Bob Dylan an art thief? Say it isn't so!

 

 

 

Bob Dylan Accused of Painting Plagiarism!

 

 

Critics say new images are copied from famous photographs


By Matthew Perpetua

September 28, 2011 9:10 AM ET

A visitor to the Halycon Gallery in London views a painting by Bob Dylan.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images for Halcyon Gallery

 

The paintings in Bob Dylan's "The Asia Series," which are currently on display at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan, have come under fire for their resemblance to widely available pre-existing photographs. The series of paintings, which are said to part of a "visual journal" made by the singer during his travels through Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea, have been compared to famous photos by well-known photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Léon Busy.

"The most striking thing is that Dylan has not merely used a photograph to inspire a painting: he has taken the photographer’s shot composition and copied it exactly," wrote Dylan critic Michael Gray in a post on his blog, Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. "He’s replicated everything as closely as possible. That may be a (very self-enriching) game he’s playing with his followers, but it’s not a very imaginative approach to painting. It may not be plagiarism but it’s surely copying rather a lot."

Photos: The Artwork of Bob Dylan
While some fans in the Dylan-centric online community Expecting Rain have voiced concern about the songwriter's highly derivative visual art, others have argued that "quotation" is a part of the tradition of art. Nevertheless, it's a bit difficult to reconcile this notion with the fact that the work has been presented as coming from the rock legend's "firsthand" experiences abroad.

Photos: The Evolution of Bob Dylan
Dylan has, in his way, been forthcoming about using photographs in his paintings. In a statement in the exhibition's catalog, the singer says that he paints "mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work."
 

 

Yes. This cat still makes it work, whether he's singing in that voice that sounds like a cross between Louis Armstrong and a garburator, or painting things that, somehow-or-other, we think we've seen before.

In this exclusive glimpse inside the mind of a genius, here are a few original Dylan paintings which have been unfairly maligned as "derivative".

 

"Hotdog on paper plate" by Bob Dylan

 

 

 

"Portrait of the Hotdog as a Young Sausage" by Yousuf Karsh

 

 

 

"Car, Car" by Bob Dylan (based on the classic folk song "Car, Car" by Woody Guthrie)

 

 

"Leaving Manzanar: 1943" by Ansel Adams

 

(Note: not all art historians are in agreement on this issue. Some believe Dylan's "Car, Car" was plagiarized from the following image:)

 

 

 

"Ants on Car" by Anthill Adams

 

 

 

 

 

"Happyface" by Bob Dylan

 

 

 

 

From "Fat Celebrity Faces",  an exhibition for the Guggenheim Museum by Annie Leibovitz

 

 

 

"Another one-o'-them self-portrait things" by Bob Dylan

 

 

 

 

Van Gogh Action Figures (I just thought they were cool)

The Big Bang Theory: Season Six Coming Soon!

Hey! I thought he was a Jew!

The little mermaid (and her little brother)

 

 

 

Do you know the way to San Jose? Actually, this might be San Francisco (I wasn't there). Caitlin the mermaid has learned how to dive, without even being taught, but Ryan isn't so sure he's ready for his closeup.

 

They grow up, right out from under me. 

Woody Allen sings "September Song"

Y'know, if you asked me abaht it, I'd have to say this: it's, kind of like a lwoong lwoong time from May to Decembah, which is when my pahrents go to Flahhrida every yeahh and stay there for, like, six months or something, and I haven't gahht time for things like, y'know dating, when I nevah know whethah the gehrl is  going to "dig" me or not, not that I think "dig" is the proper expression for what you'd cwall, amorous attachment to someone that lasts more than, say, two minutes? (pause for laughs and bodily contortions). Speaking of two minutes, I was trying to figure out why my gehrl friend awll-wees calls me "minute man". (pause) I asked my analyst abahht it and he said it had something to do with an egg timer. That I should use one. Becwosse my egg timer lasts at least twice that lwoong,you know? But then she said to me, honey, your time is up and it hadn't even, you know, beeped yet. Am I supposed to be singing a swoong here? Sahrry. I haven't got time for that, y'know, "waiting game" they twoahhk about in the sahhng, because to be hahhnest with you if I wait much lwwoonger I'm going to be dead! (riotous laughter, applause) Being dead isn't exactly conducive to amorous attachment unless you're, y'know, one of "those" people, and I'm nahht, I sweahh! No matter how it looks, I've never been that desperate.  I know it's very stylish right now to be a zahhmbie and all that sort of thing, but most of my gehrl friends have been zahhmbies to begin with! The sahhng says something about the days dwindling down. Reminds me of how I always go over-budget on my pick-chas. You know, the cash dwindles down.  (scattered applause) By the way, if you wondah why I cwaall them "pick-chas", it's becwooahs my cinematic style hasn't really changed since, you know, Take the Money and Run, when wooa-di-ences really appreciated good cinematography and really hot gehrls. I'm kind of an old-fashioned guy, y'know, I don't use a computer, in fact even typewriters are too modern for me, so I use a unique system, maybe you've seen it, it's called a Gutenberg? Run by hamstah, and hand-cranked when the hamstah dies. Most of my budget goes into replacing all the hamstahs that die of ex-woahh-stion after printing out all those pages, and besides, the Humane Society has been getting after me for some reason. So I spend a lot of twoyyme hand-cranking, you know? It's given me carpal tunnel so I can't indulge in my favorite athletic activity. Guess I'll just have to take up synchronized swimming. Thank you very much, good night. 

Feel like I'm made out of Emmental

This is, or will be, my last word on September Song, I hope. It's now wearing a bit thin now after I was hoodwinked yesterday into thinking Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holliday recorded the exact same song with the exact same arrangement in the exact same vocal style.


Turns out both of them were by Sarah Vaughan, but someone(SOMEONE, not me!) had mislabelled one of the two videos and posted it as Holliday's rendition. There. Mystery solved. What embarrasses me is that I didn't get on to it right away: I did twig on the arrangement, which sounded so much the same that it puzzled me. But because I was expecting to hear two different vocal performances, that's what I heard. Sort of.

I was trying to find some strange versions of this song sung by comedians on variety shows like Ed Sullivan, just to prove that they could be Serious Artists If They Wanted To Be (which they couldn't). Rodney Dangerfield was one of them, I swear. He sang Fool on the Hill, I think, on  Hollywood Palace. I thought he also sang September Song, but I couldn't find any reference to it.


And I DO remember Milton Berle singing it, probably on the Muppet Show.  I found him offensive at the best of times, though the legend of his oversized penis is kind of entertaining. Once during an infamous dick-comparison in a bar somewhere, someone had the audacity to challenge him. His accomplice, probably a gangster in a zoot suit, whispered in his ear, "No problem, Miltie. Just take out enough to win."


I like the concept, if not the execution.

So I find this instead, and think: God, Sammy Davis. I used to buy his albums, incredibly, and marvelled then at how much he sounded like Frank Sinatra. He does, in his phrasing more than his vocal timbre which is actually warmer and smoother. Most singers try for beauty, and Sinatra didn't bother because he had Something Else. He appeared to think with his voice, and I don't know if anyone else has ever done that. (Some men think with their penis, but that's another story.)

A couple of things put me off Sammy Davis. He became more and more Sammy Davis as he got older, and disappeared into the sunken trough of Living Legend. There was all that Candy Man business, followed by the appalling Sweet Gingerbread Man ("Feel like I'm made out of peppermint, uh-huh, uh-huh"). In the mid-'80s I saw the beef-on-a-stick skewering of Davis on SCTV, in which Joe Flaherty nailed him as a histrionic white guy in an Afro spouting show-biz hyperbole. Then I saw Jim Carrey's grotesque impersonation of him, which many found offensive. Well, yes, it WAS offensive, but that was the whole point.

 

 

With these situations, I find it useful to go back and actually listen to the recording(s) in question. It surprises me how often I am - surprised. For one thing, this arrangement (the factor that ruins nearly everyone else's version with sickly suds and squeaky, cheesy violin glissandos) is much cooler, dominated by saxophone, with a Rat Pack sound that suits his performing style. During "the days dwindle down" bridge, the accompaniment takes on a doo-wop quality that reminds me of the Platters (who also recorded this, though for some reason I don't like their version).

I think the song got sort of sung-out in the '60s and you don't hear it any more, not much anyway. It has that godawful introduction ("when I was a young man," and blah-blah-blah, as if we cared) that in some versions literally takes up half the recording. When I found the reference to limping around toothless in the original, it took something away from the song's charm.

You don't expect Quasimodo to stand up there singing a love song.

Lady Day and Sarah: are they the same person? You decide

Lady Day and Sarah: just a coincidence? You decide

As so often happens, a hunt for a decent version of Kurt Weill's September Song turned into something quite else.

I kept playing different versions, 90% of them embedded in those godawful schmaltzy '60s string arrangements (and Frank Sinatra's brilliant version was thus ruined for me), then finally coming upon Billie Holliday. Wow, she aced it: undersinging it with that incomparable throw-away voice that made it sound easy. Here at last was something I could post! But I still had to listen to a few more, and when I heard Sarah Vaughan. . .

It too was magnificent, perhaps even sweeter, if a bit less subtle. But as I listened to it over and over again, I noticed something strange.

These two versions are done with exactly the same arrangement. I mean EXACTLY the same. The smoky slow-dancing tempo, the sax licks, the piano, the soulful guitar. It's as if someone lifted the vocal track out of one song and plunked it down in the other.

So fine, I guess this was a popular arrangement for September Song during that time - when was it, the '40s? My YouTube info is scant. But - identical? That's just so strange. Why would two titans of song decide to do it that way, when all these singers tried so hard not to sound like each other?

Anyway, this is valuable for an example of Billie Holliday before she degraded into a heap of irritating mannerisms. She still had a voice. Sarah Vaughan went on for far longer, not being a heroin addict, but was she ever so poignant again?

Why do I post this? Oh. . . cornball as it is, it's September, the kids are going back to school, and I at last understand that line "one hasn't got time for the waiting game". It's really one of my favorite songs, especially those two melancholy chords in the first line under "em-ber".

I have this memory - surely it must be wrong, but I don't think so - of watching TV eons ago, probably when I was about ten, and seeing Rodney Dangerfield on a variety show. Sometimes comedians stepped out of their normal roles then, with mixed results (and I swear I remember him singing The Fool on the Hill, and he shouldn't have). But I swear, and I may be wrong, I heard him speak-sing this one and it wrenched my heart. What did I know of Kurt Weill then? Well, plenty, since my histrionic sister had come back from Europe speaking German, waving copies of Goethe and singing little ditties from Mahagonny. Moon of Alabama (later recorded, incredibly, by The Doors) was practically my cradle song.

I can't find Rodney Dangerfield singing September Song, but I did find this odd twinning of two of the greatest voices ever, each slotted into the exact same arrangement. I still don't know why it happened that way, but it's intriguing to listen to.

We won't go into the melancholy I feel when I hear this, summer running through my fingers so fast it scares me, fall lifting up hopes that invariably fail. I wonder if I want to live out my 50s or if it might be better to make a graceful exit right now, before real deterioration sets in. I can't quite bring myself to dive in front of a bus, however (not today, anyway): I just hate suicide, too many people I loved have done it, not that I haven't thought about it a few hundred or a few thousand times.

One hasn't got time for the waiting game. But - for what?

 

 

 

CODA. As usual, I found more just as I gave up. I had this feeling the words were just a little different in the original version from the stage musical, Knickerbocker Holiday (and how a song like this ended up in such a jolly-sounding production, we'll never know).

 

Darker, stranger, and even with certan subtexts which may or may not have been intended.

 

 

When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I'd let the old Earth take a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in place of pearls
And as time came around, she came my way
As time came around, she came

But it's a long, long while from May to December
And the days grow short when you reach September
And the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
And I haven't got time for the waiting game
And the wine dwindles down to a precious brew
September, November
And these few vintage years I'd share with you
These vintage years I'd share with you

But it's a long, long while from May to December
And the days grow short when you reach September
And I have lost one tooth and I walk a little lame
And I haven't got time for the waiting game
And the days turn to gold as they grow few
September, November
And these few golden days I'd spend with you
These golden days I'd spend with you.

When you meet with the young men early in Spring
They court you in song and rhyme
They woo you with words and a clover ring
But if you examine the goods they bring
They have little to offer but the songs they sing
And a plentiful waste of time of day
A plentiful waste of time


But it's a long, long while from May to December
Will the clover ring last till you reach September
And I'm not quite equipped for the waiting game
But I have a little money and I have a little fame
And the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I'd spend with you
These precious days I'd spend with you



Hmmmmm. "Clover ring"? And who are these young men? The line "I've lost one tooth and I walk a little lame" does somewhat take away from the smooth romanticism we've come to associate with the song. It's a bit macabre, in fact: offputting. And those tossing curls (rhymed, of course, with pearls): the antiquated courtly language. And the reference to wine. As with Woody Allen's mother and the boiled chicken, hasn't this song been put through the deflavorizing machine?

You decide.

CODA TO THE CODA. Playing these two versions over once again, I'm embarrassed, because I honestly think they're the same recording. They are just TOO alike to be different renditions, different voices.  I think someone mislabeled one of the recordings. So we're left to wonder, who's Sarah and who's Lady Day? Or are both of them someone else?

Just listen to this!

I've always loved this song since I heard Walter Brennan sing it eons ago. I love how the crowd hoots and hollers their approval. I'm far from a country fan but once in a while there's an exception (like Marty Robbins singing "Devil Woman": but that's for another day).

This could be the start of something big

 

 

Just this. . . the merest hint of something I'm working on now. I haven't forgotten you, Harold! I've just been in mourning over the complete lack of interest I've had from publishers for my novel about your life, The Glass Character. But this experience far exceeds the success or failure of a mere book. It will live in Greatness.

Day of the Long Bangs

Gummi Baby: unliving or undead?

<sup>I admit I tend to harp on one subject until I can't stand it any more. It's part of my relentless nature and necessary for surviving all my self-generated difficulties.

But these! These things, these "reborns" (sometimes called "unborn" or even "unliving") got me onto the subject of "the undead", though not in the usual zombie sense of people staggering around with raggy clothes and painted faces.

I am drawn to this subject, and yet repelled. Yes, sometimes I wish I could hold a baby again. Hell, ALL the time! My grandchildren are my life now, I'd be bored and/or dead of despair by now without them, but my eldest granddaughter is turning NINE on October 31.

I was there in the delivery room when she was born, an amazing experience that can never be exceeded in power and wonder and love. But it will never happen again. In a sense, it was the very peak of my life, but of course I didn't know it.

My first novel had just been published, I was the thinnest I'd been in many years, and people kept asking me, "What have you been doing? You look ten years younger!"</sup>

<sup>Never mind the rest of the story, but let's say I'm lucky to be alive now, if very fat, and much, much older, most of my dreams sadly packed away.

But these babies! I can see how someone, stricken with grief, might latch on to one of them. They don't poop, never cry (though as the info below explains, some of them "coo" and make baby noises when you throw a switch somewhere). Some are heated and/or even appear to breathe and have a heartbeat.</sup>

^{The newest category, and one I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around, is "full-body silicone babies". These are molded out of that rubbery stuff you make sex toys out of (not that I'd know anything about THAT), not to mention fake breasts and full-size sex dolls. It's hard for me to get a bead on what the exact difference is between these and conventional vinyl Reborns. I know that the original reborns were baked in the oven, and I don't think you'd do that to silicone unless you wanted a big puddle. The artists who make the Reborns don't say much about the silicones (which I suspect are a new thing that's catching on now) except to be defensive and rather negative. I suppose they're poured into a mold of some sort, but it's hard for me to grasp how you'd make that mold. I have horrible visions of newborn babies being encased in plaster of Paris.}

<sup>One traditional Reborn site said that "silicones" have the squishy texture and cold feel of a Gummi Bear. The real plus however is that you don't have to look at that awful cloth body when you change them. I always hated that about dolls: it interfered with any feeling that I was handling a real baby. Plus you can bathe them and make their little arms wave around and splash in the water cuz they're so rubbery.

I HAVE to get off this, I know, but I'm stuck in it now and feel like I'm walking around in the Ninth Circle of Hell. So, more knowledge from Wikipedia:</sup>

Supplies

Starter kits are equipped with basic reborning necessities such as limbs, faces, heads, paint brushes, eyelashes, weighting pellets, genesis 'heat set' paints, cloth bodies, cable ties, nose drill bits, fake tears, thinning shears, cosmetic foam wedges, cotton dipped applicators, and glue. Genesis 'heat set' paints are an odorless, non-toxic paint that dries when the artist chooses by applying heat. The nose drill bits are used for creating and perfecting the nostrils of the doll. Acetone or a paint thinner medium is needed for removing the factory paint from the doll. Hair is an optional choice to add to a doll. Fine mohair, human hair, or wigs are usually used, but it is found in a variety of types. Rooting tools are utilized for this process and are available in numerous sizes 20,36,38, 40, and 42. The smaller the number the thicker the needle which will grab more hair and leave a bigger hole in the head of the doll. Eyes for a reborn doll are offered in a variety of brands and sizes.^[6]

 Process

Vinyl doll kit shown side by side (unpainted parts & painted "reborn" doll). The doll has a "chest/belly plate".

The technique of reborning a play doll typically involves a number of steps. To begin the doll is taken apart and factory paint is removed. Then a blue color wash may be applied to the inside of each vinyl part to give the appearance of realistic baby skin undertones. For dolls with an awake appearance eyes must be replaced.

The outer layer of the vinyl doll is given its skin tone by adding dozens of layers of flesh colored paint. If heat set paints are used, the doll parts must be heat set by baking them inside an oven or by using a heatgun after each layer of paint is applied. Lighter skin tone dolls can take 15 to 30 layers. The effects of the blue color wash combined with the outside layers of paint creates the appearance of veins, and gives the doll its newborn mottled look.

Manicured nails and opening of the nose holes are other details that are added during this process. The next step is to apply hair. The hair can either done in one of two ways; wigging or microrooting. When microrooting, hair is added strand by strand. This can take up to 30 or more hours per head. Once the hair is finished, the original vinyl body is weighted with a soft stuffed body filled with pellets. The weight corresponds with its age to achieve a real effect.

Various additions also can be added to give the doll an even more life like appearance. Reborns heads are often weighted, so that owners have to support the head like one would a real newborn. Purchasers can have magnets attached inside the mouth or head for attaching a pacifier or hair bows. Electronic devices that mimic a heart beat, or make the chest rise and fall to simulate breathing are common. Reborns can come with an umbilical cord, baby fat, heat packs to make the reborn warm to the touch, or voice boxes that mimic infant sounds. For preemie dolls, they may come in incubators with a breathing apparatus attached to their nose.

(Emphasis mine.) If you found one of these lying in a crib, motionless, not breathing (unless it had one of those pump thingies installed inside it), wouldn't you think you had a dead baby on your hands? If this thing is really as rubbery as they say it is, wouldn't picking it up be like scooping up a giant jellyfish?

I think technology has gone too far, both in filling gaping needs with inanimate objects, and in preventing those needs from really being filled because there are such satisfying and manageable substitutes available on eBay. Ones you can buy and sell, not bother to feed or change, and toss in the closet when you get tired of them.

What mother was ever so richly blessed?

 

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

The Resurrection of Peter

It wasn’t much of a day. She wasn’t even sure it was a day at all, since they had really cancelled days quite a long time ago and made everything One. Or was it that they had cancelled Night?

 Which means, you walk around in a half-state, sometimes jokingly known as Twilight. Twilight was the stuff of owls and demons and things that didn’t even really exist any more. But, she thought to herself, do any of us really exist any more?

 They all made it seem as if it were “just her”, and that everyone else was normal. This was all part of the scheme, the huge heartwrenching scheme to take her life away. It was illustrated nearly every day now when she ran into the people she knew.

 They looked dissimilar, but all the same, with a strange hazy quality. Yet they laughed and were jolly in a way they never seemed to be before, as if they had discovered an amazing new Secret.

  

“Emma. Hi, Emma! Haven’t seen you in a long time!” Gretel was wearing the strangest outfit, bright paisley like she’d never worn, a sort of muumuu, with a straw tote bag.

“Hi, Gretel. I think.”

“Oh, it’s me all right. This is just my New Look.”

It’s hardly a look at all, thought Emma, wondering whatever happened to the Old Look, and what made her change it.

“You look the same,” Gretel said in a flat tone. Looking the same wasn’t quite “it”, she supposed.

“Haven’t gotten my instructions in the mail yet,” Emma said, trying to be ironic.

“Oh, that’s so funny! You’re such a funny person! Well, goodbye then!”

“Wait, Gretel. I need to ask you something.”

 “What is it now?” She was getting testy already.

“You know, Peter. . . “

“Yes, Peter.” They had both known Peter. His sudden death had been a wrench, for both of them she thought, but now she wasn’t so sure.

 “What about Peter?”

“Ever since he passed, you know. . . “

“Passed?” She began to titter. “Was he in school or something?”

“No! Don’t you remember? When he. . .”

 “What, when he went on vacation?”

The ultimate vacation, Emma thought.

“Look, I mean when he died.”

“Died?”

“Died.”

“Died?”

“For God’s sake, Gretel! You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, that.” She fumbled around in her straw bag for a minute. “I thought you’d heard about it.”

“Heard what?”

“He’s back alive again.”

Stunned silence. A sick feeling gathered in her stomach.

“Back alive again?”

“Of course. Haven’t you seen him? He’s walking around.”

“How, by remote control?” Her sarcasm seemed to be flying over Greta’s pointed little head.

“Sort of, but it’s better than that. He can go under his own steam by now.”

“But he’s dead!”

“Sort of. But not really. You can get renewed now, sort of like a library book. You must know that by now."

She stood there stunned, things whirling around, as Gretel just walked away without even saying goodbye.

She started to comprehend then why everything was different, why she was sort of seeing through some people, mostly really old people, but some of them children. They had a strange sort of translucent quality, but they were still walking around.

And they always seemed happy. Emma thought about Bible study a million years ago, before the Bible was universally banned, and how Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. She had always wondered if Lazarus really wanted to be raised, his body half-rotted. Would he have a new body, somehow, or walk around  like that forever?

 

But then that meant she could find Peter!

Peter wasn’t her lover, never had been, but he had been there during the blackest, the most despairing time in her life. He would just show up at Starbucks with his baseball cap and his smile, cheerful as Bugs Bunny. He was in worse shape than she was, but they joked about it, guffawed about how awful life was.

“I heard about a woman who committed suicide. But before she committed suicide she got out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned her whole house top to bottom so it was absolutely spotless. Then she hung herself.” They had both howled with laughter.

Then they just lost touch. Like a sick cat, he had crawled under the house somewhere. She had known he was deteriorating; one conversation they had wasn’t a conversation at all, but a monologue on her part. He’d start to say something, then dry up after a couple of words and look at her in bafflement.

What bothered her was the fact that it didn’t bother him.

She kept sending him emails long after she suspected he had passed (and NOT “in school”!). She couldn’t help it. She’d think she saw him in a crowd. But it wasn’t him. Because the emails didn’t bounce back to her, she assumed they were hitting the target and he was just too busy to reply (knowing full well he had kicked the bucket long ago).

Back alive again. Strange things had been happening lately. She had mentioned her grandfather to a friend of hers, how difficult it had been for him to let go.

“Is he still dead?” the friend asked.

 h, maybe they meant in her mind, in her memory! But somehow she didn’t think so. Death was the only thing more sure than birth. Wasn’t it?

Would she see Peter again? A wild stab of hope made her heart beat faster.

She became aware of how the light went right through people, and began to count them. It was an awful lot. She wondered just what had happened to everyone. Back alive again? Is he still dead? Did you will this, wish it, or did someone impose it on you like poor Lazarus wrapped in his rotten gravecloths?

It was too much to hope for, but in her next turn of mind, when she did not pass Go but began in the middle again, she saw him. She saw a ball cap bouncing up and down the street first, then a smile.

Then they were sitting in Starbucks, but she noticed he was sitting two inches above the chair. He didn’t seem to really drink the coffee, but the eyes were the same.

 They could always be blunt and honest with each other, so Emma waded right into it.

“So, Peter. I hear you’re back alive again.”

“It would seem to be so.”

“How does that happen?”

“I don’t know that, any more than cells know how to multiply or the earth knows how to turn.”

“But is it. . . beyond your will or something?”

"This is a place beyond will."

"Her head was whirling. She hated the idea of not being able to die. Death was one of the things she looked forward to the most.

“Peter, I’m sorry, but it sounds as if you’re a fucking zombie or something. The Undead.”

“Hey, I like that! Undead, but not really alive.”

“Look, Peter, there are only TWO states: dead and alive! Which one are you?”

“No. There is the dream state. There is the hypnotic state. There is the hypnogogic state. There is the catatonic state. There is the trance state. There is the transcendent state. There is the resurrected state. I could go on and on.”

“But those are only in your mind, Peter.”

“Tell me this.” He leaned forward and looked at her with his old intensity, and for one moment she really believed this was Peter. “If I were just a body, I mean lying over there with my heart beating but no consciousness, would that be ‘me’?”

“I don’t. . . “

“So what is it that makes me me?”

“I don’t know, your brain?”

“The brain is just half a pound of juice with some wires running through it. Dissect it, and you see some curls and buds and bulges like normal internal organs. There’s nothing there.”

“So where. . . “

“Ah. You’re about to ask me where Consciousness resides.”

“I guess so. Peter, why aren’t you drinking your coffee?”

"I've evolved beyond coffee, I guess." He chuckled to himself.

“You’re not alive. Get away from me! You’re not really Peter. Are you a ghost?”

"Beyond ghost. We've been refined. We don't have to go around haunting old buildings and Civil War battle sites any more."

“But who DOES this? It has to come from somewhere!”

“Haven’t you noticed you don’t have any privacy any more?”

“Oh, Jesus, Peter.”

 “Haven’t you noticed all the electronic jims and jams that everyone seems to carry now?”

“Oh, so you’re saying your Smart Phone turned you into a ghost.”

“Everything is changed, changed utterly.”

“So what if it all just shuts down, the power grid and that?”

“Yes! Smart girl. THAT is what it is all about.”

“What?” 

"Bodies that need no sustenance when the Time comes. That time when the whole ecosystem collapses, gives way in a great Biblical flood and rips apart the rest of the world with an all-consuming fire."

“You’re scaring me.”

 “Haven’t you ever worried about it?"

“Of course. But I never knew that. . . “

“Now we can live under any conditions.”

“BUT YOU AREN’T REALLY ALIVE! You died of AIDS two years ago!”

 “But I’m not really dead.” He grinned, looking as cheerful as when he told me the suicide joke.

“You must be dead, Peter. You MUST be.”

 “No, my good friend.” He lifted his mug and pretended to drink from it. “I’m back alive again.”