PAUL GAUGUIN TRAPPED ON THE 37TH FLOOR
by
HP Tinker
Paul Gauguin respects his brush. A brush is for him, alternately, a feather
or a gavel, occasionally a cat o'nine tails, but always a raw channel of
expression, a seething sewer from which he can ejaculate litres of emotional
bile, like syrup, if he's in that kind of mood. Paul Gauguin is neither
overly tender or excessively brutal with his brush. He is distanced from it.
(He prefers to consider himself both tender and brutal.)
"Like any artist," says Paul Gauguin. "I am an intrinsically
paradoxical creature."
·
Paul Gauguin works quickly at the best of times, rapidly scratching out
shapes (a line here, a curve there) across the canvas until they form a
rough framework he can jazz up later, filling in the outer areas with a rich
expanse of colour when he has swallowed enough bourbon. Paul Gauguin doesn't have a studio; he works from an easy chair in his small front room
surrounded by Japanese woodcuts and medieval stained glass. He lounges all day in the chair alone with his brushes, paints and easel, eviscerating
great works with a sour expression on his face, The Yellow Christ, Emile
Bernard Wearing Hat, Jacob Wrestling Grandma Moses, drinking coffee and
watching TV. In the evening he downs half a bottle of Jack Daniel's, his
preference, improving the sour expression on his face, contemplating his
latest works in a dazed, lethargic, utterly serene state.
"Many of these new works I like," he mutters to himself. "Many I
do not."
·
Van Gogh: "People just do not understand Paul yet. Unlike Monet he has bad
teeth and takes pleasure in visiting the Zouave brothel. Paul is suffering,
I think, because he has not sold anything. Like all true poets, I suppose,
he is essentially alone and misunderstood..."
·
Paris is unseasonably cold this winter, Paul Gauguin observes, even for
January. It is so cold Simone de Beauvoir has taken to wearing a bright red
scarf, her fierce black hair framing her delicate features, her darkened
lashes partly obscuring her dancing eyes. "All my life I have secretly loved
men," she confesses. "I was the lover of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus,
Jean Cocteau, Miles Davis... and Otto Preminger... Does he count?" Dressing
with colourful eccentricity, Paul Gauguin adorns her arm tonight, escorting
her to the same chic, seductive cafes Sartre himself once frequented - Le
Boeuf sur le Toit, Cafe de Flore, La Rose Rouge... "Bonjour, Monsieur
Gauguin, bonjour"...
At the Cafe Volpini, de Beauvoir talks of love, sex, poetry and
being naked.
Paul Gauguin gazes misty-eyed towards the bar area bustling with
prostitutes and bohemian art critics, trying to catch the eye of the young
waiter with increasing desperation. In his hand an empty tankard,
melancholic as a blank canvas.
·
Postman Joseph Roulin: "Paul has had his moments of pure happiness, I'm sure of it. Not many, admittedly, but I'm sure he's had a few of them. You know the sort of thing. Those moments when you forget the outside world of
economic hardship and the inner world of emotional turmoil. Yes, in fact I'm
convinced he's had them - just not very often. Usually when he is making
love, cooking spaghetti, or exceptionally drunk..."
·
Paul Gauguin's shopping list (fragment only - undated):
Shittake mushrooms
Shallots
2 green peppers (small)
Celery
An aubergine
Mozzarella
2 beefsteak tomatoes
·
"I take absolutely no interest in the world of politics," says Paul Gauguin
·
Comments made, unfairly, by Edith Piaf:
"This is quite the worst home-made macaroni cheese I have ever
tasted, Gauguin. You are lazy and selfish. You just sit in your easy chair
all day with your brushes, paints and easel. You never do anything. You are
lazy and selfish. Anyway, General Pinochet has asked me to sing for him next
week in Chile and I have agreed to go. What! Are you jealous? Poor, foolish
man. I shall enrage Pinochet nevertheless by performing an entire repertoire
of Johnny Mathis numbers. Just you wait and see..."
·
Paul Gauguin's only companion is a small parakeet called Gustave Courbet. It
is bright yellow and has beautiful plumage, plumage Paul Gauguin finds
unspeakably uplifting. In keeping with Paul Gauguin's humanist philosophy,
the bird is not caged. It flies freely around the house, landing where it
will. Often it sits impassively on the hoop in Paul Gauguin's bathroom,
watching him whistle. The bathroom is spotlessly clean. Because he never
sees his wife or five children, Paul Gauguin does all his own housework. He
regards this housework as a chore, not a pleasure. Paul Gauguin says, "I
like to keep my soul on the outside, in the folds of my pitch black
clothing, neatly pressed and ironed."
·
Toulouse Lautrec: "People say Paul is tragic. But not a bit of it. Paul
loves to laugh and to make other people laugh. He also loves to dance. He
has been blessed with the gift of tap. Not a lot of people know that."
·
Paul Gauguin is asked to sign an open letter of support for the President
from well-known artists and leading intellectuals of the day. Initially he
is sceptical, but seeing Edgar Alan Poe's signature at the top of the list,
he agrees. In his heart, he has always yearned for revolution, but
bloodless, peaceful, beginning with the human spirit, and he watches the
rise of the European right with increasing horror, from the corner of a
half-opened bloodshot eye.
"On second thoughts," says Paul Gauguin, "I am very interested
in the political world. As a process, I think it's vitally important."
·
Nico: "Most men are like an electric toothbrush, useful for one particular
task and nothing more. But Gauguin is a remarkable human being, beautiful,
strong, fragile all at the same time, like a priceless piece of crystal cut
glass..."
·
Paul Gauguin could phone his wayward sister in Buffalo, but consults the TV
Guide instead, seeing if there's a decent movie he can attempt to sit
through: The Lives Of A Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935). Vixen (Russ
Meyer, 1969). Deaf Smith And Johnny Ears (Paolo Cavara, 1972). Sense and
Sensibilty (Ang Lee, 1996), Finian's Rainbow (Francis Ford Coppola, 1968).
Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979). Vampire In Brooklyn (Wes Craven, 1995).
Paul Gauguin has seen Quadrophenia twice before, isn't in the mood for
Finian's Rainbow, and despises Jane Austen.
He flicks over to Russ Meyer's Vixen.
The heroine has unfeasibly large breasts, Paul Gauguin notes,
unable to take his eyes from the screen.
·
Alone in bed with his scotch, Paul Gauguin remembers his childhood with deep affection. "My mother and older brother were active in the Resistance. One day, the Gestapo came for them and ransacked the house. When a tall blonde officer asked me where they were hiding, I told him at once without
hesitation. They were imprisoned for over two years in a Nazi concentration
camp because of my impetuosity. They tried hard, but they could never look
me in the eye after that..."
Paul Gauguin has many regrets.
·
Paul Gauguin labours hard over his next masterpiece, Woman Chasing Bagel
Down Fifth Avenue. On the table next to him: a joint of ham, some small
onions, a half-drunk glass of red wine. "But the world could end tomorrow,"
he tells himself morosely. "And would it really matter?"
·
A memory: "Following the failure of my first overdose, I turned to Birds
Instant Custard granules. Subsequently everything I have ever learnt has
come via the intravenous consumption of illegal baking substances. On the
nineteenth anniversary of my first nervous breakdown, I decided to make
certain of a premature death and thus secure my place in world obscurity.
That is why, in the early hours of a becalmed Saturday morning, I took a
wide selection of paracetamol, slashed at my wrists with a rusty razor,
weighed myself down with body building equipment, and leapt from the nearest suspension bridge to the boisterous encouragement of Pissarro and the entire Pont-Aven school..."
·
"You are making incredible progress," beams Carl Jung.
"Really?" says Paul Gauguin.
"No," admits Carl Jung. "That's just something I tell all my
patients in order to keep their spirits up and prevent further bouts of
self-mutilation."
·
Carl Jung is a capable man with capable hands and a mobile phone slung over one ear. During their evening sessions together, Carl Jung consults the
Devil's Handbook for advice and plies Paul Gauguin with Vodka Martini to
calm him down. He has analysed the high and low points of Paul Gauguin's
life and expressed them in attractive graphical form for his own amusement.
Paul Gauguin's life looks something like this:
·
Paul Gauguin in therapy:
"Often I feel I can't paint at all. I seem unable to do anything
except sit in my easy chair. The blank canvas in front of me resembles some
insoluble Maths equation. So I sit and wait and sit and wait. When I look
back over my finished works I find it unbelievable that I was responsible
for them. It's like my mind is somewhere else now. I can't get started.
Every stroke I attempt strikes me as trivial and meaningless, severed from
the real world, drained of any relevance. An hour might pass. Or two. Then,
in the blink of an eye, everything transforms. Something unholy takes hold
of me and I suddenly realise I can do this. In fact I have no choice; I am
compelled to do this. So I launch myself into my work, proceeding
methodically at first, feeling my way as best I can, before I know where I
am suddenly on fire again, blazing across the canvas, elated, astonishing
myself at how it was any other way..."
·
Paul Gauguin face down on the floor of the Cadogan Hotel, having fallen,
clutching at his throat frantically, people at other tables whispering to
one another. Someone not conversant with the Heinrich Manoeuvre attempts to resuscitate him mouth to mouth. After a few moments, Paul Gauguin splutters back into full consciousness.
"There, I have just saved your life, young man," Vivien Leigh
says coolly.
"Really?" says Paul Gauguin. "I was merely struggling with the
baby shrimp."
"Oh no," curses Vivien Leigh, returning bashfully to her rainbow
trout. "I'm always doing that - especially to close friends and near total
strangers."
·
Lying next to Vivian Leigh in his own bed, Paul Gauguin feels strangely like
a new person and attempts to re-evaluate his life. She is restless, mumbling
incoherently in her sleep - fully clothed. "You have been poisoned by the
words of others, Paul," she warns him the next morning, eating scrambled
eggs in a yellow cafe. "They know less than you, but pretend to know more."
Vivian Leigh fondles him once again for old time's sake before returning to
the set of Waterloo Bridge. "Everybody has the right to do whatever they
please with their own body," she comments, waiting in line at the taxi rank.
·
Tired and emotional, Paul Gauguin drinks creamy Irish coffee in a bar, sun
streaming through the shutterless windows. "I don't care too much for
money," he tells his Cornish dealer. "But at least money can buy you
drugs..."
·
Women prick his interest now and again. Mostly these are imaginary
experiences with celebrities (Gloria Grahame, Shirley Eaton, Catherine
Deneuve, Diana Dors, Valerie Leon) but that doesn't make them any less
intense or stimulating. Paul Gauguin likes to wine and dine actual women at
Oldenburg's, his favourite Fluxus bistro. They don't seem to enjoy it as
much as he does though. They leave early while he picks up the bill and
stays behind, exploring the length of the optics with Max Klinger, the
temporary bar manager.
·
Paul Gauguin considering himself moderately in love with Jacqueline Du Pre
and sleeping with her because of her fragile mental state and undeniable
musical gift. Jacqueline Du Pre feeling much the same about him. Refusing to
take her prescribed medication, Jacqueline Du Pre begins to behave
erratically in public and spikes Paul Gauguin's Budweiser with something, a
mind altering substance which only really kicks in the next day when his
hands start shaking and he starts seeing colours and he is flying right
through these colours at great speed, suddenly nauseous, unable to eat,
sleep or have sex with his furniture, and he is attending an important
Christmas social function feeling like Algernon Swinburne, ordering drinks
from a free bar that doesn't exist, pulling bathroom fixtures off walls,
climbing barbed-wire fences in the olive gardens, tripping-out on high bar
stools and trying to stand and trying to stand and trying to stand and
managing to stand and looking for the man from the house with the high
window and meeting the man from the house with the high window and speeding away and feeling fine and then feeling black and walking by the sea and walking along the beach and taking tablets and tablets and tablets and
walking right along the coastline with the waves suddenly crashing through
him like Mme Schuffenecker's darting eyebrows and in the final few moments
of lucidity before unconsciousness everything looking
·
Letter to Jacqueline Du Pre (extract):
"...your breasts depress me now. And for years I had not been
without the thought of them. Then, when I found you in the arms of another
man, I asked myself the logical question: Where is the rest of his body?
Does an involvement with a pair of malnourished arms really constitute an
act of infidelity? And to think, all that time I imagined those stains on
your dress merely to be guacamole..."
·
Paul Gauguin travels secretly to Fleet Street to design Clarice Cliff's
corporate logo. After he has finished, he refuses to show the results to
anyone. He is ashamed. He feels artistically sullied. Paul Gauguin catches a
late train home, returning to exactly the same place he left eight hours
earlier. Paul Gauguin has an intense hatred of worthless, disorderly
undertakings.
·
"What I want most of all is to leave this town. My reputation as an artist
is growing hourly, but sometimes I go three or four days without eating at
all which undermines not only my health but my artistic energy. Still,
tonight I am off to the cinema with Ezra Pound to see South Pacific.
Afterwards he is taking me to a French restaurant where I intend to eat as
much as I am able - like a complete and utter savage..."
·
Privately Paul Gauguin considers himself an undiscovered genius.
"But," he tells Woody Allen over the phone, "What happens to an
undiscovered genius when their genius is finally discovered? What is that
all about? Where can you go then?"
·
An erotic postcard arrives from Yoko Ono, saying: Hello. It was good to meet
someone like you. Believe it. Now I can't remember what you look like. Will
I ever see you again? Please take good care. It reminds Paul Gauguin of the
cold winter's night he first met Yoko shooting an avant garde movie inside a
telephone box: "I would give up drink and narcotics tomorrow," he'd
confessed to her later that evening at the Arles Cafe. "But I fear life
would hold no meaning for me then..." Paul Gauguin does not reply to her
card and does not know why. Postcards are a most inappropriate method of
communication at the best of times, he thinks to himself. Yet perhaps a
whimsical Japanese conceptual artist was just what I needed all along...
·
"Isn't it strange, Paul, the way you are always chased by the wrong person,"
remarks Man Ray at Jackson Pollock's house warming party. Paul Gauguin wakes around noon the next day having passed out on Willem De Kooning's sofa bed.
He can remember little of the events of the previous 24 hours.
·
lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost
lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost
lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost
lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost
lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost
lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost lost
lost lost
·
No matter how often you repeat a word, observes Paul Gauguin. Its meaning
always stays pretty much the same.
·
Paul Gauguin strolling through the narrow cobbled street of an unknown
fishing port, the pavement lined with young people carrying placards. It is
raining and he is getting wet like everybody else. Oddly, Paul Gauguin is
wearing only his underwear, an incongruous note in an otherwise typical high
street scene. The act of physical movement feels strange, yet strangely
familiar, thinks Paul Gauguin to himself. Like an old overcoat I once wore,
then forgot how comfortable it actually felt against my skin.
Paul Gauguin notices people staring.
What are those people looking at? he wonders.
The expression on their faces is one of mild irritation,
disturbing him.
·
The human anguish of Paul Gauguin:
"Everything is slipping away from me now. Time is moving too
fast. The moment is looming closer. The spirits of the dead are watching.
When I go, everybody will hold a ceremony for me in my absence, I am
convinced of that. Chinese girls will weep openly. Americans will speak for
hours into BBC microphones. Casually dressed acquaintances will wear
mourning suits. Tears will flow from all four corners of the globe...
Remember my eyes; oh please remember my beautiful eyes..."
(Quoted from a longer conversation with Hans Arp.)
·
Paul Gauguin at the Museum of Contemporary Obsession, London, accompanied by Elizabeth Smart dressed entirely in stone-washed denim. The museum is famed throughout Europe for its adventurous, eclectic admissions policy and long afternoon queues. Exhibits currently on display include:
Salt.
Dead flies.
Two portly sailors.
A wardrobe of fresh bread.
Chairman Mao, in his treehouse.
A poor pastry boy named Sergio.
Pier Angeli's Ford Capri.
Some cancer.
Telephones.
J.Edgar Hoover.
An advertising mogul.
456 drawings of Jeff Lynne.
Sinclair Lewis dancing the hornpipe.
Former Luftwaffe personnel eating tempura.
The Post-Hiroshima Choral Society's Mack The Knife.
Brian Sewell and his singing penguins.
Ernest Borgnine, feeling remorse.
Paul Gauguin is not knocked out by the museum's contents and Elizabeth Smart takes to surreptitiously drinking sloe gin from a silver hip flask. By the
grand central entrance, she falls down. (She slipped.) And despite Paul
Gauguin's repeated offers of assistance she refuses to get back up again.
·
His latest collection of work, Colors Colliding Inside The Mind Of A 23 Year
Old Colombian Taxi Driver, is safely stashed inside a gold-braided leather
satchel. Alain Planet, the museum's lugubrious thin-lipped curator, is
curious. "I'm curious," he says, opening the satchel. "My supply of strange
ideas isn't endless, you know..." He returns Paul Gauguin's paintings from
the Museum of Contemporary Obsession the next day, with a brief note:
Sorry, not quite contemporary enough...
·
Maudlin, depressed, penniless, Paul Gauguin breaks his midday Bacardi
Breezer curfew. Listening to John Wesley Harding[1], he poses himself many
questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? What are we doing here? What are we going to do next? How can we escape everything that is artificial and conventional? What can we have for lunch? Why is there no food in this house? Did I forget to visit the supermarket? Are
these potato cakes stale? Where is the green curry I was freezing? Am I all
out of seaweed fasoli? Is a Brie sandwich at all feasible in the circumstances?
Questions such as these.
·
Although a great artist, Paul Gauguin doesn't claim to have any great
answers.
"Sometimes posing questions is enough," he tells his bank
manager, defensively.
·
Head swimming with despair, Paul Gauguin wakes in the middle of the night to find himself trapped on the 37th floor of a burning tower block, blinded and
dazzled by the heat. The fire like a poem. The flames thick and flat. What
is my subconscious trying to tell me now? he wonders. In terms of dream
logic, Paul Gauguin doesn't know how he came to be here. His mind is a blank on that score. He thinks a woman may have been involved. Possibly a dancing girl. (He often dreams of dancing girls, usually several at a time.) The
maroon flames keep rising higher, licking up the walls like a hungry dog.
The emergency services have been called out, he is aware of that fact, but
they are held up in unusually busy traffic. Paul Gauguin can only study the
composition of the flames, the off-beat lighting effects they create against
the walls, the ceiling crumbling, burning beams snapping down around him.
The scene gives him an idea for a new painting, experimental in perspective
and form...
A candelabrum crashes to the floor, narrowly missing his head.
·
The thing about mortality, Paul Gauguin notes, is that you don't really
think about it until it is far too late. I mean, is this it? Is this all you
get? Is this how all things must end?
·
Paul Gauguin wonders how his subconscious will get him out of this jam. Or
will it even try? He is not hopeful of getting out alive, at least not until
he sees the monstrous head of Victor Mature appearing at a window, the
Hollywood idol over fifty storeys tall at a conservative estimation, his
mighty hand plunging through the flames, plucking Paul Gauguin off his feet,
pulling him clear of the fire and holding him aloft outside like a trophy, a
crowd of Tahitian dancing girls down below applauding and cheering loudly.
The incident, although implausible, serves to remind Paul Gauguin that art
can be a redemptive force in itself and he vows to continue with his work.
His faith in humanity and art and life freshly restored, Paul Gauguin awakes
to marvel at the power of the creative mind and the startling changes it can
affect when aimed judiciously in the correct direction.
[1] Track 5, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest 5:33 (Dylan) Dwarf
Music, Columbia 01-463359 01
© HP Tinker
Reproduced with permission
JOHN SLADEK
MORRISSEY
NATHANAEL WEST
JOE ORTON
KURT VONNEGUT
BOB DYLAN
WOODY ALLEN
DR. SEUSS
HUMAN NATURE
ANYTHING ELSE
MASKED AND ANONYMOUS
THE AGE OF WIRE AND STRING by Ben Marcus
FRANCIS BACON
RENE MAGRITTE
WASSILY KANDINSKY
JACKSON POLLOCK
MARCEL DUCHAMP
PAUL GAUGUIN
MARK ROTHKO
DANIEL JOHNSTON - The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered
LOVE AND DEATH
MANHATTAN
ZELIG
HUSBANDS AND WIVES
DECONSTRUCTING HARRY
COMPLETE PROSE
DENTON WELCH
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
RONALD SUKENICK
PATRICK MCGOOHAN