Auditorium

Deep in its bowel, where the ink floods roil, something dawned on the Tower of Art. It was Willis Winter, the pornographer, ink-spattered and prone on the black shore, and the dawning of his arrival on the Tower was wintry too: reluctant and gloomy and later than was preferable.

The Tower of Art contains all that is art, and nothing that is not art. Willis Winter was in the tower, and that meant his work, his product, had to be art, and he an artist. Nothing else could possibly make sense. Then again, it is not always, not even that often, necessary for art to make sense. The Tower of Art is a case in point: it is art – it is art – and almost never does.

The flood tide ebbed, slinking off to ink rooms, staircases, hallways and vaults. These spaces, spaces accommodating to one like Willis Winter and his work, had always been there in the Tower of Art, just never depicted before. It is true that in art, not everything present must be depicted, or seen, or dwelled upon at any length.

His coat of ink withdrawn, Winter awoke and considered his situation. His viewfinder eye, surely seeking suitable subjects, angles, close-ups, framed only the flaking ruin of the auditorium.

The residue of the ink floods became the uncanny Winter. His was a likeness better captured with leaking ballpoint on napkin than with oil on canvas or chisel on stone. The lines of him ran and where he was most densely shaded, he bulged. His face was a cave, the brow shadowing the eyes, the chin retreating to safer depths. Only the dandelion burst of his hair caught the light, so that from every angle, Willis Winter had the appearance of being lit from the back.

Ascending the auditorium tiers, wary of the returning tide, he found each seat carved with a name: the names of his customers, his viewers, all those touched by his work. His art. Willis Winter the pornographer was in the Tower of Art, had found his way inside its walls, deep inside its bowel, or a way had found him; and these names were his and were here, recorded, so art his activity surely was.

But look: other travellers through the tower had found the auditorium immovable, monumental in fact, an enduring edifice, even if not so sprawling and many-tiered as Winter’s. But this auditorium was barely a sketch, a flick of the ink floods. Winter spidered delicately up the stairs, careful not to let even his gaze rest too heavily on any carven name, feeling the structure under him as brittle as charcoal.

Still, under his graven brow, a heavy expression settled. He knew these names, but in charcoal and ink they meant little and mattered less. This was not the medium that had drawn them to him. Perhaps elsewhere in the tower there was another accounting rendered in currency and current, pixels and payment details, gasping breaths, chemicals, fluids, darkness, solitude.

Perhaps, the sooner Willis Winter found himself on familiar ground, the sooner he would find his travels through the tower at an end.

There was an aisle, a passageway between seats. Below, the returning ink flood boiled. Flickering light beckoned Winter into the aisle. Unbeheld behind him, his auditorium was blotted out in a wash of ink. Some drafts are not worth preserving.

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