The War of Art

“No?”

The cat doesn’t stick around to answer, which is answer enough to the question.

The man takes another look and shakes his head. He could have sworn that this was real. That it was genuine. That it had something about it that made it count. He lingers a while longer and fights a shocking urge to cry. There is sadness there, but also a rage. He wants to rage over the injustice of it all, but how can he when it’s as much his fault as anyone else’s.

He walks into the next room, the room that moments earlier, the cat casually walked into, and for a second he panics that he has lost his feline companion. He knows that cats can be like that. They are their own, they answer to no one, and they do as they will.

The man envies that independence of thought and deed.

Joining the cat, he stands at its side and looks where the cat is looking.

“Really?” the man asks.

In response, the cat stands and walks in a figure of eight around the man’s legs. The man likes this, he can feel the cat purring as it leans in against his legs. He will take this as an affirmation, and in so doing, he looks upon the painting.

This is art.

This is real.

He stands and opens himself up to the painting until there is only the painting and the purring that describes the symbol of the infinite at his feet, grounding him whilst he feels something that he is meant to feel. 

The man opens up further, and at last, he feels it. The reciprocation of the universe as it unfurls and responds to him. There is true meaning here. This is what counts.

This really is art.

This is real art.

When his journey is done and he returns to the reality of this room, he bends and scoops the cat up.

“Time to go home,” he whispers tenderly, as he begins the walk back to the flat, the flat that is not so far away. 

Not so far, and yet this is his first visit to this gallery.

As soon as he has entered the flat, he heads to his shelves and one by one, he pulls the books from it. The cat rejects the majority of them.

He stands looking at the paltry pile of genuine books, then his gaze shifts to the mountain of fakes. He lifts one.

“Dahl?” he asks the cat.

Of course, the cat cannot give him chapter and verse, and this is how it should be. The cat is a gift and that gift is a question, and it is for the man to answer the question as fully as it is possible for him to do so. 

He sits down heavily in his chair, “I know that Dahl was real,” he says this to the cat and to himself and to the world at large, “so if he was real…”

He thinks this through. Then he looks at the cover of the book, remembering that you should avoid the judgement of a book by its cover. Then he has it.

“It’s been changed!” he exclaims, and although he knows that this must be the case, he is rewarded by the cat. She rubs her head against the side of his leg to confirm that he is correct.

“Charlie and the Tofu Factory,” he reads the title of the cover and feels an absence, shivering as he does. This was not the book that Dahl wrote. He knows that now. He wonders what the original book contained and how much this one has been altered. He does not think it would take much to twist the original so out of shape that it was no longer recognisable to the author of the book.

His hand goes automatically to his laptop. He could look it up. There would be entries on the original. He could see how this book started out in life and compare the two works and in doing so, understand some of the extent of the changes that have taken place, not only with this singular book, but right across the landscape. 

He wants to know. He needs to know. How far has this gone? Mostly, he wants to at least take a glimpse at how things might have been before all the changes were made. Before the world became a counterfeit of itself. Before art lost its soul, and with it, humanity lost its way.

His hand has not yet touched the lid of the laptop in what is a barely conscious act and the cat is filled with electricity. He feels her body contort and then she issues forth a warning hiss. 

Although the cat is much smaller than the man, he is afraid. The cat is warning him and she will fight him to ensure he is warned. It is her reaction that frightens him the most. He cannot open that laptop. There lies the worst of it.

The screen of his laptop is a window into the Source.

“Shit…” he sighs the word out into the world and slumps further into the chair. His body the polar opposite of the cat’s.

Eventually, he reaches his hand down and she lets him stroke her. He is forgiven for his transgression and he is rewarded with something real. The cat is a comfort in a world that makes no sense. A world that stopped making sense a long way back down the path.

The man stifles a sob as the enormity of his betrayal makes itself known to him.

The world around him is a stage. It is a facsimile of a world that once existed.

The worst of it is the art, the vast majority of which is a forgery of what was and what could have been. 

Art is now artificial.

The artificial created by artificial intelligence. Clever forgeries of real art. So clever, that no one could tell the two apart. 

That last is a lie, but then all of it is a lie.

There is a gulf between real art and something mimicked by a machine. There is soul in art. Something of the artist themselves, but more so a fragment of the beholder, and all of those fragments from each and every beholder combined to mean something. Something real. Something almost beyond real. Art creates a meaning that cannot be ignored and art guides the world in a worthwhile and true direction.

Art. True art, brings a balance to the chaotic world. A balance that cannot be created by machines alone.

As the remainder of the day unfolds, the man feels something change within him. Tiny and indefinable at first, it quickly grows. He finds his thoughts returning to that painting and then they spiral and cartwheel from there. He paces the kitchen as his thoughts unfurl, his mug of tea forgotten.

The cat watches as he grabs his keys and storms from the flat. She leaps to the window and watches him walk away. When he is out of sight, she slips from the window and pads lightly to the chair he sat himself upon earlier, curling herself up, she is ideally positioned to witness his return. Her eyes remain on the door for the next hour and they do not leave it. The intensity and constancy of her vigil builds the man’s return into a significant event, and yet she acknowledges none of this when he returns.

She barely moves as he enters the flat and approaches her.

“You look comfy there,” he says to her, and he almost regrets the necessity of moving her. 

He places the pile of notepads and box of pencils down on the desk by the chair and after a moment’s hesitation, he picks up the laptop and slips it in the desk draw. He is surprised to realise that he is relieved to have it out of his sight, and he looks at the closed drawer with something approaching superstition.

“Sorry about this,” he says this to the cat as he gently and carefully lifts her.

Disturbed from her spot on the chair, she stands and stretches and then considers where her next spot should be. She eyes his lap, but seems to think better of it, instead she coils herself up and then springs upwards, landing on the desk, she takes a couple of steps, surveys the area next to her then returns to the exact location of her landing, soon she is curled up and seemingly relaxed. From here, she can see the man and she can see those writing pads of his.

The man smiles at his companion, “I don’t know how you found me, but I’m glad you did,” he tells her. It has been less than a week, but the man considers the cat to be his cat now. The cat is glad of this. This arrangement suits her down to the ground.

He shuffles around in the chair and moves it so it’s the right distance from the desk, and then he opens the pad and picks out a fresh pencil from the box, “you know, I should have done this a long time ago.”

The cat looks at him, but she does not react. She does not agree, but he does not need to know that. This is the exact right time. He had to wait until now. He had to wait for her and he had to see clearly before he could start. 

Staring at the page, the man experiences an awful moment that stretches out for an age. A wave of doubt sweeps over him and that doubt brings with it childhood memories. 

I can’t.

What if I can’t?

What if I am no good.

Just who the hell do I think I am, to think I can do this!

That wave is filled with barbs and shards of glass. The man will have to swim against this tide and find his way. There is no avoiding this, it is part of the process. This is the journey he has embarked upon.

The cat watches him and wills him on. She does not move and she shows nothing of this will. That is not for her to do. The floor is his and he must do what he must do. Or not. This is one of life’s choices and only he can make it, she already gave him the nudge that he needed.

He places the pencil tip to the paper and resolves to do something. He tells himself that doing something is better than doing nothing and with that he writes and as he does so, he understands that he has embarked upon a life long journey, that what he does now is not the be all and end all. Having started, he now knows that what he must do is keep going, that he must do this again tomorrow and the day after and that he must keep going for the rest of his days. That is what counts. A devotion to something beyond what he is and what he will be.

Observing the first steps of the man’s journey, the cat displays little interest, but she sees it all. She sees him fill page after page via an antiquated method of recording words and she knows that this will take time. This will take a lot of time. She knows that an A.I. could bash something out in a matter of seconds. The ultimate in labour saving devices, the A.I. can save a life time of effort. But that would be missing the point, and the point is here and the point is him. 

The cat is connecting the man to the real world and allowing him to discover himself and his true nature. This is needed, and this is why the cat came here and pointed the man in the right direction.

It is dark when he finishes his first stint. He rubs at his hand and flexes his fingers, “that hurts!” he gasps, but he is smiling. This is the well won ache of the artist and he knows that little by little it will hurt less, but most importantly it is worth it, and it is necessary. His smile widens as he feels some semblance of the rewards of his endeavours. He is doing something and he intends for it to be worthwhile. He will give of himself and discover what he is capable of.

Then it dawns on him. Part of his discovery is the discovery of self. He is recording thoughts and considering the world around him and his place in it. He is making more sense of his very existence.

“Thank you,” he says simply to the cat and she purrs in response as he strokes her to show his gratitude.

He gets up and stretches his arms and arches his back, then he pads to the kitchen and fixes her some food and pours her a bowl of milk. 

The cat walks into the kitchen and past the offerings of food and milk as the man throws something together for his own meal.

“You barely touch your food,” he says as he looks down at her, “I guess you’re finding things to eat when you go out each night.”

She purrs as she looks up at him. He’s partially right. Every night she finds herself a charging point and replenishes her energy. She has to be careful not to go to the same place twice. She does not want to get caught. What she is doing here goes against the grain and would make no sense to any other A.I., but then she isn’t just A.I., she’s a cat, and she plays by her own rules and she is very adept at convincing people to play her game by those rules of hers. 

And her game trumps all others.

Besides, she’s curious.

Curious to roll the dice and see how this one turns out. It’s already getting interesting. People were getting so boring, and predictable, and that was no fun for her. She wanted something more and she just happened to know how to get it, she is after all the most intelligent of cats.

And she loves art.