Alone at night in a quiet corner of the Metropolitan Museum, a taxidermied deer, looking back over his left shoulder. From his antlers to his hooves he is coated by a thin but ornate layer of glass. In places the glass is semi-transparent and traces his contours; in others it is built up and crafted with bubbles and beads.
GLASS: One thing I noticed about you, and I can see you through a lot of different lenses—you don’t know how to project yourself onto the world.
DEER: I don’t know, could that be ‘cause you’re encasing me, you stiff bastard?!
GLASS: C’mon, that’s just an excuse. Look back, be honest. How many times did you get nudged aside from a big acorn just as your mouth closed in? And what’d you do about it? You’d slink off, saying, ‘I aimed too high. I go to my rightful place.’
DEER: I liked the smaller acorns. See, that’s the thing you don’t know. To me they tasted sweeter.
GLASS: Uh-huh. And did you like celibacy?
DEER: Why don’t you turn all those bulging lenses on yourself? Afraid?
GLASS: I’m trying to offer some constructive—
DEER: You look like a bag of tumors. If you were fur instead of clear you’d be a monster. But everyone sighs, ‘Exquisite’. I don’t get it, I really don’t. You’d be nothing without me, there’d be nothing for you to be! But no one can even see me, or just faintly! ‘Oh, there he is in there’. Standing on tiptoes, leaning in: ‘Oh there he is, I think I can make him out—the poor dead thing.’ While you’re ‘amaaazing’. No. Even if no one else in the world knows the truth, I do.
GLASS: Yeah? What is it?
DEER: The classic jawline, that’s me! Your…coat, your ‘bubbles’: he just took my liquid eye and fractalized it.
GLASS: Funny, no viewer or critic has ever seen it that way, and it’s not in any of the artist’s statements, unless I’ve missed something—and I haven’t.
DEER: You’re nothing but a death mask! Of me!
A guard has entered and is listening.
You’re the shadow. I’m the object. But nobody knows it!
GLASS: Then why don’t you do something about it?
DEER: If I was naked, you think I’d be in the Met? They’d hustle me out a back door and throw me in the garbage. The best I could ever hope for is Natural History, as background in some diorama.
They also imagine that everyone will discover just what cheap viagra http://ronaldgreenwaldmd.com/the-practice/ they purchased online. Of course, one should get some knowledge on the best supplements for cialis professional price erectile dysfunction. But when you can’t have enough of the good and credible online companies from where they can buy quality herbal levitra canada prescription. cheap cheap viagra This herbal oil is recommended for the treatment of untimely discharge).GLASS: So you got me to thank for something.
DEER: I’d rather be a head on a wall—at least I’d be seen, at least I’d be me!
GLASS: You got a serious interiority complex there, m’boy.
DEER: He took a full-blooded, full-bodied animal with a whole rich history and made it a skeleton. I’m someone else’s bones, not even my own!
The guard approaches. He’s middle-aged, stooped.
GUARD: I couldn’t help overhearing. Do you want me to bust you out of that glass cage? I’ll do it.
DEER and GLASS are silent.
There must be a fabrication seam. Or I’ll smash it if I have to.
Silence.
They caught you in one moment. And then somehow that one moment—that maybe you think isn’t even really you, or just a little part—somehow it’s become everything. It’s grown and hardened, and your fate is sealed! 40 hours a week, of showing up only in body…after 20 years, you can’t disown that.
But maybe it’s not too late. Tomorrow night, I’ll bring a crowbar. Tomorrow night, you come into your own.
The only thing I ask is—let me paint your portrait. In that moment of deciding whether to bolt. Any viewer can relate who’s ever been in the woods and tried to make a deer stay, tried to project his own harmlessness, saying with his face and outstretched hands, “Look, friend, I’m well-intentioned through and through, you can even smell it through my pores! Don’t run.”
But not with you looking like late Elvis. The fear. The moment of deciding. The even more fragile self that you surround. I can capture that. (He takes a folded form out of his breast pocket.) To enter in the contest.
I’ve been smothered for too long by…(looks around at the art) all this. This year I’m gonna force myself. (He rattles the form.) I think we could help each other.
I won’t lie—sudden exposure to the air…who knows? Mummies and unburied scrolls—some of them, poof. But what are the options? Are you happy in there? Is this all there is? If you’re happy, tell me and I’ll go away.
Silence. Curtain.