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.
Maynard Keyes and Daisy Brisco, wrapped in her Ukrainian flag scarf, join me at the shopping center. We shelter under the overhang, outside the new store, Legal Drugs.
Rain follows last week’s blizzard in a drenching beat on one side of Maynard’s large umbrella that reaches beyond our shelter.
“My contract with PU art department may not be renewed for the spring semester.”
“Why, Daisy?”
“It is funded by a grant from the NEA!”
“Yes, a threatening part of the deep state, of course!”
“MAYNARD!”
“Sorry, what other opportunities do you see?”
“Not much. I guess I might be able to work at Tenniel’s Art Shop again.”
“Have you got an agent?”
“No, no representation at all.”
“Might help you sell some art.”
“That is the way to do it, of course, but I never have. I never really wanted a job.”
“Why not? Seeking opportunities and making money can be great fun!”
“I am looking for different kinds of opportunities.”
“What kinds?”
“In my artwork, for example, Maynard.”
“Oh, personal growth, you might say.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“One of those ancient Greeks had an idea about chariots.”
“Oh! a strategist, was he?”
“He was using an analogy, Fred.”
“For what, Maynard?”
“It is all about virtue.”
“Could that be the pursuit of happiness?”
“Precisely, Fred, but not the modern meaning of happiness.”
“What is the modern meaning, Maynard? You mean it has changed?”
“It has, Daisy. Happiness might mean going to a ballgame or dinner with your lover.”
“It might not if the lovers are fighting.”
“For the sake of argument let’s assume they are not.”
“Okay, Maynard, so what did this Greek think about happiness?”
“Daisy, think of June 1776, Jefferson’s famous opening to the Declaration of Independence.”
“Daisy, you might say we have the consumer’s idea of happiness.”
“Sure, Fred that’s my feeling about it!”
“That’s it. Jefferson wrote before our consumer society evolved.”
A deep green Ford Transit van from Phaedrus Conceptual Solutions Inc. pulls up to the dry cleaners next door. Their rearing palomino horse leaps forth from a circular yellow background of the logo on each door.
“Excuse me! Look at that van!”
Daisy reads the slogan printed under the logo.
“’Kick back! Let us do the thinking for you with Phaedrus AI’”
Maynard is laughing.
“Speaking of our consumer society!”
“Yes, Kick back and be relieved of your responsibility!”
“Can you imagine that, Fred?”
“Daisy, they are giving America another convenience.”
“Oh! That is a nice rendering of the horse even if it is a logo.”
“There you are Daisy, you could go into commercial art!”
“No thanks Fred, I am not into evoking mindless slogans.”
“Certainly not, that would be no help in understanding virtue.”
“Interesting; from a chariot, an engine of war, we get virtue.”
A woman in a deep green uniform step out of the van with her phone to her ear.
“Here’s the thing, Fred, he uses the charioteer and two horses to picture your soul.”
“Like a snapshot from two thousand years before the camera!”
“It is a mental picture, Fred.”
“Okay, an image, you might say!”
“The charioteer is reason, which directs the horses. One has a good equine nature and the other a bad nature.”
“I get it, our good and bad impulses!”
“Right, Daisy, so the idea is that reason should guide people towards wisdom and virtue.”
“Okay, what about intuition, you know, the heart?”
“He didn’t use that metaphor.”
“It all sounds kind of abstract, I mean in reality we all have emotional reactions.”
“We do, Daisy, those might be of the good horse or the bad.”
The woman from Phaedrus Conceptual Solutions comes out of the cleaners with a bundle of uniforms, draped in plastic, over her arm.
“So, it’s horses all the way along!”
“Galloping through life, Fred.”
“Not really, in some respects life is more like a rat race!”
We are interrupted by a thunderclap. A man in shirtsleeves is running to his car from the hardware store, further down.
“That guy is getting drenched!”
“You want to run for it, Daisy?”
“No thanks, Fred. Look, there’s clear sky coming. Mind your umbrella, Maynard. Don’t get struck by lightning.”
Maynard moves back against the window at Legal Drugs and folds his umbrella.
“I feel like we are getting off the point.”
“Which one, there are so many, Maynard?”
“The whole work leisure-thing, Fred.”
“What do you mean by ‘thing’?”
“Alienation! Fred.”
“Maynard, let’s start over. There is work people like or even love doing and there’s work people do because they need money and may hate the job.”
“They just need to find a better job.”
“True enough, Maynard, but easier said than done.”
“I didn’t mean it was easy!”
“Okay, okay, look, what I am trying to say is that most people need a break from their work.”
“Yeah, like time off. Free time to cultivate your garden or get a haircut or take care of a sick child.”
“That isn’t exactly free time, Daisy. The thing is what do you want that time for?”
“You mean free of obligations? Lots of us don’t know what to do with it.”
“So true, Fred and some of us can’t get enough of that kind of time.”
Maynard leans on his umbrella.
“I think this is a Marxian insight. Alienated labor divides you from yourself.”
“Yes, Maynard, you really don’t want to be working but you do anyway so that part of you that ‘wants’ is denied.”
Daisy’s scarf has tumbled from her shoulders. She wraps it around her neck. “When we are divided, we can’t get it together.”
The Phaedrus van starts its intrusive beeping, backing out into the parking lot.
“So it is, Daisy, and has been, since the industrial revolution.”
“Let that thing get going.”
The van is stuck behind an F-150 and a Tesla, both heading for the newly vacated space.
“As machines did more work, many of us had to work more like them, in tedious repetitive tasks.”
The Tesla moves on, opening the way for the van to leave and the truck to park.
Maynard’s ring tones sound into the silence of the departed engines.
“Well, now we have to keep up with instant digital communications!”
Maynard taps out a quick text and pockets his phone.
“I wish they would just shut that noise down for a while.”
“You mean all of it, the whole internet?”
“No, Fred, just social media.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“Do you ever read the comments on websites?”
“Yup, it is often a lot of Noise, I mean just obnoxious and of no value.”
“But Daisy, people are busy reacting and venting their compressed frustrations, etc.”
“That is what I call noise, Fred. It doesn’t tell me anything.”
“It tells you how they feel.”
“Yeah, like a swishing cat’s tail tells me it is feeling defensive.”
“It is not virtuous, that much is clear.”
Maynard looks up from tapping out another message. “When virtue guides the horses, we have self-mastery.”
“That is something artists need, to some extent at least.”
“Really Daisy? So many artists seem to have been a bit deranged.”
“Yeah, I know, Van Gogh, for instance, but when he was painting, he had his chariot on track and his horses balanced virtuously.”
Maynard points to the sky with his big, folded umbrella.
“Look! The sky is clearing.”
The rain slacks off and sunlight brightens puddles among cracks in the asphalt.
“I need to make a move. See you soon!”
Maynard walks over to his huge pink Buick and Daisy and I cross Maxwell Avenue to Fauxmont and our homes.
