ACT TWO: Scene Three "The Price of Privacy"

In a world where everyone knows everything about everyone, and privacy is often an illusion, it seems more than a little strange when one retires from being on public display.


[Maestro answers the peeling phone. He is in his studio, still wearing pajamas and bed-hair, while adding finishing touches to his latest sculpture: a small and, by his own analysis, a relatively artless piece, a lost doe in the wood. Though artless, it has held the measure of his need for time away from his business as a university teacher. The Muse, his bourgeoisie amorosa, an art student and world traveler, (thanks to Daddy’s managerial position at an international bank), is complaining from her sense of entitlement about his unwillingness to give her some token of his love with which she can remember him by while abroad].

Maestro: I don’t recall you saying you were going to Genoa.

Delphine: I told you! You must remember the things I tell you. My words are very important.

Maestro: I have 263 individual students preparing for mid-years to think about, my love. And a family of four adopted children - and their missing beagle, to consider, as you know. Everyone's words are important to me, and it is important for them all to tell me - one man - all manner of things, or else, they would all fall silent like the woods in winter; and I would have a lot more room in my mind for contemplating such scenes.

But it is hard for me to talk now. I'm not yet full awake. And I have no idea what even happened yesterday, at this moment.

Delphine: Ha! You have done it to yourself again! Staying up all night to finish your sculpture? Ludicrous. It’s all on you, you like not to sleep.

Maestro: Well, the lateness of our long distance chat, my work, and my donning pajamas- has little bearing on what words of yours I remember or not, dear lady.

And I'm not asking for anything. Least of all, for sympathy from you. It still does not change the fact that the fog is real. I am still foggy, my love.

Delphine (the Muse): ...Okay. Fog! Remember how you used to draw the scenes of life from your window – the park, the shadows, the birch trees in Fall? And you used to sketch yourself for me. You used to send those sketches to me and they would almost always arrive on a Friday; and I would have all weekend to dream the scenes you saw! Oh! Send me something, Nikolaus, while I’m away! Oh, please say you’ll start right away! Not the whole self-portrait thing – just send me your eye. Draw it for me and send it to me!

Maestro: I did already send you an eye; and, remember? You were not happy at all, as I recall. Because the rest of the face was missing.

Delphine (the Muse): [laughter down the phone line] Well… I sent you mine!

Maestro: An eye for an eye.

Delphine (the Muse): You must send me another eye- I want a new one!

Maestro: It is the same damn eye, my love.

Delphine (the Muse): Okay. Fine. You don’t have to send me anything.

Maestro: How many eyes do you need?

Delphine (the Muse): None- I need none. In fact, I wish I was blind.

Maestro: Really? And I wish damn charcoal and damn chalk and damn parchment were never brought into the damn world.

Delphine (the Muse): [more laughter] And I'm so happy they were!

[silence]

Fine. Use a camera – just for one eye. One eye! A camera is so easy to use and makes the whole event instant! Then we can see each other in this, a unique way. I'll buy you one and have it sent to you, today! But you must promise to use it! Do you own one already?

Maestro: I can get one, my love, I thank you.

Seeing each other by sending photographs? But, even then we still wouldn't see one another enough. I'm sure of it. And the impasse is this: when one doesn't want to be seen, on a day when they are feeling sub-human, they would feel as though they have no choice in the matter. After all, they have the camera - so there's no excuse. Correct? Because... how simple it is to simply use it.

The Indonesian and African tribes are correct. The camera does steal the soul.

Delphine (the Muse): [laughter] it doesn't steal the soul!

Maestro: Of course it does. One's liberty is one’s soul.

Delphine (the Muse): [laughter] Oh goodness. Here we go again.

Maestro: Yes, we do if we must. We live in a world of automations. But that doesn't make man an automaton, some creature to be made to do this thing or that thing apart from his will. Mankind must hold the sovereign right to decide what his heart will do or give. No compulsion. No reluctance.

No human society must ever fall into the trap of being happy with a social culture in which children are forced to pick petunias for their parents. Or… Where lovers are pressed into ritualistic performance of romantic labors.

I will give you an eye, or both eyes, and along with them, my ear, dear lover of Van Gogh – but only when I am in the right state to do it. Otherwise, the gift is meaningless; it becomes a clinically functional image, devoid of love’s warmth; and more fit for the macabre voyeurism of the medical practice than for the way of love’s true roses.

Delphine: So you will not send me an eye, amor mío?

Maestro: Well, now… If you forget me so soon, or little by little, know this. I will forget you little by little or a little bit after. But, while there is one pearl moon above us, to carry our affectations abroad, to rule tide and the tides of our hearts; and while our hearts seek to raise flowers to our lips in memories of knowing each other’s lips- I am with you. More with you than can be described in those little deaths memorialized in portraits.

When you leave, tomorrow, my love… I will go to the green, cold sea. There, I will send a bottle containing a message for you alone into the heart of the ocean; and may it find you on whatever day you start to forget me. And, daily, I will send you all my love into the blue jewel skies – and you will feel me, new-love-real, sun-warm on your soft skin, in whatever hour your lonely heart realizes she is all alone. But, not alone – for we are the verse and phrase of one song, no matter the tide, the time or the fortunes of the heart.

I love you. And no picture can ever prove it less or more.

~Alexander Valentin Dubinin. 2015.