(THREE BIG CHORDS)
TR (ANNC): Once again, Rainbow Motor Oil and the Rainbow Family of Automotive Products is pleased to present....The Story of Bob, A Young Artist....
GK: My play, "The Flaming Heart," has been postponed at the Arts Center, and the director --- this very controlling, very manipulative person named Hubbard Bellow --- told me on the phone that he'd like me to change some stuff. He said, "Your play is sort of uneven." Uneven! Uneven! As if smoothness were the ideal. And if I evened it out, he'd probably say it was sort of flat. You just can't win with these people.
(BIG ARPEGGIATA THEME, APPASSIONATO, AND UNDER....)
TR: The Story of Bob, starring Carson (Bud) Wyler as Bob, and written by Sara Bellum.
(VIOLIN THEME, AND UNDER....)
(DISHES BEING CLEARED FROM THE TABLE)
SS: You didn't finish your tapioca pudding there, Bob --- is something wrong? Didn't you want tapioca? I made butterscotch too.
GK: I'm just not that hungry, Berniece.
SS: I made an orange Jell-O too.
GK: I'm absolutely stuffed. I had two helpings of the hula meatloaf.
SS: And there's ice cream.
TR: Boy, that hula meat loaf really hit the spot, Berniece. Nothing like pineapple, I tell you.
SS: Glad you liked it. (POPS MAKES A STRANGE GAGGING SOUND) What's wrong, Pops?
TR (TOOTHLESS): I'm taking out my upper plate. Got some meat loaf stuck under it.
GK: Would you mind doing that someplace else?
TR (TOOTHLESS): Only takes a minute.
GK: I may not be here for supper tonight, Berniece.
SS: Oh? What's up?
GK: I may go off by myself and just brood for awhile.
TR (TOOTHLESS): There. It was just a caraway seed. (HE PUTS PLATE BACK IN) About drove me out of my gourd.
SS: I heard music coming from your studio this morning, Bob --- sounds like you're back to work on that motet, huh?
GK: I rewrote the words a little. It's no longer a hymn to Creation, it's sort of a lament for lost youth.
SS: It sounded real nice.
GK: I call it "Orpheus and Fess Parker in the Underworld".
SS: Well, that sounds nice. Are you going to send it somewhere -- -- for someone to perform?
GK: I suppose. Eventually.
SS: Sing some of it for me. I'd like to hear it. Go on.
GK: I'd rather not.
TR: Sure, sing it. What's the matter? you ashamed of it?
GK: I'm just not in the mood for your abuse right now.
TR: Oh my----- aren't we sensitive---- can't take a little constructive criticism, huh?
GK: It didn't seem constructive to me.
TR: My advice to you is: demolition. After that, then you can start construction.
SS: You used to sing some of your songs for us---- I remember --- - don't you, Pops?
TR: Sure do. Remember that song called "Mister Handsome"?
GK: It was called "The History of Randomness"----
TR: Whatever. I remember it.
SS: Which one was that?
TR: It was the one that sounded like a cat going into the meat grinder.
GK: It did not.
TR: Dumbest goldang thing I ever heard in my life.
GK: It wasn't finished.
TR: You bet it wasn't.
GK: I showed you an unfinished work.
TR: That poem should never have been started.
GK: Okay. Forget it.
TR: Boy, it was dumb.
GK: I heard you the first time.
SS: Well, it sounds interesting to me.....Is this a page of it here?
GK: Yes----it is, but I'd rather you wouldn't----
SS: Kim Basinger's dog is drunk, fledgling emerald light streaming crystalline over sacred stone boats laden with luminous laundry & the cactus tracks & geese going and going & great elephants, O Fess Parker your raccoon plumage dangling like the placenta of an old pair of pants.
GK: It's a whole new style for me. It's called unconscious writing. I come to the page in a mood of complete passive calm and I simply put down on the page whatever wants to go onto the page.
SS: How do you know?
GK: I don't know. It knows. The things that want to be in the play, they know, and they find their way to the page through my fingers.
TR: If it's unconscious writing, maybe it'd help if somebody hit you over the head with a 2x4.
SS: I like that about "raccoon plumage" and the "placenta of an old pair of pants" ----
GK: It's powerful, isn't it.
SS: It's something all right.
TR: All I can say is, if that's poetry, then I'm Rhonda Fleming.
SS: Pops, you remember today is the day your seniors group goes to tour the creamery. Bob, you had a message from a Mrs. Timmy that her daughter is coming over today to pick up the collage she ordered.
GK: Oh. Thanks. I'll go in my studio and pick one out. (FOOTSTEPS, DOOR CLOSE. FOOTSTEPS. SOME TRASH IS MOVED. PAPER IS RUSTLED. A DRAWER IS OPENED, A CHAIR CREAKS. SOME MORE TRASH IS MOVED.) Gosh, I hardly have room to work in here. (TRASH IS SHOVED ANGRILY TO THE SIDE. SOME OF IT FALLS BACK.) I have got to get this place cleared up in here so I can work. (PUSHES TRASH TO SIDE) (PAUSE) Whom am I trying to kid? Pops is right. This stuff is junk. What a load of garbage this is. What did I do this for? What was I thinking? Pops is right. I've wasted my life. I've worked for years and what do I have to show for it----- I ought to burn it. I'm going to. (STRIKES MATCH) ---be one less motet to clutter up the world. (FLAME, CRACKLE OF FIRE) Save some audience the trouble of having to sit there trapped for fifteen minutes listening to a bunch of squeaks and squawks by one more self- indulgent composer.... (KNOCK ON DOOR, SS MUFFLED VOICE) ---- No, I'm okay! Just smoking a cigar! Be out in a minute. ---- And this painting---- all these squiggles and blobs ---- what got into me? (RIP CLOTH, SMASH FRAME) And this sculpture made from an old car bumper and a picket fence and a goalie's mask and a tutu--- why do I waste weeks doing this? (METALLIC AND WOODEN CRUNCH AND BWANG) (KNOCKS ON DOOR. SS MUFFLED VOICE) Let me alone. I'm relaxing and having a smoke. I'm okay.
God---- I want to do something that's really good, God. Don't you think you owe me this after all these years? Just one little thing that's really good? Can't I get to do one good one? God? This is all I ever wanted, God. Was to make art. So if I can't--- - I wish you'd tell me what else you want me to do---- please.
(THEME)
TR (ANNC): THE STORY OF BOB, A YOUNG ARTIST....was brought to you by Rainbow Motor Oil and the Rainbow Family of automotive products. Join us next time when we'll hear Berniece say....
SS: I'm not sure the garbage man is going to take all that stuff you put out by the garage, Bob.
GK: Why not?
SS: You've got twenty-seven big bags of stuff out there and a big pile of sculpture and ---- how come you're throwing all this stuff away now, anyway?
GK: Art is kinetic, Berniece. It comes, it goes. It moves, it changes. The artist builds it, he tears it down, it's all part of the process.
SS: Well, okay----
GK: I'm only interested in my play right now, Berniece.
SS: The Flaming Heart?
GK: Yes.
SS: So you're going to rewrite it?
GK: I'm completely rewriting it. In my unconscious style.
SS: The plumage of placenta style?
GK: I'm done with symbolism, Berniece. Naturalism. Narrative. I'm done with these careful little compositions. It's over. Art is meant to be brilliant vivid strokes of color in a dull grey world ---- art is meant to be bold ---- uncompromising ---- irrational ---- for the first time in my life, I feel as if I'm completely free.
SS: That's wonderful. What would you like for supper?
GK: What?
SS: You want chicken chow mein or hamburger hot dish?
(THEME)
TR (ANNC): That's next time on....THE STORY OF BOB, A YOUNG ARTIST. (MUSIC UP AND OUT)
© 1997 Garrison Keillor