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May. 23rd, 2009 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
little_lady_dapparently this will be my weekend to link random-interesting things from my journal -- like this text-game, where you're an art critic observing galatea after pygmalion abandoned her and she was picked up by a museum for 'animates'. you progress mainly by looking and thinking and talking, and in my first playthrough i ended up calling down dionysos, which i suppose is as good an ending as any. (but when i was asking her about her artist and she told me to stop acting as though her pain was a part of a game invented for my amusement -- *shivers*)
You come around a corner, away from the noise of the opening.
There is only one exhibit. She stands in the spotlight, with her back to you: a sweep of pale hair on paler skin, a column of emerald silk that ends in a pool at her feet. She might be the model in a perfume ad; the trophy wife at a formal gathering; one of the guests at this very opening, standing on an empty pedestal in some ironic act of artistic deconstruction --
You hesitate, about to turn away. Her hand balls into a fist.
"They told me you were coming."
>look at her
She is facing away from you. You cannot see her face, only her hair, and the line of her shoulder. It's hard to know what she's looking at -- the velvet backdrop, if she has her eyes open, but there's not much to see in that. Mostly, it is obvious, she is not looking at you.
Her green dress widens out at the knee, falling over the pedestal on which she stands in a way that would probably be very awkward, if she wanted to move.
>look at her shoulder
Left bare by the gown, wrongly perfect.
"You might try speaking to me," she prompts. "It's not polite merely to stare. And I've gotten very bored, standing here."
(An attempt to engage the audience -- the proactive element... you frame the words for your review, but you find that you can't get as far as a complete first sentence. There's something more here; anxious, chilly, visceral. Better pay attention.)
>hello
"Hello," you say -- and stop. What would you say next? 'I'm a famous critic, be on your best behavior'? There's no etiquette established; and then it strikes you as strange that you should bother to be concerned.
Fortunately, the little awkwardness is lost on her. "Good of you not to walk away again," she replies.
>tell her about me
Where would you begin? And what context would she have for anything you could say? She has had no childhood, no history, no network of passions and friends.The persistent inclination to tell her such things takes you by surprise. Animates are notoriously poor at processing uncontextualized personal information. And you know better than to waste your time.
But this piece of logic doesn't banish the desire to confide in her.
>tell her about my job
"Actually, I'm a critic; I'm writing a review of the exhibition." (And why, exactly, did you need to get that out in the open?)
You become aware of her breathing -- the slight expansion of her ribs, the soft exhalation -- natural, and yet somehow studied. "I see. I suppose in that case I ought to stand in my pose, so that you can tell what the artist intended. Moving around ruins the lines. Or so I'm told."
"That's quite all right," you reply. "I think I can see the intent."
>touch her
You put a hand on her shoulder: the skin is smooth and warm, though it lacks the velvety finish of a vintage Hazar.
>think about hazar
Ah, Hazar. The first animate you ever saw was his Scherezade. Groundbreaking.
>think about animates
Seems these days that you don't think of anything else. Sometimes when you're in the middle of a conversation with a real person, you find yourself mentally critiquing their dialogue design, or wishing that someone had taken a little more care with skin tone.
A little twisted maybe; but the study of animate design has actually led to a new understanding of how conversational pragmatics work: you only realize how many rules govern an interaction when you see them violated.
>think about her
You don't really have a full sense of her as a work yet -- either in the sense of assessing technical particulars (body mechanics, range of topics, vocabulary recognition, mood simulation and authenticity; setting, lighting, props and sound effects...) or the artist's overall intent for the piece (what mood he meant to evoke, what issues he intended to raise.) There's a certain assurance in her bearing that convinces you that he must have meant SOMETHING. But there's also an unusual openendedness to the piece, like there are lot of ways you can take this but you don't even know what they all are..
>ask about her
"Read the placard," she says. "That's what it's there for, after all."
>look at the placard
Large cream letters on a black ground.
47. Galatea
White Thasos marble. Non-commissioned work by the late Pygmalion of Cyprus. (The artist has since committed suicide.)
Originally not an animate. The waking of this piece from its natural state remains unexplained.
>ask about the artist
Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "I don't know where he is," she says. "Or who, or what, for that matter. He sold me immediately after my waking. While he was carving me, there was no strangeness, but afterward..."
>ask about afterward
"Strangeness? What sort of strangeness?"
"He avoided me. He was uncomfortable; he wouldn't meet my eye. He wouldn't speak to me. I asked him questions -- I had just discovered how to speak, but for hours I thought I was getting it wrong, since he gave no sign... Finally I made him talk to me, and he told me that he didn't want me to be alive. He hadn't made me to be alive. He asked me, in fact, if I would go back to being a statue."
She moves her arm -- just a slight movement, it comes into an unexpectedly graceful position. Art, not nature. If you'd been about to forget that she began as a statue. "I said no. I didn't think it would help. And he sent me away. He didn't want me to be near him, if I couldn't be the way he had made me."
>ask about placard
"So," you ask cautiously. "Is this placard all true?"
"I haven't read it," she says. "The gallery owners didn't put it up until I was already up here. And you may have noticed that I can't exactly see it from this position."
There's a thoughtful pause. "I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be true, though," she remarks.
>touch placard
The lettering is very slightly raised, the edges crisp under your fingers. Along the bottom is a Braille transliteration, though you lack the skill to read it.
>ask about death
A pause. "Mine? Or yours?"
Before you can answer, she lifts one shoulder in a delicate shrug. "It doesn't matter which you mean, since I know nothing about either. You will go your way when the time comes; and I-- Who can die who is not alive?"
>think about death
It's not exactly your favorite topic. (You brush aside -- Jenny -- and old wounds.)
>tell her about placard
"The artist," you say gently. "It says on the placard that he has committed suicide."
A pause. Time passes, but she doesn't move. You are tempted to reach out to her, but the memory of the last time you touched her still leaves you a little embarrassed. As though you'd made it obvious that you weren't thinking of her as an actual person... The intention would be just the opposite now, but the barrier is there. So you just stand there, looking uselessly at the back of her head and wishing that she'd turn around.
"I don't know," she says in a strained voice, "what I am supposed to do now. I only exist because of him, for his sake--"
You bite back a remark on the virtues of modern feminism.
>ask about him
"What is there to know?" she exclaims bitterly. "What's left to say? He left me here! What use am I without him? I make no sense to anyone but him..."
There is a pause. "Except, of course, that people like you will come stare and prod at me as though I were produce at a market. Oh, God, that I had never come awake at all. What use is there in this? And you, you just stand there watching me as though I were a spectacle made for your amusement and all my grief were only art and posture."
(Is it possible?)
>ask her about grief
"Are you going to be all right?"
"No," she says. A pause. "But thank you for asking."
>take her hand
She doesn't let you.
>sorry
She seems unconsoled.
>ask her about art
"What do you know about art?"
"In the abstract?" She moves her arm -- just a slight movement, it comes into an unexpectedly graceful position. Art, not nature. If you'd been about to forget that she began as a statue. "Not much. I've seen very few pieces: myself, and the murals at the airport -- and the latter, I am led to believe, do not quite count."
>wait
A pause.
"He used to talk about his Muses," she says, evidently following on her own train of thought. "I didn't know for the longest time what he was talking about. In fact, I still don't really understand. I never saw them; if they were in the studio with us, they never showed themselves."
>think about muses
You only know them as a symbolic entity representing creative inspiration.
>ask about muses
"What did he tell you about the Muses?" (An artist's idea of his own inspiration is usually fascinating though sadly incomplete.)
"He said that they were the only gods who had not deserted him entirely. He told me that they gave him the means to face the other forms of madness -- and though I sometimes wondered what that meant, I'm glad he felt so."
>think about muses
One phrase of hers rings in your head: "He told me they gave him the means to face the other forms of madness..." A dubious sort of blessing at best, but the man seems to have been not entirely at ease with his own creative process.
>ask about madness
"There are four sorts of madness that the gods send," she says. "The madness of drink -- that's from Dionysus. The madness of prophecy, which is of Apollo. The madness of love, which comes from Aphrodite. And the madness of creation, which is the inspiration of the Muses."
You take a deep breath. "Those whom the gods wish to destroy..." she adds softly.
>ask about prophecy
"I don't know much of prophecy," she says. "It was not a talent he possessed, though he liked to claim he knew what was coming. He had no idea whatever; he was constantly being surprised.
"But there were times when he ranged around muttering to himself about what was to come. Which was his cynicism talking, or despair."
>ask about apollo
"What did he tell you about Apollo?"
"That he is an archer, of course," she says, "and a prophet; the god of the sun, the representative of civilized song, the opposite of Dionysus."
The air conditioning hums, sending a ripple through the velvet curtain. "He also warned me not to trust Apollo. He said he'd tried, and found it ineffective. Civilization only goes so deep and under that is mere anarchy. As he put it." As an apparent afterthought, she adds, "Dionysus presided at Delphi three months of the year, you know. Apollo did not hold even his most sacred precinct absolutely."
>ask about anarchy
"So underneath the power of Apollo is this seething chaos that cannot be made orderly?"
"Something like that. The power of nature, desire, conflicting things that refuse to fit simple rules and go into boxes. But also freedom, energy, and rejuvenation, the province of Dionysus."
>ask about dionysus
"Tell me about Dionysus."
She turns -- not her whole body, just her head, so that you can see one ear behind the cascade of hair. "God of wine and drama," she replies smoothly. "And a dangerous eastern influence, as well. Elusive. Able to create illusions. A breaker of bonds, a bringer of freedom, a force for anarchy and the end of social order."
>ask about illusions
"Why would you want a god of illusion?" you ask, bringing the conversation back to an earlier point.
"Perhaps illusion is not quite the right word. Many of his tricks involve a shift in perception: what you see is a spiritual truth to which the overly literal are blind. But there's considerable danger involved. If you don't treat the vision with respect, the result is not understanding, but insanity."
>wait
The curtain moves in a slight breeze.
She shifts, so that she is now standing in profile to you, facing the blank wall.
"It's related to the idea of masks and drama," she remarks. Her voice is dry, almost gritty. "Disguised identity. Cross-dressing. All those things that let you behave outside the rules, redefine your identity for yourself, encourage people to treat you in ways they otherwise might not."
You find yourself staring at her curiously. What would she know about masks and disguises?
>look at her
Her body may be turned towards you, but she still won't look at you. Her gaze is fixed somewhere on the blank wall.
Her patrician nose, the slight compression of the mouth, the line of slender throat and chin, show sharp and cold against the velvet drapery.
>look at her nose
A proud, aristocratic nose, without softness; almost aquiline.
>look at her mouth
The expression of her mouth is hard to read; it seems to hold something back, from pride or from shyness.
>look at her throat
Her neck is so slender that it barely avoids being grotesque, very white, and without banding. When she moves her head, there is only the most impressionistic suggestion of the working of realistic musculature.
>look at her chin
It makes a clean, continuous line with her neck; she reminds you of a wetlands bird, preparing for flight.
>look at her eyes
They are shadowed, unreadable from this angle.
>galatea, turn
"Would you turn a bit?" you ask.
She turns again, almost fully towards you, though she can't seem to actually look at you: her face is still turned toward the side. "There." Gracious she is not.
>look at her eyes
Her eyelids conceal them.
>galatea, look at me
"Galatea. Look at me."
She turns to face you, in a rustle of resettling skirts. "Galatea. Look at me."
Her eyes flicker up and meet yours. There's a strange blend of emotions in that look -- something akin to cruelty foremost, and under that a hint of fellow-feeling.
"Are you sure you can stand the scrutiny?" she asks. "So used to looking, but perhaps not to being seen."
You open your mouth to retort, but it's true: the objective, deliberate way she looks you over has you squirming a bit, eager to move, to distract her, to turn the conversation to some new topic. This was not exactly what you had in mind.
>look at her face
A fine architecture of chin and cheekbone, brow and nose. If there is vulnerability, or the hint of a flaw, it lingers in her mouth and at the edges of her eyes.
Hard to know what to make of the expression. It's terrifyingly bland, no tension anywhere except for the slight curl of the mouth -- which might be a smile, or might be raw contempt.
>ask about her
"Tell me about yourself," you prompt.
"There's nothing to tell," she says. "I'm lost without him; everything that I am comes from his stories and his precepts."
>ask about stories
"What stories were these that had such a great impact on you?"
"There were his stories about the gods, of course," she says. Her voice doesn't sound like it's coming from a human throat at all. "Which were I believe intended to teach me about how people think and what forces control them. And then there were his personal memories -- things about his travels, for instance -- and a large selection of maxims, some of which I'm not sure he meant seriously."
>ask about travels
"Pygmalion travel much?"
"All over Europe and America, certainly, though I think he might have gotten other places than that. The way he described it, he was looking for something. He liked to go to museums -- which isn't really surprising, I suppose -- but that wasn't what he was trying to find. And he liked talking to strangers, but I don't think that was what he was looking for either. Maybe a sensation, a kind of numen -- certainly there were some memories that he kept coming back to, that he cared about, that stood out in his mind."
>ask about numen
"What's numen?" you ask.
She pauses, thoughtful. "I don't know how to answer that," she says eventually. "I always knew what words meant, when my artist spoke them to me, and I know this one too -- but it doesn't have an easy connection to other concepts that he gave me.
"I suppose the fairest explanation is that it's the quality of divinity: power, wonder, majesty, mysterious significance... None of those words quite gets it, but that's as close as I can come to a definition."
>think about numen
The power and presence of a god -- according to her definition, at any rate. Though from the way she talked about it earlier, it sounded as though it referred to the mortal experience of those things, rather than the things themselves.
>ask about memories
"You said there were memories that he cared about particularly -- what sorts of things?"
"There were moments where I think he felt he could see through to another existence entirely."
(That de Chirico quote, about there being another, metaphysical existence behind ordinary objects: do all artists feel that way?)
"For all that he was lonely, I don't think that other people usually mattered to him terribly much. What he was trying to work out was between himself and the universe -- or universal forces, or the gods, or something -- and everything else was just..." She shrugs.
>ask about gods
"Do you believe in God? or gods?" you ask. "Or universal forces?"
He told me that there are gods, like the ones who lived on Thasos where I was quarried, or on the citadels of the old cities, or in the sea. He told me stories about them: their exploits, and how they went to war, and how they fell in love."
You take a deep breath. "There were nights when he would pour out the first of the wine to one of them: to the Muses, to Aphrodite the Cyprian, to Apollo. He said prayers, and he made me be silent; to say the wrong thing to the gods, he said, is at least as bad as not to speak to them at all."
>ask about prayer
"Oh?"
"I don't know that I can exactly offer a full explanation of his beliefs," she says. Her voice doesn't sound like it's coming from a human throat at all. "But to put it simply, he told me once that all the gods require our observance, since to ignore them is to bring down anger; but that some gods are special to some men. Also, that if you want something specific, you must ask the right one."
>ask about freedom
"What sort of freedom is it that Dionysus brings? I assume he didn't go around freeing slaves."
"The end of cares," she says. "No pain, no grief, no constraint. No stiffness or inhibition."
"What you're feeling now; could he cure you of that?"
The curtain moves in a slight breeze. "Yes, I believe so. At least for a time."
>ask about inhibition
"No inhibitions or constraints? But that sounds a bit dangerous to me."
She laughs. "Dangerous? All the gods are dangerous! But the idea is to get outside the boundaries of yourself, not to be trapped by your fears and your habits."
"So in order to gain freedom, you first surrender your will," you say. "That doesn't sound like an entirely wise exchange. What is freedom if you have no control over where it leads you?"
"There is a price to everything," she replies enigmatically.
>think about prayers
What you know about the subject is limited to a few desperate addresses to an empty sky.
>look at her
Her eyes shine a smoky green -- a color almost alien, until she meets your look, and smiles
>look at her eyes
They're a deep grey-green, and the pupils are unnaturally large and dark, despite the downglare of the spotlight.
>think about her
You'd have a hard time thinking about anything else. She's prickly, but also embarrassingly open; highly changeable; not exactly easy to read. And she also makes you edgy in some strange ways.
>take her hand
Her fingers interleave themselves with yours. You look at your joined hands: your skin looks darker than usual, in the contrast. And it is the reminder of the disparity in your experiences that makes you draw away again.
>sorry
She just shakes her head. "I don't know what you're apologizing for."
>galatea, pray to dionysus
Her eyes meet yours briefly. "Io, Bacchus!" she shouts, so loudly that the sound echoes off the walls.
What happens next comes all at once. There is a tremor in the floor like the beating of drums. The air conditioner rattles, the vent disgorges dozens of emerald snakes. The curtain becomes a tangle of vines.
A man steps through them, a young man, with curling blond hair and a smooth face, carrying a strange rod with a pine cone at the end. When he sees you, he smiles -- a sweet menacing smile that makes you take a step back.
His attention turns to her. He taps her with the end of the wand, and the stiffness and the posed quality leave her. She follows him. Called to, she does not turn around. The vines part. She is gone.
"What have you done to her?" you demand.
"Set her free. I could do the same for you. But I forget: you value your-- self-control." He salutes you, a mocking gesture, and follows Galatea through into the darkness.
You stare, disoriented, at the moon, vivid through the ceiling. Then it fades, and there is only the spotlight, and the white walls, and the empty pedestal.
*** The End ***
You come around a corner, away from the noise of the opening.
There is only one exhibit. She stands in the spotlight, with her back to you: a sweep of pale hair on paler skin, a column of emerald silk that ends in a pool at her feet. She might be the model in a perfume ad; the trophy wife at a formal gathering; one of the guests at this very opening, standing on an empty pedestal in some ironic act of artistic deconstruction --
You hesitate, about to turn away. Her hand balls into a fist.
"They told me you were coming."
>look at her
She is facing away from you. You cannot see her face, only her hair, and the line of her shoulder. It's hard to know what she's looking at -- the velvet backdrop, if she has her eyes open, but there's not much to see in that. Mostly, it is obvious, she is not looking at you.
Her green dress widens out at the knee, falling over the pedestal on which she stands in a way that would probably be very awkward, if she wanted to move.
>look at her shoulder
Left bare by the gown, wrongly perfect.
"You might try speaking to me," she prompts. "It's not polite merely to stare. And I've gotten very bored, standing here."
(An attempt to engage the audience -- the proactive element... you frame the words for your review, but you find that you can't get as far as a complete first sentence. There's something more here; anxious, chilly, visceral. Better pay attention.)
>hello
"Hello," you say -- and stop. What would you say next? 'I'm a famous critic, be on your best behavior'? There's no etiquette established; and then it strikes you as strange that you should bother to be concerned.
Fortunately, the little awkwardness is lost on her. "Good of you not to walk away again," she replies.
>tell her about me
Where would you begin? And what context would she have for anything you could say? She has had no childhood, no history, no network of passions and friends.The persistent inclination to tell her such things takes you by surprise. Animates are notoriously poor at processing uncontextualized personal information. And you know better than to waste your time.
But this piece of logic doesn't banish the desire to confide in her.
>tell her about my job
"Actually, I'm a critic; I'm writing a review of the exhibition." (And why, exactly, did you need to get that out in the open?)
You become aware of her breathing -- the slight expansion of her ribs, the soft exhalation -- natural, and yet somehow studied. "I see. I suppose in that case I ought to stand in my pose, so that you can tell what the artist intended. Moving around ruins the lines. Or so I'm told."
"That's quite all right," you reply. "I think I can see the intent."
>touch her
You put a hand on her shoulder: the skin is smooth and warm, though it lacks the velvety finish of a vintage Hazar.
>think about hazar
Ah, Hazar. The first animate you ever saw was his Scherezade. Groundbreaking.
>think about animates
Seems these days that you don't think of anything else. Sometimes when you're in the middle of a conversation with a real person, you find yourself mentally critiquing their dialogue design, or wishing that someone had taken a little more care with skin tone.
A little twisted maybe; but the study of animate design has actually led to a new understanding of how conversational pragmatics work: you only realize how many rules govern an interaction when you see them violated.
>think about her
You don't really have a full sense of her as a work yet -- either in the sense of assessing technical particulars (body mechanics, range of topics, vocabulary recognition, mood simulation and authenticity; setting, lighting, props and sound effects...) or the artist's overall intent for the piece (what mood he meant to evoke, what issues he intended to raise.) There's a certain assurance in her bearing that convinces you that he must have meant SOMETHING. But there's also an unusual openendedness to the piece, like there are lot of ways you can take this but you don't even know what they all are..
>ask about her
"Read the placard," she says. "That's what it's there for, after all."
>look at the placard
Large cream letters on a black ground.
47. Galatea
White Thasos marble. Non-commissioned work by the late Pygmalion of Cyprus. (The artist has since committed suicide.)
Originally not an animate. The waking of this piece from its natural state remains unexplained.
>ask about the artist
Her head moves -- as though she were going to turn and look at you properly -- but then she thinks better of it. "I don't know where he is," she says. "Or who, or what, for that matter. He sold me immediately after my waking. While he was carving me, there was no strangeness, but afterward..."
>ask about afterward
"Strangeness? What sort of strangeness?"
"He avoided me. He was uncomfortable; he wouldn't meet my eye. He wouldn't speak to me. I asked him questions -- I had just discovered how to speak, but for hours I thought I was getting it wrong, since he gave no sign... Finally I made him talk to me, and he told me that he didn't want me to be alive. He hadn't made me to be alive. He asked me, in fact, if I would go back to being a statue."
She moves her arm -- just a slight movement, it comes into an unexpectedly graceful position. Art, not nature. If you'd been about to forget that she began as a statue. "I said no. I didn't think it would help. And he sent me away. He didn't want me to be near him, if I couldn't be the way he had made me."
>ask about placard
"So," you ask cautiously. "Is this placard all true?"
"I haven't read it," she says. "The gallery owners didn't put it up until I was already up here. And you may have noticed that I can't exactly see it from this position."
There's a thoughtful pause. "I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be true, though," she remarks.
>touch placard
The lettering is very slightly raised, the edges crisp under your fingers. Along the bottom is a Braille transliteration, though you lack the skill to read it.
>ask about death
A pause. "Mine? Or yours?"
Before you can answer, she lifts one shoulder in a delicate shrug. "It doesn't matter which you mean, since I know nothing about either. You will go your way when the time comes; and I-- Who can die who is not alive?"
>think about death
It's not exactly your favorite topic. (You brush aside -- Jenny -- and old wounds.)
>tell her about placard
"The artist," you say gently. "It says on the placard that he has committed suicide."
A pause. Time passes, but she doesn't move. You are tempted to reach out to her, but the memory of the last time you touched her still leaves you a little embarrassed. As though you'd made it obvious that you weren't thinking of her as an actual person... The intention would be just the opposite now, but the barrier is there. So you just stand there, looking uselessly at the back of her head and wishing that she'd turn around.
"I don't know," she says in a strained voice, "what I am supposed to do now. I only exist because of him, for his sake--"
You bite back a remark on the virtues of modern feminism.
>ask about him
"What is there to know?" she exclaims bitterly. "What's left to say? He left me here! What use am I without him? I make no sense to anyone but him..."
There is a pause. "Except, of course, that people like you will come stare and prod at me as though I were produce at a market. Oh, God, that I had never come awake at all. What use is there in this? And you, you just stand there watching me as though I were a spectacle made for your amusement and all my grief were only art and posture."
(Is it possible?)
>ask her about grief
"Are you going to be all right?"
"No," she says. A pause. "But thank you for asking."
>take her hand
She doesn't let you.
>sorry
She seems unconsoled.
>ask her about art
"What do you know about art?"
"In the abstract?" She moves her arm -- just a slight movement, it comes into an unexpectedly graceful position. Art, not nature. If you'd been about to forget that she began as a statue. "Not much. I've seen very few pieces: myself, and the murals at the airport -- and the latter, I am led to believe, do not quite count."
>wait
A pause.
"He used to talk about his Muses," she says, evidently following on her own train of thought. "I didn't know for the longest time what he was talking about. In fact, I still don't really understand. I never saw them; if they were in the studio with us, they never showed themselves."
>think about muses
You only know them as a symbolic entity representing creative inspiration.
>ask about muses
"What did he tell you about the Muses?" (An artist's idea of his own inspiration is usually fascinating though sadly incomplete.)
"He said that they were the only gods who had not deserted him entirely. He told me that they gave him the means to face the other forms of madness -- and though I sometimes wondered what that meant, I'm glad he felt so."
>think about muses
One phrase of hers rings in your head: "He told me they gave him the means to face the other forms of madness..." A dubious sort of blessing at best, but the man seems to have been not entirely at ease with his own creative process.
>ask about madness
"There are four sorts of madness that the gods send," she says. "The madness of drink -- that's from Dionysus. The madness of prophecy, which is of Apollo. The madness of love, which comes from Aphrodite. And the madness of creation, which is the inspiration of the Muses."
You take a deep breath. "Those whom the gods wish to destroy..." she adds softly.
>ask about prophecy
"I don't know much of prophecy," she says. "It was not a talent he possessed, though he liked to claim he knew what was coming. He had no idea whatever; he was constantly being surprised.
"But there were times when he ranged around muttering to himself about what was to come. Which was his cynicism talking, or despair."
>ask about apollo
"What did he tell you about Apollo?"
"That he is an archer, of course," she says, "and a prophet; the god of the sun, the representative of civilized song, the opposite of Dionysus."
The air conditioning hums, sending a ripple through the velvet curtain. "He also warned me not to trust Apollo. He said he'd tried, and found it ineffective. Civilization only goes so deep and under that is mere anarchy. As he put it." As an apparent afterthought, she adds, "Dionysus presided at Delphi three months of the year, you know. Apollo did not hold even his most sacred precinct absolutely."
>ask about anarchy
"So underneath the power of Apollo is this seething chaos that cannot be made orderly?"
"Something like that. The power of nature, desire, conflicting things that refuse to fit simple rules and go into boxes. But also freedom, energy, and rejuvenation, the province of Dionysus."
>ask about dionysus
"Tell me about Dionysus."
She turns -- not her whole body, just her head, so that you can see one ear behind the cascade of hair. "God of wine and drama," she replies smoothly. "And a dangerous eastern influence, as well. Elusive. Able to create illusions. A breaker of bonds, a bringer of freedom, a force for anarchy and the end of social order."
>ask about illusions
"Why would you want a god of illusion?" you ask, bringing the conversation back to an earlier point.
"Perhaps illusion is not quite the right word. Many of his tricks involve a shift in perception: what you see is a spiritual truth to which the overly literal are blind. But there's considerable danger involved. If you don't treat the vision with respect, the result is not understanding, but insanity."
>wait
The curtain moves in a slight breeze.
She shifts, so that she is now standing in profile to you, facing the blank wall.
"It's related to the idea of masks and drama," she remarks. Her voice is dry, almost gritty. "Disguised identity. Cross-dressing. All those things that let you behave outside the rules, redefine your identity for yourself, encourage people to treat you in ways they otherwise might not."
You find yourself staring at her curiously. What would she know about masks and disguises?
>look at her
Her body may be turned towards you, but she still won't look at you. Her gaze is fixed somewhere on the blank wall.
Her patrician nose, the slight compression of the mouth, the line of slender throat and chin, show sharp and cold against the velvet drapery.
>look at her nose
A proud, aristocratic nose, without softness; almost aquiline.
>look at her mouth
The expression of her mouth is hard to read; it seems to hold something back, from pride or from shyness.
>look at her throat
Her neck is so slender that it barely avoids being grotesque, very white, and without banding. When she moves her head, there is only the most impressionistic suggestion of the working of realistic musculature.
>look at her chin
It makes a clean, continuous line with her neck; she reminds you of a wetlands bird, preparing for flight.
>look at her eyes
They are shadowed, unreadable from this angle.
>galatea, turn
"Would you turn a bit?" you ask.
She turns again, almost fully towards you, though she can't seem to actually look at you: her face is still turned toward the side. "There." Gracious she is not.
>look at her eyes
Her eyelids conceal them.
>galatea, look at me
"Galatea. Look at me."
She turns to face you, in a rustle of resettling skirts. "Galatea. Look at me."
Her eyes flicker up and meet yours. There's a strange blend of emotions in that look -- something akin to cruelty foremost, and under that a hint of fellow-feeling.
"Are you sure you can stand the scrutiny?" she asks. "So used to looking, but perhaps not to being seen."
You open your mouth to retort, but it's true: the objective, deliberate way she looks you over has you squirming a bit, eager to move, to distract her, to turn the conversation to some new topic. This was not exactly what you had in mind.
>look at her face
A fine architecture of chin and cheekbone, brow and nose. If there is vulnerability, or the hint of a flaw, it lingers in her mouth and at the edges of her eyes.
Hard to know what to make of the expression. It's terrifyingly bland, no tension anywhere except for the slight curl of the mouth -- which might be a smile, or might be raw contempt.
>ask about her
"Tell me about yourself," you prompt.
"There's nothing to tell," she says. "I'm lost without him; everything that I am comes from his stories and his precepts."
>ask about stories
"What stories were these that had such a great impact on you?"
"There were his stories about the gods, of course," she says. Her voice doesn't sound like it's coming from a human throat at all. "Which were I believe intended to teach me about how people think and what forces control them. And then there were his personal memories -- things about his travels, for instance -- and a large selection of maxims, some of which I'm not sure he meant seriously."
>ask about travels
"Pygmalion travel much?"
"All over Europe and America, certainly, though I think he might have gotten other places than that. The way he described it, he was looking for something. He liked to go to museums -- which isn't really surprising, I suppose -- but that wasn't what he was trying to find. And he liked talking to strangers, but I don't think that was what he was looking for either. Maybe a sensation, a kind of numen -- certainly there were some memories that he kept coming back to, that he cared about, that stood out in his mind."
>ask about numen
"What's numen?" you ask.
She pauses, thoughtful. "I don't know how to answer that," she says eventually. "I always knew what words meant, when my artist spoke them to me, and I know this one too -- but it doesn't have an easy connection to other concepts that he gave me.
"I suppose the fairest explanation is that it's the quality of divinity: power, wonder, majesty, mysterious significance... None of those words quite gets it, but that's as close as I can come to a definition."
>think about numen
The power and presence of a god -- according to her definition, at any rate. Though from the way she talked about it earlier, it sounded as though it referred to the mortal experience of those things, rather than the things themselves.
>ask about memories
"You said there were memories that he cared about particularly -- what sorts of things?"
"There were moments where I think he felt he could see through to another existence entirely."
(That de Chirico quote, about there being another, metaphysical existence behind ordinary objects: do all artists feel that way?)
"For all that he was lonely, I don't think that other people usually mattered to him terribly much. What he was trying to work out was between himself and the universe -- or universal forces, or the gods, or something -- and everything else was just..." She shrugs.
>ask about gods
"Do you believe in God? or gods?" you ask. "Or universal forces?"
He told me that there are gods, like the ones who lived on Thasos where I was quarried, or on the citadels of the old cities, or in the sea. He told me stories about them: their exploits, and how they went to war, and how they fell in love."
You take a deep breath. "There were nights when he would pour out the first of the wine to one of them: to the Muses, to Aphrodite the Cyprian, to Apollo. He said prayers, and he made me be silent; to say the wrong thing to the gods, he said, is at least as bad as not to speak to them at all."
>ask about prayer
"Oh?"
"I don't know that I can exactly offer a full explanation of his beliefs," she says. Her voice doesn't sound like it's coming from a human throat at all. "But to put it simply, he told me once that all the gods require our observance, since to ignore them is to bring down anger; but that some gods are special to some men. Also, that if you want something specific, you must ask the right one."
>ask about freedom
"What sort of freedom is it that Dionysus brings? I assume he didn't go around freeing slaves."
"The end of cares," she says. "No pain, no grief, no constraint. No stiffness or inhibition."
"What you're feeling now; could he cure you of that?"
The curtain moves in a slight breeze. "Yes, I believe so. At least for a time."
>ask about inhibition
"No inhibitions or constraints? But that sounds a bit dangerous to me."
She laughs. "Dangerous? All the gods are dangerous! But the idea is to get outside the boundaries of yourself, not to be trapped by your fears and your habits."
"So in order to gain freedom, you first surrender your will," you say. "That doesn't sound like an entirely wise exchange. What is freedom if you have no control over where it leads you?"
"There is a price to everything," she replies enigmatically.
>think about prayers
What you know about the subject is limited to a few desperate addresses to an empty sky.
>look at her
Her eyes shine a smoky green -- a color almost alien, until she meets your look, and smiles
>look at her eyes
They're a deep grey-green, and the pupils are unnaturally large and dark, despite the downglare of the spotlight.
>think about her
You'd have a hard time thinking about anything else. She's prickly, but also embarrassingly open; highly changeable; not exactly easy to read. And she also makes you edgy in some strange ways.
>take her hand
Her fingers interleave themselves with yours. You look at your joined hands: your skin looks darker than usual, in the contrast. And it is the reminder of the disparity in your experiences that makes you draw away again.
>sorry
She just shakes her head. "I don't know what you're apologizing for."
>galatea, pray to dionysus
Her eyes meet yours briefly. "Io, Bacchus!" she shouts, so loudly that the sound echoes off the walls.
What happens next comes all at once. There is a tremor in the floor like the beating of drums. The air conditioner rattles, the vent disgorges dozens of emerald snakes. The curtain becomes a tangle of vines.
A man steps through them, a young man, with curling blond hair and a smooth face, carrying a strange rod with a pine cone at the end. When he sees you, he smiles -- a sweet menacing smile that makes you take a step back.
His attention turns to her. He taps her with the end of the wand, and the stiffness and the posed quality leave her. She follows him. Called to, she does not turn around. The vines part. She is gone.
"What have you done to her?" you demand.
"Set her free. I could do the same for you. But I forget: you value your-- self-control." He salutes you, a mocking gesture, and follows Galatea through into the darkness.
You stare, disoriented, at the moon, vivid through the ceiling. Then it fades, and there is only the spotlight, and the white walls, and the empty pedestal.
*** The End ***
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 12:53 am (UTC)>pray to dionysus
The end of inhibition, the end of constraint...
The prayer speaks itself through your mouth. As soon as you have willed the act, the need for thought leaves you. In fact it's not exactly clear to you what you're saying. The syllables are of an old language, with deep vowels and strong consonants: a summons, and a song.
And in the darkness, drums and flutes
on the ground honey and a sweet flow of wine
and all around dancers, hands and eyes
*another shiver*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 12:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 05:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 01:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-24 11:04 pm (UTC)