Artists dream, but not as we do. They live in the disassembled mosaic we escape to only in sleep. When they say: I had a dream, they might mean: the teapot told me or: I imagined. When we say: I’ve been dreaming about you, it’s because we’re too timid to say: My fantasy self penetrates and partially devours your fantasy self. Try it. Once should be enough. So I wonder: is this a dream I can share? I was at the office, right, but not the office? More like a gallery? And my boss was a painting? Not the whole painting, just one of the background figures you might not notice if you were listening to those headphones and the audio-guide told you to move along? Which I was? Because it was my boss’s voice over the headphones? And then I realized it was your voice? And that you were my boss? And learning that I tried to quit, but you said I hadn’t begun to do the job you had hired me to do so I couldn’t quit, because quitting implied that the job had failed me whereas it was me who had failed? That the job would have to quit me? So I cut you out of the painting and devoured you? And the guard had me arrested because you can misunderstand the paintings but you can’t eat them, but the judge didn’t want to convict me because his son hadn’t done his job either, the son’s job that is, but the jury was background people from other paintings, and they were unsympathetic because a lot of people had failed to notice them? So I’ve been sentenced to be in a painting where you’ll never find me? And all I want is for you to find me?

Copyright © November 16, 2006