Why is it that when offered a penny for your thoughts, we often give two cents worth in return? Do we think more of ourselves than others think of us? Is our stock value appreciating? In 1968, Andy Warhol offered, in an exhibit catalogue, that each of us would claim fifteen minutes of fame. In 1909, however, E. M. Forster granted us a mere ten minutes of fame.
What Johnny said was not well translated into English, even though he spoke in English. Consequently, he often kept his thoughts to himself. The world he knew was beautifully simple. Language had a difficult time containing it. Language yearned to be expansive. Painting vignettes in phrases meant to evoke brush strokes that, in themselves, were meant to capture light and darkness, movement and stillness, moments of birth and of death or of less monumental, the more mundane seconds of lives . . . well, it seemed to lay beyond his mastery of simplicity. — A cloud of algae swimming off the coast of Matagorda Island, for example; its blue-green mass, never the same form from moment to moment, effervescing oxygen: it could not be rendered in words. — He lacked the power to make them wholly real. In comparison to the thing itself, they would be mud men. And, though they might do his bidding, they would sink in the real world.
Besides, he told himself, the canvas that lay between two minds, ... well, it required a common understanding, if not common sense. Johnny didn’t believe it existed. It was like painting on water, like suminagashi, the Japanese art of ‘floating ink’ to marble papers. If it were possible, no two papers were alike. But, it was worse than that in his mind. Philosophies and metaphysics almost literally drew words upon words. Words, themselves, relied upon themselves, almost solipsistically, like the dialogue of two facing mirrors. Words were randy bastards that copulated when brought together and masturbated when left alone. Johnny’s mind was a brush filled with words spilling out. It was Contagion that he dared not let loose.
Still — In moments like these — Dominique bearing down upon him — He used his thoughts as Diversion. With them, he could make time stand still. He could draw out moments into eternities, singularities, as the fellows of the University’s Physics Department might say. Her pressure tactics were sufficiently intense; he felt himself flattened before her. How much longer, he wondered, could he ignore her?
This theory of fame, his mind hammered away, was just a theory, taken in sixty-eight year segments. If correct, the common man enjoyed no fame at all before 1705. This much of the theory might well be true. It was at about that time that newspaper publishing as we know it — knew it, anyway — came into being. In 1704, the Boston News-Letter was granted a license. Skip forward, two-hundred and sixty-three years or so; and, the Pelican Rapids Press, as every other small-town newspaper, was making everyone’s business known. If correct, each of us individually now has a claim of approximately eighteen minutes on fame. — Johnny was talking to himself. Eighteen minutes was an answer to his question. But, eighteen minutes seemed a long time to ignore anyone, let alone to ignore Dominique. — If correct, it’s probably eighteen minutes in total, summed up in the read-life of a Twitter stream, or, Facebook feed, or, the moments of lucidity afforded our shortening attention span.
As a theory, though, it’s almost certainly wrong. — This ability to argue against himself made Johnny his own best opponent in games of chess. — Economies of so-much-more-to-do in ever less time and for less and less pay, . . . well, they dictate: The theory is hokum! Even the choice of the word, ‘hokum’ — contraction of the words hocus-pocus and bunkum, LOL — stands as a proof contra-theorem.
Forster saw it coming. — Johnny was certain of this. — His short story — short story, indeed — The Machine Stops predicted the fall of social media, the last line of communication, the likes of Twitter, Google+ and the Facebook Wall, even their foreign counterparts, like Baidu. Forster’s machine stops something like a wind-up clock, like the old ticker that granny bequeathed you in her last-will-and-testament. That old girl, the old ticker, the antique clock — the one given a stately place on the mantle — it’s fire too, gone out, made redundant, Johnny remarked to himself on the irony of it — it has needs that you keep forgetting to attend to. — Wind her up! Johnny instructed himself. Hadn’t that been what he had done with Dominique? — Warhol, all things considered, was an anomaly. — He was certainly Johnny’s antithesis. — Warhol, the attention seeker, could never be given enough recognition; he had to manufacture it for himself. Self-made manufacture alone guaranteed that fame would be received in the measure required. It’s surprising that five minutes more fame, alone, sufficed.
In the theory’s contrapositive, then, ... In the reduction of fame over time, its apogee will be the simple greeting, “Yo!” or “Word”. No other words will be needed. Indeed, it’s already becoming so difficult to tell, really, what one means when one is talking. Appoggiatura — explaining oneself — will lack economy. — Here, he excused himself for terminating further conversation with Dominique. It wasn’t much of a conversation anyway. Dominique issued commands. She didn't expect to be spoken back to, even though most people called that 'normal conversation'. — No need to polish the penny, Johnny instructed himself, when a dull one, and only one, need do.
Well? He heard Dominique demand. He knew that he would be thrown down a well in the morning. She was his boss, after all. And, if wolves were to be found down there, he knew they’d be biting his ass. For now, snapping to, he responded, Benim Adım Kırmızı! “My Name is Red!” ... Dominique simply huffed, her exasperation audible, and, turning with her black humour intact, left. She hadn’t understood a word he said. Of course, this time, he was speaking Turkish.
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