Bright Shards of Someplace Else (14 page)

O'Hara, with an uncanny ability to preempt my comments, summed up the experience. “I know. It's beautiful for a moment and then it's garbage. That's the problem with organic, living matter. But you want to know what those were under there?” He waited for me to supply the superfluous “what?” while I waited for him to give up and continue without it. We broke down simultaneously, both of us suddenly speaking at once. For a moment O'Hara seemed annoyed, but the thought of his theory, as always, seemed to banish all irritation from his mind. “Those were my own cells you were looking at. My own cells, that is, after visiting the museum.” O'Hara delivered this
with a finality that indicated that I should find this as significant as he did. With a slight hand-flutter of impatience, O'Hara elucidated. “You see, I went to the museum, and I swear to the holy higher power that my cells, blood, skin, tissue, the whole bit—became
like art after viewing the art
. What I'm saying is—and I know this sounds radical—I'm proposing that our organic selves adjust to art. We see the art, and our bits then become the art. Our body
recognizes
abstraction and, in turn, competes with it.”

O'Hara now seemed to be entering some even stranger theoretical territory than before. Was he just synthesizing a number of clichés and new-agey superstitions into one pithy idea? We're beautiful on the inside, art is good for the soul, and we're all unique—all repackaged as Microaestheticism. Was this a ploy to sell the theory, to give it some marketable touchy-feelyness?

O'Hara, however, seemed too sincere and unsavvy for such sales-manship. He was still lost in explaining the before and after appearance of his cells. “They were downright boring before. I mean, they were drab. My skin cells were just beige little irregular chambers, my blood cells were completely uninspired. Even the bacteria in my gut looked hackneyed. They were nothing, nada, sans thing, el nothito.” O'Hara apparently found some amusement in approximating other languages, an unusual quirk for someone of his education. “But afterwards …” He paused to give his customary lovelorn sigh. “They were sublime.”

“Hey—I've got an idea.” At once overtaken by manic energy, O'Hara began rummaging through the boxes piled about the studio. As his search intensified, he became less concerned with keeping things orderly. He knocked images off the wall as he rushed by without even bothering to see what he had unsettled. At one point, he toppled a rickety microscope but merely giggled when it hit the floor. “Mave can have that one,” he said, referring to his sculptress friend. “She's been planning on creating a 'scope sculpture as a criticism of the fussy, mechanical way gallery-goers see art. She'd love the big lenses on that
one.” Finally, in the bottom of what looked like a tackle box, O'Hara's search ended. “We've got to get a blood smear from you,” O'Hara blurted, simultaneously casting me as both a fellow researcher and willing test subject. “It's perfectly safe.” O'Hara punctuated this by showing me a trio of lancets, still in their sterile wrapping. “I would love, love, love to get a look at your blood. I'm sure it's spectacular. After all the art you've seen …” He virtually shuddered with pleasure at the thought. Both flattered and curious, I held out my arm for him.

“Wait.” He again launched into a search, this time for something he called Ethiphet©. “Where is the goddamn Ethiphy?!” This search, much shorter than the last, quickly produced a vial of absinthehued liquid from the recesses of a clearly secondhand file cabinet. “Now just drink this first. It's a stabilizing agent. Sort of like a coagulant but not quite. What it does is slow the movement of your blood cells so they'll fix into an image under the slide.” Unconsciously, I had drawn my arms back to my body protectively, the arm formerly offered up now receding behind my back. Another impatient flutter of hands. “For god's sake, of course it's safe. It's sure as hell safer than all the genetically modified food you scarf down without a thought! I'm a biologist. I know the properties of everything in this lab down to the molecule! And I know their effects!” O'Hara's presumptuousness about my eating habits (scarf?) made me even less inclined to take the “Ethiphy.” “Look. You saw what happened under that slide. The cells shift, the picture's ruined. Don't you want to see how beautiful your cells could really look? Who knows? You might be a masterpiece.” O'Hara whispered this last part in my ear, after silently advancing into my space.

The old observation about people eventually coming to resemble their pets seems doubly true for theorists and their theories. Wittgenstein was as austere and difficult as his theories, living in a highly ordered home and quick to anger over unintelligible slights. Kierkegaard's theories were innately paradoxical, much like his sex life: he would woo, woo, woo, and then cut out before consummation. (Some
biographers claim to have found evidence that Kierkegaard had a curved penis, which would explain his sexual reticence. Even that deformity could be seen as a metaphor for his ideas.) O'Hara himself, likewise, now seemed just as threatening to me as he claims Micro-aestheticism is to science. One could speculate that O'Hara wanted a unified front: man and theory, both at the ready to disturb. And finally illuminate.

Ultimately, though, neither O'Hara nor Microaestheticism presented any real danger. Or any real illumination. Microaestheticism may be a pleasant diversion, but it simply stands on too many thresholds to truly enter into theoretical discourse. Part science, part art criticism, part New Age feel-goodism, part old-time alchemy. But in the all: not much. The mainstream art world simply won't accept that its field is mere inaccurate biology, and if O'Hara's old colleagues are any indication, science will simply banish it, not even granting the acknowledgment of a refutation. It seemed harmless enough, then, to follow O'Hara's instructions, if only to fully experience what will no doubt come to be known as an amusing hiccup in the history of ideas.

The Ethiphet© went down easily and seemed to have a numbing effect. O'Hara had already deftly pricked the finger by the time I put the vial down. “It works the minute it hits the gullet,” he said, without explaining this improbability or apologizing for what felt like a pretty rude way to take a blood sample. Wasn't there a blood-taking etiquette? Unlike someone in the medical profession, who would at least put on an empty show of caring about my well-being (or give some vague comforting comment such as “that wasn't so bad, was it?”), O'Hara had already moved on, with nary a half-hearted nicety. For lack of a cotton ball or a Band-Aid, O'Hara absently reached over, without taking his eyes off the lancet, and ripped off a paper towel from a soiled-looking roll. But perhaps O'Hara could be excused (or figured he should be) for all his born-of-distraction boorishness: he was, of course, a man of both science
and
art, leaving little for the prosaic world of manners, bedside or otherwise.

O'Hara now silently drew the lancet, sheathed thinly with a spread drop of blood, along a slide, then pressed another slide atop it to secure the sample. He slipped the specimen into its proper place under the 'scope lens, securing it with two silver clips. With the herkyjerkyness of someone tired of simply verging on something great, O'Hara nearly leaped to the other side of the table and thrust his head at the eyepiece. He hit it with what looked like enough force to give himself a black eye, yet he didn't pull back to assess the damage or rub his eyes in chagrined bafflement. Instead, he merely grunted with impatience and reached down to reaffix the slide. Now came another round of ever-so-slight knob spinning, focusing, and refocusing. To the untrained observer he appeared to be undoing everything he did, as every knob turn seemed followed by a knob turn of an equal amount in the opposite direction. To O'Hara, though, progress was being made. Soon enough, he chortled and pulled his hands away from either side of the 'scope to free them up for a merry clap of victory. “Come here,” he called, his voice taking on the near-obscene vibrato of intense pleasure. “It's as beautiful as I had hoped.”

But the trek to the microscope, and the image, seemed suddenly complicated. For one thing, there were suddenly two of everything: two Dr. O'Haras, two battered stainless steel tables, two identical 'scopes. Though disorienting, it certainly had its implications for O'Hara's work. He probably
would
benefit from having two selves—one to remain in the science world and one to flee fully into art.

The whole room now shifted entirely out of focus, as if the whole space was under a giant 'scope, and O'Hara, miscalculating, turned a mammoth knob way too far. It took considerable effort to keep O'Hara in my vision—there was suddenly something indistinct about him. Much like Microaestheticism, which more and more seemed to me a theory only of specifics, lacking a fundamental to give those fine points relevance, O'Hara's relationship to the space was suddenly unclear. Was he that form inches to my right? Or was he the faded blob
still feet away? Groping, like all theories do in their infancy, I reached out for my bearings and apparently collided with the 'scope instead.

“Damnit! I had it perfectly adjusted! Look, this space is just as sacred as any gallery. Same rules apply! Watch what you're doing; don't touch without permission,” O'Hara scolded. “This place may not be pretty but there's serious stuff going on here. You can't just grab at things willy-nilly.” O'Hara seemed unduly annoyed, as if he had been intuiting my increasing doubts about his theory and his credibility. Perhaps that's why he elaborated so unnecessarily. “Think about it. What if you just reached out like that in a gallery and knocked over a sculpture?” Leaving me to think about what I had done, O'Hara went back to his adjustment ritual. The knobs turned, a sound not unlike an arthritic joint complaining at having to move once more. Or perhaps that sound
was
O'Hara's joints, the soft bone-on-bone groan of a body too often employed in the same tiny gestures. In the absence of any clear visuals, it was impossible to say which. But it was clear where the murmurs of complaint originated. O'Hara's mutters, theatrically overblown to remind me of the grievous consequences of my conduct, ranged from snarled “damnits” to little whispers on how things had degenerated in the last minute. “Well, there goes the right quadrant,” he said, seeming to address the 'scope in their kindred agony over how out of whack everything had become. But as for O'Hara's face and movements, they were left up to guesswork. The room remained as undefined as the moment of my transgression.

“All right. It's as fixed as it's going to be. Believe me, it's not nearly as good as it was
before
, but it'll at least give you some indication of the quality of post-art-viewing blood.” I advanced toward the sound of O'Hara's voice gingerly—I had a feeling bumping the 'scope a second time would be more than enough ground to end our contact. As I attempted to round the corner of the steel table to the viewing side, I felt O'Hara's hand close around my upper arm. “Open your eyes, will you? You were about to bump the table.” O'Hara, one of the few of
us blessed enough to believe that everything he does is eye opening, luxuriated in the dual meaning of his directive. “You know, Microaestheticism is all about opening your eyes. It's about seeing life—and art—in a new and entirely synergistic way.”

I stood in front of the 'scope, unable to decipher where it began or ended, or how far it was from my face. O'Hara, suddenly enthralled at what must be a new thought about his cherished theory, went on, oblivious to my hesitance. “In fact, I see the 'scope itself as a conduit to that new seeing. Unlike the gallery—with its white walls, its wine and cheese corner, its emptiness amplifying every insipid utterance—the 'scope is a quiet and private place.” He paused to let the profundity of that sink in. “And I like that you have to bend down and put your eye to an eyepiece to see a slide. That act … it's like a literal—or rather—a literal
ized
gesture—or act—of interpretation.” O'Hara, demonstrating the smug habit of rewording his own ideas merely to extend their expression, seemed in no hurry for me to begin this “act.” And all this talk about seeing was providing too obvious an irony in a room now so blurry.

“You know, when you put your eye to the eyepiece, you actually bring your brain closer to the slide, you know, the art. Isn't that neat? That's really what you're doing at the 'scope—getting that thinker right up tight to the art.” Merely to stop O'Hara from continuing down this line of thinking—a line that would no doubt lead to another manic epiphany about the implications of his Big Idea—I asserted my interest in finally seeing what all the fuss was about. “Well, by golly then, put your eye to the 'scope. You don't need my invitation. That's the thing about the 'scope. It, by its very mechanism,
demands
viewer participation. You have to crane down and look. You can't just stroll through like you can in a gallery. Noooope …” I had a feeling this was meant as some sort of dig—as if O'Hara was implying I had been spoiled by the noncommittal ease of gallery going. Rather than argue with him—perhaps pointing out that a viewer's level of engagement had nothing to do with a physical “craning” or lack thereof—I
attempted to line up my eye socket with the eyepiece. It was best to let it go. O'Hara was obligated to criticize the art world; otherwise, how could he justify his intrusion? Like many theorists, O'Hara's zeal was born of a belief that his idea was a long-overdue corrective. And anyone who was presumptuous enough to believe himself capable of remedying both art and science would hardly be distracted by the pinpricks of a single doubter's logic.

A man of science, such as O'Hara still would tout himself, could probably tell me that looking through the 'scope's magnified lenses would not correct what had suddenly gone wrong with my vision. Still, once I finally situated my face on the eyepiece, I was startled to see nothing crisper than the general blur everything had become. I tried to tell O'Hara, but I suddenly was too short of breath to speak. Thankful for what he no doubt thought was a silence inviting commentary, O'Hara plowed forward with a fresh thought on his theory.