Constance Mallinson
Element Magazine
Winter, 1986i'd like to save you the trouble of the journey
Paintings by Constance Mallinson
I AM IN THE ROOM where the books are kept. Behind me out the door is my dejected and abandoned work which I haven't touched for six months because I've been making money painting pulp. Expensive, vacuous pulp. I need the money. I thought this project would save my ass this year. The project is a collaborative mural, a nonexistent Mediterranean port town, pictorially assembled form several travel brochures and National Geographics. Small fishing boats and pleasure crafts loll in tranquil, shimmering water which reflects the picturesque town and ancient hills under a turbulent, corpulent sky. At the mouth of the harbor, a cruise ship lies in wait for errant shoppers or debauchers detained by enthusiasm before it moves on to the next port of a call. I am leafing through an old Italian-English dictionary to find Italian words to use as names for the little boats. In this halcyonic port, this ideal romance, I arrange for references to the more sobering arts of life to bob on the bows of quaint boats. The only way I can get my name, any snippet of my being into this work, is to make certain that the young professionals who will eat and drink in the radiant glow of this mural, never suspect an indictment in Italian of them, their single language (American is so big), and their single minded (united we stand) image of the world poised for their pleasure (nationalist tourist).
To my earnest fingers the decaying bilingual dictionary feels like depth (intensity and profundity) and satisfies me like a substitute lineage from my untended work. I'm onto something, a glimmer of discovery. From the English use of the French 'ennui' is the Italian word 'noia', a direct hit. Noia. It reads tediousness, weariness, trouble: I fear I am giving you some trouble. I fear I am in your way. I got tired o the classics...to be a tease in one's committed little way. Allow me to hire you a coach, a cruise ship of delusions, dejections and deep regret. May I offer you a form of memory so when nostalgia fills you and tips your hand to the extreme situation you may recognize that exotic stimuli can be only the temporary height of your desire. May I save you the trouble of the journey.
AT THIS MAKESHIFT TABLE, a scrap of double A plywood over a TV tray, I listen to Walter Lab spout English translations from his musty bilingual mausoleum. My life is a collage of crises, all clamoring for immediate attention. My show at Attack opens Friday, I have to rent furniture for it, my car battery was stolen again, I've only half moved out of my old studio, I'm couch-hopping without a car, and I've already bought tickets for a trip to Hawaii financed with, as yet, unsold art work. So this is crisis management time, and in times of crisis I write to siphon off tension, vicarious paper vacations. Exotic vignettes that will do in a pinch to soothe frayed nerves. (You will have to bear with me, I lost the following story in the latest move, but I will try to render a copy of it as close as I van to the real thing). The psyche sometimes precipitates peculiar reactions to extreme crises; its rather novel unconscious methods attempting to reestablish some semblance of stasis. Here I was, submerged one evening in that expected post partum melancholy artists endure after their own openings and the following morning I was blind. I opened my eyes wider and cried rivulets in utter darkness. I tried to rationalize it for a long time. My doctor later said it was hysterical blindness, nothing worse that a nervous breakdown. Valium, bed rest, friendly care - everything would be okay in a few days. Take it easy. What else could I do? I didn't tell him. I was determined to go. I already packed, I'd memorized the map of Oahu, I had every image of every travel brochure painted across my mind. Besides, I couldn't get a refund. Why not blind? No visual crassness, no gaudy souvenirs. I was going over to uncover the real Hawaii. And I had a friend there who was waiting for me. Something awkwardly, Cam shuffled me and my bag into the car.
The drive to the airport was long without the normal visual diversions. The conversation seemed to float and dissipate in the darkness. When the terminal police saw that I was truly blind they let Cam park in the taxi zone until I boarded the jet. I waved goodbye in his general direction and took the stewardess's hand, cold and slender. Her touch, her voice. An ad for Lufthansa provided me with a face. Such seductive eyes! She sat me next to a large woman (she had a very low alto pitch) who talked incessantly, which for the first time n my life was fine. I missed little being blind. The ersatz movie was probably better anyway pared down to the sound track over the head phones. And beneath the plane was that easily imaginable sublimely spatial expanse of clouds and light, and six hours of solid ocean. I imagined Hawaii stretched before me, without depth, the literal purity of the slick surface of the brochures. Green dye palms, the blue dye sky: generic models. Benday Dot titilation, the visual lubrication greasing desires. This grotesquely flattened commercial image was serving me faithfully as a seeing eye dog. I would be sad to see it disintegrate against the upcoming reality. Ukuleles strummed over the loud speaker muffled by the excited voices of the other tourists as we left the plane. A warm hand helped me down the ramp and a hired greeter threw a lai around my neck. Wonderful! Ron later told me that they had probably mistaken me for a member of a tour group. Normally they just ignored you.
Looking out and all around me I recall the death of Kings and Presidents. The tragic suffering of an entire era, or the death of a single heroine or hero usually at the hands of a king or some president. Untimely death always seems to end the high ambition of life in which there is the predominance of adventure: different than the sufferings and despair of some spoiled young executive's confrontation with the song of life.
Mostly we are limited by the present, myopically optimistic and nervous. To set an example for perceiving a location different than our own, I will take you to a place, in a nostalgic poem. If we think strictly of perception we must acknowledge that it shifts. If we go to another location, perception will have another format. When we get there what we take for granted may not apply. We may assume that we share the perception that our most extreme states of being furnish a common experience and as such a similarity of choice: morality based on equanimity. Perhaps there is sameness of mind under stress - therefore I stand up for what I believe. There may be truth to this, yet since you work so hard for your nostalgia, I want you to be acquainted with the possibility of peripety if you go there. As an example, my memory visits my friend from Paradise, PuSoa, who was a great leader and example to his people, loved with devotion by all, who having broken wind at a public gathering, in his shame climbed a coconut palm and sat down on the sharp-pointed hard flower spathe, which pierced his fundament and killed him. A bizarre case of making the punishment fit the crime.
Ron Saito was already there to take me to his parent's house. After only a day at his home his accent was thicker, a chipped mixture of island pidgin and his father's University English. I hadn't forewarned him about the blindness. When I assured him it was temporary, stress related, his concern turned instead to bewilderment. He had prepared a full itinerary. First, to the Al Harington Show, a variety review ending with a large paper mache volcano belching a chemical flood, then the Polynesian Cultural Center, skin diving in the coral, surfing the Banzai Pipeline, King Kamehameha's palace, Pearl Harbor Memorial – places he hadn't been, things he hadn't done since he was a kid. I was his first tourist since Alexis Smith had dropped b in 1981, and she had been too busy lecturing. Ron wanted me to see the fun Hawaii. I had him pick out a raunchy postcard and write a short paragraph about fondling native girls which I sent to Walter Lab as a joke. Ron flushed his itinerary down the toilet and we left.
While hard at work on the mural with my collaborators, a registered letter comes for me. It's Hawaii. In the envelope is a postcard from David French. David is in Hawaii? He is not in Hawaii. I know he is working hard on a show and plans a trip afterward, but who knows, I've been isolated with this project. Wait. He hasn't had the show yet. The card depicts a white beach with a half naked indigenous woman standing waist deep in tranquil water. On the other side his writing describes, upon arriving, being kissed and greeted, rubbed with warm oil and pulled laughingly onto the sand under huge banana leaves. This is some ultimate male fantasy. the heavy scent of flower and roasting pig, my own breast heaves with jealousy and despair. I don't think I even got an announcement for his show. This has got to be an untrue postcard. What cruelty. I am drunk with insecurity and the inability to decipher or test the deformity of my own reality. Has David achieved his Hawaii against my seemingly endless drudgery? I am certain this must be his idea of funny, still I am swooned by longing for the potential of my own Hawaii. I must sit down but there is no chair. Falling backward I see the little boats and the great billowing sky. Noia. Sneering, I spit the word at the beach on the card just before I crack my head on the cement floor of our production facility. There is no knowing untruth at a distance.
We walked out of the air-conditioned terminal drenched in sweat from the humidity. The breeze would whip up, cool down, die out and the process would repeat. The freeway was a short ride through Honolulu, past the smell of pineapple upside down cake (the pineapple cannery) blended only with oily diesel fumes, then through Waikiki's noise. I asked him to pint out when we would pass the Hilton Hawaii's mural because I remembered it vividly, it seemed like the best building to take a photograph of. He laughed. He said the picture I described was old. The murals were still there, ugly as hell, and luckily there was no vantage point any longer from which to see them, obscured by the dense growth of new condominiums. In the pamphlet the competitor's hotels had obviously been airbrushed out. What could one see was a solid uninterrupted mile of concrete and window, an impressive skyline that kept Waikiki in the shade. And those brochure hula girls, added, are never Hawaiian. You could only find them in the archives of the Tahitian Chamber of Commerce. He helped me out of the car at his house and pointed me toward Diamond Head. "We have the best view of the city, " he said. I could hear a low roar in the background, a combination of the surf and the afternoon traffic. I could feel the afternoon sun on my face.
I can see David hiking up a volcano, squeezing the juice of a Passion Fruit and rubbing it over her bare breasted, brown chested body. I can imagine the taste and feel of her far-away soothing smile. Mere pleasure and delight are usually not extreme states. Yet, even the simple introduction of these themes into my condition of marathon labor provides the exception. Affected as I am, an extreme state of disillusionment channeled my general class indignation into full resentment toward the audience for this mural. I am infected by the large prettiness I am making for their terms. Temporarily I am no different than them. What have I gained? Money! But more influential is the accumulation of a list of the aggregate headings under "being" which we all must confront, which we all use daily in our conversations, but which now, I , like them, cannot put into my work. Like them, I am immersed in work which does not correspond to the full concept of life. The slovenly prigs. Eating their charming lunch, talking about their problems and looking at my labor as devoid as their labor. Only at an intimate table will they confirm to one another that what they share at work is otherwise living and devouring within the range on this list. This list I ceremoniously refer to as "The Twelve D's". Recite them.
1. Dread
2. Depth (intensity and profundity)
3. Disillusionment
4. Despair (Depression, despondence, dejection)
5. Derangement (delusions, dreams, drunkenness, drugs)
6. Debauchery
7. Degradation ( of others)
8. Destruction (including suicide and murder)
9. Devotion ( love)
10. Defiance
11. Dionysian joy (associated with music)
12. Dionysian abandon ( associated with dancing)
They will have their lunch and they will have their talk and they will drift off (perhaps for the dramatic effect) staring slightly out of focus at the idealistic romance of the mural, imagining themselves farther up the ladder, resting in Paradise, sunbathing there and attempting to prove that you really can get laid at Club Med. But this musing will reinforce each one's professional caution because the competition is fierce. When they return to the office they will know that they had a conversation with a friend and that the Twelve D's are troublesome. When they go home they will have escaped realizing that the Twelve D's are the affluent part of life, because what they desire is the mural. They will, almost all of them, never find ways of processing the Twelve D's by realizing them in their work. Hawaii is their only goal. For that, I stroll to their table from out of my dementedness, lean palms down onto its surface, gather my temporary sameness into big green lugy and spit it onto their plate.
The next few days were relaxing. Every morning I would hear the chorus of myna birds and the strange twitterings of mejiros. The smell fo plumeria blossoms hung on the air, warm sunshine always on the bedsheet, bacon and eggs. With my infirmity, Ron decided that we should avoid Hawaii. We waded in the warm waters of the west side, away from the tourists, with Mark and Ward, two of Ron's high school friends. We spent evenings beating out rhythms on synthesizers and drums, eating homemade poi, leaf wrapped baked ono and drinking cokes. My three friends recounted memories of high school gangs, summer freedom and island politics. Oahu, yes, but this was not Hawaii.
Hawaii, they explained, is essentially comprised of tourists. It is the place tourists go to be emptied of drudgery. The hotel beaches, the hotels, the organized sightseeing – that is Hawaii. Tourist are the landscape. They see each other parading around in swim wear and think Hawaii is so casual. But Hawaiians would never do that. Shirt and shorts always. Hawaiians make Hawaii as much like the brochures as they can. They rake the beaches, sprinkle seashells on the sand, heighten the image of Paradise. The tourists rarely leave the air-conditioned buses, watching, through the guide's commentary, the two dimensional screen of the bus windows. At the new Kahaluu Park, cassette recorders are given out which identify all the flora and determine the spots where the best snapshots can be taken. Everything is in order, everything is in its place reaffirming expectations. Troubles are made negligable. Paradise. Tourists in return, besides providing the basis of economy, reify Hawaii as a desirable home to Hawaiians. Because he has stayed in a picturebook, when the tourist leaves Hawaii his kinesthetic haptic memory will activate and fill each commercial image as if it were his own. These so easily triggered responses will help spread the yearning for Paradise even faster. They become the living testimony of tourism's successful fulfillment of expectation. Paradise is an efficient mechanism. " And we intend to make your stay here equally as pleasant, " Ron said.
My extreme state caused by my grotesquely narrow range of experience during the last several months is the product of swelling resistance to how I've been spending my time. David's little joke with the postcard has allowed me the realization of my own need to justify contradictions. I wish I could just make pretty pictures. To get the money, you make what they want. What they want is shallow: in this case a relocation fantasy. When one works very hard at leaving out the width, breadth and depth of a thing the work becomes drudgery. Drudgery incites resentment. I became like them because I am doing work that I do not value beyond its dollar significance. I censor myself to make a generic product. The work takes many months. It's been a long and rarely exciting process. This unsatisfying nature of the image. Subsequently I begin to develop my own relocation fantasy. Perception then appears as a mode of being. Pretty simple. I am making Hawaii for them with no Hawaii of my own. Naming the boats is a simple act of subversion, an habitual obsession common to my procedure inmost situations. I know it won't change their Hawaii one bit. I've managed some community with my audience, with the laymen. Just like the mural audience I've been trying to stay conscious while waiting for my own Hawaii. Just marking time getting paid to make a painting for Italians, who if they see it will probably be on vacation.
