His Only Street is Air

A man is walking home from somewhere he has been that may or may not have been art. He is no longer sure. He is surprised that the journey back is downhill and getting steeper with every step. Pretty soon, he notices that the houses on this street, the trees that line both sides, and even the well-behaved suburban clouds are tilting downhill. Everything is sliding in the same direction. He thinks maybe the picture they are all within is crooked on the wall. It must have tilted much more than forty-five degrees. Faster and faster he goes, as the suburban street steepens; now cars are tumbling over his head, and an airborne stray dog with a mailman in its fangs. The old postman forlornly holds out a letter to the man as he whizzes past, hoping for just one last delivery. A young couple has latched onto an old couple by a grey granny’s shawl and all four fly past together, heading down a sort of crooked elevator shaft the street has become. If we are in a tilted picture, the man thinks, we will all end up in the lower right corner. It means there must be a nail holding everything up. The earliest and most simplistic philosophers were right! When everyone and everything are all in the same place together, pressed together as tightly as possible, the history of art may be over. Unless someone straightens the picture on its nail again. But that probably won’t happen. One thing absolutely everyone agrees upon is that modern art must never be allowed to be on the level again. The man is still pretending to step, although now his only street is air and he is plummeting rather than walking. “It is so very, very hard to get home in art,” the man thinks. Just then three children fly over his right shoulder like living kites sucked into a jet engine. They blur into screaming giddy laughter. He thinks, “What a lovely collage we are becoming!”