The Quest of the Artist: A Sci-Fi novella (4 page)

He knew it as a cliché—the misunderstood genius. He felt instead, the need to engage with world and to communicate to others. But he still delighted in his own talent.

While attending a Health Ed class in the nature of sex, mating, and the purpose of procreation—realizing these normal functions were expected of him—Kruger finally rejected the Mill Valley life as “the absolute denial of art.”

And so he left his native town with its tortuous, dusty streets with the damp warm wind whistling through them; left the fountain ruins in the garden and the ancient eucalyptus trees. He wandered about the state of California.

He at last articulated his vision. His art would be simply his activity, it would be a lifetime of practice to present truths using light, color, and form. The world had been blown apart by unparalleled forces, technology had sent us back to the stone age—but still the world was extraordinarily volatile and there were new possibilities, and he would use new methods to take all this on himself. He would continue to paint to show the world’s mutability, its ever-changing forms, tremulous light, this ever shifting world in a state of flux particularly in this turbulent period in history, perhaps even the insignificance of human beings.

Kruger lost his connection to Mill Valley and developed a greater talent for painting and eventually moved to San Francisco. He was called to come by the inhabitants of the walled city.

Invited to San Francisco to join what he thought to be a utopian and more deviant community, since he felt deviants might be necessary for the utopia, he found the utter disappearance of consciousness in the larger city. Not many were allowed in; nobody could get out of the city of their own choosing; nobody wanted out of the city if they could help it. It was a kind of inertia.

There were two types of predominant people there—the Sleepers, who did little—and the Gung-Hos, who wanted to do everything they could with the limited resources. There were overlaps, of course; you can’t sleep or be gung-ho all the time but little was known about the benefits of equilibrium.

He lived in the large city promising first himself a luxuriant ripening of his art by being with those more like him in an artistic community. But with his heart still dead and loveless, he fell into sexual adventures, descending into the depths of lust and searing bodies, and suffering even so. It might have been his father in him, that Chinese man, which made him suffer, aware of sin, in the city now and again he would feel a faint, yearning memory of a certain joy that childhood had offered.

With the lightweight rear-entry Tsuit, there was always a certain amount of contortion to get in and out, but it was generally easy on the body, compared to the old style suits. Sex was easier now and some people were starting to live without their Tsuits in the indoors since the environment had stabilized.

He felt existential Angst—a deadly detachment from world— hinting at the very terror of existence, and only when he painted did he feel rapture and a kind of euphoria. He was likely one of the most
feeling
individuals in the city. But his feelings of dejection, resignation, hyper artistic awareness—and now biblical guilt—he couldn’t talk about that—worried he would be expelled back to Mill Valley for admitting these feelings in the utopia.

In Old Frisco’s Twitloin on the ruined Nob Hill above the water with its large residences, like the ancient Palatine Hill in the center of Rome, he lived. Looking down on one side, the encroaching  bay; on the other, the old ways of life. He discovered nobody is really secure, without materialistic wellbeing and accumulation. This was the message of the Gung-Hos. Even an artist needed these basics—maybe just not so much. Here was still the rationing of synthetic food, with little personal space, with little to do, but there was more “life.” Sexuality, dancing, drugs and alcohol of dubious authenticity was for the taking—either for those who completely gave up, or for those who needed a break from optimism. There was little walking or exercise, nothing to do, a fledgling barter economy—albeit with little to barter, synthetic food, treated water, your one piece of clothing—the Tsuit—to protect you from weather, though inside some residents some took off their suits and went naked.

He had plenty of pencils, coal, paint, paintbrushes, sponges, rags, glue, watercolors, and very valuable quality woven paper to better show the nuances of color, wash, and texture. And a public more interested in his work.

He began to decorate citizens’ Tsuits with color, patterns, and forms, to individualize. He got a reputation.

Access to more materials piqued a greater interest in the technicalities of his art. He was able to eat and sleep comfortably in the city and produced massive amounts of work. Much of it was displayed in the city but without any protocol. Many looked at the works as so much more junk and garbage, which the residents were discouraged from contributing even more of to the city. Residents were encouraged to live in an orderly and simple environment and aesthetics was not much debated, as the public cared little about art. However there was an emergence of critics who might debate these concerns.

As he made more art and lived in the city, he forgot Mill Valley, and his younger self’s battle with dichotomies—his father and his mother. 

His draftsmanship improved dramatically. He experimented with the rational and irrational order of space in his compositions, and used subtle and radical coloring. He continued to feel detached, but found the detachment was beneficial for his greater technique. Sometimes he felt autonomy, which felt good to him in a world of sameness and sociability in the city. He did not talk about art. Art was everything in his life, but when it transcends existence where does it lead us? He was reticent to discuss this with the normals who wouldn’t have understood. He was astute enough, like someone insane, trying to hide his mental condition by appearing normal.

He constantly painted the fantastic storms over the city capturing the volatility of natural phenomenon. He added titles to his works. He called one “Storm Monster,” which was more experimental since he added an imaginary monster that seemed to be evoking the storm. 

That painting was a minor sensation. An urban myth spread that some citizens had mental breakdowns after encountering the Storm Monster in the painting—and yet, the painting was quite beyond the comprehension of most normals.

In his pocket, he carried something from Mill Valley, a shell with whirled patterns from Tennessee Valley, to counter his blackouts of memory. Sometimes the sense of time and place disappeared completely and he would remove his shell and feel memory twitching again. With language cut down to the bare minimum in the city, using less words—consciousness seemed smaller; with our ignorance in politics, God, and spirituality and our lack of machines and interest in science, nobody was really free or honest.

To spice up life, Kruger did some graffiti painting in his late twenties. This behavior was not encouraged in Old Frisco, in fact, it was illegal, in so far as there were laws, but surveillance was primitive and he honed his guerrilla skills. He did not consider himself a political artist. Kruger left graffiti around the city—not fully aware of what he’d created, while the public, or a kind of ruling class public, formerly called critics, were oblivious.

He became a graffiti artist or a Scratcher, painting obscenities on walls, little faces and bodies using stencil. Though amateurish and incompetent, he considered this art as affirmation. How much easier it is to be an artist with action—acting as an artist—than to live and suffer, he thought.

He enjoyed returning to the embellished sites and observing viewers engaged with his work. He felt there was meaning even in his graffiti work, meaning embodied in the work, which could only emerge when viewed by a engager.

He had a small circle of friends. He was able to barter some of his art to meet his simple needs. In the city were a few connoisseurs, his patrons, who wanted his work as decoration in their residences. He was known to be unique in his work. There couldn’t be said to be collectability since art, like most activities had no monetary value. But there were movements to bring back the monetary system in the city. He wondered what kind of existence that would be like—working for money. But that was far away in the future, he thought. After his time.

All this egotism—or self-interest—or repressed consumerism—arising in the city meant morality would have to be taught again. It was felt that this would be more useful than compulsion and government suppression. When you have broken eggs—like a dystopia—you make an omelet—a utopia. We hoped to engineer better people. But for Kruger, art replaced life and therefore—transcended even—morality itself.

Kruger didn’t understand himself. How could he? He lacked many intellectual concepts intelligent humans might have had before the War. Sometimes he just saw producing art as an exercise. He was happiest doodling and doing simple works he felt contained emotion. He didn’t know the theory of the objective correlative, but would have understood it. He showed his works to people in the city and some responded. That made him happy.

The authorities wondered how far to let Kruger’s artistic freedom extend. And we didn’t have much time to decide if this highly creative brain, grappling with art, his quest—the role of the artist—was necessary to a utopian society.

Here, the experiences of his youth lead to what he finally felt must be the way of the world in art, as his mother expressed it: “the person who lives
does not
work and… an artist must virtually
die
in order to be fully creative.” This conflict continued into Kruger's late twenties.

He devoted himself to the power of the intellect, but remained elusive to others. His perception became sharpened, but what he saw disgusted him. His sexual encounters in San Francisco left him unfulfilled—he decided he would not procreate—and he finally came to see life and art as mutually
exclusive
.

And then, with knowledge, its torment and its arrogance, came solitude; because he could not endure the blithe and innocent with their darkened understanding, while they in turn were troubled by the sign on his brow. But his love of the word kept growing sweeter and sweeter, and his love of form; for he used to say (and had already said it in writing) that knowledge of the soul would unfailingly make us melancholy if the pleasures of expression did not keep us alert and of good cheer. This kind of idealized thinking was simply beyond simple virtuosity.

A gated community of rich, leisure, orderly, efficient, antiseptic, surveillance, some luxuries, a nice place really, but you can’t leave, world of glass, steel, snow-white concrete, pounding music, his friends at the disco, making gestures like apes. San Francisco was alternative values with ineffective laws, no enforcement, no compulsion, you could began to live a private life, your own life, but there was the pressure, the expectation to procreate and began to build a new society. Without any images, most could not imagine the carnage of the Annihilation. If there were images, many would have been glued to the images of the carnage.

Outside the city: Drums, flags, patriotism, parades, animal worship, exaltation of the primitive, fire (banned in the city). Kruger certainly didn’t want to go back to that. But inside the city, he still felt his suffocating ironic sensibility, his skepticism of life, his estrangement from the normals.

In his thirties, Kruger met Lisa Ivanova, a young sociologist or social engineer. She told him,  Nietzsche asserts that the “subject” is nothing but a spell cast by “the snare of language,” that “no such agent—as the subject—exists; there is no “being” behind the doing, acting, becoming; the “doer” has simply been added to the deed by the imagination—“the doing is everything.”

She told him the “I” is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being.  She explained history to Kruger, as the progressive triumph of science and technology over superstition. Space technology. We must use means of science and technology to enhance material existence. We have to do it again. He was upset by that knowledge. As a romantic, conditioned by his mother, he believed in the self, and the priority of that self. She told him that idea was unintelligible and probably caused many of our problems.

She further upset Kruger by saying, “In my limited medical knowledge, I think you’re diseased with mental aberrations.” She twisted the knife by finishing, “Certainly your mother should have been in an asylum, if we’d have them, and now that we can have them, maybe yourself.”

“I know I’m different but isn’t an asylum where they lock people up by themselves?”

“Yes,” she said. “Indicative of mental diseases—disturbed mother as a bad influence, your solitary existence—how’s that any different than a life in an asylum—abandoned by your moral father and immoral mother, your wandering...”

He whipped off a drawing of Lisa to please her. Every time he told her how he adored her almond eyes, Asiatic like his, she would say, “Please, cut out the almond eye shit.” Still, he drew her quickly and handed over the sketch. She took it.

“Is that really me?” she asked.

“It’s you,” I said.

“Why did you stop?” she asked

“You mean, why didn’t I keep drawing?”

“Yeah, how do you know when you’re done?”

“That’s a good question. The question of stopping.”

“Well, how do you know when to stop?”