#433 The Future of Voices + The Key to Dreams

The cicerone paused midway between the two paintings. "These were both painted in the same year," she said, "but we do not know which one came first. I like to think it was the one without the internal frame, without the labels. I am probably wrong, though. More likely that the painter saw these objects & captured & imprisoned them, then called their images by another name so that they would forget who or what they were.

"If we accept my initial ordering, then the future of voices is that they fall silent unless they are given names, no matter if inappropriate. If we believe the alternative scenario, then reality gradually falls away until the objects become the stuff of dreams, misnamed, though something of a key left behind so we can make the invisible visible if we so desire.

"Each time I walk by I make up stories, create associations. The briefcase has been floating around in space for so long it has become the sky that surrounds it. Then the painter comes along & stuffs it into the case it used to be but which he now names sky. It becomes a paradox: how can it be both inside & outside itself when it is not transparent?

"Then we confront mundanity. The sponge is so absorbent that no matter what we throw at it, it takes it in & remains what it always was, will always be, in captivity or not. The name remains the same no matter what happens in the interim. But a falling leaf transforms into the table we are lunching at.

"Not everything is so straightforward. Perhaps the bird slices its throat with the pocket knife & is swallowed up by the space between, eventually reappearing as a pipe. Yet if we approach this from the other end, it may be that the painter was unable to rename the pipe, disturbed by what he later described as the treachery of images, & so excluded it from the reworking, leaving a space until the knife flew into view.

"History records that it took the painter two more years before he could confront the pipe again, & even then could not name or rename it. Instead he attached a warning label: Ceci n'est pas une pipe."