NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Boom chic chic … Boom chic chic … sounds like a dance band. A small couple are stepping in time to a jingle, waltzing in a big empty room with a shiny hard wood floor. I watch their tiny legs moving; legs only about as big as their teeth looked just now, when their smiles first filled the screen.
“Waltz through life with windows by De Hooch” says the commentary. I am curious to see whether they will grow bigger or smaller in the next instant. A woman’s voice comes over the fading sound of the jingle.
“These windows are designed to stay clean”. Is this the voice of the dancer? A chorus sings in the background “Created by De Hooch to stay clean” with a long sustained note on the word clean.
The dancers have stopped. Her face grows gradually larger as the chorus sings more of the jingle about clean windows by De Hooch, the sound rising gradually until her face fills the screen and the volume is loudest.
She seems to be the same tiny woman in a white turtleneck who was dancing just now. She has stopped growing and she speaks. The screen is filled with her fresh clean face. I can see her as an animated portrait bust, framed by the TV. Short light brown hair curls forward informally over her brow. How friendly she looks! Her eyes are bright blue and moist.
Her shiny pink lips move distinctly with each word. Now she has finished speaking, the woman is growing smaller again and I can see her standing looking towards a man, appearing magically in the background on an upbeat in the music. It is her dancing partner looking at her with his warm smile. He moves towards her until he is close to her, instead of resuming the dance he looks adoringly at her. A voice says “At home with windows by De Hooch.”
Then he and the woman keep shrinking and growing, and partially appearing and disappearing, framed by different kinds of windows accompanied by the waltz string music without vocals.
Now the jingle tells me that everything will look better through his windows. Are they his windows not hers?
They are Peter De Hooch’s windows. The dancers have gone. Peter owns the company. He too looks handsome with silvery hair, perfectly aligned teeth in his smile, a strong jaw. His small blue eyes shine from his tanned face. After a moment’s distraction I see Peter is diminishing. The man and woman are waltzing away from Peter, and he gets smaller as they move through their big bright house disappearing into the garden.
Now Peter is back, framed by a window.
“These windows keep out harmful ultraviolet rays with such transparency you could admire a painting through them.”
He says in an enthusiastic voice, pitched to sound more sympathetic than authoritative. There is another flicker on the screen, or perhaps I blinked. No it is not really Peter, it is a painting of Peter.
Peter has gone again. The painting is gone. A female voice says in welcoming tones “It is as light as day in our new living room”. I think it is the dancer’s voice but there is no way to really tell.
The male dancer returns to the screen to hug the cheerful looking woman who reappeared opening the glass door and passing through it. As the waltz music swells, the image of a golden retriever in the garden beyond the door grows to fill the screen. The dog barks, but looks friendly, wagging its tail and panting, showing its teeth as harmlessly as Peter de Hooch showed his when he smiled. The dog slowly grows smaller. The couple comes back into to view getting larger as the dog gets smaller and disappears.
Now all I notice are their rows of gleaming teeth and their eyes, filling the whole screen. As suddenly as the couple grew, they shrink again, waltzing across the shiny floor framed by one of Peter’s windows.
I get up from my chair.
My old friend Alice remarks on how annoying she finds commercials interrupting the news on TV.
The news is back.
“That was the chairman of the select committee on Aesthetic Crime, Congressman Lee Leavenworth Knox outside the hearing rooms this evening, after the third session of these hearings to clean up America. Presented to you live by De Hooch’s windows.” Says the newsman whose picture is gone in a flicker.
I can hear the theme from that famous Lutheran Hymn, “A mighty Fortress is Our God.”
Or is it? Well, I am hearing something very much like it. Was that the news? There is a picture of Lee Leavenworth Knox. His serious face fills the screen with battleship gray hair combed back in a bow wave above a square face. His bushy graying eyebrows arching on his brow could be comic, but the Congressman is in a somber mood.
“We need to clean up America” he says as if he wishes it weren’t necessary, like having to do the kitchen after a party when you would rather sleep.
“As the Congressman marches down the narrow streets of this small town in upstate New York the country wonders about the progress of his hearing in Washington” says the sententious news voice, somehow speaking for all of us in the country.
We can see the banner of Knox’s “Clean Up America” (CUPA) movement carried down a narrow street in a parade. A male voice talks from the street about cleaning up America in authoritative tones. “That was our correspondent reporting from the town of Dyspeptic New York. Stay tuned for the interview” the news voice tells us. I can’t hear who is reporting.
The scene changes. Knox is being interviewed:
“Are you going to pull down the Washington Monument?”
“I do not regard it as an aesthetic crime.”
“Congressman, what is your position on a replacement design?”
“We shall hear from all sides about aesthetic crimes in America. That is the purpose of these hearings.”
“Do you think the Washington Monument is an aesthetic crime?”
“No I do not.”
“Okay, let’s put it another way, do you think the design or construction is or was an aesthetic crime?”
“As I said before, I do not. That is a question the committee is exploring and it would not be fitting for me to comment further at this time.”
“What is an aesthetic crime?”
“It is an offence against the good sense of Americans.”
“What do you mean by ‘good sense,’ Congressman?”
“I think that is plain to the American people.”
“Which Americans Congressman?”
“The majority of American voters.”
“Congressman, we are just about out of time. One last question: What law does aesthetic crime fall under?”
“It falls under God’s law.”
The interview is over and teeth are back on screen along with the bright eyes of the smiling couple in a De Hooch window.
I go back in the kitchen again to get a beer and can hear the Waltz and jingle from the other room and get back in time to watch a crowd dispersing on the street outside the hearing rooms on Capitol Hill.
Now the commentator is reporting from the street looking down from Jenkins Hill, amidst the mixed evening lights. Orange brake lights flash on and off against the constant white headlights of oncoming traffic moving slowly along Pensylvania Avenue below. The evening’s remaining light filters through low cloud filling the background. “That was Lee Leavenworth Knox fighting aesthetic crime in Washington,” says the commentator.
