Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten

Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten - Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The rain hit the pavement like applause. Sand walked toward Holly through the puddles. The night was lit from the top of one tall pole against which Holly leaned, surrounded by a cone of glitter. His back was to Sand, and he played a long horn mournfully slow, twisting a tone of tortured purity, squeezing a song from a single note. His melodies were like so many eels intertwined. He showed no sign of knowing Sand was there, but when he finished his eyes were open and looking straight at his student.

"Do you know the unit of concentration?" Holly asked. "Can you split it in two, and leave each piece still beating? Can you ignore the imperfections so convincingly that others will not detect them? Can you grab someone's attention like this...?"

A bird whose color was all Sand could see swept by and straight up, plunging the rainy darkness into bright blue daylight, higher still until it was just a speck. The sky burned brilliantly as a thousand suns.

"Can you keep someone's attention, never faltering, for so long that you never stop? Can you hold them by their senses, cast them in a spell? That is what an artist does, and drags the other's mind along, because to be convinced is all that matters."

The spotless sky turned bluish green, and Holly demanded, "What is the proper color?"

Sand considered, and in a humble voice answered, "Blue."

"You are wrong. Blue is just a word," said Holly. "Concentrate. Make it right."

Sand was about to speak, but Holly silenced him.

"No more words. Just make the sky the way it really is."

Sand looked up, and swallowed. He tried to remember how it looked the last time he had seen the actual sky. Finally he started changing hues, dimming here, brightening there. It was more complicated than he had ever imagined, richer at the center, whiter at the rim. The more he played, the more adventuresome he became, and the less he was sure.

Sand glanced at Holly for a reaction. The master was inscrutable. But Sand sensed his teacher shifting the background.

"How can I decide, when you keep changing it?"

Holly only smiled.

"I am the audience, Sand. The audience will always wander. You cannot take the time to worry that they follow. If you glance backwards, you will crack the bonding of your picture. Whoever can derive more pleasure from the sky will determine its color. Most people are not like you or me. They are satisfied with someone else's taste, a certified opinion. But you and I are different. We know that to be certified means only to be sure. When you show your worry, others try to help you. They pity you, and end up competing with you. When you find that happening, Sand, change the rules. This is the proper color for the sky."

Black.

Holly lit a candle, and the trunks of trees surrounded them. Branches were thick above them, and the sky was gone.

"Come. It's time to move on," said Holly. "Your father is performing and we must go listen."

They walked through the simple forest of Holly's design, and Sand noticed with a sudden thrill that the candle did not react to Holly's movements. Glancing at his teacher, he saw that Holly's attention was on the path ahead, so Sand imagined the candle flickering. Instantly, he was gratified, for the shaking light made the shadows dance.

But Holly was speaking.

"Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Disney, they plodded along with a brush or a pen, always confined to the actual page, the darkened room around the stage, the border of the screen or canvas. No, Sand, today is the age of the artist."

And so saying, Holly blew out the candle.

In the path ahead appeared a clearing full of people. On a platform raised in the center was a large piano with the top wide open.

Sand's father was playing. Peter was very much involved. The audience around him on the ground seemed entranced, all eyes reflecting. The visual detail was not extravagant, just vague forms in the dark, but the sound was rich and full.

But Sand could still detect the nervous self-awareness that always weighed on Peter's music. He played with a virtuosity only possible in simulation, and with a sheer drama that seemed to watch itself from the side. Surprise after surprise rang out, and always Peter's posture changed to lend great meaning. But the rhythm faltered, and the simple promise of the measure, that two plus two is four, was broken.

Sand turned away, and Holly commented, "You don't like concerts?"

"Sometimes," he replied.

It bothered Sand and he felt ashamed. "It's just that..." he struggled for the words, "Peter needs his audience, but they're not really his friends."

"Ah, yes," said Holly, "but when Peter is not playing, don't you suppose that he still has an audience, one of memories and fantasies?" Holly turned back to the concert. "Perhaps this audience keeps the other one at bay."

"But all this giving," Sand protested, "for people he doesn't even know."

"You feel that way and yet you want to be an artist?"

Sand paused to think, and Holly put his hand on the young man's shoulder.

"But you're right, even an artist must have friends," he said, "and you are your father's friend. We all start with our family. Down into the soil we burrow, like the growing cells on the tips of roots. With our family trees behind our backs, and with the winds of ancient times swaying the branches far above us, we each press through our little patch of dirt, bumping blindly into strangers."

Sand shifted uncomfortably under Holly's hand.

"I don't think you understand what happened with my parents," he said. "It was Mara who made Peter this way."

"Which way?" asked Holly.

"Unhappy," said Sand. "Alone."

There was a pause.

"A man cannot be made into something he is not," said Holly.

Sand watched the final chords of Peter's performance. The applause sputtered and then swelled, but Holly and Sand did not applaud. They simply turned and walked into the woods again.

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