Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 61. Mental Jimnastics

The painting of the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep: the words alone make you want to lean against a wall. This painting affects different people in different ways: Joe Fontana, who had never painted before, created it in an altered state, calling himself Volatore and smelling like Volatore. He later reverted to his normal state with no recollection of doing the painting nor of selling it to Lenore Goldfarb. When Hennessy and Angelica took him to the gallery and made him look at it he fainted.

Volatore Three dreamed about the tiny tinies and followed their metaphysical scent to the gallery. Looking at the painting seemed to have no physical effect on him while he was in the altered and smelly state. When he reverted to his normal state he threw the painting off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Lenore Goldfarb paid Joe Fontana fifty thousand dollars for the painting but then developed an aversion to it without going strange or smelly and wanted it out of the house.

Alexander Zhabotinsky had never seen the painting but spoke of ‘winey, winey trancing clients in the dim red taverns of sheep’ and took on the famous smell very briefly. As his normal state, however, is already altered from what most people would call normal it is not possible to assess the effect, if any, on him.

Hennessy, Angelica and Olivia all felt woozy looking at it but no more than that. I had to sit down quickly when I first looked directly at it.

So, reviewing these data, what do I think? I think the painting puts into an altered state only those who come more than halfway to meet it, those who want something from it, perhaps access to that dream of reality made real in it. Joe Fontana and Volatore Three went more than halfway to meet it and what happened? It took them in and then it spat them out. So the painting has opinions, it decides whom to accept and whom to reject. What is it looking for, what does it want?

What is the genius of the painting, its familiar spirit or whatever that made Joe Fontana, not an artist, visualise the tiny, tiny dancing giants in the dim red caverns of sleep? Whatever it is, it’s something that wants to, needs to? make itself known to some but not to others.

Lenore Goldfarb, Hennessy, Angelica and Olivia were not invited in; they didn’t need what it had to offer. They were already based on the reality necessary to them.

Well, we’ll see what happens when Dr Jim steps up to the plate.