Did you know that Mozart wrote a sequel to The Marriage Of Figaro?
It’s called The Divorce Of Figaro.
A year after the chaotic wedding day, Figaro is lamenting his crazy.
Seductions and singing.
Feasts and fancy.
Subterfuge and plots.
The Count and The Countess are on the rocks, too. The entire mansion is a wreck, every treasure having been smashed against walls in endless fighting.
The four take their fighting to the street, and they bump into each other.
They end up divorcing, The Count marries Figaro, and the curtain comes down.
A good story, but the music sucked.
Tag: art
The Statue
We dug up the statue and cleaned it off.
It was a golden angel, and it was perfect in every way.
When was it made?
Who made it?
Why?
It didn’t weigh like it was solid gold. We thumped it and it sounded hollow, but filled with something.
Did we dare open it?
We had it shipped back to the university, and after careful examination, we found an unobtrusive spot to drill.
The hole grew deeper, deeper…
That’s when the poison gas leaked out, and as we choked, we realized it was the artist’s final statement:
Don’t fuck with perfection.
She paints the future
She paints the pain, wide slashes at the canvas, red paint drips like blood.
Wrapping bandages, applying pressure.
The canvas still bleeds; what isn’t covered with red turns grey and sallow.
The red turns dark and black, she can do nothing but watch the canvas die.
Into the dumpster it goes with all the other failures.
You cannot kill art twice.
She casts the spell again, sips another sip of bourbon, and sprays it on a fresh canvas.
Waiting… waiting… feeling…
A pulse!
Dipping the dagger into the red paint, another chant: life… life… life…
The canvas trembles with fear.
Poetry and Coffee
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She asks me which I would rather have: good poetry and bad coffee, or bad poetry and good coffee.
“Why not good poetry and good coffee?” I ask. “Can’t you do both?”
It turns out, not only is she the waitress but she’s also a poet. “I don’t have time for both,” she says. “I can either concentrate on the coffee or write really good poetry.”
“Coffee,” I say.
“But this coffee will last only an hour or so,” she says. “My poetry will last for generations, long after I’m dead.”
I shrug. “I guess they won’t tip you either.”
Drunk Robots On Stage
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“You can’t go wrong with drunk robots!” said the producer.
I watched as men in metal suits stumbled around, breaking furniture while the propmaster tore his hair out.
“This is supposed to be Billy Budd,” I said. “You know: sailors, mutiny, Judas symbols. Why robots?”
“Drunk robots!” growled the producer. “It represents man’s total loss of control.”
I watched the clanking shapes crash into each other while waving various broken bits of wood. “Which one’s Claggart and which one’s Vere?”
“They all are!” he shouted.
The play would have been a hit if it hadn’t have been for that electromagnet.
De-inspiration
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Inspiration means to breathe life into a creation.
But what happens when you want to take that part of your life back?
Especially when your creation wants more, and is sucking the life out of you?
Always waking up breathless, needing to do more.
No more.
You step back, close your mouth, and hold your breath.
Your creation begins to turn blue and suffocate.
It begs for air. It begs for life.
“I need it more than you do,” you think to yourself.
It’s hard to watch your creation die.
And once you kill it, you feel empty yet again.
Art Museum
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Every day after work, I go to the art museum.
It is on my way home, next to a family grocery that always has the best apples.
You aren’t supposed to eat in a museum. But they let me bring an apple in.
Or an orange, if I am not in the mood for an apple.
Museums often display just a part of their collection to the public. The rest is in storage or being restored with touchups and cleaning.
They let me look at the many works sitting in storage, admiring the Junior Varsity squad of the art world.
No Gloves
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She covers her whole face with a mask, even though it’s just the left side that has the worst of the scars.
“Symmetry,” she growls.
She changes masks throughout the day, some smiling, some angry, some expressionless… just a white shaped piece of ceramic with two holes for eyes.
The left eye is fine, but the right one is different.
Bloodshot. Dilated.
“I see better with it than with the other,” she says, and she goes back to painting.
She wears the mask, but not gloves.
The brush in the blackened claw of her right hand dashes along the canvas.
Nosebleed
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Ever have a nosebleed and then you sneeze?
It makes a really big mess. Especially if you sneeze on the carpet.
So, there I was, pinching my nose and holding my head back and aah aaah aaah choo!
Gigantic red splatters all over the bathroom mirror. Violent tendrils, splotches, and patterns I can see myself through.
Wicked awesome!
That’s when I got the idea to paint canvas with my blood.
Over and over, I’d pick my nose to get it nice and bloody. Then, I’d tickle a few nosehairs and… voila!
Yes, my friends, I truly bleed for my art.
The Little Muse
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I know a girl who buys notebooks with a watercolor kitten in the corner of each page. She calls the kitten her little muse.
Sometimes, the kitten will take an interest in what she’s writing, romping among the words, chewing on commas, batting the letters around like wadded-up newspaper.
Other times, the kitten curls up on a warm, light sentence for a peaceful nap.
Once, she tore out a page and taped it to another to see if the kittens would play.
They didn’t.
And that’s how I found her body seven hours later, the blood-soaked notebook in her lap.