only.
Something happens, or fails to, a moment is gained here, lost there, and the result can be anything: joy, desire, inspiration, tragedy, pleasure, loss. Her first grinning Philip was happenstance also, the endpoint of an earlier randomness which was itself an outcome of triumph.
Also, wherever she looks there’s a thoroughly lodged, intricate twining between Philip and work, and what happens to that now? Work is what Nora does. What she does saves; saves her, if nobody else. She would even have said, maybe, right up till this morning, that work would be worth any sacrifice; but she would never have meant this one.
At least it isn’t as if Philip’s death is connected in some sacrificial way to her work.
Or—who knows? Awful second thought—maybe it is.
All she has ever meant by sacrifice is choice really, the weighing of one thing against another. It’s not so hard to sacrifice—choose—if desires are clear, and what have Nora’sdesires been but Philip and her freedom to work, in that order or not, nothing very dramatic or drastic?
Even poverty, one choice and sacrifice, was not only relative but a circumstance of relative youth. When Nora was twenty-five she was still very poor, as well as distinctly unknown. She was living, barely, above a sandwich and variety store in a cramped apartment where she slept, ate, and experimented with attaching fabrics to canvas, bedecking painted figures with beads and embroideries. She was interested in the relationship of colours and textures, as well as figures and shapes, as well as certain ideas, but no one lives on colours and textures and shapes and ideas. She was beginning to suffer rat-gnawings of desperation, not only financial. Not everyone appreciated what she was trying to do. Her only public mention to that point was in a newspaper review that called her contributions to an artist-run show “vivid and intriguing, but ideologically idiosyncratic.”
Well, thanks.
That was right about when Max and Lily arrived from France via England and opened their gallery. Coming from Europe spoke, she hopefully supposed, of either sophistication or of up-to-the-minute, on-the-edge taste. New eyes, anyway. Worth a shot. Nora walked in with a selection of slides and two of her actual works, then waited anxiously through a two-month silence that some days felt like a good sign, other days not. This was her life, didn’t they know that? Or care? Should she call them? Should she walk downstairs and ask for a job in the sandwich and variety shop, preferably a night shift so she could continue to work upstairs in daylight but also continue to eat? She jumped each time the phone rang. The time was coming, not that far off, when she wouldn’t be able to pay for the phone.
At last, Max called. In his flat, slightly accented voice, he said just, “Come in. Lily and I will discuss your work with you.”
In those days the gallery had one very large room, one lesser one and an office. There were canvases on the floors of each space, but facing the walls, about to go up or already down. Max leaned back in his chair, hands folded over a belly that was capacious even then, and tiny, silvery Lily leaned forward in hers, hands at palms-up rest on her desk. “Welcome,” she said. “Tell us about your work,” Max said.
What about it, exactly? They’d had two months to see for themselves. Still, Nora made her little speech, glancing towards Max but letting her eyes rest on Lily, about definitions of art and of craft and her desire to apply both. Because, she said, “I tend to think distinctions between them are basically arbitrary. As far as I can see at the moment, a stitch is as critical as a brushstroke. So differences are more a matter of who gets to decide what is art, not what art actually is.” Did that sound dogmatic? As if her real interests were merely political? “I like to make possibilities larger. I want expansion. Some kind of whole-heartedness.”
“The
Something happens, or fails to, a moment is gained here, lost there, and the result can be anything: joy, desire, inspiration, tragedy, pleasure, loss. Her first grinning Philip was happenstance also, the endpoint of an earlier randomness which was itself an outcome of triumph.
Also, wherever she looks there’s a thoroughly lodged, intricate twining between Philip and work, and what happens to that now? Work is what Nora does. What she does saves; saves her, if nobody else. She would even have said, maybe, right up till this morning, that work would be worth any sacrifice; but she would never have meant this one.
At least it isn’t as if Philip’s death is connected in some sacrificial way to her work.
Or—who knows? Awful second thought—maybe it is.
All she has ever meant by sacrifice is choice really, the weighing of one thing against another. It’s not so hard to sacrifice—choose—if desires are clear, and what have Nora’sdesires been but Philip and her freedom to work, in that order or not, nothing very dramatic or drastic?
Even poverty, one choice and sacrifice, was not only relative but a circumstance of relative youth. When Nora was twenty-five she was still very poor, as well as distinctly unknown. She was living, barely, above a sandwich and variety store in a cramped apartment where she slept, ate, and experimented with attaching fabrics to canvas, bedecking painted figures with beads and embroideries. She was interested in the relationship of colours and textures, as well as figures and shapes, as well as certain ideas, but no one lives on colours and textures and shapes and ideas. She was beginning to suffer rat-gnawings of desperation, not only financial. Not everyone appreciated what she was trying to do. Her only public mention to that point was in a newspaper review that called her contributions to an artist-run show “vivid and intriguing, but ideologically idiosyncratic.”
Well, thanks.
That was right about when Max and Lily arrived from France via England and opened their gallery. Coming from Europe spoke, she hopefully supposed, of either sophistication or of up-to-the-minute, on-the-edge taste. New eyes, anyway. Worth a shot. Nora walked in with a selection of slides and two of her actual works, then waited anxiously through a two-month silence that some days felt like a good sign, other days not. This was her life, didn’t they know that? Or care? Should she call them? Should she walk downstairs and ask for a job in the sandwich and variety shop, preferably a night shift so she could continue to work upstairs in daylight but also continue to eat? She jumped each time the phone rang. The time was coming, not that far off, when she wouldn’t be able to pay for the phone.
At last, Max called. In his flat, slightly accented voice, he said just, “Come in. Lily and I will discuss your work with you.”
In those days the gallery had one very large room, one lesser one and an office. There were canvases on the floors of each space, but facing the walls, about to go up or already down. Max leaned back in his chair, hands folded over a belly that was capacious even then, and tiny, silvery Lily leaned forward in hers, hands at palms-up rest on her desk. “Welcome,” she said. “Tell us about your work,” Max said.
What about it, exactly? They’d had two months to see for themselves. Still, Nora made her little speech, glancing towards Max but letting her eyes rest on Lily, about definitions of art and of craft and her desire to apply both. Because, she said, “I tend to think distinctions between them are basically arbitrary. As far as I can see at the moment, a stitch is as critical as a brushstroke. So differences are more a matter of who gets to decide what is art, not what art actually is.” Did that sound dogmatic? As if her real interests were merely political? “I like to make possibilities larger. I want expansion. Some kind of whole-heartedness.”
“The
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