trans_9 | (no subject)

Much of what we call art caters to an inner desire for comfort. Yet the most memorable artists created works which disturbed the psyche of the viewer. That is why the most important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone by questioning the society's values can force it to change.
-archives of the Missionaria Protectiva, unknown author*

Something had welled up in Sheeana in the past few weeks. It was an accumulation brought about by too much time spent around people whose secrets etched lines on sleepless faces. The mood had grown tense and the ship was starting to feel closed in. She knew she would have to express what she felt on this sooner or later. It was either art or snarky commentary that was sure to earn her enemies.

Thus she was down in the city with lasgun and crysknife, carving wood. It was far cruder than the shaper gloves she was used to, and she had not the time to create the traditional Fremen wind sculpture but she would have to make do. The beam sliced the heavy Elaccan fogwood with an impunity not known to any earlier carving instruments. The crysknife took care of any spurs. The sandworm's tooth knife was a finer carver than any before her had been blessed with. The cloying smell of burnt fogwood filled the chamber.

Gradually a figure took place. Born under eye and hand, emerging fully from her roiling brain like Athena, was a humanoid figure. Atop a deep bed of blue sand, he struggled on his stomach in an arch-backed pose. He was half sunk into this psuedo-ocean.

And emerging from the sand all around him were arms, frozen perpetually in the act of reaching for him. They emerged from the sand, their fingers open, questing.

It was an ambiguous sculpture. Was the man drowning or swimming? Was he sinking or emerging? Were the arms reaching for him to pull him under or to support him? To rescue him? The answer would depend on the viewer, and they would surely project their own psychic situation onto it.

It was a distressing piece, not comforting, but she hoped one that would provoke something within the watcher, stir parts of themselves they had not known to activate.

A quick wash of paint (grey for the man, vivid red for the arms), and it was done. She let out a sigh, contented as she felt herself relax from the trance of creation. Time gradually began to reenter its normal phase and she lost her tunnel vision. That was when she realized she wasn't alone.

*[OOC: quote is actually by Samuel R Delany]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Interesting piece. Does the artist care to explain in her own words, or does the piece speak for itself?"

He lifts his hands, palm-front, in response to her recoil. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you. My bad."

Sheeana slowly settled back into 'normal' time. She controlled her breathing and heart rate. "Fremen instincts. It's not your fault. I suppose you can have the former...if you first tell me what you think is happening."

"This is gonna be hard. I never took art history."

Really, it isn't hard. Really, he looks at the piece, and his mind turns it into math, into measurements and proportions and volume and those numbers grant each other significance supplemented by external colors and emotional symbolism. The hard part will be assigning it a meaning in a language not involving pi. The interpretation lends itself more easily to music than to words. If he hadn't left his guitar back in his quarters -

He delays the explanation. "Had a couple girlfriends who dragged me to the Met a couple of times but I bitched and moaned and made myself a nuisance until they agreed we could go to the Annex next time."

There were several things she could say to his obvious stalling.

What does your romantic history have to do with this?

I asked about your impression, not your education.

And I slept through most of it.

But she just fixed him with a blue within blue stare. Silence as a weapon.

He stares back, rather more smirky. "What, no witty banter today?"

"Do you think you need to buy time with me? Take your time to think about it. But I want to know your opinion first." Partly because she found his opinions interesting and partly because she had that inborn tendency to the megalomaniacal.

"I'm just making conversation. We can't have a conversation now?"

He's just messing with her at this point, but gauging her reactions carefully behind his casual smile. The nightmares have been getting to everyone. They would be getting to him if he didn't have those thoughts carefully locked and logicked into a quiet place, where they won't stay for long. Bad idea to bat the Bene Gesserit when everything is going dangerously close to hell.

She was tempted to use Voice on him right there. That would loosen his cyborg tongue! But too much risk.

She folded her arms and gave him a cutely miffed look though. It was just short of Voicing it out of him.

No need to be an ass about it. "Man pulling free of the grasp of that which has been keeping him down and seeks to pull him back there?"

A fairly literal interpretation, but Sheeana does not strike him as in a joking mood.