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

"I see a man rising up. Something greater seeks to push him down, to force him below, but the man is not alone. The hands support him, raising him up." Khel's eyes dimmed as he thought. He wasn't trained to read people to the extent Sheeana was. He had no idea what was meant, if anything was, by his interpretation.

"The hands in turn belng to others like the man. People trapped below. They raise him up to helpfree him, and they are raised in supplication. They seek as much to be raised up by the man as they do to raise him."

Sheeana's laugh was like small bells. "You are the first person to interpret it that way! Everyone else was far less...optimistic." The response seemed to indicate a degree of comfort with the archetypal fears that everyone else who viewed the sculpture shied away from. Small wonder, since in a way he was one.

"Even when I lived, I did not fear drowning or being buried, whether physically or metaphorically."