006. ( video. )

[magnitudes]

( Ah, it’s a heartwarming holiday scene, viewers. Sarissa, lounging on a couch, somehow inexplicably still with severe tank top tanlines despite a) it being winter and b) her wearing a tank top, which surely should theoretically make the tanlines less apparent. Not today, apparently. It reads “Sorry for the thing I said when I was hungry,” but perhaps “Sorry for what I’m about to say now I’m drunk” would be more fitting. She’s got a neon curly straw sticking out of a bottle of bourbon, and a cocktail umbrella tucked behind her ear, and appears to be wearing tropical board shorts. It’s just that kind of day. Or night. Whatever.

Sitting next to her is Pablo, who is wearing a striped cardigan, black shorts, and fiddling with his bangs and a straightening iron until he notices that Sarissa is recording. He frees his hair and sets the iron aside, picking up instead his own drink of choice (non-alcoholic; it's a capri-sun pouch) so he can more easily listen. )

Okay, but like. Okay, no, sorry, but if you think about any of the stuff that all of us across all our bloody worlds have gotta have in common, it’s art, yeah? Like— creativity. Art and poems and music, the expression of everything that makes us who we are given some kinda solid shape. Whether its colours or melodies or whatever form we gotta grab and twist about, it’s expressions of the world and how we understand it, right? It’s a way to know that we’re not going out of our bloody minds, because there’s thing element that we can understand and connect with, and it links us to other people. It’s why people got all fired up about the Spice Girls, a while back.

( That isn’t actually what happened, Sarissa, but sure. Go with that. ) And Pablo here, he’s an artist. Makes the world make sense with colours. Everything is colours and— and texture. It’s stories all layered up and up, kind of like people. We’re all hundreds of thousands of stories all layered together and then laid out.

What? Oh, uh...

( Pablo seems to not know what to say about that, given his silence, though if he feels put on the spot it doesn't show on his face. He starts to shake his head, but then instead opts to say: )

Right. Well you know, I don't know if it even has to exactly make sense, if like... we can still look at it and feel something, because either somehow we do understand it, on the level of like... uh... ( He gestures circularly over his head, glancing in Sarissa's direction for a moment but then upward. How to say it? ) You know, intuitively, even if we don't know why, or what anything really means. Or we don't understand but try to, or-- sometimes people don't want to. It all depends. But, uh-- yeah, it's still a little bit of everything and everyone we've ever known, too. Like stories.

( He stops talking and looks back over at Sarissa. )

Or a jigsaw puzzle. Or, uh— there’s this art, in Japan? Kint— ah, shit. Kintsuko...roi? It’s um, it’s like the to do with change and journeys and things gathering more meaning. I guess. I mean technically it’s about repairing broken stuff with gold lacquer, but it’s like an extra layer? Like a new addition to the story. Somethings not less perfect for being broken, and it doesn’t lose something. It gains it? I don’t know, make that a metaphor, if you wanna. People and art fit together. ( She grins, a bit ridiculously. ) And if they don’t, we can glue ‘em together with gold lacquer. It could get very Klimpt. Or Kahlo.

( Sarissa frowns, then, as she delicately sips her bourbon. ) Does anyone else do that? Like finding ways to express the way they understand things more tangibly? Like an enigma machine for your thoughts?

Comments

[notsheepish]

[Excuse you. She is no white knight! Just... friends with a few of them.]

Yeah, maybe not. Since I think a lot of that just kinda flew over my head.

[magnitudes]

( B| B| B| crushing feelings of inadequacy and feeling that she makes all of them sad and suffering etc etc it's very angst very emotion how dare Ruby be better than her etc etc

Maturely, she does what sounds very much like a put-upon teenager groaning at a technologically-inept parent. )

Which part? I mean, okay. You know there's different styles and movements in art, right? And they came from different things. Incorporated—

( She takes a moment, right hand waving vaguely as she thinks and also sips her bourbon through her curly straw. )

They came as a reaction to movements that came before them, and they were shaped by the world, as well as the artists themselves. And then the world reacted to them, and it's all very... whatever, the point is that you have different movements, and then you have the artists, and then you have different creations by the artists, and they all mean different things. Like Edvard Munch, yeah? He's most famous one is probably "The Scream." It's uh— all colourful and swirly background and then a person in the foreground all ... ( Well, okay, she sets down her bottle and does the scream pose, to explain. )

Do you know that one? I can explain it better with a specific painting, probably. Art helps me explain. Or contextualise. I'm not good at— explaining shit so people get what I feel about things, all the nuances. Art and poetry and all this other crap help me get other people to see what I see, or... I understand.

( Suddenly, she sounds irritated, though it's more at herself than Ruby, it may not translate that well. ) It's probably fucking pretentious, okay? Happy?

[notsheepish]

[Again, there is confusion, though this one is more about the (perceived?) attitude there. Ruby is... admittedly slightly uncomfortable and unsure where she stands with Sarissa, but she doesn't have any ill will toward her.]

Uh. I mean, it's not really my thing, but I don't have anything against it either?

I even know the one you're talking about, yeah.

[She didn't know that's what it's called or who painted it, but it's famous enough that even she's seen it before.]

[magnitudes]

Okay, good.

( Thank Heavens - cue pearl clutching, etc - that Ruby didn't fail this essential test of humanity or something. Sarissa is hideous and absurd, idek. )

So it's expressionism, right? The style? But Art Nouveau was this big fuckin' deal around that time, it was like... it was all flowing and meant to be more natural than some of the complicated-as designs that were before it? It's like um, end of the nineteenth century and tipping into the twentieth, yeah? Munch did The Scream in nineteen-ten, I think. '

( She takes a second, biting the inside of her cheek, trying to remember. ) Anyway, it's like... expressionism, which is all about things being subjective and evoking emotion, and he made it because one time he was out on this walk in nature and maybe high, I can't remember, and his friends had just left him, and cutting through everything he heard this scream. And it's all bright red, fiery skies and this cool blue landscape, and—

( Wow, she's getting frustrated, but now it's more obviously at herself, as she tries to scrabble for the right words. ) When we have art and they capture that moment or that feeling and they can evoke that— that shock and those visceral feelings in us, they make stuff make sense, right?

( Pleading, for maybe half a second. ) It's all organic, flowing lines, while trying to make us understand shock and— those things don't automatically go together, in your head. When you think shock and being jerked out of one mental state into another, you'd think more sharp lines, right? So it... creates a nuance? And like... levels? Of how something feels and makes sense?

[notsheepish]

[Slowly:] Yeah, I guess that makes sense... [The part about sharp lines and jagged corners seeming more jarring at least.]

It seems like a pretty complicated way to get something across though, one that wouldn't be hard for someone to misunderstand. Especially someone who hasn't put a lot of thought into this kind of thing before.

[She raises a hand into frame.]

[magnitudes]

But everyone feels things when they look at art. It's... visceral. Gets you right by the guts and pulls at you. You can't— explain a feeling but you can describe art.

[notsheepish]

[There's a bit of a pause while she tries to find the right words.]

Yeah, maybe everybody feels something, but it can't always be the same thing just because they saw the same painting. Like, if I just looked at the one we were talking about out of the blue, maybe the feeling he was trying to get across wouldn't be the one I read from it.

So would that mean I... did it wrong or something? And I guess if I didn't, and there is no right or wrong, then why try to get across a specific feeling or whatever that way at all?

[magnitudes]

Well obviously arts subjective, but there's still all the facts that get layered up into building it. There's— context. I give context.

( Maybe she sounds defensive. )

Never mind.

[notsheepish]

No, I'm... genuinely asking here. Is it supposed to be both? How does that work exactly?

[magnitudes]

It's different every time! It's not like there's some rule for it. I don't—

( Sarissa makes a frustrated sound. This, words, trying to make things make sense to other people, the big, important things is exactly why she is doomed to metaphors and art and stars. Moreso lately than usual, because she is barely holding it together ever since she woke up from dying, and everything in the world has felt like a struggle since then. )

Trying to use words is like snatching bleeding dust out of sunbeams, okay? It's hard. Art just helps and I can't use art to explain how art helps. Or how stars help, or any of it. It's like defining a word by using the word you're defining. Shitty definition, the understanding isn't gonna be there.

( Her hands are outstretched before her, and her manner has shifted - less aggravated, more just hoping to Christ that Ruby will understand, will just get it. )

[notsheepish]

[It takes her another few seconds to respond as she tries to make sense of Sarissa's words. This may become something of a pattern.]

...yeah, okay. I guess I'm just more of an action words person than an imagery one.

Stories are kind of a big deal where I come from. [A face and a small chuckle like she's just made a pithy, possibly self-deprecating inside joke with no one.] Ones with a lot going on and maybe not a lot of time to sit down and smell the metaphors.