Art Along the Aether, Chapter Eleven – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

Dark and cold and silent, old environment untouched by hands civilized, or beset by ravenous eyes. Where were they? Or would it have been pomp and cliché to say when were they, and the snow touched not the leaves crinkled up beneath their feet and the twinkle of the moon shrinking down, not diffusing off of a million crystal mirrors. It was cold but not winter, forlorn but not forgotten, quiet but not soundproof as the whoops and hollers in the distance, the guttural grunts and the fucks and motherfuckers told them they hadn’t strayed far from the 518 area code.

Sarah, big black book in her hand, sank to her knees, sniffles and pleas of an unknown petition as both God and Jesus, they knew, were busy.

“It was real,” she said. “All of it. How did we get here?”

“I don’t know,” Ollie said. “My stomach hurts, I don’t want to fly that airline again.”

“It’s such a joke to you, so simple,” she said. “All of this is a joke to you. Does anything scare you? Is anything serious enough to you that it can’t be solved with a burp or a fart?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Ollie said. “You used to like that about me. ‘Oh, Ollie’s cool, he doesn’t give a fuck that I’m a mess, he likes me anyways, oh Ollie, not giving a fuck.’ We’ll hey, I’m Ollie, I don’t give a fuck.”

“You really think I’m a mess?”

“No more than anyone else,” Ollie said. “We’re all messes.”

“Do you wish we were back on the shit?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t know. But I do know I ain’t quittin’ for you any more. I can’t. Win or lose, it’s on me.”

“You think I’m going to go back?”

“I can’t kick ‘cause of you and have you go off on some crusade picking up stragglers. What did you think was going to happen to Juli?”

“I don’t even know what did happen to her. Where the fuck are we, Ollie? Was that really Jesus?”

“You’re much smarter than me, Sarah. You figure out what just happened, you do tell.”

They sat down and Ollie held her and she shook because she thought she could return the favor that God or whoever granted her in her choice to kick the habit over kick the bucket and she failed. Juli stayed at the Gallery, content to ride out the apocalypse on what Ollie knew now was the Titanic facing its never-coming dawn. Ollie couldn’t hold his contempt, at her, at them, but what truly had they done? Shown pretention? He wanted to destroy the Problematic for making the second floor weak, but could eviscerated patrons stomach hot peppers and one-hundred-and-fifty proof rum? They abandoned their Christ on the dancefloor, but did not Peter suffer the cock to crow thrice? Ollie didn’t hate the Gallery. In their own way, they were as much freaks as the people in the warehouse, their backs just couldn’t bear the label. Maybe Ollie should’ve handed Suzy on of his permanent markers.

“Art is dead, Ollie,” Sarah said. “It is, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. But I’m still gonna sing and write songs. What about you?”

“What’s the point?” Sarah said. “We’ll never make it. Art’s dead, it’s just faces now, and I have acne scars.”

“So we don’t blow. I just did it to get girls, and I’m already a success.” Sarah rubbed her head along his chin. They had ignored the whooping until it was joined by the crunch of leaves. They got up and Ollie pulled out his folding knife, which had not seen combat since the box war of September 3^rd at his warehouse job.

Light flashing, bobbling, swinging wild.

“Whoa, killer,” Deke said. “It’s just me and Harry and a couple other assholes. Where the fuck did you two come from?”

“Long story,” Ollie said. “Where are we, and maybe when are we?”

“Holy shit did they have some designer shit at the Gallery. I thought you both quit?”

“Long story.” Sara pointed up in the sky. “It was snowing like crazy, and now there’s no snow. Explain that.”

“It stopped snowing like an hour ago,” Deke said. “And this is dense tree cover. And I won’t tell nobody if y’all took some shit. I’m just proud you made it this far.” Deke shone his flashlight down. “Oh, you got the book. Cyra’ll be happy about that.”

“Cyra? The Poet?”

“Yeah. You guys were supposed to take her to the Gallery and you left her there to take that Juli chick. So Cyra found us. Don’t know how, but she did.”

Ollie got himself and Sarah up. They shared their experience with Deke, who seemed fairly nonplussed that Jesus Christ was their travel agent but had a story to tell himself.

“So me and Harry took the junkie OD to the hospital. And he was in and out – we damn near didn’t get him to the car. But we got pulled over, and I’m shitting bricks cause we never searched his pockets, and I got weed, and he’s fucking out in the back, I mean, out. He could’ve been capital-D dead. So the cop comes up to the window, and it seems like he’s got better shit to do, and if the junkie didn’t take one of them deep breaths like from when you’ve been holding your breath for a hot minute. His arms go out straight like Frankenstein and the cops pulls his gun and shoots the guy. Fifteen times. So then this whole big fucking thing, and we’re at the police station, and then they get a drug test says the guy’s got so much opiates in him, he was probably doing his last breath when he got shot.”

“So the guy’s dead?”

“Yup. And I got an appearance ticket for speeding. So okay, we got the pavilion all set, and someone broke into the junction box so we have power. I grabbed the amps out of the practice space, and we took extra special care of your bass, Sarah. So are you guys ready to do the show?”

Ollie and Sarah followed Deke to a snow-coated clearing with coffee clouds above and the rock solid blocks of dirt and boulders below. A pavilion peaked the distance and a string of brave souls gathered in clumps between them and their stage. There had to be near three hundred people and not a set of taillights, and not a stroller, thank God for it, and neither a terrestrial radio station nor an extraterrestrial cable show covering it, though the Radioradiox was there, zine in hand, throwing guitar picks and, oddly, gold artist medallions into the crowd. But they weren’t allowed. But word was they didn’t care.

“Is it just us playing, or do we have a headliner?” Ollie said. “Or an opener? I don’t even remember booking this shit.”

“We got two bands opening,” Deke said. Intentionally Wrong and Misinformed. I don’t know which one is better, they’re kinda’ both relevant, I guess.”

I heard Intentionally Wrong fired their drummer for pretending he was Napolean. Wrecked the whole seventh floor of the Sheridan Hotel, tried to conquer a Shriner’s Convention.”

“So how much are tickets?” Sarah asked.

Deke laughed. “No one’s got any money anymore,” he said. “So it’s a benefit.”

“Yeah, some pompous idiot said that art was dead. So it’s a benefit for the family.”

Ollie glanced at Sarah, who glanced away.

“Guys, what if art was dead?” Ollie asked. “Like it was really dead, or it was dying?”

Deke whipped out a joint and gave it the spark of life. “So what, tomorrow I’m not going to be able to write a tasty riff? Is that what you mean? Cause I got weed just for that.”

“But what if the world stopped caring about art, or creating, or any of it?”

“Ollie. My friend. My compadre. The world doesn’t give a shit about anything we do now anyway. You remember when we played in a fucking sewer tunnel because we wanted to play in the Fourt of July parade, and they told us ‘fuck no.’?”

“Yo Deke,” Harry said, nearly out of breath because he’d been eyeing a goth cheerleader.” Remember the record label? We burned CDs that night on acid, painted on them, they were fucking sick. And we went down the street the next day, no sleep, just handing them to people in exchange for pocket change and cigarettes?”

Deke turned to face Ollie. “Nobody cares what we do. We always talking about blowing up, but it’s talk. You’re supposed to wanna blow. Don’t mean it’s everything. Let them stop caring about art. Let them make it illegal, it’ll be outlaw country.”

They walked up to the pavilion and Ollie felt a weight him his that would’ve never found him if not for the wild journey of the past twenty-four hours. There it was. The spectacle only in this absolute dead-zero-time instance, it made the strictest, clearest sense.

A gentleman half-composed of fine tailoring and shredded American flag waved about a rolled-up parchment copy of the declaration of independence, a beach ball radio station giveaway in his other hand, in the air and struck with a declaration of grand-slam goodness. A spindly woman held a turn of the twentieth century camera at every prime angle at the flag-ripped man, recording his likeness for posterity, if in her memory only. A naked, muscular participant whacked his member against a steel pole as a feat of strength, and an even more muscular man in the stretched-thin black muscle shirt grabbed the tally-wacker by the scruff of the neck in a vain attempt to establish a decorum.

But it went deeper. He saw Jermaine and Erica stroking rainbow glitter into each other’s raven hair. Cory was drumming along a drum that’s like a conga but was from another country than a conga was, given to him by a man he’d made a friend of on the street corner, a busker with no home but a homeland he longed for and an inkling that Cory would be a fine kid to inherit a man’s tradition. Jerry Oles and Jerry Openal fought for the rights to Jerry O’, even though the whole world called Jerry Openal ‘Oppenheimer’ for his penchant of destroying shit.

They reached the back of the stage, to where the instruments and amps were placed in the precarious position that a resurgence of snowfall could short circuit half the municipal power supply. Ollie picked up Sarah’s bass, kissed it, and gave it to her. She slung the strap over her shoulder and felt the back of the amp for the chrome switch, which she flipped upon finding. Her bass came to life.

She played simple notes, single notes to a rhythm that changed mechanically, only to evolve in cybernetics to the beat of a vibrating heart, of a string that they say created existence, a string vibrating to the double helix of a strand of choice, Grade A DNA, encased in chromosomal chromatic tuning, which was what she set her mind to once she found her groove.

People gathered around, in particular Intentionally Wrong and Misinformed, who believed they were up first and, as such, the holders of the first soundcheck.

Sarah unstrapped and flipped off her bass amp. “I think I’m good,” she said.

Ollie and Sarah found a spot in front of the pavilion to watch the openers. A boulder, left alone for decorative effect, perfect for a young couple in love. The dusted the snow off and slid up against each other and felt each other’s heat for the first time that day; their real heat, their real hearts and the love that stood as one narrator of two journeys, so far apart that they clear went across the globe and kissed each other with the world between them stretched like a rubber band.

The bands played fast and fierce and the words, were they recognizable, would have preached technicolor revolution and anarchy and about sixty-million streaming services that could kiss the better part of a pimpled ass. But it was them and it was home. And in no time, they were up next.

More from Liam Sweeny…