Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Chapter 23 - The Chinese Characters for 'Dialogue'

Apparently the Chinese Characters for "dialogue"


Sally had spent the whole night practicing writing the Chinese character for dialogue. Not out of some desire to ingratiate herself with her teacher, but first with a genuine curiosity and soon after with intense fascination. Drawing the strange characters was not easy, even with her extensive calligraphy tools. She tried writing them over and over again, in pen, in chalk in finger paint. Her bedroom floor was covered with squiggles and boxes, few of which, to her, bore a satisfactory resemblance to what she was trying to create.

Here parents were concerned. To avoid any complications she told them that she was volunteering at an art program that taught post modern theory to Kindergarteners as a cover for her college career. She knew they would not mind her taking college courses, but they would never stand for the fake I.D., and enrolling in a college the correct way was far too inefficient.

What concerned them was the impenetrable distractedness she was displaying that evening. She kept staring at the wall, tracing strange shapes with her eyes. Food would fall off of her fork, which she would put, empty, into her mouth without seeming to notice. They had raised two teenagers before her, and had once been fairly normal teenagers themselves, they knew that there were two possibilities. She was either on drugs, or worse, in love.

But Mr. and Mrs. Pope were not ones to interfere with their children's lives based on circumstantial evidence so they let the matter go, with the intention of watching Sally's behavior a little more closely.

Sally convinced a maintenance woman to let her in to the classroom an hour early. She left the lights off, she wanted to feel the writing, and the more she could see what her hands were doing the harder it was to write. Her first attempt would have satisfied most Chinese people as adequate, Mr. Thomas certainly wouldn't have noticed that some of her angles were too steep and the proportion of the boxes in the second character was off, he had never seen "dialogue" written in Chinese before. He thought there would be one symbol and not four. Regardless, Sally felt that the attempt wasn't good enough, and, when she could still see the ghost of her failed attempt, unexorcised by the eraser she went to the woman's rest room for some wet paper towel.

Her third attempt satisfied her as a faithful representation of what she had only seen in one book and on a computer screen. No one who saw he writing knew that such perfection, such fantastic emotional expression in Chinese calligraphy, albeit in the uncouth medium of chalk would have made her a very famous person in China. The art form Sally had been searching for her whole life could well have been Chinese calligraphy, and that the circle with eyelashes that haunted her dreams was most likely the character jรบ symbolizing a bundle of wheat. This would seem tragic, had she not ended up being Oliver Fagin Thomas' most trusted assistant, and one of the very small number of people who could claim to have seen him naked.

Oliver had over the course of his life, three people whom he considered his assistants. The first was Langley Chelmsford, who in early elementary school was often seen on the playground with Oliver behind the large baseball backstop, writing things hurriedly in a notepad. The notepad was lost unfortunately, in a fire set by Langley after hearing that Oliver was leaving for Moscow. The fire also consumed several photographs, drawings and a set of miniature green plastic soldiers that were added just for the thrill. The second was the Pyotr, the doorman at the hotel in Moscow. This was really more of an honorary position based on the loyalty he demonstrated in the whole matter with the cigarettes, though Oliver has said that he would have been very useful if he didn't have other duties to occupy him. Sally Pope was by far the longest and most successful of the three.

The first time Sally spoke to Oliver, he was in dire need of an assistant. At this point the last details of the final phase of Persephone's composition was taking place and Oliver found he was increasingly using his spare attention span to analyze the work that his primary attention span was doing. He grew absent minded and unfocused while experiencing a profound entropy in all of his environments.

Oliver was criticizing his criticism of some particularly intricate dialogue when Sally came to his office to ask him a question. He looked up when she came in, his eyes followed her reflexively. She sat down without being invited and began talking. He instinctively nodded although his consciousness was actually putting off the task of observing anything outside of his own mind in a constant unthought, 'just a minute.'

His mental dilemma was resolved at the same time she finished talking. Oliver's external processing functions returned to him. A vaguely familiar, slightly pretty but awfully young, girl was sitting in front of him. He had the feeling she had just told him something very important and he had no idea what. He felt awful.

"Can you help me?" he asked. He did not know that was the exact question she had just asked of him. She thought he was mocking her.

"Is it inappropriate to ask?"

"I don't know," his reply was thoughtful he was still a bit stunned. "I suppose the age difference makes it a little bit questionable but I don't have any questionable intentions."

"Neither do I." she said. "No questionable intentions on my end."

"Do you cook?" he asked.

"I can follow a recipe."

"How's your memory? Can you organize a mess?"

"My memory is strong and I have an excellent sense of design."

"Will you come to my apartment tonight?" he asked, betraying a modicum of shyness.

"Yes," she said. "I will."

She did go to his apartment that night and continued to do so three nights a week and Saturday afternoons until she graduated from high school, after which she moved into a small wing of Oliver's estate. By then Oliver was more capable of taking care of himself but Sally's duties had broadened. She took on a large portion of the responsibility of planning and coordinating the details of the Persephonic empire. Perhaps they were too heavy for an eighteen year old girl who never really got a chance to experience life, but she was well paid.

Even years later, Sally's most important responsibility was that of being sure that Oliver woke up on time. A theory exists that Oliver's body needed extra sleep to compensate for having twice as many thoughts as a normal person. Although the exact mechanisms of sleep are not understood, even today, a good deal of evidence supports the theory that sleep plays a role in the storing and organizing new bits of memory formed during the day. Oliver was not an ideal subject to study for this theory, however because he was very busy and sleeping in would be a major disaster. None of this, however, changes the fact that, Oliver Fagin Thomas was very hard to wake up in the morning.

For the first few months, Sally needed between an hour and an hour and a half to complete the task. Conventional methods didn't work. Any kind of loud noise or jarring action would make Oliver retreat into an even deeper state of unconsciousness. They day she tried, out of frustration, to use ice water he curled up into a ball and refused to respond to any stimulus until the late afternoon.

Eventually, Sally discovered that the way to draw Oliver out of sleep was to take advantage of his innate curiosity. One of the first successful methods involved her simply sanding just outside of his bedroom door and whispering "you'll never guess my secret." After two days, however the subconscious Oliver had learned not to trust Sally concerning the subject of secrets and Sally had to try other methods. Eventually Sally found she could play a recording of someone reading a interesting book and slowly decrease the volume. If she did this at the correct rate, Oliver would be sitting up in bed with a hand cupped to his ear after a few minutes. This meant that she was always searching for new recordings that were both interesting and new to Oliver because anything not absolutely fresh would bore him and draw him in deeper. Anything, that is except the works of Dostoevsky which she found she could repeat every year or so, always with excellent results.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Chapter 22 - The Third Chance

The Blue Canoe Saloon is much better than this.

Many of the people who are significant in the development of Persephone were present at the opening of the Blue Canoe Saloon. This is not really a coincidence as artists have come together in groups throughout history, especially in the history of New York City.

The nightclub was opened by a young interior designer named Francis DeLisle who had earned fleeting notoriety as a trendy interior designer. His particular style was to make a space seem grandmotherly. He was into brick-a-brack, ribbon candy and crocheted afghans. He put doilies on wing chairs and dusty ceramic lamps on end tables. He did all of this, not as a matter of personal taste but because he knew the style would be popular and would make him enough money to complete his dream of owning and designing a night club.

The Blue Canoe Saloon was an experiment in sticking to the strictest of design concepts. First of all everything was a shade of blue or yellow. No light was left unfiltered so everything had a green hue that changed in value depending on from which angle it was viewed.

Oliver was at the opening because Francis considered him a friend. Langley Chelmsford was there because he was at the time a much sought-after bartender. Cassandra Calo stopped by because of the event’s prestige, this is also why she didn't remember attending. She also attended disguise, something she did often and very well. This time she was dressed, rather unattractively in an expensive black and white polka dot designer two-piece, a false nose and a curly black wig. She went straight for the dance floor where she attracted as dance partners the less affluent, more ambitious single men, most of whom danced very well.

Oliver, who at that stage preferred to find hiding places at parties where he could observe unnoticed, and who all throughout his life drank far too much at social gatherings, found his way onto the catwalk from which the club's lights were hung and, securely fastened with a stage electrician's harness, lay face down next to the base of the largest disco ball and sipped scotch from his favorite hip flask as he watched people socialize.

Langley, who expected Oliver to be there but had not seen him arrive, spent the whole party looking over his shoulder whenever someone came in through the main entrance. He had a project he wanted to pitch to Oliver and had pilfered a fifth of twenty-five year old single malt to encourage acceptance. As it went, he ended up splitting the bottle with a business card designer who was a natural blond and whom Langley would immortalize in a book of poetry.

Oliver undoubtedly saw both Langley and Cassandra from his vantage point, and we can be almost certain that he recognized them both. Cassandra, though she was an actor of both great breadth and depth, was someone who worked within a style and Oliver by that time must have known that style better than his own genitals, and Langley Chelmsford has never gone unnoticed by anyone, anywhere.

Oliver must have had a reason for not connecting with them that night, and this is most likely not the same reason that he avoided Cassandra at the airport. The play was finished, the atmosphere was perfect, Oliver, Cassandra and Langley were all together in jovial creative moods. Persephone must have been trying to chisel her way out of Oliver's skull but for some reason, Oliver refused to let her out. The night of the opening of the Blue Canoe Saloon is extremely important and worthy of intense study because, besides being a lovely evening with fine music, excellent drink and the good time had by all, that night provides only evidence we have that Oliver Fagin Thomas ever doubted his own ability.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Chapter 21 - The Second Chance

Children Interested in the Arts


The second time Oliver and Cassandra's positions intersected, Oliver was nineteen and employed as a counselor at Painted Rock Summer Camp for Children Interested in the Arts.

Age nineteen was the height of Oliver's attractiveness, his high school years had been too greasy and ungainly and after college he was always a bit too fleshy to be considered anything more than pleasant looking. At nineteen, however, in the summer Oliver was sun-bleached, a bit shaggy, an acting coach and swimming instructor, and consequently a person quite often whispered about, although he seemed unaware of this.

Cassandra Calo was quite aware of Oliver however, the night she performed at the camp. She was about to perform the role of Emilia in the last scene of Othello, but first she made a speech of her own writing.

"They asked me to come here to give you some tips on acting. I avoided laughing out loud (being an actor, I am able to control all of my natural reflexes) and I said yes. I will tell you now that there are no tips on acting. Acting is something that is impossible to teach, and impossible to learn from someone else. You probably all came to this camp expecting to learn how to act. I hope you all succeed, but understand that learning how to act is not like learning how to do long division or how to fix a car. Learning to act is more like learning how to walk; no one taught that to you. Maybe your parents held you by the wrists, but you figured out how to take those first steps on your own. That is all I am going to say, for the rest of the evening I will perform. Observe well so you will at least be able to recognize good acting if you ever see it again."

And then she went on to perform the scene fifteen times, each with a difference subtle nuance. Everyone at the camp said the lesson was the most educational experience of their lives. Everyone, that is, except Oliver, who was merely happy to find that all of his expectations of Cassandra's abilities were correct.

For Cassandra however, her superb focus and concentration were tested that evening. She had endured countless distractions in previous performances, coughing fits, telephones ringing, set pieces catching fire, even stage rushes, but that night she could not help but be distracted from the young man staring at her from the back of the theatre.

She had been stared at before of course, some would say that the only important part of acting is being able to handle being stared at, but something about the way Oliver was staring at her was different. He was studying her. Nobody had ever studied Cassandra Calo before, reviewed perhaps, observed certainly, but never studied. Cassandra could not understand what was going on and she was distracted, not completely, but there were a few upper levels of her consciousness that were focused on Oliver and his eyes. Oliver noticed this, but forgave her, she would learn in time.