Meg Odgerel-Bolormaa (hyperkinetic) wrote in whatprice, @ 2009-06-01 21:40:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | mathias von rothstein (npc), meg odgerel -bolormaa (npc) |
On Pornography, Art and the Nature of Truth
Who: Saranchimeg Odgerel-Bolormaa and Mathias von Rothstein
When: Saturday 30 May, early evening
Where: a coffee house in Islington
What: Meg and Mathias discuss many a sundry thing.
Rating: PG
He had merely been seeking out a cup of coffee. Muggles and the way they went about their day was so rapid and chaotic that it left Mathias wishing for nothing but a quiet place to sit and think over coffee. He had felt naked all day, forced to leave his robes at home and venture out in only trousers, shirt and jumper. Mathias rather disapproved of this level of undress but he had seen quickly that muggles must have higher body temperatures than wizards. With the level of nudity they run about in it was the only logical conclusion to Mathias.
The coffee shop was warm inside, smelling of the raw grounds and cream. It was relaxing, even with his constant awareness of his state of undress. After ordering Mathias looked over the place. There were tables with chairs, but there were also worn, comfortable looking couches and armchairs in clusters on one side of the space. He'd chosen the deep olive coloured armchair at the back of the shop to sit and watch the people. He'd not expect such an influx of people this late in the evening. How many people drank coffee at this hour? Mathias reminded himself these were the English and it was likely the less caffienated tea they were seeking. People settled in as if it were a comfortable routine and he watched them curiously. Having picked up a book which was either forgotten earlier or which belonged to the shop itself, Mathias alternated between scanning the lines of what seemed to be a tawdry love story and peering over the top of the pages as some sort of metal equipment was set up. He hoped vaguely that there wasn't going to be violence. Who knew what muggles did with long, metal rods these days? Once they fought with spears of metal or wood in colosseums. Perhaps this is where they had taken up such sport now that there were no colosseums left?
Meg didn't walk so much as she bounded. She had a lightness to her step that would have been darling on a seven year old, but generally just made her look over-excited to get wherever she needed to go. It did take skill to achieve the effect with a full cup of tea on a saucer and what looked almost like a souffle in the other. Despite her sine-wave motion, they looked to be staying perfectly still.
She dropped into one of the olive chairs in the back and set down her saucer and plate on the small pedestal table between her chair and the next. Bracelets of varying colours, textures, and sound-making quality went nearly halfway up her forearm as she worked on plucking out both ear buds and turning off her iPod. There was, after all, going to be a show.
Meg pulled on her well-done-but-handmade clothes and looked at the chairs to her right and left.
Mathias found him staring at the young lady who very well could have been a friend of Luna's had he not been convinced she was a muggle. She jangled and clanged as she moved and he had been quite convinced she would end up with her steaming beverage all over herself, though he found his prediction to be quite incorrect. He knew he was staring. He knew it was rude. He simply could not cease to be mesmerised by the young woman with her bracelets and her bouncing and her tea. Mathias was also quite curious about the things she had stuck in her ears. Did they cancel out noise? Were they feeding knowledge directly into her brain? Perhaps they were meant to paralyse parasites which had nested inside her skull?
When the woman's eyes caught Mathias' he gave her a polite nod and attempted to appear to be reading the trashy romance novel once more. He hid his slight blush at being found rudely staring at her behind the pages of the volume.
"I'm much more interesting than that trash novel," Meg reasoned, unhindered by the stare at all. She bent her head so she could read the front of it, noticed the picture, and righted herself.
"Incest?"
Mathias would have squeaked if he were a lesser man, or perhaps merely a more vocal one. He kept the book up simply to have something with which to hide his blush until it faded. He made a show of flipping through the pages. "I am unsure," he said with a thick, German accent which was peppered with a bit of generic English inflection. "I have yet to read enough to find out. It is quite possible, however, that you may be correct."
"The woman and man on the cover look fairly similar. Could be a mistake on the artist's part but really? Trash novels? They'll write anything to sell and some people enjoy that. I mean, it's rule 34 really isn't it? Just in paperback form," Meg remarked as she picked up her tea cup and blew over the top of it.
"Rule thirty-four?" He had, quite clearly, not concept of what she was speaking. There were rules? For romance novels? Was the first that all handymen and plumbers were devastatingly attractive and fellatio must be performed upon them at once lest they lose their zeal and be left unable to perform their more mundane duties?
"Porn exists for any conceivable subject. And by conceivable, I mean stretching the imagination to if not it's breaking point, a severe sprain-ing point. Like, toaster porn. What is that? Stick your lever into my slot?" Meg rolled her eyes. People were weird and sometimes, simply for the sake of being weird.
She sipped her tea delicately in the asian fashion and held onto it, letting it warm both of her hands.
Mathias blinked at her. This woman was quite blunt even where rather improper subjects were concerned, wasn't she? He resisted the urge to curl in upon himself a bit in recoil. "Incest is number thirty-four then?" It was the safest thing he could possibly think to say that would not, hopefully, cause her to speak even more frankly and at more length on the topic.
"Oh no. It's part of it. I mean, siblings is a concept and by rule 34, there musts be pornography of it. And there is your example of it. Maybe."
Meg held out a hand for the book as she used the other to set the teacup down. "May I?"
"Of course." His blush had faded so Mathias handed the book over without complaint. He still had no idea what that woman was on about but he thought it better to merely not question her further on the matter.
Meg read fast- her eyes skipped over the page and her fingers turned a few pages in the dead center of the book.
"Oh, never mind. Just your average romance. Boy meets girl, girl is fluttery, boy is dangerous, conflict, kiss, the end." She set the book on the table.
"This show will prove to be much more interesting and surprising, just watch," Meg added, nodding her head. "Are you performing tonight?"
"Performing?" He blinked again. "No. My presence here is mere coincidence. What sort of show is occurring?" Mathias was back to thinking about gladiator games, though the venue was awfully small for such sport. Perhaps they would use beasts as substitutes. Small beasts. Such as chickens or piglets. Muggles were cruel enough and wasteful enough to do so, Mathias thought.
"Spoken word. You know, poetry," she beamed, the gestured over to the stage. "In like, ten minutes. I try and come every week. It's not always right good but it's expressive and it's nice to see people take an interest in baring their mind and soul for art. Very brave," she nodded voraciously as started digging in her bag for the fork she brought.
"As opposed to unspoken words? Such as words one only reads? Or perhaps words thought but not expressed?" His tone was quite serious and curious. What was the point of poetry if not to speak it aloud? Such things were not meant to lay silently on a page. The origins of poetry involved performance. Were muggles not aware of this fact?
"Hmmm," Meg thought, trying to imagine how to explain it to a non-native. Maybe they didn't have this sort of thing in Germany; she knew they didn't have it in Mongolia.
"It's a catch all description, really- not a... comparative term. Most of the time here, at least, it's poetry. But some people read essays, or fiction they've written or rap without a beat. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's political, sometimes it's painful. That help?" she asked, looking at him hopefully.
He thought on her words, brows knitting together a bit as he did. Ultimately, it explained what people did during it, but it wasn't precisely a performance then, was it? This informal setting, the lack of audience, speaking only to one's peers if they could be considered as much. "It is a form of creative workshop, perhaps? Or a group therapy?" Honestly, it sounded most like the latter but he did not want to presume and so Mathias left that as the second option.
Meg frowned, finding her own words to be failing him. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to explain it differently than I did. I guess... um. It's not a workshop cause they don't write it here? And if it's group therapy, then I guess you could classify any performance on a stage as such. Actors working out their issues through their characters, musicians through their lyrics, writers through their work. Um. I'm really sorry," she apologised again and looked genuinely distressed into her tea cup.
"Maybe it's not so important to define it. Or, maybe you just need to see it," Meg added experimentally, not sure if that was an answer.
She looked flustered, in a way. Or perhaps scattered. It was as if the girl could not connect one to two because eight kept pushing itself in the way. Mathias felt bad for his part in that, though he still did not understand the point of it all. "My apologies if my lack of comprehension has frustrated you. I do not quite understand the point of it as you describe, but that is my own failing, not your own."
"Asking what the point of art is is kind of... fluster-inducing," she agreed. Then she shrugged sympathetically. "But you still have... five minutes to run away before you're subjected to it."
"You had not stipulated it was art," he pointed out quietly. Mathias glanced at the door when she mentioned running away. He was strongly considering escape and weighing it against his curiosity.
"I'm sure I did..." Meg said, eyebrows knitting in thought. She used the fork and finally poked at the chocolate soufflé, taking a bite and mulling it over as the chocolate dissolved. Then she shrugged.
"Well, it is, of a sort."
He quite clearly remembered her calling it poetry, not art, but his memory could easily be mistaken given how confused he was over it all. "How is it art of a sort? Something is either art or is not. I do not believe there is such a thing as a grey area there."
"Art may be in the intent of the the creator, but it's also sort of in the beholder, I think. If you don't think it's art, then it's not art to you," she shrugged again, daring a smile once more.
"You truly believe art to be so subjective?" Her stance was intriguing and beguiling at once. Art could not be entirely subjective or it could never be judged. One could not be a master painter if there were not standards to uphold in the tradition. Skill and technique mattered in art. Ability mattered. A thing was not art merely because one wished it to be or thought of it as such. Art was art because it was by objective standard.
"Yeah, I guess I do," she responded after some thought over another bite of soufflé. "I mean, my experience is the only real truth I have to work from, everything else is conjecture and borrowed sensation. And maybe my experience is shaped by previous assessments of art, but at the end of the day, if I don't think it's art, it's not art to me. The rest of the world and their opinions can go hang."
Meg looked at the stage thoughtfully.
"I think we all have to come to our own conclusions about stuff. Especially art - it's supposed to incite something in you, yeah? You can't fake that!" she said excitedly, putting a hand on her heart.
"If I do not think this is a table," he gestured toward it with a wave of his hand, "then it is not a table to me. Does that stop it from being a table? My belief is that, merely belief, not truth. Truths exist whether or not we have an awareness of them, otherwise how could anything ever be a lie?" He didn't understand her. In fact, Mathias found the woman harder to comprehend than Luna had ever been. He admired her enthusiasm for her words, but that made them no more sensible.
Meg clapped her hands spiritedly, her bracelets jingling pleasantly, engaged by the sudden turn to the metaphysical.
"But if I can also sit on a table, couldn't I just as well call it a chair? What I see as a chair, you see as a table- both are true and yet both are intrinsically defined by the viewer!" she replied brightly, an amazement to her tone that indicated she might just be constantly rediscovering the world anew.
She leaned against the arm of the seat, excited to hear his response.
Mathias ignored her enthusiasm as it threatened to distract him from his thoughts. The fact he was having a philosophical conversation with a muggle on the nature of truth and existence was not lost on him. Wizarding Britain had fallen so far. "If a thing is at once one thing and a separate, different thing then is it both things? Can something be a chair and a table or is the existence of both in one contradictory? Contradictory truths would indicate there is, rather, no truth, would they not?"
"Or that we cannot perceive the truth. I mean, we've got these five senses right? And they lie! Like the blind spot in your eye- you don't see the gap in your vision because your brain covers it up. Or that stuff you can eat that makes sour things taste sweet... what is it..." Meg snapped her fingers as she tried to come up with the name of it.
"Some fruit from Africa, I saw it on tv. But if our senses can be faulty, then so can the truths we derive from them. So how can we trust anything we experience?" Meg laughed and gestured with her fork towards Mathias. "I work with this Catholic priest and I have to say, I grew up Buddhist but I was never really into it before I started working with him. D'you know? The nature of reality and why we're here and how we got here- it's pretty mindboggling."
"How can one know the nature of reality? If everything we perceive and experience is faulty how can any person know enough to realise that for certain?" This whole thing led toward circular arguments, he thought, and ought to be wandered away from. Mathias refrained from commenting upon his lack of knowledge regarding either Catholicism or Buddhism, which he assumed was a muggle religion like Catholicism as they had been mentioned in near relation to one another. Then again, Buddhist could have been something else entirely and he would never know. Conversations with people like this were rather vexing for the mere reason that they did not communicate with a common knowledge or understanding employed.
"Maybe no one can. But it's fun to speculate."
Meg flopped back into her chair and sighed. "Maybe nothing matters but how we feel. I don't know. I know I like art. And even if this chocolate souffle I made is actually something else entirely, it made me feel accomplished to watch it successfully rise and it tastes pretty fantastic so there is that. Who cares if it's a table or a chair so long as it's keeping stuff off the ground?"
Her head tilted slightly as she examined the young man in his proper clothes and proper voice. "How long have you been in England for?"
He was grateful for a topic change, even if he was the focus of it. At least it was something which would confuse him less and allow him to appear with a modicum of intelligence. Mathias may not have been gifted with an intellect such as that of his childhood friends Chris or Theo, but he was smart enough that he ought to not look like he did not comprehend half the words coming out of a person's mouth. "Most recently I have been in the country for quite a short period of time. Just over a week."
"Germany?" she asked. "I mean, could be Austria, could be Luxembourg, etc but I thought I'd take a guess. I've never been before, is it nice?"
He smiled, only a small upturning at the corners of his mouth. It was a brief expression, but a genuine one. "Yes, Germany. It is where my mother's family lives. It is a beautiful country should you be able to endure the Germans." His tone was flat, no inflection to indicate he was kidding even though he was.
Meg laughed. "I find that more often than not, people have trouble enduring me rather than the other way around. But I would like to go and have real Black Forest cake in the Black Forest. And go to Berlin. So much world, so little time to travel to it with."
"You do not seem so hard to endure." Perhaps when one knew what she was talking about it was harder to withstand her presence, but Mathias found himself only confused and fascinated. "Berlin is a wonderful city. You should find the time to visit. If you do not know you may find yourself an old woman with only wishes for what you could have done."
"What do you think makes it wonderful? I mean, there are things obviously," Meg laughed, "but you've lived there. You know the scope of the city, the tourist places, the regular places, the secret places. What would you lists as your favourite?"
"I have not lived in Berlin," Mathias clarified. "The place where I have lived is nearly half the distance between Berlin and Hamburg, though I have spent much time in both cities. Berlin is a city which has reclaimed itself in many ways. It had to do so after the events at the end of the first half of the twentieth century. There is a feeling of history but not of clinging too tightly to it. People often do not know when to let the past remain as the past. It informs but does not dictate the current identity of the city. In many ways much of the country is like that, though in Berlin it is more so due to the former division of the city. Of course, I have quite a bias in favour of the country in which it resides to begin with." The corners of his mouth twitched upward in a faint smile. The expression was there and then gone a moment later.
"That sounds fascinating and totally non-descrip--" Meg stalled as the lights dimmed slightly in the cafe. "Well," she said with a laugh, "last chance to escape before the spoken word begins!"
Mathias narrowed his eyes and stared toward the metal rod set up in the cleared area. "How painful is it likely to be?"
"I won't ruin you for life," she giggled and grabbed her tea cup. "Just relax, guy. It'll be fine."
"Your advice is difficult to follow when you laugh like that whilst giving it," he pointed out as his gaze swept over to her from the metal rod which now had a spotlight on it. Perhaps there would be ritual sacrifice on the rod. That would make more sense.