Perfect Vision

Short story in which a passion leads to lunacy.

Perfect Vision

         Everyone along the street of shops and galleries came out to watch the unloading of the stone. Photographers were there as well, clicking away. Damon ran back and forth, around the stone, trying to supervise. The movers ignored him.

This was his stone. It would portray his finest work. This would be the rare piece swept up by a museum or prestigious private collection on the night of its opening. His dream was to become someone the top private collectors would follow and buy.        

His last show had been a mild success and fostered some interest in his next work. A few mid-level agents and collectors sent requests for future gallery invitations. The guests who attended had just been rich people looking to dress up their homes. They didn’t fit his aspirations, although he cultivated them to pay the bills.  

The last gallery show wasn’t his concern now. He was enveloped by the internal creative shell, mentally dabbling with what he saw in the seven-foot-tall piece of black and gray veined marble. What he saw in the stone would become his masterpiece, his legacy. It wouldn’t be a decoration. It would be a statement that collectors would fight over. 

The movers placed the stone in Damon’s workroom, cleared out to bare walls for this project. He looked up at the ten-foot ceiling. It had been fate when he chose this warehouse. The space was three floors: the ground floor, the gallery; the second floor, a small kitchen and sleeping room. Four steps down from one side of the gallery, the workroom.  

         In the work room, Damon played with the dimmer, setting the lighting exactly. He wanted the lighting to be bright enough to give every inch of the stone its due and yet subdued enough not to block the creative process. He started the recording of Sibelius’s Symphony Number 5. It was a good piece to meditate on how he would approach the work. He walked around the jagged marble pillar. As the music reached a brief crescendo, he touched the stone for the first time, thrilling to the chill under his fingertips. The stone was massive, big enough to allow all of his sculpting energy to flow and flourish. He hugged it, closing his eyes, feeling the power in its jagged edges.. 

         Damon raised the pointed chisel and hammer. He struck his first blow, claiming the stone. Moving gracefully, Damon let the chisel briefly weave back and forth across and through the marble. He used the music to power each blow of the hammer. The shavings and chunks driven from the stone created a variegated snowfall at his feet, but he didn’t notice. He was enthralled by his own genius, his own mastery over the stone. 

         He stepped back. He strolled around the stone, brushing dust from one spot, tapping lightly on another. He saw his life spiraling through the veins in the stone. He saw in one sharply outlined vein the year his father laughed and called his talent paltry. His memory murmured apologies as it traced the path the stone exposed with Gillian walking away, unwilling to be his second passion. Past reviews brushed the edges of his memories. This piece would get real reviews, not the ignominy of a single line announcing that “eccentric Damon Husk” held a show that drew a decent crowd. Eccentric? He wanted genius coupled with his name.

         Weeks went by punctuated by pounding at the door, answered each time with a single caustic word. “LEAVE!” He drank his entire stock of wine and was reduced to tepid water to wash the stone’s dust from his throat. An occasional grape here, a cracker there fueled his concentration and determination. Sleep came only when his body gave out. He slumped against the wall, in a chair, against the stone, lifting the chisel as consciousness returned.

Each morning he swept dust into corners not realizing the size of the piles. He tossed discarded shards of marble to the side like pieces of lint, a constantly growing debris field. He saw only what was emerging from the stone.

         Finally, he laid down the rasp, the rake, and the flat chisel. His hands fell silent at his sides. Almost there, he thought, making a slow circle around the piece. A final flourish and you will sing with my genius, he whispered.       

Damon threw the lights up to their brightest. He changed the music to Dvorak’s Symphony Number 9 and felt his core flame. His hands rose and he caressed the stone, determined to mark it with his soul. He followed the pacing of the music working with conquest and sacrifice. When the music soared, he raged, fiercely chiseling and pounding. The stone fought back, resisting his full ownership. It seemed to ripple beneath his hands. He persisted, muscles clenched. The stone wept dust. Damon heard the moans bleeding between the bars of music as his touch sought supplication. The fusion of notes and stone fed him.

         As the strains of the melody melted into the mounds of powder at his feet, he stepped back. The stone was his. Musica Maxima was born.

         He sent out notices, press releases. He called and texted. He hung posters in the gallery windows. The night of the unveiling, the crowd milled around the floor of the gallery. Gems jostled with the ebony of tuxedos. He watched the gathering, standing hidden in a small, dark alcove above the gallery.  As the appointed time approached, he vanished down the steps to the work room, only air beneath his feet, and gazed on his legacy. 

         He lifted the sculpture, cradling it. His measured steps gave him time to flip the speakers on and  Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony crashed into the gallery as he and his masterpiece entered. He carried it to the center of the room and placed it on the pedestal. His face was red from the exertion. He slid a gold plated placard with the piece’s title, MUSICA MAXIMA, next to the pedestal, and removed the velvet cover. He stepped back, chin lifted, eyes scanning the crowd, and basked in the gasps washing over him.

         On the pedestal rested a perfectly formed twelve-inch diameter marble sphere. Damon did not notice the frantically moving eyes, sneaking peeks first at others around them then searching out the exits. The crowd backed away, silent.  

They must be in awe of his genius, he thought. He read the silence as wonder and tried to look humble. He heard the click of a camera echo through the silence. His legacy was formed and would be preserved. He smiled and moved to the champagne fountain in the rear of the gallery, giving Musica Maxima’s admirers a chance to appreciate the beauty before them without his hovering presence. 

Turning back, he stopped breathing. The room was vacant, devoid of sound or movement. The sparkle from the last evening bag was slithering out of the door. The madness in his eyes morphed into disbelief, then desperation, rage, and finally, unrelenting lunacy. 

Author's Note

Is it ready for submission? Any suggestions?

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

I can't help but think, "If Poe wrote about an artist, it would be something like this." Being a bit of an artist, I related well to Damon's thoughts and actions as he single-mindedly applied himself to his creation. It made me think of Michelangelo and his large chunk of marble that became King David, so I deflated a little when he carried it in his hands. (So small?) That doesn't matter, of course, because that which he thought was monumental wasn't accepted as such by the crowds. (That can certainly happen!) It's a fine piece as is, but could be lengthened if you wanted to further explore Damon' s madness.

[Hunter Lewis]

If I were to offer a suggestion, it would be never ask for suggestions. Your ego must be bullet proof. This ~ or any story / poem / etc ~ is ready if you think it is. It's perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet, and that [as writers] is as much as we can hope for.