A Frank Farce, Or A Day In The Life -- Part Two

SEE Link to Part One: https://www.abctales.com/story/chris-whitley/frank-farce-or-day-life-par...

Within a hour we find our hero standing before his white space with a glass of wine in one hand and a large cone of a spliff billowing clouds of blue-brown smoke in the other. In the sitting area sat Cass, a tall gaunt man in his late thirties with deep set eyes, hawk like features. Sitting opposite, was a broad, forty-something-faced, General Custer look-alike, with long, straggly, blond hair pulled back behind his ears, and a small moustache and goatee beard. The symmetry of his face was interestingly broken by a black eye-patch over his right eye. He was dressed in black ex-military garb, and was making another large spliff on the coffee table.

'Nice place you've got here frank; how do you pay for it?' He asked.

'Lucky gits' got a stipendiary!' Cass charmed in.

'Only for this year, then I'll have to go back to teaching,' said Frank over his shoulder. Frank turned and went over to them and gave the joint to Cass

'We haven't seen you for months, Fox, where have you been hiding?' asked Frank looking into the one eye.

'Hiding is true! in Portugal and Morocco, from my wife and the tax man, who seem both to get pleasure from taking me apart: as the maggot that weakens the flesh from the bone, so to speak. So now, to mix my metaphors it's back to the fucking chocolate factory to make some bread.' he laughed like a cavalier.

'And the book?' asked Frank.

'The book? Oh please.... rewrite! rewrite! rewrite!' His one eye raised to the heavens. And you, Frank, Cass was telling me, you've got a creative woody on!'

'I think the the woody is for Opal,' Cass laughed.

They all laughed.

'Do you know Opal, Fox? Were you here when she came?' asked Frank.

'Do I know her? Yes sure! She made quite a splash down the Scene, didn't she; turned a few heads, hey Frank. A free spirit if ever there were one! And a few hearts were broken I hear, when she left?

'The only woman I could talk Nietzsche with!' added Cass.

'Yes, she's a beautiful woman, and then the rest. It'll be good to have her back again.' put in Frank.

'Do you have a copy of her hot little book?' asked Fox. 'I lost my copy in Portugal.'

'Yeah, it's on the shelf in the hall,' said Frank

'So, are you really the painter in 'Indigo Blue' Frank? Everyone says you are, teased Fox.

'No, she told me she had that idea a long time before she met me....'

'Frank's too much of a gentleman to mention it, Fox, but too much of an artist to behave himself,' said Cass. They all laughed.

Frank moved to the bench and pulled out a roll of white paper from a large earthen vase standing on it, and began unrolling it. Cass got up and went over to the LP rack and began flicking through the collection.

The doorbell rang.

'It might be her!' said Cass

Frank went out the room, and down the long hall, and opened the door to find Mice and Sandra out of breath from climbing the four flights oft stairs carry the plastic carrier bags in both hands.

'Hi Frank, is she here yet?' panted Mice.

'No,' said Frank, looking surprised to see them.

'Shall we put the beers and the food in the Fridge?' said Sandra going past him.

'Food and beers?' asked Frank

'Well, you can never have enough at these get-togethers can you, and it saves running out for more if we need it,' called back Sandra.

'Get together...? I don't know when she'll get here... and I'm going to work....'

'Oh, you're working again, Frankie! That's good news; well we won't stop the artist! said Mice following Sandra into the kitchen. 'Nice music Frank!'

Cass had selected the Animals; 'Don't let me be misunderstood,' sang Eric Burden.

Frank still determined went to work at his bench, cutting the paper and marking out nine equal squares, while the others gathered around the coffee table.

'So what's the big idea, Frank?' asked Fox.

'Oh, it's not such a big idea.... at the moment. It's just a vague area I want to explore. Said Frank coyly.'

'So out with it, we're all ears!' demanded Cass.

'Well,' said Frank turning to his audience, 'you know I've always been interested in the method of painting... many people; the Surrealists and abstract expressionists tried to find ways to get the unconscious involved somehow, through dreams, trance-like states, and such like. They also tried ways to produce incidental marks by chance or serendipity... by dripping or splashing, so they could arrive at a more organic image, rather than something obviously contrived... but..

The doorbell rang!

'I'll get it,' said Sandra, already taking up the matriarchal role, she always seemed to revel in.

'That might be the guys.' said Mice.

'Which guys?' asked Frank, looking dismayed.

'I've invited a couple of the bunch.'

'Mice...! I didn't want to make it a big thing; I need to work.'

'Yeah, Frankie, you can still work, and we'll keep you company a bit, and knock the spliffs together, cooed Mice.

'Yeah, it'll be like old times Frankie.' said Cass, 'the way we used to work. I was telling Mice earlier about those days we shared a studio; it was always full of people coming and going.'

'So who did you invite Mice? Please not Jellyfish Pete?' said Frank hopefully.

'No! No, course not! I haven't seen Pete for ages. Someone said he's inside again.'

'Well that's good news! Who then?'

'Roast, Lady Joe and Dame Dancer.'

'No..! Please... Lady Joe and Dame Dancer! For fuck sake..why?'

'Well, they never get out Frankie...!'

'Ha fucking ha, Mice! Are you taking the fucking piss? Dead right they never get out; they just sit around all day shooting fucking smack, and reading Silvia fucking Plath. What is it with you, Mice; you got masochist tendencies or what?'

'Well, I telephoned Roast, and he was round at theirs, and he asked if they could come and...

'And why fucking Roast...? He's about as interesting as nappy changing!'

'Well, he's got the blow, Frankie....'

Frank's eyes rolled over, but he said nothing.

A moment later, Roast, a small squat man, almost bald, and Lady Joe, and Dame Dancer, two thin androgynous looking creatures slinked into the room.

'Carry on with the idea Frank,' said Fox.

Frank blew out his cheeks, then began to gather his thoughts.

'Where was I?'

'You were talking about letting chance happen.' Said Cass.

'Ho yeah! Well... without the planning, you could arrive at a more abstract image. This would make the artist more the director and observer of procedures, rather than creator...

`Yeah right! said Cass. 'And who was it said, something like: if you can disorientate the viewer he will see the raw, before his brain has time to make sense of it?

Yeah that is the aim, but of course, the problem is the artist, at every step, is still making and directing the course of the picture's development, right...?

'So your idea?' asked Fox.

'Well, my idea was to push it further...' Frank paused (for effect), and looked around his audience,

'Well, I got the idea to introduce more randomness... For example... by dividing a picture into nine equal squares. Then writing those numbers also on bits of paper, which, when shuffled and selected in the order they appear, could determine the direction of a line, or where any other elements, such as colours, might appear in the picture frame.'

'But you'll still be making choices...' Said Fox

'Sure, but I'll make a few simple rules: and we can never truly remove the human mind! Quantum physics says the the observer always effects the outcome of the experiment!: it's where mind and matter are joined, I suppose...' Frank smiled his Frank smile.

'But won't your work lose all that free expression if you just follow that randomness?' asked Cass, looking doubtful.

'Well, I think I can keep a lot of the abstract elements, but what I lose in expression, won't that be made up for in the concept?'

'You know you artists make me laugh,' said Sandra, 'you're so up in the fucking clouds! Why would you want to take yourself out of the picture? You all imagine you're above what's happening in the every day, don't you? While you lot search for what's new! Well, I tell you nothing is new... and making no decision is a fucking decision!

'We have to live with our responses, Frankie... Read the news; it's not news, is it....? It's the same old fucking thing: war! death! destruction!

'The world is in the hands of a few bastards who carry the mark of Cain in their actions, if not on their poxy fucking publicity photos. And as good old Henry Miller says: you have to be a bit of a fucking murdering bastard to be a politician! isn't that it? And this all goes on while you guys are a-busy-trying to get out of the picture, but you know, that's the thing, our fucking dilemma... we're all fucking slaves of our own shitty choices, isn't that true, Frankie?'

'I'm not taking the bate today, Sandra!' said Frank, matter of factly. 'I'm not going to get into one of your endless discussions on communism! As I keep saying! An artist is a man of action, Sandra! So, I'm going to fucking paint!' Frank got up and went back to his workbench.

The doorbell began ring regularly

Frank tried to concentrate on the job at hand.

Each new arrivals greeted then mingled with the others. People were milling around. Joints were criss crossing the room, finger food had appeared in bowls which Frank hadn't used in years.

Sandra closed in on him again! She passed him a joint.

'Does our life really belong to us, Frank?' she in a soft voice Frank knew all too well, 'When it can be so easily effected, distorted, and changed...? Don't we have to reclaim it every day from those who try to pry it away from us bit by bit, with their words, their threats, and the shuffling of bureaucratic paper?'

'Yeah Sandra,' Frank said dryly, 'hell is other people, hey!' He sucked deeply and long on the spliff, then moved off into the kitchen to escape her.

He pressed the flesh of a couple of people he hadn't greeted earlier, who were sat around the kitchen-table, then went back into his studio.

Sandra had gone back to the main group. Fox and Mice were hovering over lines of coke on the coffee table.

'Hey Frank, you want a line of this?' asked Fox.

The doorbell rang. Frank realized, that, as it got later, more and more people would go down to the Scene, and then be directed here.

'No, I'm fine.' He said.

A lot of the crew from the Scene were here now; all the bar-flies and butterflies, plus a few he didn't know so well. 'God,' he thought, 'That girl has some pulling-power! What had he done; where was his quiet day painting?'

He tried to concentrate on his work, laying out the nine squared sheets of paper on the floor, and writing the numbers one to nine to represent them on hand notes paper. Now and again, someone would pass him a joint, and he'd make a break to smoke it, or eat some of the finger food, drink some orange juice, or explain what he was doing to some newcomer.

His mind sometimes drifted, and was occupied by those images of Opal; those crazy erotic scenes, and hot sessions; they had been right here in this studio, on the chaise-lounge, on the floor! He thought of her mouth, her touch, her long silky entwining legs....

'You can't always get what you want,' sang the Stones.

Then, suddenly, absurdity seemed to zoom down on him! He stood frozen to the spot, feeling squeezed by the atmosphere. He felt waves of something washing over him, electric nerves sang through his body! He closed his eyes and there was a visual explosion of light! He opened them again and went over to the open window and began sucking in air; 'spiked!' he thought!

After he had regained a little equilibrium, he slowly made his way to his bedroom; a sanctum sanctorum.

And there he lay on his bed listening to the sounds of the party oscillating in his mind. He could feel, whatever he had been given, rising ever higher. Patterns like shattered mirrors sprang from the walls of the room into his eyes. 'Acid or mushrooms!' he thought. 'Yes, the juice!'

He connected his mind to the music; Bach; very loud – and went with it. He closed his eyes and let the sunlight coming in from the window enter under his eyelids. Immediately his thoughts coloured, and blew around his mind. The music swirled and swooped and took him up and away! Whenever he opened his eyes there was an explosion of colour too hot to look at with the naked eye. The sounds of so many voices and the music coming from outside chased around the room. So he closed his eyes and took the magic ride....

Link to part 3

https://www.abctales.com/story/chris-whitley/frank-farce-or-day-life-par...