I know that," Crossmann says.

"So, what are you doing for him...?"

"What?"

"What are you doing for him?"

"I dont' know," Crossmann says.

"Give him some of your money," the driver says. "He needs to pay off his boss back there. He misappropriated some money from his boss. He's selling drugs -- but he came upp short. You know what I mean? Give him some money and you can save Jim's life again...!"

"I did give him some money!" Crossmann says.

"Oh, that was long ago!" the driver says.

"No, tonight!" Crossmann says. "I gave him some money tonight...!

"Oh, that was play-money," the driver says. "Give him some real money...!"

"I will! I will!" Crossmann says.

"You've got money now! You're rolling in money now...!"

"I know. You said I'd see him again...!"

"Yes, you will. I need to stop here a minute...."

He pulls the taxi over a minute.

Crossmann wipes the window on condensation again. Belmore Cafeteria.

Crossmann watches the taxi driver go inside. He talks with a bald man who is sitting at a table with a black man, older, solid-looking, and a goofy-looking white man in a cap.

The driver is back out quickly.

Then they are driving again, turning right, again heading south.

"What did you need in there?" Crossmann asks.

"An address," the driver says. "I'm not very good with addresses. I don't have a very good memory for addresses..."

They hit Central Park West and move into the light again.

"This is more your style, I'll bet," Henry says.

To the right large, elegant apartment buildings begin to come into view. On the left is Central Park.

They ride.

The music has changed. Now it's John Lennon. Crossmann begins to hum along.

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing

Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin

When I say that I'm o.k. well they look at me kind of strange

Surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game

People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away

Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me

When I tell them that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall

Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go

Ah, people asking questions lost in confusion

Well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions

Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind

I tell them there's no hurry

I'm just sitting here doing time

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round

I really love to watch them roll

No longer riding on the merry-go-round

I just had to let it go

I just had to let it go

I just had to let it go

The music makes Crossmann sad.

The taxi pulls over to the curb. The cab crawls up a few feet toward the corner of West 90th Street. Henry turns off the meter.

"I'm not getting out here," Crossmann says. "Where are we...?"

"The El Dorado Apartements," Henry says. "Rich people live here."

"So. You're not trying to sell me an apartment too, are you...?"

"Oh, that's funny...."

Crossmann sees a white limousine pull slowly up past the taxi.

He sees Truman and the old Russian woman in black looking out the window, looking up at the El Dorado. Truman's mouth is moving wildly. He looks drunk. His face is red.... Crossmann sees himself in the white limousine creeping up the street, drinking champagne....

"Yeah," Henry cries. "There they go. You want to get a ride with them. You like them better than you like me, won't you...? Oh, you're gonna make me cry...!"

"What are we doing here?" Crossmann asks.

"Look up there."

"What?"

"Up there. The seventh floor, with the light on," Henry says.

"What?"

Crossmann wipes the condensation off his window.

"The one that's closest to this edge of the building," Henry instructs. "The light on the seventh floor. See the woman in the window...?"

Crossmann sees a woman's silhouette in the window.

"Yeah, you see it. Good. You see the woman. Good. You ever see what a thirty-eight caliber gun can do to a woman's face close-up? Well, it will blow it apart. It will blow a big, fucking hole in it. Have you ever seen what a thirty-eight caliber gun could do to a woman's pussy? You should see that. That you should see. A woman's pussy. I bet you think I'm sick, right. Do you think I'm sick? No, you don't have to answer that..."

"What are you talking about?" Crossmann asks.

"Well, don't you recognize the woman?"

"What?"

"Don't you recognize the woman?"

"No."

"You don't?"

"No."

"Well that aint my wife in there. It's your wife..."

"That's not where she lives," Crossmann says.

"That's where her boyfriend lives," Henry says. "What's his name -- Marshall Felton...?"

"Fenton."

"That's his apartment. Your wife is in there going down on that Ivy League queer right now. That's why you've got that gun in your pocket, remember. You're going to take both of them down tonight...!"

"What?"

"That's the plan, remember?"

"I don't remember anything," Crossmann says.

"Are you a man? That's your wife in there...!"

"I'm not going to kill her," Crossmann says.

"She left you, man," Henry says. "When you needed her most. And she took your daughter with here. You're alone, man. They've left you all alone. You have nobody in this life..."

"I'm still not going to kill her."

"Oh, mister big-talk!" Henry says, scoffing.

"I never said I was going to kill her. I have no intention of killing her...!"

"Why not? You're home free tonight. You have the key to the city. You can do anything. It's like being in a dream. You won't be responsible for anything you do. It's like being poor in a heaven of liberals. You can do anthing you want...."

"Who are you, the devil?" Crossmann asks.

"Henry Krinkel, I told you."

"What's that haircut all about?" Crossmann asks.

"Going primeval. That's what it's about," Henry says.

"Going primeval?"

"Going primeval means you can do anything you want. You can become a vigilante if you want...."

"Who put you up to this?"

"Who do you think?"

"Tell me..."

"Didn't you ever try looking through your own eyeballs in the mirror," Henry says.

There is silence.

The radio is still playing...

Our life together is so precious together

We have grown, we have grown

Although our love is still special

Let's take a chance and fly away somewhere alone

It's been too long since we took the time

No-one's to blame, I know time flies so quickly

But when I see you darling

It's like we both are falling in love again

It'll be just like starting over, starting over....

"Drive the car!" Crossmann commands.

The car pulls away from the curb.

Henry says: "You're like me, man. You're like me...!"

"How and I like you?" Crossmann asks.

"You're a vigilante, man," Henry says. "I'm a vigilante too...!"

"We're all vigilantes, Henry," Crossmann says. "You and me and William Foster. We're all vigilantes..."

Henry says: "Who the fuck is William Foster...?"

"Oh, he's an imaginary person. Did you see the movie Falling Down. That was William Foster..."

"I don't watch movies much," Henry says. "They give me headaches..."

"Do you know Michael Douglas, the actor?"

"Sure, Kirk's kid," Henry says.

"Well, it was his movie. He played a vigilante. A decent guy, who became a vigilante..."

"Ok," Henry says. "Whatever...."

Henry drives on in silence for a moment.

Then he says: "When you become president, you should clean up this city. It's like an open seweer full of filth and skum. I can hardly take it sometimes: I smell it and get heaches The next president should clean up this whole fucking mess, just flush it down the fucking toilet. When you become president, that's what you should do...!"

Crossmann says nothing.

Then, under his breath, he says: "I'm not becoming president...!"

"Oh, that's what you think!" Henry says, laughing. "I've seen the moving, remember. I know what happens...!"

Crossmann sees a commotion up on the right, on the sidewalk. People begin running. Then he hears gun shots.

"What the fuck!" Henry shouts.

"Pull over here," Crossmann says. "Something's going on..."

Henry eases the taxi over to the right. He gets out of the taxi.

"We need help!" a woman cries out. A Japanese woman.

People are carrying a man's body toward the taxi. They open the back door.

Crossmann moves over to the left.

They slide the man into the taxi. He is bleeding.

"Get him to Bellevue!" a policeman cries. "Take him to Bellevue!"

The Japanese woman is trying to close the door, but the man's feet are still in the street.

Crossmann takes the man in his arms and pulls him in to the car.

Crossmann notices a copy of Catcher In the Rye lying on the sidewalk.

The Japanese woman closes the door. Then she stands at the car, looking in throught he window. She has a look of utter sadness. It makes Crossmann want to cry.

Then her face changes. She changes into the woman from the millionaire show, Hoa-Lan Tran, the Vietnamese woman who Crossmann is supposed to know but doesn't. She smiles at Crossmann. She puts her lips up to the window, kissing the window.

Then she opens the front door, gets into the taxi.

She looks back at Crossmann. She is now the Japanese woman again.

Henry is back in the car and they are out of the street.

"Get there as fast as you can!" the Japanese woman cries. Tears are streaming down her cheeks.

"Who would do this?" she pleads. "Who would do this!" she cries to Crossmann.

Crossmann doesn't know what to say. He thinks Holden Caulfield might do this....

But then he says: "A madman. Only a madman...!"

"Why do the gentle ones always get killed...?" she asks. "Is that part of God's plan...?"

Crossmann says nothing.

The man in Crossmann's lap is breathing in short gasps.

He is bleeding all over Crossmann's green army coat -- the one Jim gave to him. It doesn't matter.

Henry is hurtling up the street and then takes a hard left. He leans on his horn.

It seems like it takes an eternity to get one block.

"Drive this thing, Henry!" Crossmann cries. "Drive this thing...!"

The wounded man in Crossmann's lap tries to say something.

Crossmann leans down.

"What?"

"Tell her..."

"What?"

"Tell her I love her..."

"He says he loves you," Crossmann says.

"Oh, John! I love you too! I love you too...!" she cries. "We are going to get you to the hospital! They will be able to save you! Don't worry! God is taking care of you...!"

"Drive, Henry!" Crossmann cries.

He feels the life slipping out of the man in his arms.

"No!" Crossmann says. "No! Don't give up! You've got to stay with me...!"

But he is gone.

The Japanese woman is still talking, still telling John to hold on. But John is gone.

Crossmann says nothing to the woman. He holds John as if he is still alive.

He doesn't want her to know. He doesn't know what to do.

At Bellevue, the medics run out and draw John out of the taxi, pulling him on to a gurney.

He and the woman are gone.

Henry is arguing with someone about where his taxi is parked, threatening to break the guy's face.

Crossmann gets out of the taxi and wanders toward the hospital.

"Hey, Crossmann," Henry cries out. "I'll take you to the MOMA. Get in! You don't want to be late...!"

"You go ahead," Crossmann says. "I don't have any money to pay you."

"I don't care about you money!" Henry says. "I never cared about your money. Get in...!"

Crossmann is in the hospital.

A nurse hurries up to him, crying: "You're bleeding! Have you been shot...!"

Crossmann says: "It's not my blood. It's someone else's. I'm fine."

She gives him a towell to wipe the blood from his coat.

Crossmann is again outside, at the front of the hospital. Everything is quiet. Around the corner, the main lobby is locked, dark. Crossmann uses the Key to the City. It works. The lobby door opens.

The lights come on.

The entrance rotunda: white walls, four central pillars, four doors leading into the room. A series of large paintings on the wall. Crossmann recognizes the paintings. These are his paintings. Winding around the room.

Crossmann moves from painting to painting.

I. Evolution

II. Science

III. Agriculture

IV. Industry

V. Family

VI. Construction

VII. Destruction

VIII. Democracy

IX. Recreation

A door in the back of the rotunda opens.

"Stranger!" a voice comes into the room. A Russian voice. Broken English.

"Welcome back, stranger! How do you like my present for you...?"

It is the Magician. He is dressed in a tuxedo. Still he is wearing gigantic glasses, tinted a magenta hue. His hair is black, long and greasy. He is holding a bottle of Wild Turkey, half-empty, cap gone.

Crossmann has not seem him above ground before.

"Abrahadabra," the Magician says to Crossmann, making a sweeping gesture down with his left hand.

He moves across the room and shakes the Magician's hand. Then he hugs him.

The Magician offers him a drink from the bottle of Wild Turkey.

Crossmann takes a drink.

"I love your work!" the Magician says.

"How did you get it in here?" Crossmann asks.

"I have my ways. I have connections here. I live below by choice. But I have connections all the way to the top..."

"Himmelmann?" Crossmann asks.

"I'm teaching Himmelmann's daughter how to paint," the Magician says. "And she loves my dog. But Himmelmann is nobody. No, I have connections to the very top."

"With God, you mean?" Crossmann asks.

"Even higher. I'm friends with the night janitor."

Crossmann laughs.

"Come with me!" the Magician says.

"Where?"

"You have to meet your public..."

At the back of the rotunda is a poorly-lit corrugated metal spiral staircase leading straight down. Room enough for one person to pass at a time. Spiralling down, around and around, deeper into darkness.

"Don't worry," the Magician says. "This is a cork-screw we are walking on. And it leads you to your biggest intoxication yet. It gets light at the bottom again...."

Crossmann descends by feeling, touching the railing, guiding himself down through the blackness. He can see nothing. He hears the Magician ahead of him, hears the whiskey bottle the Magician holding bang against the railing from time to time.

"Ok," the Magician says finally. "We're here. Yes, give me your hand."

Crossmann reaches out in his blindness, somehow finding the Magician't hand.

The Magician leads him down a pitch black passage. The Magician walks like he can see. He says: "This whole city is connected by underground passageways. You can walk all over the city underground if you know what you are doing. Come this way, just a bit farther...."

Then he throws open the door.

Light comes rushing in on Crossmann.

Music. A chamber orchestra is playing something by Bartok. It is a formal room: elegant. Chandelliers. Men dressed in tuxedos. Women in long gowns. Everyone looks rich.

"Where are we?" Crossmann asks.

"At the gallery," the Magician cries. "At the museum, for your show. Here, get rid of that coat. What have you been doing, eating at Mc Donald's? You got ketchup all over yourself...!"

"That's John Lennon's blood," Crossmann says.

"What? Sure it is!" the Magician plays along. "I was going to offer you a pair of magic glasses -- but I guess you already have your own...!"

Crossmann straightens his glasses, pushing them up on his nose. He hates it when they slide down his nose.

The Magician feels the gun in the pocket of Crossmann's coat.

"You won't be needing this here," he says. He puts the pistol in his belt at the back of his tuxedo. He throws the stained army coat off to the side, saying: "You can't go in here dressed like a bloody bolsehevik, now can you...?"

He takes Crossmann's arm, and presents his to the king and queen.

Mayor Guiliani and his wife. His pretty wife. The actress.

"Hello again, Mister Crossmann," the Mayor says. "I hear you've had quite a full day in our great city."

He shakes Crossmann's hand.

"Donna Hanover," the pretty strawberry blonde woman next to the Mayor says. "My vagina speaks four different languages and over 70 dialects...."

"Please, dear!" the mayor says, under his breath, angry. "You're not on stage here! This isn't your show. Behave yourself...!"

"I say 'vagina'," she explains to Crossmann, "because I want people to respond. I say it because I'm supposed to say it. I say it because it's an invisible word, a word that stirs up anxiety..."

"It's clearly stirring up anxiety in your husband," the Magician says, taking a pull on the Wild Turkey.

"Oh, he's got cancer in his testicles," Donna says with a smile. "That's why he appears so anxious...."

The Magician whispers to Donna, so the mayor doesn't hear it: "Do you just talk about it, or do you show it off at all...?"

"Oh, I show it to some of my friends," Donna says, seductively.

"Come this way, Michael -- can I call you Michael?"

The Mayor leads Crossmann away from his wife. The Magician stays behind, seeing opportunity present itself.

"I'd like to present you to Catherine Herr-Clement, one of the great benefactors of New York Art."

The woman is tall and thin, a bit gray, like she has been eating air for several generations. She has the air of aristocracy. And Crossmann knows he is supposed to admire this air; but he finds it, instead, a bit thin.

"Your work if really refreshing, Mister Crossmann," Catherine says. "I wouldn't call it revolutionary art. But, then, one can only take revolution so far until it becomes...."

She searches for the right word.

"Reactionary?" the Mayor suggests.

"No."

"Uncivilized?" the Mayor tries again.

"No."

"Childhish," another man adds, one who is listening to the conversation.

"No."

"Unceremonious?" say another.

"No."

"Debilitating?"

"No."

"Insincere?"

"No."

"Taxing?"

"Heavens, no!"

"Animalistic?" Crossmann says.

"Yes, indeed, animalistic." Her eyes flash into Crossmann's, as though the word has awakened in her some primal memory long slumbering in the antarctic of her soul. "Animalistic," she says again with relish.

Anthony Hopkins is in the crowd. He smiles at Crossmann, then at Catherine. Then turns away, sheepisly.

"There are a lot of people here you have to meet," the Mayor says.

"Is this the artist!"

Catherine Zeta-Jones is there, dressed in a rapturous blue gown showing three-quarters of her lovely breasts. She is drinking champagne; and she is a bit tipsy.

"Your work is so strangely satisfying," Catherine the second says, smiling a rosy full-lipped smile. "Satisfying like afternoon love-making in Rangoon on a rainy afternoon during Monsoon is satisfying. Do you know what I mean....?"

"Not personally," Crossmann says. "I''ve never been to Rangoon. But if you hum me a few bars, I might be able to follow along..."

The comedian in Crossmann is coming out again.

Catherine laughs genuinely, throwing back her head. Her breasts nearly come out of her dress as she moves too abruptly for the structure of the gown.

Crossmann's eyes grow large.

"Here, have a drink," she says, handing him a glass of champagne she has just snatched from a passing waiter.

"We bought one of your paintings," Catherine says, "me and Michael, my Michael. I don't remember which one, but we liked it alot. We're going to put it in our study, I think. Although it has too much blue in it for the study, I'm afraid..."

Crossmann wants to kiss her. He wants to take her down on the couch and swallow her beautiful lips in his mouth like two succulent berries. But there is no couch in the room.

"The one we bought reminded me of Picasso's Weeping Woman -- it had that same kind of feeling...."

Crossmann is staring into her eyes, mesmerized by her beauty.

"You are much more beautiful in person," Crossmann says. "I don't really like you as an actress that much. But I sure like the way you look in the flesh..."

She realizes he's flirting with her. She smiles, almost blushing.

Crossmann wishes she would begin to discuss her vagina and the words that it can pronounce.

But then her husband appears. Michael Douglas. He shakes Crossmann's hand.

"Michael!" It is Lola Fanti, the director of the gallery. One of the Associate Directors, that is. Lola is very nervous, very high-strung. She clearly is too busy, and has too much responsibility. Her eyes do not focus properly: when she is talking with a person, her eyes are doing calculations of something past or present.

"Michael! Oh, Senior Douglas and Seniorina...."

"Zeta-Jones," Catherine helps her out.

"Yes. Of course, Zeta-Jones. I have too much on my mind," Lola says, apologizing. "They bought one of your pieces," Lola says to Crossmann.

"Yes, Catherine just told me," Crossmann says. "The one that looks like Picasso's Weeping Woman..."

"I didn't say it looked like it," Catherine corrects Crossmann, laughing. "I said it reminded me of Picasso..."

She is much sweeter than he thought she'd be. Perhaps it is the champagne.

"Michael, I think maybe you need to meet some friends of mine," Lola says. "I hate to take you away from this lovely couple, but...."

"No, that's fine," Catherine says. "It was nice meeting you. I'm sure we'll meet again, some time later tonight..."

"I'll be looking for you at Midnight," Crossmann says quietly to her, so that her husband doesn't hear.

"Ok," she whispers back to Crossmann. "You have a date...!"

Lola drags Crossmann across the room. He looks back, looking to catch another glimpse of the beauty.

"What is she talking about!" Lola snaps under her breath. "'She Loves to Talk' looks nothing like 'The Weeping Woman'! The woman is hopeless...!"

"Feelings," Crossmann says, defending her. "She was talking about feelings...! How the painting made her feel...!"

"Oh, you Americans!" Lola replies. "Everything is feeling! Feeling! It makes me want to puke some times! She is such a....bimbo! What's the word you have.....'gold-digger'? Yes, that's it...!"

"Be nice," Crossmann says. "She was very nice to me...."

"Well, of course," Lola says. "You are a man. She probably wants something from you...!"

"Like what?" Crossmann asks.

"How do I know," Lola says. "Use your imagination. People are saying you might be president some day. I'm sure she'd love to be the First Lady. Now, don't you think that might suit her...!"

Crossmann had never thought of that. He never thought he might be holding more cards that Michael Douglas.

"Michael Crossmann!" Lola nearly shouts, "Enzo Stendi and Marissa Niemo."

An stately couple stands before Crossmann. Italians, Crossmann guesses.

"Hello," Crossmann says, shaking hands with each.

"We have made an investment in your work tonight," Enzo announces. "We have purchased six of your pieces. And we feel that this is just the first step for us. We will collect your work, assuredly. For we find your work really breaking new grounds in the world of art. Going back is sometimes going forward. We understand this as you do.."

"Si," Marissa adds. "The work is....like Gaudi. The dream becoming....the dream..."

"Yes, precisely," Crossmann agrees.

Enzo is a handsome man of wealth, with gray hair brushed back, a full mustache, and strong shoulders. He is not exactly handsome. One eye wanders furtively, his left eye. But he does have a presence. An aristocratic flavor.

His partner is short and muscular-looking, with short-hair in the style of European feminists. But she is obvously Enzo's lover. They are both lovers of the arts.

"I appreciate your patronage," Crossmann says, bowing to both.

"Enzo, Marissa, I will see that he spends more time with you later tonight," Lola says. "I need to see that he meets everyone now, everyone who matters...!"

They shake their heads graciously.

"It is a pleasure meeting you," Crossmann says.

Lola whisks him away.

"Don't waste your time on people without money -- remember that!" she commands. "You only have so much time tonight -- and there are many people you must meet! If you don't smell money, keep moving! You are selling yourself here, remember that! Look at these clowns! They have no money! They'll never buy your art...!"

Lola nods over toward the wine table. Crossmann sees his brother William, Truman, Faramarz, Alan Ginsberg, and the old Russian woman in black. Jim is also there, dressed in his chauffeur's uniform. Crossmann smiles to them.

"You know those losers?" she asks. "They should have stopped them at the door. They're just here for the food...!"

"Relax, Lola! You've already sold seven pieces," Crossmann says. "That should more than cover the cost of the food for my friends...!"

"Seven pieces! I've sold more than that! Now don't you get all soft on me! We're going to build an empire for you! Nothing less will do...!"

"Lola" the Magician appears again. "Stephen S is down in the Hershfield Room. He's thinking about buying one of Michael's paintings. I think you better swoop in for the kill. He's opened up, like a crab on its back in the sun...!"

"Oh!" Lola exclaims, throwing her hands up. "Yes. Stephen S. Stephen S. Going in for the kill! Remember, Michael: Nothing short of an empire! Nothing short of the gugular...!"

Lola vanishes.

"I could tell you needed to be rescued," the Magician says.

Crossmann laughs.

"Don't tell me there was no Stephen S," Crossmann says.

"There is a Stephen S," the Magician says. "But he's not downstairs." The Magician smiles mischievously. "Lola's a rabid canine. She can ruin your night in a minute or two -- in a New York minute, as the song says. You better avoid her. She tastes like arsenic with a beer chaser...."

The Mayor's wife is following the Magician. She has taken a shine to him.

"She likes you," Crossmann says, pleased.

"I think it's my magic glasses," the Magician says to Crossmann. "She looks at herself in my glasses, seeing her reflection. And it makes her think she's on tv...."

Donna approaches, moving with energy, projecting a role.

"If your vagina could talk, what would it say?" she asks, emoting with a diva energy. "If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear? What does you vagina smell like? The responses range from the pithy to banal: 'Yum, yum' -- 'oh, yeah' -- 'Is that you?' say interviewees who mentally dress their 'sexy' and 'wet garbage-smelling' vaginas in everything from a pinafore to a slicker..."

Woody Allen walks by Crossmann with his Asian wife, eyeing Donna with heightened confusion. Then he gives Crossmann a sympathetic look.

"Dear," the Magician says. "Can you give it a rest. I'm not the BBC or PBS afterall..."

"Take off your glasses," Crossmann says.

"What?"

"Take off you glasses."

The Magician takes off his glasses.

Donna stops talking suddenly.

She says: "I never realized you have such a damaged face, Mister C. Where did you get all those pockmarks...?"

"I earned them. In prison," the Magician says.

"In prison? You've been to prison?"

Donna walks away dejectedly, energy sapped, looking for another pair of magic glasses in the crowd.

"Crossmann, like your art!" It is Donald Trump -- 'the Donald' as he's called by those who know. He has a beautiful blonde on his arm. "I bought a couple pieces. First Date -- it reminded us both our our first date! Now, don't laugh! We're still young at heart, you know... What was the other piece...?"

The woman is laughing.

"It is very sexual," the woman says. "The painting. First Date."

"Yes, it is," Crossmann says.

"There is a pulsing sexual instrument in the painting," she says, taking the theme a step further.

"Bloody red and ready to explode," The Magician says, seeing that such talk exictes the blonde.

"Yes. Beneath everything, initially, every love attraction, there is sex," Crossmann says. "That is what draws the man and woman together. It's not what keeps them together. But it's what brings them together in the beginning...."

"It's what drives them apart in the end," the Magician says.

"Oh, come on now," Trump says. "Sex isn't what pushes the world apart. It's what keeps the world alive...!"

"Yes," the Magician agrees. "In the beginning. And before the beginning..."

"It's what keeps a romance alive," the woman says.

"Romance is one stage of a love affair," the Magician says. "It is the youth of love. But people who must experience the youth of love always jump from romance to romance -- and the love affair is never allowed to develop. The plant is pulled out of the earth always before it can really bloom. Passion is the first stage of love. But passion isn't love. Love is passion and not-passion at once...."

"Are you...I don't even know you -- but I get the sense that your are criticizing my life-style," Trump says, smiling. "Am I to take this analysis personally...?"

"No. I speaking about the 'happiness cult' in this culture," the Magician says. "The idea that everyone has a right to be happy. Everyone doesn't have the right to be happy. We have no rights. We have life. Life makes us happy and sad; and the sad part can't be exiled from life if we want to build our character, to deepen our understanding and natures. That's all I'm saying."

He takes a swig of Wild Turkey.

"A philosopher," Trump says under his breath. "A European philosopher."

"Love is supposed to go through youth and maturity and old age," the Magician says. "Sorrow in love, alienation in love, also is a part of the fruit. A part of the experience. People who want to bounce on the surface chase only the sunny part of love; but they never develop real character either..."

"Listen, you Russian kook," Trump says. "Better watch yourself or I'll plant a big ugly hammer on your head..."

"You can't hit a man with glasses," the Magician says. He puts his magic glasses back on.

Trump begins to laugh.

The blonde on his arm also begins to laugh.

Soon, everyone is laughing.

The Magician hands Trump the bottle of Wild Turkey. Trump takes a pull.

"Crazy Russian artist!" Trump says.

"Crazy American Capitalist!" the Magician says.

'I have about ten of this lunatic's paintings," Trump says to Crossmann, pointing to the Magician. "Are you like him?" he asks Crossmann.

"I don't know," Crossmann says. "I don't think anyone's like him."

"He's not like me," the Magician says. "I'm a devil. He's the angel. Don't you see it? I'm Lucifer; he's the real Michael."

"Yes, we were watching you earlier on tv," the Donald says, "with Charlie Rose. What is that Michael the Archangel stuff? Do you really thing we've already fought Armageddon? We've already won the war of the apocalypse? I don't understand that..."

"No one understands it but him," the Magician says.

"Do you really think you were Micahel the Archangel?" the blonde asks Crossmann. "We weren't planning to come here tonight. We had been asked to several parties. But when we saw you with Charlie Rose tonight, I really wanted to come meet you..."

She is smiling a big, cuddly smile at Crossmann.

"She insisted we come down here," Trump says. "And, I thought, if we're coming down, we might as well open up the check book; support the arts a bit in town...."

"I love your work," the blonde says.

"We hear some Italians are driving up the price of everything?" Trump says. "Is it Enzo and his little scarlatti? I'm sure it must be them...."

"Rudolf Heinz has also come over from Dusseldorf," the Magician says. "There are several Germans entering the bidding also. He's considered a litrary genius in Germany, in all of Europe really..."

"We bought First Date and The Re-Birth of America. Your work on black paper reminds us of Hundertwasser... But it's a bit too dark for me. I like the work on white paper more...."

"Hundertwasser was a wonderful artist," Crossmann says. "He was a bit of a bore politically. But he was a wonderful artist. As were his predecessors Klimt and Schiele..."

"We're very fond of the Austrians, too," the Donald says. "We have originals of both Klimt and Schiele in our house. And now we have two of your paintings to go with them..."

"May I have your attention for a moment." Hedda Krantz is a late middle-aged woman of medium height, short sandy-hair, and a facial expression of steely resolve. Not unsympathetic. Some warmth in her face. But a fierceness too. She is dressed in black and white. In fact, everyone is the room is dressed in black and white. Crossmann can't believe it. He is too.

"I would like to welcom you all tonight; and thank you for spending Millennium Eve with us tonight -- and, more importantly, with our featured artist, Michael J. Crossmann, controversial but respected fine arts, novelist, poet, from the Pacific Northwest. I'd like to ask Mister Crossmann to come up here for a moment and say hello to you all. We are showing thirty-six pieces of his work tonight, work on paper and board, work in ink, colored pencil, gouache and acrylic. Mister Crossmann's work has been called an echo from the pre-World War II expressionist era. He calls his work Abstract Expressionism; and he refers to his imagery as veritable photographs of the psyche, part dream, part reality, part figure, part abstraction. He works in archetypal forms, dream images which, because of their archetypal nature, belong to everyone, are a part of everyone's experience...."

Crossmann has moved slowly toward Hedda Kranta, the museum's managing director. Making his way toward the microphone.

"It's my pleasure to introduce Michael J. Crossmann...."

Crossmann moves to the microphone. The audience applauds. A young woman, in here twenties, dressed in a chartresuse downy duck costume, hollars to Crossmann: "Racist, fascist, misogynist...!"

The crowd lets out a gush of disapproval.

Two ushers move to the protester, surround her and ask her to leave.

"How the fuck did she get in here!"

It is Lola's voice, behind Crossmann. "I'll fire that fucking doorman! I'll fire him tonight!"

Lola moves through the crowd, moving toward the fluffy duck with an intention to maim.

"I appreciate your coming here tonight," Crossmann says. "I realize that my ideas are controversial to some, and misunderstood by some; and they are, in fact, misrepresented by some others. But I appreciate being given a forum in New York City to show my art work -- which is really not especially political by nature. Which is, as Hedda Krantz has suggested, very private, on one hand; but very communal on another, primal in the sense of coming from our own common roots, our roots in dreams, from the gods of vision. I hesitate to say that I am eager or willing to answer questions about my art, since I am not sure that talking about the visual arts is a good thing, or even possible, except as a kind of masturbatory exercise. I think people talk about art more as a way to shine a light on their own intellectual processes, which may or may not have any connection to the art upon which they are throwing shadows or handsfull of light. The visual arts touch us in places, quite often, where words don't exist. Our first response to visual art is in the stomach or in the heart, very rearely in the intellect. There are exceptions to this. Some of my own art, I believe, is an exception to this -- the works which incorporate written poetic texts are, in fact, in some ways, illustrated texts which require intellectual analysis to understand. Generally, I don't talk much about my art. I try to look at it. To see things in it. I know there are secrets in there, things I should know, faces I should recognize. I know that my art is trying to educate me. But not through language. Something more immediate than language..."

"Which is what?" someone asks in the audience.

"My process in creating art is working from the inside out. Pushing the dream, the imagery hidden in darkness, out in to the light. I think many people don't understand abstract art. But the way I view abstract art is as, often, as a magnified view of the very close, the microscopic. I am a photographer -- an amateur photographer. But one of the wonders I see in photographer is the power to view to small, the infinitessimally small, in close-up. And how the small, the close-up, becomes, by nature, abstract, mysterious, difficult to solve, to master with the mind. Because it obscures scale. It is not clear if the picture is very large or very small. Patterns emerge; patterns become definitions of space. Colors become definitions of space. Forms are very less dominant than patterns. One can photogaph the skin on a woman's arm and discover wonderful, beautiful skin patterns which have no formal connections in the frame. Jackson Pollock is like this, especially in his drip paintings, which I find wonderful; Mark Rothko is also like this, a close-up of something he sees with his mind's eye. There may be a tight intellectural philosophy eventually built up around the art -- but the basis of the art form is a microscopic, or, at the other end of the spectrum, a macroscopic view of a slice of reality. One can get the same abstract pattern-qualities by pulling very far away in scale. Abstract art, generally speaking, is art not at the human scale, art at the atomic or sub-atomic scale or art at the God scale. My own art, I believe, is both abstract and figureative at the same time. If abstract art is the art of chaos, and figurative art is the art of form, then my art attempts to synthsize these opposites, being, as it were, a description of the reality between these two poles, Chaos and Form, Dream and the Awakened Object. In most of my work, both choas and formality are present together, abstraction and form living in close contact, interwoven, illuminating one another..."

"For someone who doesn't like to talk about his art, you do ok," Norman Mailer says. Mailer has made it to the opening. He smiles Crossmann.

Crossmann smiles back.

"I think this is quite a wonderful introduction to the art of Michael J. Crossmann," Hedda Krantz comes in. "I have asked four people to come by tonight, and provide us with a walking tour of the work on exhibit here tongith. As I have said, we have thirty-six of Michael's pieces displayed. I have asked Henrietta Beach, art critic of the New York Times to join us; Xavier Rubenstein, art historian from Columbia University, Reggie Lyons, Baker Chair Professor in Art History at Oxford University, and Richard Baker, a doctoral student at NYU who is working on a book entitled: Abstract Narrative: Mosaic Construction and Hermetic De-Construction in the Painting of Micahel J. Crossmann -- I have asked these four people to visit with us this evening and take us on a walk through the mind of our artist. Of course, I am hoping that the artist himself will join us in this excursion into his controversial and fascinating creations -- and that you, too, the audience, will also participate in our analysis of the work..."

The chamber orchestra beings playing Mussorgsky's Pictures at An Exhibition. This is a kind of inside joke; but many of the sophisticated audience understand the allusion and show their appreciation with well-mannered laughter.

Crossmann joins the four analysts and Hedda Krantz as they proceed to the north side of the building, to the first painting to be considered.

Crossmann notices a young Hasidic Jew with forelocks, wearing a black broadhat move in with the four analysts. The Russian woman in black also joins the group, as well as Alan Ginsberg, Faramarz and Truman, who is clearly soused; but brother William and Jim stay behind, near the food.

"The first piece is a work on white paper in India ink, a collage entitled 'Before the Beginning'," Hedda Kranz begins. "My first sense, and, I think, appropriately, is that the work appears unfinished. But how appropriately so. Because the idea here is, for lack of a better word, pre-genesis. Three words appear in the drawing: KOS, Chaos; Space; and Zero. What does this tell you? Anyone...?"

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

Richard Baker steps forth, the NYU graduate student. He is a small man, with sandy hair, looking like a headier version of Michael J. Fox. He is dressed immaculately; he clearly has a sense of his own importance: "One has to understand Michael Crossmann's metaphysical system, which we get from his novel. Pre-genetic matter; Chaos. The Dark Principle; the Night. The abode of the woman. Space and the Womb and Chaos and Zero all being the same thing. The two women of the left -- they seem to have two heads growing out of one stem, one neck. This is an illusion; but we only see this as we move down the body to see the dresses of the two women. The dress in the foreground is white; the dress in the background in black. Those familiar with Conversatons On a Dying Age will remember Crossmann's metaphysi of the two women, one a white woman (the Moon) and the other a black woman (the Earth). One being the Mother (the Moon); and the other being the Daughter (the Earth). The Father mates with the Daughter; and, thus, the Son is born. But the Son is born under the Earth -- hence, he is the Dark Man, the Shadow, who then mates with his Mother, the Moon. Electra and Oedipus. Of course, this drawing occurs prior to the appearance of the Man. It is before the beginning. The two women's heads and bodies are separated, with Space in-between the head and the body. Before the beginning, the Mind and the Body as principles are not connected. At the beginning, the principles are connected. This drawing does not state that; but the title implies that. When the heads and the body move back together, they will be a perfect fit. At death, of course, in religious thought, the mind goes to heave and the body stays on the Earth...."

"Well, that is an interesting analysis," Hedda Kranz replies. "The geometries in the drawing?"

"I don't know. They seems to be a kind of private language," young Baker responds.

"May I interject something?" a man asks. A rumpled man in an old white trenchcoat. It is Peter Falk.

"Mister Peter Falk," Hedda Kranz says, smiling broadly.

The crowd begins to applaud.

Everyone loves Peter Falk.

"Excuse me, thank you, Hedda," Falk says. "Hedda and I -- well, we've known one another for years. I dn't know that much about art. But I did notice something in this drawing. I was in here studying it earlier, before the crowd came in. In the three circles that were drawn by the artist -- note that in the top circle -- and I think of this drawing as having four panels: the first with the two women and the words space; the next with the two circles, the smaller one on the top and the larger one on the bottom; the next utterly empty; and the fourth on the far right, with the largest circle. Anyway, the small circle in the second panel has a single dot on the periphery of the circle; the largest circle on the far right has two dots on the periphery; and the second circle in the second panel, below the small circle, has three dots on the periphery. I believe these are time codes. They are sequences; and the story is to be read in that order: 1, then 2, then 3. Also, looking at circle number one, we have an arrow pointing to the left, back in time. The A in the circle: the A is the beginning. This would read: 'Before the Beginning'. The first circle on top is the title of the drawing...."

"Very impressive," Hedda says.

The crowd applauds again.

"What about the other two circles -- what do they say?" Hedda asks.

"I have no idea," Falk replies, laughing a gravely laugh. His bad eye is floating a bit; both eyes are twinkling.

"You said that the third panel was utterly empty," Baker replies. "But that isn't true: there is a word, 'ZERO' in that panel..."

"Yes, that's correct," Falk says. "He is correct."

"Why don't we ask the artist about this drawing?" Henrietta Beach suggests.

"Well," Crossmann says. "It does have a meaning. But I did this drawing in 1987. Thirteen years ago. I really don't remember what it says. It is a mystical text, a hieroglyph. but I believe I have lost the key. I do notice that the movement of the text is clockwise. I'm sure that has some significance."

"It is worth noting," Reggie Lyons begins, "that a repression of the psychological is, implicitly, an attempt to deny the validity of what for the 19th century German art historians who founded the field was the ultimate goal of art history: to articulate, with all the subtlety at one’s command, the psychological meaning of art, or, more particularly, in the words of Heinrich Wölfflin, to be a “psychologist of style.” For the majority of 20th century American art historians, this made art history a kind of Geistesgeschichte rather than empirical, documentary history—the only genuine kind of history for them. From Max Dvorak’s studies of medieval art through Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy, which in a sense was the final fruit of the conception of art history as Geistesgeschichte—the conception played itself out, or rather ingeniously went underground in Erwin Panofsky’s ostensibly empirical studies of Albrecht Dürer and Early Netherlandish Painting—art history was concerned to understand the “emotional values” of art, to again use Wölfflin’s words. The indifference of American art historians to such values, or more broadly to the psychological process in history—it is a general problem for historians, as Peter Gay’s Freud for Historians makes clear—has ultimately to do with American society’s elevation of social issues, and social reality, over psychological issues, and psychological reality, and above all the refusal to see any connection between them. In art history as in the society at large, there has been a reluctant and somewhat shallow, if at times loudmouthed yeasaying of emotional values.... Crossmann's art is clearly a hearkening back to the emotional, the psychological, away from the social, vlaues of art -- the artist as a shaman, a contactor of the energy of the gods. Political correctness does not drive this man's art. The shape of the psyche drives his art...."

"Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg have also written about this," Xavier Ruberstein interjects. "About the cult of the avant garde..."

"Crossmann's work is dealing with the psychological," Henrietta Beach joins in. "But the psychological at a much deeper level. The psychological is very personal and private, unless taken to that deeper. You seem to be arguing for a Freudian view of the work, Reggie; whereas, the artist himself seems to be arguing for a much for Jungian view..."

Peter Falk ignores the two historians.

"You'll notice that there are either the beginnings or endings of graphics in the second panel of this collage, just above the 'Before the Beginning" hieroglyph. A kind of cartoon inscription..."

"A man armed with a bow, a fish and a man," the Hasidic Jew says mildly. "It is the end of the zodiac: the Archer is Safittarius; the Man, the Water-Carrier, is Aquarius, and the Fish is Pisces. The only sign missing from this group is the Goat, the Scapegoat, from Capricorn."

"Interesting," Peter Falk says.

Crossmann notices that the Magician, his magic glasses still in place, in conversing with the old Russian woman dressed in black at the food table.

"This, to me," Moishe Frank says, "indicates that the remnants of the previous world are still present. A kind of inert matter, without an animating principle...."

"This has been just wonderful," Hedda Kranz says. "Can we move to the second piece...?"

The group begins to move toward the second painting.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, saying in the voice of the old Russian woman: "In order to become a divine, fully conscious god -- aye, even the highest -- the Spiritual Primeval Intelligences must pass through the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity but to the mortals that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences who have reached the appropriate equlibirium between matter and spirit, as we have now, since the middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed. The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a spirit; the spirit, a god..."

"Very well," Hedda begins. "The second drawing is colored pencil on black paper. The Title is the "First Family." And this was completed this year. This has a very primitive, primordial feel; the feel of mythology. The man and the woman appear to be riding in a kind of ship, a ship that has a body, with two eyes below the body of the woman. I see this face, the body of the ship below the woman, as being the son in the womb of the first mother. But the ship is being born upon the back of a goose. And the woman has speared a fish -- so we definitely have the marrying of two elements in this drawing, the Air and the Water. I think the drawing is quite wonderful. It is one of my favorites in the show...."

FIRST FAMILY

Xavier Rubenstein begins: "Michael Crossmann has gone on creating big, complex, slow paintings and drawings. There are no cheap tricks here, only expensive ones -- effects bought with thought and reconsideration, and that precious comoodity -- time. The recent paintgs and drawings are bolder and tauter than the early works. The work is more attenuated, the forms stretched thin. Rectilinear Sturm and Drang has given way to more lithesome dramas. But Crossmann's allegiances remain visibly, gloriously mixed -- High Modernism and Deep Symbolism married together like an interracial couple. Formal rigor and pretty pastels, the sign-posts of ideology set in the fluffy landscape of reverie. What Crossmann has done, virtually alone among his peers, is to create a pictorial language in which hope, despair, faith and humor all come together, not in post-modern overlays, but in a series of single, cogent images -- a thin surface, deep as the world..."

She waits for the applause.

"What did she say?" Peter Falk asks.

"Post-modern overlays," a beautiful woman replies to Falk. She is wearing a bit too much makeup for his taste; but there is no question that she is beautiful. She has full brunette hair that has been teased. She is wearing a deep blue silk gown. She has the body of a godiva.

"Do I know you?" Peter Falk asks.

"I don't think so," the woman says, smiling. "My name is Denise Rich."

"Please to meet you. I'm..."

"I know who you are, Mr. Falk," she says.

"Can I get you a glass of champagne?" Falk asks her.

"Yes; that would be nice," she says.

"Don't go away, dear," Falk says; then he wanders off in search of champagne.

"The fish motif appears for a second time," Moishe Frank says. "And the goose is the Hansa."

"Tell us about Hansa?" Hedda replies.

Moishe Frank says: "The Hansa is the Hindu goose of creation who, when given milk mixed with water, separated the milk from the water and drank only the milk. She is the foundation upon and through which the world is built."

Crossmann notices that the Magician is speaking with the old Russian woman again near the table with the food.

"This man's art is about meaning," Woody Allen says. "Besides the obvious aesthetics quality of the work, there is meaning underlying the work."

"Aboriginal art," a strong, deep voice comes from behind Allen's. It is Charleton Heston's voice. "The work reminds me very much of aboriginal art: the work of the primitives. The Mayans; and Australian Aborigines."

"Because of the symbolism?" Hedda asks.

"Primarily," Heston says. "And because he is dealing with archetypes, first forms and models. With the beginning of the world. Many of these drawings and paintings, many are dealing with the beginning of the world..."

"The work is classical as it is very modern," Henrietta Beach, from the New York Times, says. "It is classical because of its reliance upon, and its re-formation, of classical mythology. It is modern in the fact that it re-dresses the symbols, the mythology, in abstract forms. The work has a modern body and a classical soul. As he synthsizes prose and poetry in his faction, he also synthesizes styles of art, merging the classical and the modern, the seeming opposites, poles...."

"We should move to the next piece," Hedda says.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann and speaks in the voice of the Russian woman: "When the 'Divine Son' breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the Active Power which causes the One to become Two and Three -- on the Cosmic Plane of manifestation. The Triple One differentiates into the many and then Fohat is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms and makes them aggregate and combine."

"Yes," Hedda Krantz begins. "The third piece is entitled 'Castor and Pollux'. It is a gouache and acrylic painting, filled, I am sure, again, with symbolic meaning. Who wants to start?"

CASTOR AND POLLUX

Reggie Lyons begins: "My work involves a regression to a Geistesgeschichte conception of art history, but involves a more updated—more theoretically sophisticated or at least elaborate psychology, namely, psychoanalysis—than that used by the 19th century German art historians and Geistesgeschichte theorists. More particularly, I have tried to use psychoanalytic concepts—no doubt in a fashion many of you will find too eclectic, although you will note a tendency to use object relational and self psychological ideas—but also to let the artists and their works speak for themselves, if interpreting what they say psychoanalytically. Thus, my basic thesis—that avant-garde art is therapeutic in intention, which is part of what gives it its authenticity, and motivates its stylistic innovations, while neo-avant-garde art has lost or rather forfeited that intention, which is part of why it is inauthentic—derives from the avant-garde artist’s recurrent, stated fear of decadence and disintegration in the modern world, which is what leads him or her to search for self-renewal and rejuvenation through the innovations of avant-garde art, and from the neo-avant-garde artist’s explicit acceptance of the decadence and disintegration of avant-garde art, involving its institutionalization or socialization and academicization, and his or her determination to benefit from this ironically decadent institutionalization. Where the avant-garde artist feared for the relevance of art in the modern world of science and technology—did it have any place in such an enlightened, demystified world?—the neo-avant-garde artist realizes that art is an important, major way to fame and fortune, that is, social success in the most grandiose terms—one becomes a part of art history—which is partly why it is conceived of as the ultimate cure for all emotional ailments."

"Do you see this painting in those terms, Reggie?" Xavier Rubenstein.

"Parddon me?"

"Do you see this paint in those terms?"

"Well, I see the artist in these terms," Reggie replies.

"I would quite agree," Xavier says. "I would argue that Mister Crossmann is, perhaps, if I am not stating the case too grandly, a synthesis of this avant-garde artist you speak of and the neo-avant-garde artist."

"An interesting thought," Reggie responds. "There are elements of each."

"Without making claims as to the authenticity, import or truth of a previously named abstract art (the genuine thing, some might call it, the work beginning with Kandinsky and Klee andthe German expressionists), I would assert that this contemporary re-named “abstract” art has as its primary cultural function the erasure of any imagined or imputed force, relevance or memory of what previously was claimed to have occurred under that title. We are less concerned with the look of contemporary painting and more concerned with contemporary production being premised upon a seemingly necessary evisceration of the past. Historical abstraction predicated itself on the creation of a fiction of timelessness. The rhetoric of this timelessness was unrelenting in the sweep of its application: everything from human nature to color, line, and composition appeared universal and timeless. The conceit was that such a thing as a profound human nature could only adequately be expressed in a correspondingly essentialist language of pure color, line, etc. We propose that the term Compositional Formalism designate this dream of a universality configurable in a timeless visual language...."

"Exactly," Reginald says, smiling broadly.

"I think you are missing the point," Richard Baker -- the doctoral student -- replies. "While one could argue that Mister Crossmann's work -- as you put it -- attempts to perpetuate the historical abstraction predicated on the creation of a fiction of timelessness, one must comprehend his work as being what it is. That is, Mister Crossmann's work, at its basis, is a portrait of the timeless. A portrait of a kind of aboriginal dream-time. This is something fundamental, something especially relevant in the age of post-structuralism and deconstruction, an age struggling to free itself from its own suffocating, totalizing 'mastery' of technology, art and thought.

Henrietta Beach comes in: "Piet Mondrian, for example, who was so profoundly influenced by Cubism, and the most radical aspects of Futurism and Constructivism was never a Platonist. Nevertheless, he was, in a sense, a Platonist, as is revealed in his purist attempt to attain the essence of that which disrupts limited form, which disrupts 'any idea'. He operates in the spirit of Plato by pursuing an ideal, through his examination of theosophy, the ideal he pursues is the destruction of idealism itself. As we would learn by analyzing his Tree series, he has discovered a unique structural principle which promotes that which has been repressed and bound by form and 'essence.' This principle is itself a new universal, a new essence, a new order, the antipode of the Platonic essence, an order that can oppose repression by opening out Platonic ideas like 'particular form' and 'the individual.' This is the 'essence,' the 'universal,' the 'unity' that Mondrian speaks of when he is sounding Platonic. Mister Crossmann's own flirtation with theosophy is similar and led him to similar results."

"What did she say?" Peter Falk asks. He has returned to Denise Rich with a glass of champagne.

"She said that Mondrian was a theosophist," Denise Rich replies.

"Oh. What does that have to do with anything?" Falk asks.

"I have no idea," Ms. Rich replies.

"Again, you are missing the point!" Richard Baker says. "Crossmann's paintings are about meanings, underlying meanings. Occult meanings. Meanings that will not be illuminated by analysis of one's own theories about art, or by psychoanalysis of the artist, but only through an understanding of the symbolism in the painting itself. One can't understand this painting through self-reflection; one must actually look at the painting to understand it!"

"What a revelation!" the Magician says loudly.

"Castor and Pollux are the twins in Greek myth," Moishe Frank says. "The twins of Day and Night."

Richard Baker says: "If one were familiar with Mister Crossmann's book -- and I am assuming that many in this room have -- one would be aware that Castor and Pollux are two of the most important characters in the book, as the twin brothers of Day and Night. One brother, Pollux, is eternal. The other brother, Castor, the Night brother -- Castor comes from the world 'castrate' -- is mortal. He, in fact, is fallen man, man without power. Of course, which brother actually 'falls' depends upon your persepective, your point of view. But note in this painting, on the viewers right side is Pollux. He is a warrior; he has white skin, rosy skin. He has a penis. He is a Grecian hero. His companion if a red war eagle, an animal of the sky, of the air. Pollux is framed in a golden triangle, the Sun, the Three being a symbol of the Mind, the Head in manifestation. Castor, on the other hand, is framed by a dark square, the Night Body. His face is blue, reflecting the Moon. He has an upper body but no lower body. He has no penis. And his companion is a crawling creature, an Earth creature, the scarab.

"The scarab is, in fact, an androgynous entity," Moishe Frank adds. "A symbol of fertility, creativity, and immortality. So, in this painting is everything, even the promise of re-birth for Castor. Castor will re-become Pollux through the intercession of that small bug, the scarab. In Christian churches, the name is sometimes associated with Christ; and, in astrology, with the house of Cancer."

"Castor is the godless man, the intellectual, the man who has no kahones," the Magician says. He seems to be quite drunk. "The one who is lost in the darkness of political ideology."

There is an embarassed silence.

"Any more comments," Hedda asks.

Xavier Rubenstein says: "In his paintings, the layers of paint, of figures, of ideas composed and then abandoned, bear implicit witness both to seriousness of intent and to changes of heart. Through visual reference he makes his dilemma explicit. When I look at this paintings, I think of the phrase: the architecture of repression rendered in the painterly hand of regret..."

There is a kind of stunned silence.

"It seems to me that this is the first painting where we see the racism inherent in Crossmann's work begins to surface." It is a woman's voice. She is standing in back. The crowd turns, parts to see who she is. It is Oprah Winfrey.

"Oprah, welcome to our... humble abode," Hedda Krantz says. "His racism. In what way?"

"The implication that Day is good and Night is bad," Oprah says. "The implication is that White is good and Black is bad."

"The implication, my dear lady," Richard Baker replies, "is that white and black are the same thing. If you had read his book..."

"His book is boring," Oprah says. "It's one of the most boring books ever written. I don't know anyone who could get through it..."

"And still you judge him by it?" Moishe Frank asks. "Without havin read it?"

"The implication is that Day and Night are the same thing, through the intercession of Christ," Richard Baker says. "Through the intercession of the golden bug, the Scarab."

"That's all a bunch of malarky," Oprah says. "It's an intellectual slap-dance. He's a white-supremacist, clear and simple."

Crossmann notices the Magician talking again with the old Russian woman off to the side.

"Any more comments on this painting?" Hedda aks. "I like the way this is generating discussion. We may not all agree here; but we are communicating. Let's move to the next painting...."

"I'd like to add something," Charlie Rose says. "Something that hasn't been mentioned. I doubt if many of you are familiar with Michael's unpublished manuscript of prosepoems, Instrumentation in the Wheelhouse. But Crossmann structures that book, in terms of time, to reflect the progression of one life from pre-genesis through birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and post-genesis. I am wondering if we may have a similar order in these paintings. We began in pre-genesis, with "Before the Beginning"; then we had the "First Family," with the primordial father and the pregnant mother. We all know how close he was to his brother William, who is in this room somewhere...

"He's over eating all the food with his loser friends," Lola Fanti exclaims, glaring bullets back toward the motley crew at the table.

"I believe this represents the birth of the two brothers, who were often confused by others when they were young of being twins," Rose says.

"Interesting thought, Charlie," Hedda says. "So you think the order of these paintings might create a structure of the man's life. That is very interesting. So, are we ready to move to number four...?"

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again. He speaks in the voice of the old Russian woman: "Fohat is closely related to the One Life. From the Unknown One, the Infinite Totality, the Manifested One or the Periodical Manvantaric Deity emanates; and this is the Universal Mind, which, separated from its Fountain Source, is the Demiurgos, or the Creative Logos of the Western Kabalists, the four-faced Brahma of the Hindu religion. In its totality, viewed from the standpoint of manifested Divine Thought in the esoteric doctrine, it represents the Hosts of the high creative powers..."

"Well, the fourth piece is a drawing entitled 'The Girl Next Door'," Hedda begins. "This piece is a collage, with text, done in India Ink and colored pencil. I wonder if the artist has anything to say about this one...?"

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

"Well, this style of drawing/collage is the main type of Day drawing I have done," Crossmann replies. "In much of my work, the force of Chaos remains very strong. The sense that forms emerge from Chaos is very important in my work. Light emerging out of Darkness. I love the world of Chaos, the primeval world, the Dark World. But I also love the world of Form, the brithplace of form, the place where the first form emerges out of Chaos. This is the World of Archetypes. First Forms. This drawing is really about the first recongition in our hero, if we do view this exhibit as the life of a hero, as Charlie suggested -- then this is the first recognition in our hero of sex, of the girl, of the opposite pole of life."

"The woman is clearly a sex object," Gloria Steinem says from the back of the group. She is now standing beside Oprah.

"Yes, that is true," Crossmann says. "The drawing is about the recoognition of sex as a force in life."

"I don't believe any of your art work shows the woman as anything but a sex symbol," Gloria replies.

"Well, 'Othello's Wife" does not," Crossmann replies.

"That is a racist painting!" Oprah comes in.

"The 'Young Girl' and the "Girl From Sapa' are not sexual in nature," Crossmann says.

"They do not represent the woman as the hero, however, do they, Mister Crossmann?" Gloria continues. "The Man is always the hero in your work; the woman is never the hero."

"That's not true," Crossmann replies. "The woman is the hero in 'First Family'. She is not only capturing the food for the family, she is also bearing the child. She actually dominate the man in that painting. In 'The Lovers', the woman is equal in strength to the man; and in 'Venus' the woman is heroic as a force of love..."

"But not as a symbol of Power," Gloria insists.

"The woman's power is the power to generate darkness," Crossmann says. "The woman's greatness is the power to generate the world through love..."

"Woman's power is negative, then?" Gloria aks. "Woman's quest for power results in Chaos -- is that what you are saying...?"

"That's what mythology teaches," Crossmann says.

"Then we have to re-create mythology!" Gloria demands.

"If the world isn't what you like it..."

"Then you change the world!" Steinem says.

"Mythology portrays the world as it is," Crossmann says. "You are not discussing changing the world, but changing the description of the world. If you don't like the world, change the description of the world...."

"That's what communism is all about!" the Magician cries out. "See the scars on my body! The communists didn't like my art, didn't like the message in my art, so they attempted to change my body by putting out cigarettes in it, and by re-describing me as a lunatic...!"

"Are you here with anyone?" Peter Falk asks Denise Rich.

"I'm planning to meet someone," she says.

"An artist seeks his truth, Gloria," Xavier Rubenstein says to Ms. Steinem. "An artist must be free to seek and express his truth."

"Even if his truth is a lie?" Goria asks.

"A lie according to whom?" Xavier replies.

"According to the truth itself," Gloria says. "I know the truth. We all now the truth. Men abuse women; they always have; and, if we let them, they always will...."

"If you don't like this drawing, then you will probably really hate the next one, the watercolor darwing entitled 'First Date'," Hedda responds. "Let's move to this one."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, speaking in the old woman's voice: "Fohat, running along the seven principles of Akasa, acts upon manifested substance or the One Element and by differentiating it into various centers of Eenrgy, sets in motion the law of Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to the Ideation of the Universal Mind, brings into existence all the various states of being in the manifested Solar System...."

"This work, entitled 'Frist Date' is in watercolor and ink," Hedda says. "Again, I would say, that teenage sexuality is the subject of this piece. The man is carrying a small, dried-up handfull of flowers to this girl-friend. But beneath this hand holding the flowers emerges a very vigorous erect penis with a big red head. There is a small man's head in black and white peeping out of the center of the painting. I'm not sure if this is the young man's angel or conscious or what. This is very clearly about teenage love. And I think it has to be viewed with a sense of humor..."

FIRST DATE

"Much of my work must be viewed with a sense of humor," Crossmann says.

"This is one of several works in this show that remind me of Picasso," Reggie Lyons begins. "Crossmann has found his own artistic roots, not in the future -- he is not a futurist, surely, and I say that with admiration -- but in the past, in the best work of this century. Picasso for instance. As Clement Greenberg said, when everyone is a revolutionary the revolution is over. Or, as Rosenberg put it, when a revolutionary “new look is ... a professional requirement,” the new is not only a tradition, but no longer meaningful. The avant-garde artist was a genuine “antenna of the race,” to use the felicitous phrase Ezra Pound used to describe the artist at his or her best. He or she was attuned to modern society, which was still fresh and surprising and not the unsurprising cliché it has become—Baudelaire thought that art’s purpose in modern society was to convey the surprise of the new, but today the new is no longer surprising but peculiarly stale. The unpredictable is predictably manufactured. The avant-garde has become a tyranny. That is, the avant-garde artist registered, in his or her own individuality and art, the pressures and threat to individuality and mental health a new, modern society presented. The avant-garde artist wanted to be of service to this society, if only by suggesting various ways of critically and creatively working it through. In contrast, the neo-avant-garde artist conceives of his or her relationship to society and the purpose of art in a completely different way. He or she is an ironical conformist, using art not only to become part of the establishment, but as an empty fetish—commodity. For the neo-avant-garde artist art is a cynical career rather than a desperate, uncertain calling."

"And you place Michael Crossmann in which group?" Xavier Rubenstein asks again.

"He is a reactionary, cleary, and that is good," Reggie says in his lovely British accent. "He is a throw-back to the great tradition of the avant-garde artist as a...shaman -- that is the world used tonight -- as a primordial savior of society..."

There is scattered applause.

"I am not certain that saving society is what the avant-garde artist really intended," Crossmann replies. "Perhaps that was so in a very idealistic sense. Of saving society and leading it back to a more primitive construction. Artists make very good critics but not very good leaders. Artists lead, in a very subtle sense, in that they, as antennas of the race, may anticipate the future. Although one could make a claim that artists are really not very good in this either. One could argue that science fiction writers are the true visionaries of our race, because they look forward. And that the so-called avant-garde artists, who are so frightened of a world which includes technology, are the forces of death in the society because of their desire always to look back, to retreat. Can one imagine Michaelangelo or Da Vinci of wincing at the prospect of a technological future? Hardly. Da Vinci was an engineer, in addition to being an artist. The Renaissance Man is afraid of neither the past nor the future -- but he attacks the future. He brings light to the world. Not just the light of fear, which is what most artists today carry with them. Fear of nuclear annihilation, fear of governmental tyranny, fear of global warming, fear of a new ice age, fear of having children, fear of war, fear of success, fear of being perceived as being on the wrong side politically. Artists aren't leading today; they are dragging their feet, afraid of moving in to a future in which they fear they will not have power. Artists have power only in the darkness. The Shaman led primitive societies because those societies existed in darkness. Here the shaman connected them to their gods. Although the shaman had a pretty mixed record of bringing health and well-being to the society. The shaman was used by the society to try to mitigate the negative. Disease, death, poverty, starvation -- the shaman prayed to alleviate these things. But, generally speaking, his success rate was rather minute. Since everything came and went in cycles, a kind of salvation was built in to the system. Artists are best at criticizing the existing world than they are at building a better world. We should not expect the artist to be a savior of the race. God saves the race; at best, the artist attempts to portray God's inventiveness. Picasso, and I love Picasso's work, did not save the world; he brightened the world with his work. But if the world had followed Picasso, as the creator of a life-style, the world would have fallen into decay and poverty. Avant-garde artists sought, in almost all cases, to destroy the middle-class. That became the goal of art after our friend Van Gogh. To attack conventional life-styles. To portray the stupidity of middle-class life. That was not always the case. Art did not always attack life. There was a time that it served life. There was a time when art sought to portray the beauty and the depth of Life. Art has now become Anti-Art, the goal of which is to portray the ugliness and the shallowness of Life. I agree with Mister Lyons in his assessment of the neo-avant-garde, in which 'newness' is confused with art. An artist hurling dung at an image of the Virgin Mary is treated as art. An artist painting herself as a nude Jesus Christ is art. Not because of the quality of the work, but because of its 'newness', and its shock value. If an art shocks today, it is considered important. As if shocking an audience is what art is and should be. Social significance has become the only criteria in some of the art establishment's minds in determining the value of a work of art. Is it politically correct? If it is justifiably politically correct, then it needs to be shown, even if it is an artist throwing dung at the Virgin Mary. I can assure you if it was an artist throwing dung at an image of Martin Luther King or Ghandi or Gloria Steinem or Buddha it would not be praised or tolerated...."

"Here! Here!" Mayor Guiliani cries out.

"What colors does my vagina come in?" a woman's voice responds.

"We live in a world now in which portrayal of the small is lauded," Crossmann continues. "Portrayal of the ugly. Portrayal of the insignificant. And, as such, the most insiginificant are applauded. We place 'social consciousness' as the highest value in art. And Reggie is correct in this -- although I wish he had a way of talking to the world instead of talking only to the faculty club -- social consciousness has become the only criteria in measuring art; and the inner nature has been disregarded. The great work of this century, in all forms of art, all genres, came from deep explorations of the self. In literature, Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Thomas Mann, Virginia Wolfe. In fine arts, Picasso, Klimt, Kandinsky, Pollock, Wyeth, Georgia O'Keefe. These artists did not seek to re-make the world by throwing dung at the world. They sought to re-make the world through coming to an understand of Life as it is. Where everyone is a revolutionary, the revolution is over. Where everyone is a revolutionary, the oppression has begun...."

"Thank you for including a few women in your list," Gloria Steinem replies.

"Political propoganda is not art," Crossmann says finally. "Political propogranda is the opposite of art. It is anti-art. Because it begins with the understanding that the truth is known. True art begins with the understanding that the truth is not known; and the process of creating art is an attempt to catch a glimpse of the truth, if only for a moment..."

Silence.

The Magician is again chatting with the old Russian woman in the distance.

Moishe Frank says: "We must remember that, in the Kabbala, there are thirty-two paths to Truth. The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and 10 numbers. There are 36 pieces in this show: the 26 letters of the English alphabet and 10 numbers."

"Do I know this person you are meeting?" Peter Falk asks Denise Rich.

"Oh, I think you probably do," the pretty woman replies, with a bashful smile.

"Who is he?"

"I won't tell," she replies.

"You are not suggesting, are you Mister Crossmann?" Michael Douglas asks. "That aesthetics is the only consideration in great art...?"

"No. I am suggesting that an anti-aesthetic is not a significant criteria, no matter how wll it can be justified in words," Crossmann says. "There has been a rapid growth in workshop art in America over the last few decades. Retired people taking workshops, being taught the techniques for rendering landscapes, children, dogs, roosters. This is the one pole of irrelevance in art: technique only. Technique can be learned. But an art with technique alone is a curse, an abomination. Painting pretty pictures is not art; it is a kind of tedium elongated, and often rewarded by nouveau-riche who have no taste. All sentimentalism and no substance. The other pole of insignificance can be seen in most of the galleries in Soho, or in any major city in America in the gallery districts. Anti-art art, generally abstract, with no attention to aesthetics; anti-aesthetic generally. With many gallery directors having fallen under the spell of the the elitist understanding that only art not comprehended by the ignorant masses is real art. Oftentimes, the uglier it is, the better. Sloppiness should not be rewarded as art, even if there is a sophisticated written philosophy accompanying it. Throw out the written word when it comes to art. The work of art has to stand on its own. A title is acceptable as a text throwing light on a subject. But a written tract should not be needed to justify a work of art. The work of art must justify itself -- and, traditionally, a work of art has justified itself under this criteria: Would I like to have this in my home with me? Do I want to live with this vision in my own sanctuary; will I bring it in to my own sacristy...?"

"You admire Pollock?" Michael Douglas asks.

"Yes. I admire many of his drip paintings," Crossmann says. "Which, to me, show a high level of concern for aesthetics..."

"Does this mean you would dismiss all social art?" Oprah Winfrey calls out.

"Not all. Hundertwasser had a very strong political and ecological message to his art," Crossmann says. "But the art is paramount. If the artist is hitting me across the face with a wet fish, which is his or her message, I generally lose interest quickly. For the right and wrong of life is a pretty superficial understanding of existence. There are much deeper levels to be explored. Hundertwasser's work goes into the deep levels. That's why I love his work. Picasso's 'Guernica' is political in nature; but, even more, it is human. It is about human suffering in war. Picasso clearly had his own sense of good and evil; but the slaughter of humans in his masterpiece could, in fact, have happened under any totalitarian regime, right or left. It has, in fact, happened under both. Was fascist Spain and fascist Germany more evil and violent than communist Russia or communist China or communist Cambodia? I think now. I don't get the sense in 'Guernica' that Picasso is saluting communism as a salvation from fascist violence as much as he is bemoaning humanity's stupidity and waste of life. When I watch a movie, if I sense the director emerging from behind the camera to tell me how to think, I turn off the movie. Art is subtle. If you want to brainwash me, convince me that your are correct, then you have to do it very subtley. Propoganda is the art of tyranny; argument is the art of subtlety."

"Any other comments?" Hedda asks. "Ok, let's move to number Six..."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, speaking again in the old woman's voice: "Fohat is, then, the personified electirc vital powr, the transcendental binding Unity of all Cosmic Eenergies, on the unseen as on the manifested places, the action of which resembles -- on an immense scale -- that of a Living Force created by the Will, in those pphenomena where the seemingly subjective acts upon the seemingly objective and propels it to action. Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Containeer of the Force but is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity, the forces he acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influences on all those planes respectively."

"Very well," Hedda begins. "Work Number Six is entitled 'The Spriit of Drink'. This is another Night painting with colored pencil and gouache. Anyone wish to comment...?"

THE SPIRIT OF DRINK

"Again," Gloria Steinem begins, "the woman is portrayed as the cause of Man's downfall."

"Clearly," Richard Baker responds, "the woman in this painting is not really a woman but is the spirit inside of the man urging him on to drink. The man is smaller than this urge. The labels on the bottles, the interwoven black and white imagery, is also in the weak man's heart. This drawing is anti-bacchanalean much more than it is anti-woman.... This is about a man's weakness. He is not being seduced by a woman. He is being seduced by his own idea of how he will find a woman..."

"I think that's right," Charlie Rose replies. "Remember, this is an autobiographical exhibit. His interest in women, in sex, as part of the teenage rite of passage also includes the rite of drink, of intoxication. The party. The image of the party will come back again at the end of the exhibit. It comes back, in fact, to this very night, the celebration of the millennium. Which I find quite intriguing..."

"Any more comments?" Hedda asks.

"I find this image striking," a man in the back replies, a well-dressed man, with an intrigued look. He is standing beside his wife. "We love the humor and compassion which is appaarent in nearly all of Mister Crossmann's work. We believe it must come from a strong religious faith. That, even with the tragedy and sorrow of the world, there is some underlying meaning, some underlying reason for existence..."

"That's Howard and Donna Stone, from Chicago," Lola whispers to Crossmann. "Time to advance! They have money up the Rocky Graziano...!"

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again: "On the earthly plane, Fohat's influenceis felt in the magnetic and active force generated by the strong edesire of the magnetizer. On the Cosmic plane, it is present in the constructive power that carries out, in the formation of things -- from the planetary system down to the glow-worm and simple daisy -- the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the development and growth of that special thing. He is, metaphysically, the objectivised thouoght of th gods, the 'Word Made Flesh', on a lower scale, and themessenger of Cosmic and human ideations. The active force in Universal Life."

"Piece number seven," Hedda begins, "is a Day painting in gouache entitled: 'Chopin, George Sand, the Birth of Fortune, and Destiny'. I find this really quite exquisite. The black and white cartoon imagery we find in many of Michael Crossmann's Day paintings represents -- and correct me if I am wrong Michael -- the mental conflict of the principles of Light and Darkness, the duality inherent in all evolution, all progress of ideas..."

"If one remembers Mister Crossmann's descriptions of the Universe and the Anti-Universe in his masterpiece, Conversations," Richard Baker says, "one will recognize that these forces of black and white, or Night and Day, are illusions. But still powerful illusions. The illusion of being on the right side is what has led to all the war and brutality in the history of the world. It is true that these are illusions, as Mister Crossmann demonstrates quite clearly in his book -- IF ONE READS THE WHOLE BOOK! This dualism is not in stasis. We remember that Michael Crossmann's hero in the book, either Jacob Heimkrieter or the Clerk, who is a form of himself, goes to sleep an adversary of Ronald Reagan and wakes up a supporter of Ronald Reagan. The darkness, essentially, in the death process, flips from the Anti-Universe in to the Universe. The black-bodied electron (the electron) smashes into the white-bodied electron (the anti-electron) -- they annihilate one another, exchanging bodies in the process. The white becomes black and the black becomes white. It is all quite scientific; and all quite factual. Science's discovery of the Anti-Universe will cement to truth of Mister Crossmann's mystical vision of the nature of reality. And perhaps it will lead to a period of heavenly, scientific understanding -- about, at least, the nature of duality..."

CHOPIN, GEORGE SAND, THE BIRD OF FORTUNE, AND MISTER DESTINY

"This is one of my favorite pieces, because of its mood -- it is a very gentle frozen mood, as if Chopin were caught in a dream." The speaker has an English accent, a handsome androgynous face, with the whitest of short-cropped hair. Very masculine -- but also sensitive in features. It is David Bowie. "I love the color patterns in this painting also. How the piano keyes blend in with the slivers of thoughts, the black and white elements, that seem a kind of glue in this painting. The dark tones fot he piano are repeated in the hair of George Sand; then again as trim in George Sand's gown and shoe, which becomes the mouth of Mister Destiny. The darkest tones are repeated in Chopin's top hat, George Sand's hair and in the cheekbone of Mister Destiny. The only unique color really, the only color not repeated, is the blue gody of the Bird of Fortune..."

"I don't see any of this," Gloria Steinem says.

"Neither do I," Senator Ted Kennedy says. "Perhaps it's because I arrived late. I don't see George Sand. Where is George Sand...?"

"It looks like a chaotic jumble to me," Steinem says.

"No, look," Peter Falk says. "See the light blue gown George Sand is wearing, with the black trim..."

"I swear, perhaps I need to drink some more," Senator Kennedy. "I really can't see anything here..."

"You're joking surely, Ted," Charlie Rose says.

"Oh, hello, Charlie," Ted replies. "No, no. Perhaps I don't understand his use of color. Perhaps that's it..."

"It's all chaotic noise," another woman says. It is Hillary Clinton. She has just come in with Ted Kennedy.

"It is noise," Bowie agrees. "And there is clearly an element of chaos in it. But it is frozen chaos. I find this harmonious, like Chopin's music. The silence between the notes is as much the music as are the notes themselves..."

"Is he on acid or what?" asks a bald-headed man, standing near Falk.

Crossmann looks out and sees the bald-headed man. He remembers him from before, in the dark hallway, when the bald-man wanted to kill him. He reminds Crossmann of Gordon Liddy. But it isn't Gordon Liddy. Behind him stands a jaundiced man with jowls, smoking a cigarette. And near him are Dana Skully and Fox Mulder. Crossmann is amazed at the creaminess of Skully's skin. He feels himself becoming aroused; and he fights off the thought, since he would be embarassed to be standing before this multitude with an erection under his dress pants.

Crossmann looks around the room, looking for Catherine Zeta-Jones. He doesn't see her.

"Any other thoughts?" Hedda asks.

"I think we need to remember the One Life theme of the exhibit," Charlie Rose says again. "This is the man's, the artist's, first introduction to culture, to art. This corresponds to his college years, I believe. The sex and the drinking of teenage life transforms into the love of art, of beauty..."

"It is interesting that George Sand is put second in the painting," Gloria Steinem begins again. "She was a very strong person, stronger certainly than Chopin -- in fact, many historians believe she killed Chopin -- that's how strong she was. If ever there was a female hero, it was George Sand, for she competed with men, and defeated them. Still, the artist puts her in second place, subservient to Chopin, the tuburcular boy..."

"Chopin's art was sublime," Richard Baker defends Crossmann. "Sand's art was second rate. She deserves second billing in terms of artistic genius...!"

"I am not sure that being able to kill men is the goal of the women's movement," Meryl Streepe interjects.

"No, that is not what I meant," Gloria responds. "But her strength as a man....er, as a woman. That was my compliment to her..."

"Many women consider ourselves feminists," Meryl Streepe continues. "But that doesn't mean we hate men. We are here together. If we want to get rid of war in the world, then surely we must conquer war inside ourselves first..."

Denise Rich moves away from Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, moving quietly, not wanting to attract notice. Peter Falk follows her.

"We find this piece quite wonderful," Michael Mendelsohn says. He is a tall men wearing a black sweater, black hair (that appears to be died -- it is too black). He werar quiet crimson glasses. Both he and his wife Gael are holding small customized European dogs: Sissy and Sassy.

"We have put in a bid on this piece," Gael says quietly to an hispanic man in a tuxedo standing beside her. It is Geraldo Rivera.

"I'll bid on it," Geraldo cries out. "I absolutely love this one."

"I have bid on it too," David Bowie says.

"I'll bid on it too," Senator Kennedy says. "I'll bid $50,000."

A hush sweeps over the room.

"Bidding begins at $250,000," Lola says, smailing like a cheetah. "I can take bids, if you are interested...."

Michael Mendelsohn and Gael move to Lola; David Bowie moves to Lola; Ted Kennedy tells Hillary that he is going to find a glass of champagne.

"Shall we move to the next piece?" Hedda asks rhetorically.

The bald man is making faces at Crossmann. Grimaces. He is either choking or he is threatening Crossmann.

The Smoking Man continues to smoke.

Crossmann looks back at Dana Skully. He winks at her, thinking about her creamy skin. His penis begins to inflate again; he quickly thinks about Bella Abzug, an anti-erection medication. It works.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, saying: "In his secondary aspect, Fohat is the Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid, and the preserving foruth principle, the Animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or -- Electricity. In India, Fohat is connected with Vishnu and Surya in the early character of the (first) God; for Vishnu is not a high god in the Rig Veda. The name Vishnu is from the root vish, 'to pervade'; and Fohat is called 'the Pervader' and 'the Manufacturer' because he shapes the atoms from crude material. In the sacred texts of the Rig Veda, Vishnu also is 'a manifestation of Solar Energy' - and he is described as striding through the Seven regions of the Universe in three steps...."

"We are at painting number eight, 'Ahab'," Hedda announces, "a Night painting with gouache and colored pencil. A striking piece, powerful. Clearly powerful in the same vein as the prototype, Melville's great captain. Would you like to tell us something about your process, Michael? How did this painting come about? Did you think about Ahab, do some kind of mock-up design...?"

AHAB

"No," Crossmann says. "My process is very organic -- although I fear using that word, since it has become such a cliche. By organic, I mean that I start, quite literally, with a seed, a point. The point becomes a line. The line becomes connnected lines, some kind of irregular geometry. Usually it is an irregualar geometry. I have no idea where I am going before I begin. And, often, I have little idea where I am going when I reach my destination...."

"It looks like it," a voice comes from the rear.

Three young men in black leather coats, with shaved heads, are standing near the back of the crowd. Crossmann remembers the one who has spoken. He was at the old beatnik restaurant that night Crossmann first came to New York. He was also at the scene of John Lennon's murder. He is the one who told the police that Jim did the shooting.

"My process," Crossmann continues, "evolves step-by-step, building a painting or drawing brick-by-brick. I don't want to know where I am going. I want the whole process to be mysterious. I want the form to emerge from nothing, from chaos -- and I want it to surprise me. The art, really, besides the technique of building with a media, is in being able to see the story, to find the story in all the chaos. Abstract narrative. It begins as an abstraction and emerges as a narrative, as a story, a form emerging. Finally, it gets a title which is designed to help others recognize the story; and also to give the story a sense of epiphany. An exclamation point. A bow of sorts...."

"Do you focus at all on the therapeutic value of art for the artist's sake?" Hedda asks.

"I haven't spoken about this much," Crossmann says, "but creation of art, whether it be through writing or painting, is, in my mind, a form of worship of my God. It is a form of communication with my God. It keeps me balanced, sane and healthy -- which is function of prayer in every society. Not only does it drive off despair. It also helps one build the sacred island, the sanctuary, in which the soul finds itself to be itself: wise and human..."

"More broadly, I trace the emotional values underlying the shift in attitude," Reggie Lyons begins again, "from avant-garde to neo-avant-garde. I argue that the avant-garde artist’s therapeutic intention is socially empathic, if also involving the notion of art as self-healing, while the neo-avant-garde artist is essentially narcissistic, for all his cynical social attunement. My book is not simply an intellectual exercise: I see a psychomoral lesson—indeed, a basic psychodynamic paradigm in modernity—in the shift of attitude from avant-garde to neo-avant-garde. I think the avant-garde artist discloses an ironical truth about the modern world: one’s mental health in it is necessarily paradoxical—at least if it is health in a meaningful sense—in that it reflects one’s way of dealing with one’s recognition of the pathology of one’s social situation, symptomatic of the larger social pathology of modernity. In modernity one becomes truly healthy emotionally by recognizing and making the best of one’s abandonment by society. More particularly, mental health involves using a kind of artistic cunning to come to grips with and survive the anguished experience of existential groundlessness—the profound annihilation anxiety or disintegrative effect of recognizing that modern society gives one no reason for being and is indifferent to one’s particular being, except as an instrument of its larger purpose. In modernity one’s instrumental value replaces what traditionally was conceived of as one’s transcendental value. To become aware of this, to experience and not deny it and the anxiety it arouses, which most people for good reason dare not do—it is the true existential shock of recognition in modern life—is to be awakened from one’s naive, somnabulistic relationship to the modern lifeworld, and to try to respond to it critically and creatively, in order to survive in it. I may be idealizing them, but I think avant-garde artists were individuals who experienced such existential agony and awakening. Their innovations were attempts to critically and creatively cope with that disillusioning, debilitating experience symbolically—that is, to make new symbols (and thus new selves) of the experience and its “existential-artistic solution.” In a sense, they make clear that whatever else it may be avant-garde art is a response to a destructive, psychotic experience of modern society, which itself is destructive and psychotic, as it were, in that it does not recognize the inherent value of real individual life, but reduces it to an instrument of collective purpose...."

"I think there is a grain of truth in what Mister Lyons says," Crossman replies.

Several snickers run through the audience.

"Alienation is the nature of what...in a religous sense?" Crossmann asks. "this is a test, to see who has read by book."

"Of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," Moishe Frank says.

"Very good."

"Why?" Crossmann asks.

"Because splitting nature into Good and Evil, in one's mind, requires that one experience alienation from the wholeness which was the original condition," Moishe Frank replies. "By splitting the world into Good and Evil, and identifying oneself as good, and one's adversary as evil, one brings war into the world. Splitting the world into Good and Evil is, itself, an act of alienation. One feels cut off from perfection, from heaven; alienation from the modern is both a reality to artist; and also a romantic pose, for the modern world does not recognize the importance of the artist. The scientist has precedence in the modern world, for the scientist, the engineer, solves practical problems. The artist solves, perhaps, the subtle metaphysical problems that are not really recognized as being important to the modern world. The artist wishes to be the Hero; but he cannot be the Hero in the Modern World which views the artist as being an accessory only, one who paints pretty pictures, one who writes stories. A child, in a very real sense. Close to God in his own mind; but more often close to the Devil in the minds of Modern Culture...."

"Very interesting analysis," Crossmann replies. "I give you an A."

"Is this a refutation of Mister Lyons' treatise?" Xavier Rubenstein asks. "Or is it a confirmation...?"

"I would like to know what this has to do with this painting?" Harry Anderson asks. Anderson is a tall man, with a conservative manner, short brown hair. He is standing with his wife Margaret. "Some of us would like to know more about this painting. My wife and I are both considering buying this piece..."

"Anyone who reads Crossmann," Richard Baker replies, "knows the importance of Ahab, as a symbol, in Crossmann's world. Ahab is a symbol of America, of America's mystical tradition. Ahab is a double-symbol in Crossmann's book, because the original Ahab was a Jewish king who was manipulated into power by his wife. This persona was taken on by Jacob Heimkrieter. The second Ahab, the American Ahab, is one of the most potent symbols in all of literature. He presides over the destruction of America in Melville's novel. And he is a major player in Crossmann's novel. In many ways he is the emperor Crossmann seeks in the second half of his novel..."

"I would argue against that last part," Charlie Rose says.

"I agree," Harold Bloom says. Bloom is seventy-some, with flowing white hair, ponderous in physique; he is dressed in an academic tweed; and he is one of the few people in the room not wearing black and white. "The emperor Crossmann seeks is God; and Ahab is the captabin of the ship taking Crossmann to God. On another level, Crossmann asks, near the end of the novel, 'Who shall be our Caesar?' Crossmann is of two minds, clearly -- and perhaps many more. But one mind fears the American empire; and another mind rejoices in it. The future, in the Roman parallel, suggests that democracy will give way to empire. And that this will, ultimately, lead to the end of the American empire, similar to the way Rome was ended...."

"This composition is one of Crossmann's boldest designs," Henrietta Beach responds. "There is an oscillation between abstraction and the figure; between all-over and focused space; between varieties of relative confusion and varieties of relative calm; between, finally, opacity and invisibility. There are also remarkably consistent themes -- a persistence of certain habits and flourishes on the one hand and certain strategies on the other. We may also point to two persistent motifs: the lonely, alienated man, a man so alone as to be capable to destroy the world, to hunt the Mystery God, the Great White Whale, into extinction, render in an elbow-like brushstroke. And to certain moods: irritation and humor. And, most of all fear. Look at the fear in Ahab's eyes: terror really, akin to madness. And finally to a color: blue, a dominant blue; red; and the striking brown and white of the wooden leg; the red and gold of the harpoon. And the ambition, however dissembled or cancelled, that tries to include all these, so that they can all be treated equally, like the spaces in which they are set."

Charlie Rose says: "In keeping with the line of thougth that this exhibit is a description of Michael Crossmann's life, the introduction of Ahab continues the exposure of Michael Crossmann to cultural material, in this case to literature. In other words, a calling is introduce, while in college -- that of the writer."

Crossmann sees the Magician laughing with the old Russian woman again.

"Any more comments about this painting?" Hedda asks. "Well, let's move to the next Ninth piece."

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann. Crossmann smells the Wild Turkey on his breath. The Magician speaks in the old woman's voice: "The 'three strides' of Vishnu through the seven regions of the universe in the Rig Veda have been variosuly described by commentators as meaning as fire, lighining, and the Sun cosmically; also, as the 'three steps of the dwarf' (Vishnu's incarnation), though more philosophically -- and in the astronomical sense, very correctly -- they are the vaious positions of the sun as rising (Dawn), Noon and setting (Dusk)... The triangle, in other worlds: the Day Triangle. Vishnu is the conservationist force, the preserver of the existing world. The world that Brahma has created."

"We move now, in Charlie Rose's perspective at least, into Michael Crossmann's liberal, social phase," Hedda says. "The painting 'Ecology' -- a drawing actually -- colored pencil on black paper -- we see a beautiful bucolic night scene, with the moon lighting a house, a kind of homestead. With a waterwheel, with three reservoirs reaching up to the waterwheel and running down to the of ground water. This is perhaps Michael Crossmann's most political statement: that the Earth is sacred and needs to be protected...."

ECOLOGY

"This man writes," Albert Gore cries out, "that the Earth is preparing new continents below the oceans now to push up above the water when a new continent is needed. He does not support ecology. He supports development, the human expansion and technologoical growth across the planet. This drawing says one thing; but his writing says quite another...!"

"Mister Crossmann?" Hedda asks.

"I support the balance between development and the purification of our environment," Crossmann says. "But I do not support radical environmentalism which is anti-man. Radical environmentalist envision Nature perfect prior to an after humanity. Humanity is a curse on nature. But this is a very warped view of nature. Nature is a violent, hostile place, a constaant war between species. Writers refer to Nature's delicate balance. Nature has no delicate balance. Nature is a violent, brutal balance. Nature is a killing machine. Study the animal kingdom. A vicious war is going on at every level to see who will eat, and who will survive for another hour. Man soils his environment; but he can also purify it again. Man is a cell in the body of the Earth. Earth's evolutionary destiny is not known by men -- it is known by very few men. Critics want to stop the boat, freeze the picture, keep everything as it is at this moment. But life goes on. Always life goes on. We can't live without industry, without development, without exploration, without development. Sustainability is a catch-word for death. Capitalism has a built-in rise and fall, ebb and flow, expansion and contraction, Day and Night. This is good. Wealth and Poverty. The so-called sustainability that many ecologists are crying out for is death itself: a kind of flatline. That is the end of things. The Night. Dissolution. But man's destiny is to explore, to expand, to create. The so-called friends of the Earth are too often humanity-haters in sheep's clothing. They weep at the loss of a tree; but feel nothing when a man raising a family loses his job and the family experience dislocation and sometimes separation. The goal of radical environmentalists is the destruction of human society, as it is, for some picture they have in their heads of the ideal life-style, one of chosen poverty, small being beautful, poverty being glory. It is the picture from the Anti-Universe. But this is a fantasy. Utopias are the abberation. State utopias are the burden of humanity, the ogre by which the world is gored and cast in a mass grave. The Utopians are the right wing and the left wing. Count the corpses in Germany, in Yugoslavia, in Russia, in Cambodia, corpses offered up to the utopian gods. The Greens are no different that the Nazis or the Communists: a few elitists who want to force the majority to live the way they, the elitists, feel is best. But the elitists, almost always, hate life. And they lead those who follow them toward this imaginary utopia -- they lead their followers through Berlin, through Rwanda, through Jonestown. Everyone gets a glass of strichnine kool-aid. Mao's Red Book is strichnine kool-aid; Mein Kampf is strichnine kool-aid. It is always the same. Extremism is always folly -- and almost always deadly folly...."

"Spoken like a true dinosaur," Gloria Steinem replies.

"The dinosaurs in America, in fact, are those clinging to the 1960's," Crossmann says. "You cling to the same ideas you held in your twenties. This means you haven't grown in thirty or forty years. The world turns. Things change. If a thirty-year old woman was still clinging to the ideas she held when she was four, we would consider this retardation. But when you cling to the same ideas you held forty years ago, you tell me that it is wisdom. Is it any wonder I don't believe you...?"

"Fascist!" a young woman yells from the back of the crowd: the woman in the chartreuse downy duck costume.

"You call me fascist so that you can dismiss my ideas without thinking about them," Crossmann says. "It is a way you protect yourself from thinking..."

"This man is not political," Hedda cries out, bruised by the exchange. "Can we not be civil to one another? Civilization implies that we will treat one another civilly, even in disagreement..."

Reggie Lyons comes in, trying to break the tension: "I use various exemplary artists and their art to make my psychosocial point. I deliberately cut across conventional stylistic categories. On the avant-garde side, I combine Picasso and Duchamp, Mondrian and Malevich, and Expressionism and Surrealism. Each double unit represents a different solution to the problem of being anxiously modern—the feeling that to be modern is to be inherently sick. Each avant-garde innovation is conceived of as a different therapeutic technique, if also articulating the pathology of modernity. On the neo-avant-garde—or pseudo-avant-garde—side, I use Warhol and the appropriationists, with Beuys as transitional between avant-garde and neo-avant-garde attitudes. My entire discussion is framed by a deconstruction of the modernist myth of the artist as having unique power of perception, unique spontaneity, and as a revolutionary transmuter of negative into positive values. I show the ironies of the myth, and debunk it, even as I argue that it was the sustaining myth of the avant-garde artist...."

""Please continue," Xavier Rubenstein encourages Reggie. "I find your ideas fascinating."

Reggie continues: "I regard Picasso as instituting perceptual distortions and Duchamp as instituting conceptual distortions—a deliberate destructive use of deformation or “negation” or contradiction for subliminally constructive, therapeutic purpose. The shock value of their work—its frequently black humor—had paradoxical proto-curative effect, for it shook one out of one’s conventional assumptions about perception and the possibilities of art, making one critically conscious of both and the critical consciousness invested in both at their best. I argue that in Mondrian and Malevich, on the one hand, and Expressionism and Surrealism, on the other, avant-garde art becomes explicitly therapeutic in purpose. The former represent what I call the geometrical cure, the latter what I call the expressive cure. They are opposite in character, but in both cases cure involves contact with the primordial—in the first case primordial detachment or transcendence, represented by abstract geometry, and in the second case free, spontaneous expression of primordial emotions, whether by means of automatist gestures or dream images. Cure, in other words, is effected by contact with and articulation of what is fundamental in existence—the absolutely “higher” and absolutely “lower” are equally fundamental—which is understood as liberating one from the unessential pathology of the modern, everyday lifeworld, with its banality and indifference to individual existence.

"The tenor of my argument changes as I move to Warhol," Reggie continues, "who signals the end of the avant-garde attitude and the beginning of the neo-avant-garde attitude. Warhol is explicitly indifferent to therapy—he in fact hates and dismisses it, suggesting watching television as an alternative—and concerned only to become famous, which he achieved. I examine the narcissistic effect of this wish and achievement on Warhol’s life and art; it is largely devoted to portraiture of famous people—as well as the ironical emptiness involved in fame and narcissism. I also show that his art represents an abandonment of avant-garde innovation and a return to banal, everyday means of representation, confirming the social status quo of perception, “art,” and importance or value. As such, it is postmodern—nontransformative or minimally transformative. Overinvested in fame, Warhol becomes a non-person, that is, a machine, as he himself said, no doubt unaware of Tausk’s influencing machine and von Bertalanffy’s idea that a conflict basic to modernity is between the closed system robot and open system organic model of human being. (He thinks the former is demonstratably false.) I also distinguish between fame and celebrity, arguing that the latter, which is dominant in the everyday postmodern lifeworld, has bankrupted or at least corrupted the meaning of the former.

"I then discuss Beuys, whom I regard as transitional between avant-garde and neo-avant-garde attitudes, and between a modern and a postmodern lifeworld. I conceive of him as a tragic victim of his own therapeutic ambition. His art is addressed to a postwar German audience, which it hopes to heal—I argue that all his art, which is essentially a performance art, symbolizes the healing process—but it increasingly tries to reach its audience by using methods, objects, and images derived from the everyday modern lifeworld, as well as by manipulating his own position as a celebrity. As his art became more accessible, it loses its therapeutic power. That is, Beuys begins as an avant-garde artist and ends as a postmodern artist—begins, as he himself said, as a shaman, and ends, as he was aware others thought of him as being, a showman. He was caught on the horns of a dilemma, realizing that in both the modern instrumental and postmodern cynical, all too knowing worlds a shaman with therapeutic intention could not help but be regarded as just another kind of manipulative showman and celebrity. “Trickster” has an unresolvable ambiguous meaning in both modernity and postmodernity...."

"Put a quarter in that man to see if you can shut him up!" the Magician calls out.

"Beuys, like our friend who has just spoken," Reggie continues, "has ceased being the martyr so that he can become the drunken buffoon."

"And where do you place Crossmann, in this strata?" Norman Mailer calls out.

"I believe he is a fascist throw-back to Picasso," Lyons replies.

"Fascist in the positive or the negative sense?" William Buckley asks.

"We aren't comfortable with his witchcraft," Pat Robertson calls after Buckley. "The black paper. All the work on the black paper. His fascination with the occult. It all his a devilish tone to me. I believe this man is in league with the devil. I have said it before, on my television show. This man is no Michael the Archangel. But he may be, indeed, the anti-Christ we have been warned about..."

"Fascist is a political word," Reggie tries to clarify. "I should have said reactionary. I think his reaction to the post-modern is, in fact, a sign of sanity.... He is a shaman clearly. His work is jerked out of the dream world by the hairs of its head..."

"Out of the darkness, yes," Pat Robertson agrees. "That's why the man is dangerous."

"Is he a sorcerer then?" Michael Douglas asks. "Is that what you are telling us?"

"Precisely," Robertson says. "He is the wolf is sheep's clothing."

"If you say he is the devil," Douglas says, "then I'm inclined to believe him a saint. And if Gloria Steinem says that he is a fascist, then I'm inclined to believe that he is a visionary of the future."

Crossmann sees Catherine Zeta-Jones standing beside her husband. Her lips look like swollen strawberries.

Crossmann thinks of Joyce Brothers, another anti-erection device.

"We have seen that the artist's childhood had tensions and deprivations," a woman's voice comes in, "expriences which should propel us to feelings of compassion for the man...."

It is Joyce Brothers.

Christ! Crossmann thinks -- that wasn't what I had in mind.

"We see in his art something very similar to the pre-Columbian genius of the native Americans in the southwest," a woman says. A beautiful black-haired woman, who looks like Bianca Jagger's sister. "We agree that his work is closest to the aboriginal in style and content," the woman continues. It is Chitranee Drapkin, with her husband, Robert, by her side: collectors from Florida.

Crossmann nods to Chitranee, catching her eye for a second.

Oh, oh.

Roseanne Barr, Crossmann thinks. Working again.

Roseanne appears. "Where are the hot-dogs?" she calls out. She is wearing a low-cut black gown showing round bosoms. "I would kill someone for a hot-dog," she shouts.

"My own work on Mondrian," Xavier Rubenstein begins, "corroborates your view of the man, who has been grossly misunderstood by the post-modernists. Central to my position is the notion that Mondrian’s work, all his work, is characterized by a powerful commitment to the spirit of realism (not abstraction) coupled with a prophetic awareness of the problems posed by what today would be called the “ideology” of the representational process. Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate, in the face of the accepted wisdom of the time, that Mondrian’s modernism is an achievement to this day still new and little understood...."

"Are you hiding from someone?" Peter Falk asks Denise Rich.

"Not exactly," the woman replies. "I'm trying to hear the discussion better."

"It looked to me that you were trying to avoid Ted Kennedy back there," Falk says.

"No, you are mistaken," Denise Rich replies.

"Did you have an affair with Ted Kennedy at some point?" Falk asks.

"Hasn't everyone?" Denise Rich asks with a smile.

"I haven't," Peter Falk replies.

"Oh, ok. Everyone but you."

"Are you saying Ted and Hillary Clinton are doing the old two-step?" Falk asks.

"No," Denise Rich says. "I think HIllary probably has a girl-friend somewhere...."

"Oh," Falk replies, his jaw dropping. "Anyone I know?"

"Not if you're lucky," Denise replies.

"Any further comments on this drawing?" Hedda asks.

Steely stilence.

"Well, let's move on then," Hedda continues. "To the Tenth piece..."

"The Tenth Symphony!" Andre Previn calls out. He has been drinking again.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again, offering him more Wild Turkey. Crossmann declines. The Magician speaks in a woman's voice: "It is stated and plainly demonstrated in the Zohar that in the beginning The Elohim (Elhim), the creators, or Demiurgos, were called Echod, 'one' -- 'the Deity is one in many', a very simple idea in a pantheistic conception (in its philosophical sense, of course). Then came the change: 'Jehovah is Elohim', thus unifying the multiplicity and taking the first step toward Monotheism. 'How is Jehovah Elohim?" -- 'By three steps, from below.'..."

"Ok. We are now at Number Ten," Hedda says. "This painting is 'Night On the Town,' a gouache painting on paper, what Crossmann calls a Day painting -- that is, on white paper. Is biography the best way to understand the work of an artist? Charlie Rose has suggested that this is the way to understand this exhibit. And, I agree, there is some logic to this approach."

"This continues the theme of the life of the painter in college," Charlie Rose says. "This is the artist on a date, a night on the town. His liberal education in college includes an emancipation from his Catholic upbringing -- and a further discovery of love and sex between a man and a woman."

NIGHT ON THE TOWN

"You will see, here, another example of why I oppose Crossman's view of women," Gloria Steinem remarks. "Look how delicate, how tiny the woman is, fitting on his shoulder. She would fit in the palm of his hand if he only bothered to turn his hand up."

"You insistence upon political correctness makes you an arid playmate," Hugh Heffner reponds. He is standing behind Gloria Steinem.

"What? Did they let you in here?" Steinem demands.

"They certainly did," Heffner replies. "And, I must say, I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. There was a lovely young woman near the door who had lips the size and hue of ripe strawberries..."

Crossmann thinks immediately of Catherine Zeta-Jones. He looks at his watch. It is not midnight yet. He has to be near her at midnight.

"This sexist argument is getting old hat, Steinem," a woman pipes up. A wiry Italian woman, who is accompanied by a man in dirty coveralls, with 'Mike' scripted above a 'Michelin' tag above his left breast pocket. It is Camilla Paglia. Small and testy, striking, like a Siamese cat: wound as tight as a corporate executive's prostate gland.

"Ball-cutters in the intellectual community are like cat at a mice convention, baby," she continues. "Get a life! We're all sick of your whining, and your self-victimization. The world can be read as the history of men abusing women, or of the ruling class persecuting the working class, or of the love affair between men and women. You can read into reality what you want. Reality is plastic. It shifts; it changes shape for you. Only don't believe it when it tells you what it wants you to. It's just lying to you, trying to please you, make you feel good..."

Bianca Jagger appears with a new boy-friend, a man who looks like Jack Nicholson, but who turns out to be a Spaniard named Esteban.

"I believe the woman in this painting is Michael Crossmann's estranged wife, Irene," Charlie Rose says. "We know that they were lovers for a time in college. This is an idealized view of their courtship in college, at the University of Wyoming -- that is my interpretation.

Edwin Fuller also appears, a gray-haired collector from England, who has a twenty-year old boy on his elbow. Behind him is Maxfield Graves, a fellow collector from London, a man known as the 'Hale Wolf' in England for his history of leveraged buyouts of English and European companies.

Henrietta Beach pipes up: "His bold brush strokes of flat, muted colors could very well be absttract -- but they are never very far away from the natural world."

"What the hell does she mean by that?" Ted Kennedy whispers, but louder than he expected. "She's not a bad looking woman though. What do you think, Hillary? She's kind of cute, don't you think...?"

"She's a distinguished professor of art history at Columbia, Ted" Hillary replies, cold as a Wyoming nail on New year's day. "All you men think about is that phalanx between your legs...!"

"I know. I know all that. Yes, of course," Ted says.

"Sober up, Ted!" Hillary says with scorn. Then she looks away from him deliberately.

Senator Kennedy eyes Mayor Guiliani's wife moving toward him through the crowd...

She wanders up to Senator Kennedy. She whispers to him: ""I felt connection, calling connection as I lay there thrashing about on my little blue mat ..."

Kennedy smiles to Hillary, nodding to his new friend. "I like that," he says. And he follows the Mayor's wife as she wanders through the crowd.

"Is the artist going to tell us about his sex life?" Doctor Ruth calls out. "Oh, yes. I would really like to hear about that. It is good for one's mental health to talk about his sex life..."

"Sex life! Sex life!" the three skin-heads begin to chant.

Governor Jesse Ventura is soon standing beside them, chanting: "Sex life! Sex life!" -- but not sure what it all means. It all sounds good. And there's a camera there somewhere. It's always nice to get on the camera.

Crossmann notices that Oprah is talking with Jim, off to the side of the room, in an animated fashion -- trying to wear him down with some insistence.

Crossmann notices Natalie Merchant coming in to the museum. He would like to talk with her. He loves her voice. Her poetry is like crystal.

"We're going to move on to Number Eleven, unless we have other comments."

"Eleven is a very important number for Michael Crossmann," Richad Baker comes in. "Numbers 1 and 11. For the number 111 has been following him around for many years..."

"James Joyce numbers Anna Livia Plurabell 111, the All-Amazingfull," Moishe Frank adds. "Aleph is 1; Lambda is 30; Pe is 80."

Crossmann thinks he sees the ghost of Bishop Sheen moving through the museum, in the air, like a cloud wearing a shroud, looking down at Crossmann as he passes by, muttering: "In nomine patri, et filii, et spiritus sancti..."

"We know where you live, we do! We know where you live, we do!"

The four skinhead now are singing, dancing like the Backstreet Boys, to everyone's delight.

Oprah is shaking her finger in Jim's face.

Allen Ginsburg is chanting: "Lawrence Ferlinghetti! Kerouac, Kerouac! Cassidy too!" -- trying to match the beat of the new Backstreet Boys. He has his eyes on one of the young tough boys.

"Are you Andry Warhol?" the girl in the chartreuse duck costume asks Crossmann. "Or are you Jesus Christ...?" She, too, is singing to the beat of the four skinheads performing, the governor now leading the younger three men.

"Get her outta here!" Lola Fanti calls. "Security! Security!"

The chartreuse girl fades into the crowd, disappearing, melting away like nothing.

"I know it is New Years -- Millenium Eve -- forgive me! We need some order here," Hedda Krantz announces. "We need some dignity for this man's presentation! Please...!"

The crowd grows silent.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann again, this time looking and smelling like Allen Ginsburg a bit. He says to Crossmann in Ginsburg's voice: "

"Here is work Number Eleven," Hedda says. "A drawing in colored pencil on black paper, entitled 'Father and Son'. This piece is one of my favorites. The child is so vulnerable in his father's arms. It's like he is somehow glued to his father. The father is very expressive, gesturing; but the son somehow is snugly pressed against his father's cheek. Again we have the characteristic balck and white world of thought, and conflict, coming in waves out of the father's head. This is one of my favorites. It looks almost like a pastel. Some people don't like pastels; but I find this painting wonderful..."

FATHER AND SON

"Of course, there is a darker side here," Oprah responds. "This is apparent to any of you who watched my show today. We did an evaluation of the life of Michael Crossmann. Besides finding him the offspring of some pretty dubious parentage, we discovered that Crossmann and his current wife, then his girlfriend, had an abortion in the early 1970's. And the loss of this son -- Crossmann apparently always considered him a son -- has Crossmann ever since. He does not have an heir now, of course; not a male heir...."

"So you say that this is a portrait of Crossmann with the son he never had?" Charlie Rose asks.

"With the son he murdered," Oprah says.

"But you don't oppose abortion, Oprah," Hillary Clinton says, shocked by Oprah's words.

"I don't oppose a woman's right to choose," Oprah says. "But for a man to support this -- a woman is protecting her body, her life, from the oppression of childbirth. But what is a man protecting: his irresponsibility? His freedom? In my eyes, on his side, it is a kind of murder..."

Jerry Falwell shouts to Oprah: "My God woman, you finally see the light! Mountains of dead babies! Mountains of murdered children on our conscience! You talk about karma! Michael Crossmann likes to talk about karma, likes to talk about Brahma and Vishnu and Siva, good old Jesus Christ isn't enough for him, he has to talk about Prometheus, Odysseus and Isis. Well, I will tell you that there will be a reckoning. The man claims to be Jesus Christ. Did Jesus Christ ever fornicate with a woman; did he ever murder his child; did he ever participate in hanging of sinners, criminals? Jesus forgave criminals -- lest we forget. It is heresy what this man writes; what this man says. Fornicator, I call him; adulterer; anti-christ. Michael the Archangel, indeed! This man never met Michael the Archangel! It is all a literary ruse! You can bet your clean apron on it! Who does this man admire? He admires David Bowie and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. He admires Mick Jagger and people like the Psychedyllic Furs and Talk Talk and U2. You see these people in his novel appearing over and over again with a friendly description. Mick Jagger gives his money to the London Society for the Kabbala; David Bowie's music is littered with occult references. He is an agent of the darkness -- I say it now. It is no surprise that he killed his baby! He probably kills babies all the time, as part of his dark ritual. I saw how he was looking at Dana Skully over there -- the pretty young woman with the creamy skin -- and Catherine Zeta-Jones: he probably wants to kill their babies too...!"

"You are missing the point about art!" Reggie Lyons cries out, exasperated. "Art is not about some personality symptom, some accident of phenomema. Art is elevated; it comes out of the God realm. At least this is so for the avant-garde artist. It is not so for the neo-avant-garde artist, of course -- for the postmodernists who are no more than businessmen in stained suits.

Richard Baker mimics Lyons under his breath: "Crossmann I believe to be a post-post modernist. A visionary lookiing forward, only seeming to be looking backward. He is looking so far ahead that it looks like he's looking back to us..."

"Yes," Reggie Lyons replies, surprising Baker. "That is it. Crossmann is no apportionist! He's a conservative revolutionary. So quietly revolutionary that the conservatives are afraid of him...."

"Apportionist?" Peter Falk cries out. "What are you saying, sir...?"

"Yes," Reggie continues. "Appropriationism has become, wittingly or unwittingly, the dominant mode of artmaking in postmodernity. Quoting another artist, especially an avant-garde one, and in the process denying his or her therapeutic intention, trivializing his or her creativity and innovations, and supposedly deconstructing his or her art—showing that it means the opposite of what it was thought to say, and turning it into an ironical cliché or shadow of itself—has become de rigeur in many quarters, a supposedly major conceptual achievement. I analyze appropriationism as the ultimate cynicism about art in general and avant-garde art in particular, as well as about creativity, and distinguish appropriation from influence, finally arguing that appropriationism signals a creative deadend—a feeling of the futility of creativity to effect any change in the lifeworld, and thus a failure. In appropriationism critical consciousness capitulates to the status quo, ironically but also smugly. Appropriationist art is neither transcendentally abstract nor spontaneously expressive, nor is it addressed or of service to anyone, but simply confirms the status quo of media consciousness, there for the asking by everyone. Appropriationist art is a kind of historicist spectacle or show with little or nothing to tell—the ultimately decadent, indifferent art, blending almost seamlessly into the pathological Potemkin Village media facade our culture increasingly depends upon for its 'self'-consciousness. I do suggest that certain appropriationists who work in a comic way offer what seems to be a critical consciousness of art’s and society’s tragicomic situation, but I am not sure I am right, although I believe that comedy is ultimately more therapeutically effective than tragedy. As Freud suggested, humor is a sign of ego strength, and it was the strength of the individual ego in the face of a society that weakened it through its indifference and failure to be an existentially facilitating environment, and that they thought would sooner or later destroy itself, that was of basic concern to the first avant-garde artists. They wanted to save people from society, not society from itself, however much some of them fantasied a social utopia in which reason was triumphant. Thus, the comic appropriationists may be the new avant-gardists, if that idea makes any real sense these days...."

"If the idea ever did make any sense," Richard Baker replies under his breath.

"I am not sure if you are saying that Michael Crossmann is the comic appropriationist," Xavier Rubenstein responds, "and that this movment you are describing merely traces a circle between the alienated artist and the non-alienated artist and back around again...."

"Are you saying, when you say that Crossmann is influenced by Picasso," Henrietta Beach asks, "are you really saying that he is 'quoting Picasso'. Clearly Crossmann does not believe that the artist will save people from society. We have heard him speak with disdain for the idea of utopias. He speaks also with some disdain for the artist as well, the artist who would consider him a savior of the masses, a revelator of Truth. In his novel, Crossmann seems to maintain that artists make good critics but almost never good leaders; and that society needs, at least in some ways, to be protected from artists -- who are the masters of the dark vision and who bring, usually, dark visions to their societies when in a position of leadership. Is not Crossmann, in fact, more a neo-avant-garde artist than an avant-garde artist? He laughs at his own work. His work almost always has a touch of self-deprecating humor in it -- almost always the comic. I would suggest that Crossmann is, himself, this comic appropriationist. Michael Crossmann seems to have no respect for the anti-hero; and your avant-garde artist is nothing other than the anti-hero, rejecting society because it is corrupt, dangerous, evil. Crossmann has said no to this; and, in his novel, he speaks very passionately for the re-birth of the hero, the overthrow of your anti-hero who only brings darkness, chaos, to the land. He choose Life over Art. He has said this clearly...."

"To everything a season," Crossmann says. "Too much Day calls out for Night; too much Night calls out for Day..."

"You are a relativist, then!" Falwell calls out. "Like your friend Bowie, or Jagger or Dylan!"

"Like my friend Eccclesiastes," Crossmann says.

"God is not a relativist, Mister Crossmann!" Fallwell replies.

"Do you claim then to know God's thoughts?"

"As you have claimed, sir."

"I have claimed to know my God's thoughts," Crossmann replies. "The God who creates me and who drives me into exile, and who calls me back home."

"Is you God the same as my God?" Fallwell asks.

"My God is everyone's God," Crossmann replies. "But I have no knowledge of your God. I have no knowledge of your heart. I do know, however, that Jesus warns us not to trust the man who shouts his prayers from a streetcorner, for all to hear. Who beats his chest with claims of his own holiness..."

"You take me for this man you describe?" Jerry Fallwell asks.

"Those fall well who overassume God's counsel," Crossmann says. "And those who make a profit of God's word, an obscene profit, in his name..."

"Do you judge me now, Mister Crossmann?" Fallwell asks.

"I judge a type of man, a man who uses religion as a profession. I don't know your nature. I know that you have appeared here judging me -- and I have never before met you. Clearly, you know me even less that my mercurial opponents, Oprah and her ilk."

"You come here to destroy, even though you dress in silk and speak with a serpent's tongue," Fallwell says.

"What I will destroy I have already destroyed," Crossmann says. "What I preserve shall for ever be preserved...."

"I expect at any moment the Roman soldiers to appear and arrest you Mister Crossmann." It is Mick Jagger, with his long brown hair, his androgynous face and body, dressed in a flourishing black overcoat -- a beautiful brunette at his side.

"Not until we finish the exhibit," Hedda says, smiling. "With God's blessing...."

Hedda looks up at the sky, feigning a short prayer.

The atheists and agnostics in the crowd laugh a bit too loud, announcing their identity with Hedda and her disbelief.

Senator Kennedy isn't sure what to do, which side to join, since he does believe in God, knows the existence of God rather explicitly. He takes another drink, looking again for the Mayor's wife.

Crossmann notices Oprah again talking heatedly with Jim, near the back wall. The Magician is craning his neck to overhear their conversation.

"Let's move on to the next painting," Hedda says.

The Magician sidles up to Crossmann, speaking in the voice of Crossmann's friend, Jim: "There are enemies here, Michael. Enemies who want you dead. Enemies with money who are trying to buy your dissolution. Beware both friends and those who say they are friends! Beware the enemies most whose enemy you have yet to be declared...!"

"This painting is probably the most delicious in the whole exhibit, I think," Hedda says. "The most psychedellic...."

"Most of his paintings are psychedellic," Allen Ginsburg says. But no one hears him; no one can hear Allen Ginsburg -- because Allen Ginsburg is a ghost.

HE'S LEAVING HOME AFTER LIVING ALONE FOR SO MANY YEARS

"Well, the title is taken from a Beatles' song," David Bowie says. "Transgendered, if you will."

Bowie signals to Lola Fanti. "I want to buy this one," he says.

"Very well, Mister Bowie."

"David, hold on," Mick Jagger says. "I had my eye on this one." His English accent as thick as stew.

"Wait a minute! Hold on!"

It is Paul McCartney.

A triumverate. Now that Lennon is gone.

"I think I have the first claim on this one," McCartney says.

"Why is that?" Bowie asks.

"The title -- the Beatles' claim," McCartney replies.

"I really want this, Paul," Bowie says.

"It talks to me."

"Ok," McCartney replies. "You can have it."

"You see," Fallwell says to Pat Robertson. "He's not one of us. Look at this art on the wall. You think Jesus would paint something like this...?"

"I don't know, Jerry," Robertson reponds. "So much else fits."

"Look at his friends," Fallwell says. "He's a rocker at heart, Pat. He fits with them. He doesn't fit with us. He's not one of us..."

"That's just it, Jerry. Jesus didn't fit in with the rabbis either. Jesus was a kind of rock star. He didn't socialize with the rich Levites. He was a kind of rebel..."

"I don't believe that kind of interpretation, Pat," Fallwell says. "You're saying that we are like the corrupt Jews who turned the temple into a marketplace...."

"Isn't there some truth in that?" Pat Robertson says. "I've been thinking about this lately."

"You're saying that we will kill the next Christ?" Fallwell asks. "Is that what you are saying...?"

"I don't know," Robertson replies. "You know what the Japanese tea ritual suggests? It suggests the belief that, in the presence of a cyclic reality, every event is unique and will never be repeated...."

"What are you saying, Pat?"

"I don't know what I am saying," Robertson replies. "I'm saying that nothing repeats exactly.... But that everything repeats non-exactly. That is the paradox, Jerry..."

"I think, in terms of biography," Charlie Rose comes in, "this represents Michael Crossmann's leaving Wyoming and moving to Oregon. College, love, alcohol, intoxication; then the abortion; Michael and Irene were separated; and Crossmann move to Oregon with his brother William...."

"I don't believe it matters what the biography of the author is," Henrietta Beech responds. "The work of art must stand alone, as this piece does on this wall. We need to know nothing about the artist. We do not even need to know who the artist is. The work of art stands alone. It is a complete piece, in a vacuum, in a sense. We approach this work of art as a unique experience, like the Japanese tea ceremony. When we study more about the artist we do not learn more about the art -- we learn more about the artist. The suggestion that this piece represents the artists leaving Wyoming is really a mental construct placed upon this piece, in the context of this show, by the viewer. It really doesn't tell us more about the piece. In fact, it tells us less, because we are no longer focussing of the piece of art -- we are beginning, instead, to focus on our own conceptions about the artist. We have put up a filter of organization that now stands between us and the work of art..."

"In that sense we can never know anything through thought," Charlie Rose says.

"We can never know anything through thought except thought," Henrietta Beach replies. "This painting, like a symphony, is not composed of words. The title is even an afterthought. A stamp the artist puts on it. His impression of the painting. Perhaps coming from a memory. More likely coming from a memory of words that have faint connection if any to the painting itself. The visual and the verbal are opposite sides of the brain. The visual is the female brain; the verbal is the mental brain. Humanity has a visual language before it has a verbal language. Cave paintings through hieroglyphics, there was no written language. Hierogyphics was the first step toward the marriage of these two opposites...."

"You talk about verbal language," Harold Bloom says, "and you really mean by this written language. The alphabet."

"Yes. Of course, the verbal, the spoken language, the grunt," Beech says, "comes with the birth of the baby. The cries, the whelps of the new-born baby. But children draw pictures before they write letters. Children draw pictures naturally. Hand a child a pencil or a crayon and that child will draw, without being told to draw. But the same child has to be twisted, threatened, cajoled into learning the alphabet. And it is the alphabet that abstracts the child, draws him into the masculine, unnatural brain. You will notice in Michael Crossmann's novel, that his passing into death and into the land prior to his re-birth as Michael the Archangel, the darkness, or chaos. The womb or the egg Crossmann calls it. He gives us a very explicit description of the Life taking up residence in the egg, in the womb. When the Life is first born, that child remains in darkness for a time, under the governance of the Mother. And it is at this time that drawings begin to emerge in his novel, the geometrical drawings first, diagrams. But this is also the time that Michael Crossmann began to draw and paint. He puts this time at roughly 1985. The visual arts are feminine; they are natural to the child. The alphabet is not natural. The learning of the alphabet is a masculine activity. It requires abstraction. The creation of letters is an abstract act. The transcription of thoughts into a shape, a body. It is a kind of incarnation of spirit. A taking of a body, if you will. The Jews have, for centuries, forbidden graven images of the deity. No people have pursued the written word with such a vengeance as the Jews, for they understood that thought, the letter, the alphabet, was the key to gaining power on the Earth..."

"That's provocative nonsense," Donald Trump says to his wife.

Brian Moore, the writer, takes a glass of champagne off a passing tray -- and says: "There was a book written about that last year. It was called, I think, The Goddess and the Alphabet. It's an indictment of men, of course. Women are the good side; and men are the bad side. It portrays egypt as being the symbol of a cultural matriarchy, a king of eden, prior to the coming of men, the thinker, the weilder of the alphabet..."

"Alpha and Beth," Moishe says. "The Man-Woman, the Father-Mother. The Alphabet, one and two."

"Well, that comment brings us to the next piece," Hedda comes in. "Number 13..."

"Number 13 is also an important number to Michael Crossmann," Moishe Frank continues. "We remember, in his book, the great significance the author put in his initials: M is the 13th letter in the English Alphabet; J and C are the 10th and the 3rd -- that is, together, also 13. Michael J. Crossmann is composed of two sets of 13. The M, of course, is the top half, Michael the Archangel; JC is, of course, the bottom part, the part that comes down to Earth, the Jesus Christ half..."

"That is heresy!" Jerry Falwell cries out. "This man is no more Jesus Christ than I am Sigmund Freud! Numbers are....the devil's playground! This mysticism of numbers! We don't want to hear it any longer! Decent Americans are tired of hearing it! The Bible promises an anti-christ before the coming of the messiah...!"

"Asian communism was the Anti-Christ!" Moishe Frank replies.

Moishe apperas, more and more, like a disciple of Crossmann.

"Don't tell me you believe that gobble-de-gook in that novel of his?" Fallwell cries out. "This man is not the messiah returned. I would recognize him if he was! I, more than nearly anyone in this room, would recognize him! Where is the rapture? What about the rapture...?"

"Your rapture is a subtle thing," Crossmann replies to Fallwell. "The Bible is very subtle. You look for the literal in everything. God did not create the world in six day. That is an allegory. Creationism is an allegory of the creation of the world is stages, in periods of days and nights, periods of rest and activity, with the seventh day being the day of completion, the day of rest. Which we haven't reached. Creationism, literal creationism, is not what the Bible teaches. The universe evolves from the simple into the complex and then back into the simple again. From the complex into the simple back into the complex again. The two unvierses evolving as true opposites: one gaining strength, expanding, as the other contracts; the other contracting as the second gains strength. The one cell split into two. These two separated but not separated cells being to one another the photograph and the photograph's negative...."

Crossmann appears animated.

The entire room gets quiet for a moment.

Crossmann notices Morgan Freeman enter the museum, dressed in a black tuxedo, looking gallant.

"Let's move on to painting Number 13," Hedda begins again. "We still have a ways to go to reach the end, so let's walk briskly and make only comments which throw light on the painting..."

It's not clear for whom the last message is intended -- but many people in the audience feel Hedda's barbs are addressed directly to them. But Hedda is a rather silly creature afterall. It is Millenium Eve. There is nothing else to do but party -- to have some fun, and pehaps get a little rowdy. The volume of the audience rises another notch or two.

The Magician sidles up to Crossman again, speaking this time in the voice of Catherine Zeta-Jones. He whispers: "Don't forget about midnight, Michael. I have something to give to you too..."

"This thirteenth painting is another primordial, aboriginal drawing in colored pencil on black paper," Hedda says. "The title is 'The Lovers'. It is stark, in a way. Dark. Dark-skinned. Somewhat African. I say that, not knowing why. I think it is quite a wonderful piece; one of my favorites....

THE LOVERS