Artistic Destruction

Once upon a time, there was an artist. His art consisted of not only his works but also his interaction with people. That is, talking to him or watching him at work, or maybe joining him in one of his works meant a transformation for the participants, for you were never the same after your experience with this artist.

As benevolent as he was, this artist also enjoyed teaching art to others so that they could enjoy the marvel of creating a piece of art. Over time, many students of his populated the world, and each of those started their own style. Yet, these students never were able to achieve a level of creativity manifested by their teacher. Still, the master artist never boasted about the excellence of his works and he did not distance himself from people. He always stayed with them and involved them in his works either as models or as assistant artists.

However, people were not the same always. Their interests and fears shifted from one thing to another as time passed. So, gradually the participants in the works of the unique artist decreased. Even those who beheld and admired his works became less patient, and focused on things that gave rather quick satisfaction. Day by day, the artist saw the dwindling of the interest of humanity in creating. He wanted to show people what he saw. He wanted to highlight where they were headed with this passive and impatient attitude that contradicted all of the order in the universe.

So, the artist who pitied the humanity went into a vigorous and prolific state of artistic production, which embodied his thunderous call for attention. He made pictures and statues of humans and contrasted them with the nature and the universe. People were not creatures of their own, distinct from the rest of existence. They were not the uncontestable and untouchable monarchs of the universe. They had to come to their senses and be humble creators rather than arrogant consumers. 

Having lost their sight of distance, people did not pay attention to these messages that were not anymore in their limited mental focus. Those who had an instant of meeting with these art works simply could not grasp what they meant at all. At some point, the artist started making his paintings overnight and leaving them where they were made, out in the public, so that people did not have to go out of their ways to receive the alerting message ciphered in his art. Even that, unfortunately, did not lead to an appreciable effect, since people, unable to see or understand the art on them, used the canvases as table cloth or construction material. Some of them even used them as shadow makers under the sun so that they could have a picnic.

This went on for a longtime. The ever concerned artist achieved a pace of production so high that it could be called frenzy. The only thing that separated his uninterrupted commitment from frenzy was his utter control of his emotions and expressions in the face of disrespect, indifference and listlessness in people towards his productions. At one point, not only the total number but also his daily production rate reached such a high level that, with the rapid means of distribution, every individual on the planet had at least some contact with this artist through his works. That is, nobody had a right to say that they were not aware of what was coming ahead.

On the side of people, however, the disconnect from the nature and universe was increasing at an unprecedented speed. In this context, the works of the great artist did not mean anything for them, because these works were ubiquitous and so abundant. And abundance meant worthlessness. So, as everything ubiquitous and abundant, the great artist's pieces did not carry much value, which was a shocking contrast to the situation in the past. Still, since people did not want to spend their money on worthless things, they collected the artists pieces freely and either hung them wherever they saw fit or tore them into pieces so that they can be used as raw material or for burning.

What people did not realize was the fact that these paintings and statues were made of special materials that were also a piece of genius art. The microscopic particles of these art pieces actually were responsive to the changes in the environment and were able to act as a single body. Given that the works of the great artist were distributed all around the world and had been used extensively in the infrastructure that people relied on heavily, it was clear that people were gambling on their lives when showing disrespect, indifference and listlessness towards the great artist and his works. But they didn't know...

 Until one morning, when all that material that was originally used for art lost stiffness with the ever warming of the air and then decomposed due to the chemical pollution in the environment. Then, everybody learned something was wrong, but they blamed the artist for all that happened. Just a few, though, raised their voices to draw the attentions to truth. Those few were the artists that were raised by the great artist, but people did not have any tolerance towards anything that had to do with that artist. 

So, with the silencing of those few, humanity found itself in an anti-art state. Art did not pay the bills anyway! Who would ever need it in the first place? All that mattered was efficient machines that produced cheaply and flawlessly. Machines that outperformed humans in so many ways... After all, who would ever need the flawed and parasitic creatures, called humans?

I, The Different

I was different. I wasn't too intelligent or stupid. I wasn't autistic savant or schizophrenic. I wasn't too artistic or sportive. I wasn't transgender or psychic. But I was different. Everybody knew it. My parents, my teachers, my friends... It took a while for me to admit it but eventually, I did. I was different.

You may ask why it was so hard for me to acknowledge my differences, given that nowadays there is so much emphasis on accepting and cherishing diversity. Easy to say. If you are in the main stream, you belong to a group, you have an identity. If you are different, you don't belong to any group. You are lonely. You cannot define yourself, you have no identity. These things are not easy to digest for a child. So, like the ugly duckling, I pretended to belong and blend, but nobody really took me as one of them. Neither did I.

Still, despite this lack of connection, how and why I was different was not as apparent in those early years of my life. My mom used to tell me that I spoke almost non-stop during the nights in a language that they did not understand. After a few years, especially after starting the elementary school, they had realized that I was repeating the conversations I had made or overheard during the day, but in a very fast fashion. She also told me that after the passing of my dad, my night speeches had come to a stop, and instead, I had started listening to radio during the night while still asleep. You may ask how she realized that I was listening while asleep. Well, at first, she didn't. She thought that I had fallen asleep while listening to the radio. Later on, she understood that I was telling of things from those night broadcasts, even sometimes repeating the exact sentences. Those were the times when my difference from others had started to find some evidence.

This night genius that I was did not show itself at school, to the dismay of my mom. I told you I was different, but not outstanding. My only true friend, who was also truly genius, once had told me that I was a race car that was on constant brakes not to accelerate. She and I were actually best friends. She was shunned for being too successful and intelligent, and she used to stay away from the rest of the students because, she thought, they were not her mental equivalents. So, oddity was our common denominator. We both stood out of the crowd.

When others started dating, she was my only choice, as I was hers. At this point, we were at university. I was going to engineering and she was in the astrophysics. Our relationship took a different turn in the second year of university. Among others astrophysicists, she didn't anymore feel odd, whereas I was still the normal but different guy. I simply couldn't belong in the crowd of engineers. My professors could tell that I was certainly different than others due to my numerous and challenging questions and due to my various divergent thoughts about inventions. Still, I did not stand out as the most intelligent; a fact testified by my low grades in some of my exams. Nevertheless, at that time of my life, I had learned to not care about everything. I was the most original. And I was the one who was in touch with the academics the most. My all-time favorite and only true friend, having found her flock in astrophysics, eventually branched off of my path. Her departure pushed me into a period of deep thought.

A depressive thought, I should say, because things simply did not make sense. My difference from others did not mean anything. I couldn't excel too much, but I didn't fail, either. I couldn't belong, but I could survive everything fine. I was able to see the big picture or grasp minor details, and had built a reputation of producing inventions, but these properties of mine never translated into something tangible. I felt like that cat in the animations who could never catch the mouse despite its most genius plans and who could not be destroyed even with the strongest explosives blasted by the mouse. After all, if you are artificial, anything is possible. You are not real anyway... Was it not for my mom, I could fall into thinking that I am a kind of robotics experiment.

Seeing me in "deep thoughts", one day she told me something about me, which I had never heard before. My conception in her womb, she said, was not normal but truly miraculous. She told that I was in her womb before anything between her and my dad. Fearing the consequences, she had hidden this fact from everybody, including my dad. So, I was the first person ever to learn this peculiarity of mine. Apparently, I was different since the beginning of my existence, let alone my life! Learning this secret spread the seeds of wonder, but also deepened the gap between me and others. Nevertheless, now I had something to work on! Having to do it all by myself was eating me inside, though. I wanted so badly my best friend to be with me.

Busy with finding new exoplanets and alien life signs, my friend was very much into her projects. She, nevertheless, had time to spare for an old friend. We were not intimate, but we still were close enough. When we came together, she started talking about her dreams about visiting, one day, the exoplanets she had studied. Then, one by one, from the most favorite to the least, she started telling about them. Strange thing is, whenever she started talking about one, I completed the rest of the explanation, although I never had any education on the topic. Somehow, that information was flowing from my tongue, just like a natural spring gushing out. My friend, at first, liked the fact that we had not fallen that far, despite the parting of our ways. Later, though, she asked where I had learned all that stuff, to which I had no answer.

As we went on that journey of life, together with my friend again, I started telling her of the stories of my classmates who developed the ideas that I had produced and voiced during the lessons. They had come up with new products and started making a fortune on them. On the positive side, the technology was advancing and the better efficiency of my inventions were helping the environment. I was jealous a bit, yes, but much more than that, I was in a growing feeling of fear of myself. Was I possessed by some kind of scientific genius spirit who was talking through me, you know?

"Maybe you were abducted by the aliens, and were loaded with all that information?" my friend suggested, seeing my worries. That was not possible, because my strangeness had begun even before I was born. Something must have happened much earlier. "Could it be my mom, who was abducted?"

That idea froze both of us in that moment of time. Could I be the child of an alien creature, and helping the human race develop? After all, my mother herself had confessed that my conception in her womb was unnatural, miraculous. What if my eyes, ears and other senses were actually functioning as sensors to transmit information back to my home planet? Why was I speaking during my sleeps in an unknown language anyway? How come could I memorize the radio broadcasts while sleeping? Was it just a coincidence that my best and only friend was an astrophysicist? What about my dad's death? Was he deliberately kept out of my life so that he would not interfere with my diverse interests and divergent thoughts and so that my alien family could exchange as much information as possible with humanity?

My friend broke the freezing silence:
"If they come to take you, I am coming with you, ok?"
"Are you sure?" I replied.
"Sure of what?"
"Coming with me to my alien planet."
"How come you know it? I thought of saying it, but didn't."
"No, I am sure I heard you say it..."
"I. Did. Not."

That was when she and I realized my alien identity for a fact. But of course, alien there on earth, not here. With you all, I feel home, at last.