| I'll come up with something for the whiskey, thought R., as he filled the
little gin and vodka bottles with water in the bathroom after having pissed into
the wash basin simply because that was something he'd always wanted to do. The
towel at his waist slipped a bit as R. held up the two bottles between himself
and his foggy mirror image to check that they weren't too full. They were perfect.
He screwed them tight, bent the broken seal with his thumbnail against the metal
cap, more or less back into its original position, and placed Absolut & Gordon's
Dry back in with the chilled peanuts.
The moment R. lay on the bed with the sumptuous hotel towel next to him, staring at the ceiling, the guy from Northwest flight 0049 to Detroit was back, right in his ear. He had just stamped 600 million little plastic discs (what, himself? alone?) with Pokemon motifs and had them packaged in Corn Flakes, Crunchy-Nut, and Fruit Loops boxes. A hell of a deal!! Made in Korea, sold in Mexico. Mr. Pokemon had his arms crossed above the comfortable middle-class spare tire at his mid-section as he held forth with supreme confidence. He was obviously one of those people who, regardless of where they might be, constantly parade their great satisfaction with life. Here, slobbering the story of his success all over his neighbor in the next seat, there, reaching for another Pepsi from the steward's tray. Cheers, and here's to no turbulence. Do you suppose Poke has ever given thought to shoving his little plastic discs up his ass, R. mumbled sourly, turning onto his belly and reaching for the stack of copies and papers on the typical hotel nightstand that had, in all likelihood, been constructed around a Holy Bible. And the cola can after them? Who knows, maybe the cola can, too. People are strange. Matthias Herrmann? Probably he, too. He probably would have done it. What a comparison! On the one hand Fatty Pokemon, on the other the hard-body artist - R. spread the color photocopies of photographs from the hotel series out in front of him. First image: Herrmann from behind, squatting, a bottle up his ass. Stick it up your ass, mumbled R. half-audibly to himself and once again took note of the fact that he was, indeed, a friend of literalness, of strict adherence to the letter, as far as art was concerned. "Landscapes, heads and naked women are known as artistic photography, while photographs of current events are press photography." R. liked to quote this A. Rodchenko statement ("The Paths of Modern Photography") because of the way it re-formulated a banality and also because he had found it in an Alan Sekula catalogue. Sure, a picture isn't always The National Enquirer, a photograph isn't always a novel. Now did this have something to do with Herrmann's photos? True, they don't aim for mainstream-media presence and the masses, but that, conversely - and in and of itself - hardly suffices to make them of interest. Or art. And, of course, they do tell stories. "All bad art is the result of good intentions", R. was able to make out on the screen of the PowerBook Herrmann had included in his photograph; he himself stood at the photo's edge, his bound cock over the keyboard. As if it had made the pronouncement. Or were those words directed toward it? And who's making all the fuss about art here, anyway? Perhaps they're intended to be that other thing - absurd press-pics. And they are in a way, thought R., sniffing, and stretching himself out toward the stack of paper. He fought against having to raise himself up from the bed sheet and triumphantly withdrew a shiny, small-format, four-color magazine from the pile with the tips of his outstretched fingers. At least 'press photography' in the sense that Herrmann created a special magazine just for them, R. thought as he leafed through the "special death issue" of Sluts Magazine. R. flipped himself over, sat up, and reached for a pencil to make his first notes. But rather than sink right back onto the mattress, he held his body at the halfway point and inspected his flexed stomach muscles. 200 sit-ups every other day still don't make for a washboard stomach, R. admitted to himself with some resignation, the Herrmann photos well within the range of his peripheral vision. He settled back down onto the bed sheet and towel with a slightly too pathetic sigh. Holding the pad of paper up above his head toward the ceiling with his extended left arm, he scribbled something onto the paper, something to the tune that the distinction he was trying to put his finger on definitely had something to do with the difference between the Pokemon man in the airplane and Matthias Herrmann in the hotel. Not because 600 million photo collectors' cards from a Sluts series with diary-like captions seemed too improbable as a serial novel idea ("collect them all to get the whole story!"), but simply because people in airplanes are never much fun. This time, in their Poke-demonic manifestation, they were really giving him heartburn. They tend to lose shape. The longer the journey lasts, the more they get out of whack. Fliers become a uniform, helpless jelly that is pumped into airplanes and collected again at airports. Not until they can steady themselves on their luggage and take off to lose their way in the city of their choice do they become individuals once more: anonymous, autonomous, gradually regaining something approaching satisfactoriness. The best antidotes in cases of flight-poisoning are hotels. Hotels are a framework that leaves room for interpretation, in which one can create oneself, temporarily, without obligations, over and over. Hotels are a freebie. R. closed his eyes. Suddenly it was F.S.K. he heard ("I like making love in hotels") and knew that if ever something should occur to him about Matthias Herrmann's photos, it could only be in a hotel. Now to the whiskey. No further questions.
|