Thursday 17 November 2011

Bar, Graphite on Paper, 2011

The place smells stale, it smells of things that have been bottled up too long and are beginning to seep out. He positions himself at the bar. The tumbler is thick, squat. Whisky covers ice bricks: his optico-acoustico-olfactory pleasure is satiated. The verb 'articulate'. Words. He's not scared of them. Words are for playing with, it's not a thesis, although he is an educated man. The verb 'orchestrate'. Whisky. First the words, now the images, time to watch them flow before he messes with them. Cut and paste, rearrange, but stay shy of delete. Never delete. Conditional 3, if he hadn't done that he would have done something else. They all would. Things would have been different. Things would be different. Things wouldn't have gone stale. Yes, they would. Same stale, different bottles. Same man sitting in a bar, alone. A different bar, but the same alone, which is the point. 

2 comments:

  1. Is the narrator writing on a piece of paper in the bar? Or just thinking about writing? The title confuses me slightly. And the word 'delete' which suggest a word-processor. Good opening and closing lines.

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  2. It's a sketch. The inside of someone's head.

    ReplyDelete