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CONTENTS
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Introduction
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Essays Jeffrey Dennis The Masterwork of the Cheese Orpheus Georgia Hayes Painting or drawing for me? No difference
between them
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INTRODUCTION
AD has been commissioning and publishing artists’ writings since 2004, producing books, audio and video works, performances and readings, as well as producing new artworks for our website. Flash 500 offers a series of commissions of up to thirty new texts from contemporary UK-based artists. The writings will initially be distributed online as well as through publications, mail-outs, pamphlets, posters and so forth.
The brief was simple. Artists would devise a piece of writing of 500 words in length. This can be a story (the flash fiction form of the short story being known as the short short and is often first attributed to a piece of writing by Ernest Hemingway), a poem, a dialogue, an account or an essay. It is up to you. The parameters for the writing are that it should be exactly 500 words (hyphenations count as one word) and also that we are looking for writing with a complete structure rather than vignettes.
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JEFFREY DENNIS
The Masterwork of the Cheese Orpheus Buses pass, outside on the street: a great stir of lights going back and forth. ‘Right under here,’ said Marlow suddenly, pointing at the floor, ‘that was the place.’ After a slow pull on his drink he continued. ‘The Tube’s got forgotten corners. You’re
younger; perhaps don’t remember the miniature public bar, right on the platform, serving pints, only four feet from the trains hurtling by. And once, following signs promising a quicker route — I forget where — I found myself on a link-line with strange, rounded trains, small port holes for windows, like a spaceship from a fifties comic. I never found it again. ‘When they were building the line extension, that’s when I came across the Cheese Orpheus. Never really met him; just once: a hunched figure at the top of some stairs — greasy coat, whiskery face, pointy, sagacious features, tugging a big suitcase, lashed with string. I offered to carry it down. When I hauled on the gaffer-taped handle, it was entwined with safety-pins; dug into my hand. ‘Heard about him? He’s that artist; the ‘Auto-Entropy’ one — stupid name! Entropy’s always ‘auto’, isn’t it? He was actually moving into the station. This is what happens: in this arched recess, across the tracks from the platform — inaccessible, but facing the waiting passengers — he stacks enough cheese (Stilton, I think, creamy-white, blue-veined) to fill the space. Every night, after the last train, he works 4
— carving, modelling the cheese — creating a fantasy of turrets, staircases, bridges, buttresses. ‘Daytime, he lies low; but the emerging edifice is left on view, lit by a miners’ lamp. Where the cheese is worked into thin membranes, it has a waxy, translucent quality in the gloom. ‘This spectacle naturally attracts curiosity, speculation amongst the travelling public. For some, it has attributes of a wayside shrine: they make special journeys to view progress; leave tokens of luck or missives for good fortune and safe journeys. ‘Soon the cheese started to ‘assert itself’: first, the warm, pungent aroma of the delicatessen, but later, a sour thickness that stings the nostrils and catches in the throats of commuters. At the busiest times of day, when newcomers are assailed by the acrid twang, their collective exclamation — ‘oooowwww… OOOOOOOWWWWWW...’ — rises in waves, almost choral, resonating through the surrounding tunnels. ‘It doesn’t last. The upper surfaces of the fantastic cheese architecture acquire fringes of grey soot; patches of spectacularly-coloured mould blossom; lower edges are eaten away by incorrigible mice. It starts to look more like the lime-scaled caverns of Cheddar Gorge; crumbling stalactites and stalagmites. ‘The desiccated cheese fades and shrinks within its recess: the smell evaporates; the lamp is no longer lit. Amongst the accidental Abstract Expressionism of peeling
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posters and building work, the once-glowing cheese Zanadu is now a blackened, shrivelled relic. Eventually, it is indistinguishable from its surroundings. ‘Official pronouncements? None. Commuters occasionally remark, when they arrive home, on its demise. Met with the incredulity of those who never witnessed it (I read your face, sir), they become ...doubtful.’
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GEORGIA HAYES
Painting or drawing for me? No difference between them In the studio: A rubbish heap. Old clothes, old favourites, ready for wiping. Newspapers – the G2 supplement, half-read, staples removed, torn down the join. Yoghurt pots, pint or half size, empty bean tins. All of this for all of that? The table crusted with – the floor crusted with – stained chairs and gouted easel. Familiar, grubby, shed full of old husks and starts and endings. The door is shut, the heat not on, empty boards and days of blank. In the mind. Sometimes dreaming or a flicker of image. Waiting, without knowing or planning. A lurking suspicion of the dream. So, set to with a rush of daring, the first colours and marks gathering to sit or separate. Keep the doors open to allow the blind, unthinking hand to join the dance. Smears and gobs and drips and runs and washes, swathes of paint. The brushes, stubbly, sparse and balding or fat, pristine, clean, waiting to be loaded, dipped, dragged or flung. A drawn line, hard pressed, light, hesitant. A heavy black mark, soft, fat, thin, sure, smudged or tight. The paint, yellow, deep, Indian, lemon, pale, primrose, chrome, (remembering Aldous Huxley, the orange cover of the penguin).
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Red for danger, flags and blood, roses and rose with white mixed for pinks, magenta, crimson, madder. Flesh tints. Mars red and violet, Indian and light red, rust. Viridian green, emerald, Titian’s elusive blue, cerulean and cobalt, ultramarine. Black, ivory and lamp, titanium, lead, Naples. Days of doubt and judgement, one thing better
than another: believing, hoping this is something of significance or beauty. A momentary love of two colours singing off each other or a sweet, clear line describing perfectly, but that is not enough. Unease with what looks crabby, jarring, clichéd. Interest in what looks jarring, awkward, odd, unfinished. Anything goes, everything goes but not anything goes. Many, many things don’t go, wont do. One thing is better than another. Sort it out. Discard it. Tear it. Scrape it out. Marks show beneath the paint. Time recorded and caught in paint. Wait, change or let it stand. This is finished. This is good. This is finished. This is rubbish. Try to do something punchy or ridiculous, inducing laughter or surprise. It will not come to order. What can you do? Set out to catch the monkey. Turn your back and sneak up quietly. Go away, wait, come back or stay away? Standing in that solitary place, beat yourself for the imperfect and disgraceful smudge. But open your mouth and allow the song to sound with all it’s dissonance or croak. Or turn away to shame and silence. Forget to try or be 9
and join the squirrels in their endless search and burial. To breath and take a chance to leap and live, to spill out of the box in an unkempt heap is maybe better than to carefully put yourself beyond the sight and shout of those who look and criticise.
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Akerman Daly www.akermandaly.com info@akermandaly.com 3