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.
Fred meets Diddlie on her driveway. She wears an unusual pale gray pinafore, gray cap, and white sleeves and tights.
“What is that outfit you are wearing?”
“It’s my admission uniform to that new Gallery.”
“A uniform?”
“Yes, you have to wear light gray, warm or cool tone, to get in.”
“Makes you look like a schoolgirl.”
“You like that, Fred?”
“Well, sure, I mean I don’t get it.”
“Don’t be shy, Fred. I didn’t pick a warm tone for nothing.”
“What’s it for?”
Diddlie presses against me.
“It is just part of the experience.”
“Where did you get the outfit?”
She moves a few inches away, rubbing herself against me.
“Off the website, fifty bucks. It’s cheap stuff, see?”
She holds out her sleeve for me to touch the fabric.
“I see, feels like paper.”
“Yeah, hope it doesn’t rip and expose my sagging wrinkled bod.”
“You won’t be alone in that!”
“Fred, that doesn’t help.”
“I don’t have a gray outfit, besides some sweatpants and a shirt.”
“That’s okay, you can buy when we get there.”
“Okay, what kind of exhibition are we going to? I thought it was going to be art.”
“Oh, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he does do art.”
“Steve told me yesterday that it’s called, ‘Art You’re In’.”
“He and bel should be here pretty soon.”
“Good grief, is that them?”
“Yeah, that’s their new Toyota Hybrid.”
The white Camry rolls silently onto Diddlie’s driveway until the front radials snap a twig. Bel opens her window.
“Hi there, art lovers!”
I can see Steve in a gray tunic and pale gray cap, while bel’s outfit is much like Diddlie’s but she has light yellow sleeves.
“Bel, what is this thing we are going to?”
“Fred, it is Boris Tarantula’s latest extravaganza.”
Bel winds up her window as Diddlie and I get in the back.
“It’s an installation at that estate owned by Axel Ensor, outside Gaithersburg.”
Steve backs the car out of the driveway.
“All five thousand acres of it.”
“Did he sponsor the thing?”
“Sure did, Fred.”
“I’ll bet Boris got a nice rake-off!”
“He is getting a hundred thousand a month, plus expenses!”
“Not bad.”
“That’s what Frank Vasari said when he told me about it.”
“Oh really, what else did you learn?”
“Frank is going to make a few bucks exhibiting the outfits and stuff at PU Art Space, when this thing is over.”
Diddlie nudges me. “Who is Frank Vasari?”
“He is chairman of PU Art Department.”
“Is he that guy Daisy hangs out with?”
We pull up at a red light and Steve turns around to Diddlie.
“He hired her to teach undergraduate drawing classes at PU. I don’t think they are dating.”
“Well, I hope she finds a guy soon.”
“She is isn’t looking, Did. I can assure you.”
After nearly an hour, Steve turns into the parking lot from which we can see a massive white curvy structure built into a hillside.
Bel turns to us before we get out of the car.
“They sell tickets at the entrance, and you can get the uniform in a packet marked ‘Liquid Light’.”
The line moves fast as a voice keeps repeating:
“Changing rooms are on the right, folks.”
The others are waiting when I come out in my gray paper outfit carrying my clothes in the plastic bag provided for the paper clothing.
“Fred, you could have left your cloths in the lockers, you know.”
“What lockers, bel?”
“Over in the changing rooms.”
“Oh, I am not going back now.”
We enter the building through a turnstile, which flashes lots of tiny lights at us. Then in the lobby of the exhibition, we see replicas of ourselves waving from a balcony above. A wall of screens explains different parts of the show.
Boris Tarantula fills the whole wall of screens with a giant presence, before we can watch the videos,
“As you proceed, microphones throughout the exhibition space will pick up voices from passersby and whatever you are talking about will materialize before your eyes. If you say, lion, a lion will appear before you. If you say, Grandma’s place, her room will surround you. Welcome to the miracles of our time, making you the art in this show.”
Boris fades away, and the screens divide into rectangles, each explaining various features of the exhibition.
We move on, into an old-fashioned parlor with an upright piano and two warn armchairs with antimacassars in front of a small fireplace. There are plenty of others in the space with us. It’s hard to tell if they are tangible or just light. We can barely hear their voices.
“So, who said anything about grandma?”
“I didn’t, Diddlie.”
“The mics must have picked up someone else.”
“Well, I guess so, Steve.”
Okay, so what’s with those screeching monkeys?”
“You hear those birds sounding off?”
“They sound like parrots, bel.”
“My God, something is coming up from somewhere!”
The rhymical repetitions of an animal trotting through dry leaves, sound alarmingly close as they grow louder. Many other sounds of the jungle come through as we listen.
“What is going on here?”
“I was going to ask you that, Diddlie.”
Viscus green liquid light drips down our paper clothes from low-hanging branches, and from shrubs as we brush by them.
“I can’t get this magenta snakeskin off me!”
“It isn’t really a snake, Did!”
She shakes some of it off and it falls to the floor spreading like a rug.
“Will you look at that!”
A lion sits only yards away.
“Are we in the same room with that thing?”
“See, it is looking across a field.”
“I can’t tell what space anything is in!”
Steve walks over, sloshing some yellow and green light across the floor as if it were slush after a thaw, giving off a little magenta vapor.
“Are you enjoying the party?”
“What party? We have been in a jungle room.”
“How about you, Did?”
“Nothing makes sense around here!”
We hear multiple conversations as if we were in a crowded room.
“Wait a minute, where is all that coming from? Where’s the lion? Where is the little room?”
“Follow me.”
Steve leads the way into a purple snowstorm.
Diddlie tries to gather some up.
It turns yellow when it gets on her paper uniform.
“You can’t even make a snowball with this stuff!”
“That’s because there is nothing there but light.”
“There is something more than that, Fred.”
Nude dancers surround us moving to Tchaikovsky’s dance of Sugar Plumb Fairy, from the Nutcracker Suite.
“Those figures are right out of Rubens’ Three Graces!”
“Who are they, Steve?”
“The Graces were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, the Ocean nymph.”
“Steve, you mean they are paintings from Greek mythology?”
“I mean they are animations of Rubens’ work.”
“What? like Micky Mouse, or something?”
“Right, Diddlie, only it’s not hand-painted cels, it’s digital stuff.”
“Well, that one has a mighty big ass!”
“Oh! Look! There’s Micky riding a sled downhill over there.”
bel taps my shoulder.
“This is cyber, ‘Son et Lumiere’!”
“Sound and light and then some!”
“Did you see the screen explaining that everything we see is a digital simulation?”
“No, I didn’t have time to read much.”
“Does this experience remind you of something, Fred?”
“Yes, come to think of it, the president-elect!”
“Creepy, isn’t it?”
“This must be the same technology that keeps people believing Macadamia is a real person.”
“Sure is, Fred. Boris gave his campaign twenty million, you know.”
“I had no idea Boris had that kind of money, Steve.”
He takes Diddlie’s arm and leads her into another exhibition space.
On following them, the first thing bel and I see is the Milky Way brighter and bigger than most people have ever seen it.
“We seem to be walking among the stars.”
“I know bel, where is the floor?”
“I don’t see it.”
“We are definitely treading on something, though.”
Diddlie is gesticulating and liquid light flies off her arms in yellows and oranges.
“Let’s get out of here!”
Steve grabs her left hand.
“Diddlie, just let it all go by.”
Bel grabs Steve’s arm.
“Do you realize they now have replicas of us all?”
“Are we going to be replaced?”
“No Diddlie, they aren’t true replicas, they are just light.”
“Well, Steve, who needs a simulated mushroom experience? I can have real the thing at home.”
