The neon sign

The neon sign

Mark took his coffee and went down the stairway. There was only one free table, just in front of the bar, which wasn’t open yet. All around the walls were pictures in the current exhibition: half-photographic, half-painting, the images depicted partially obscured female forms, mostly monochrome; the rare suggestion of colour seemed to coincide with the borders between obscurity and light. CONT

Above the bar, at the back, was the sign, flashing. As he sat down Mark deliberately avoided looking directly at it, postponing the moment. He put down his coffee and looked up. He watched as the letters, flashing at unequal intervals, lit up, now together, now separately; the sequence gave the impression of never actually repeating itself. But there was something about the sign that struck him as different, without his being able to say what it was.

Mark recalled the time before Tanner’s final degree show: loading pieces, transporting them – in a Tesco trolley – to the university, choosing spaces, knocking in nails, hanging pictures, placing constructions. Each piece had had its genesis: an original idea; sketches and designs; cutting of wood, glass, metal; construction and painting. EXP

He thought of the sign itself, finally assembled and working, geometric and brightly coloured; and then the stuff Tanner had smeared and dripped, squirted and splashed onto it – Worcester sauce, dust from the vacuum cleaner, oil. They’d left it to dry in the yard, and when they went back to check it, found Kate, the photogenic black cat, posing by it’s side; Mark ran to get his camera. Later, the photo showed Kate, still posing, engaging the viewer, as if claiming the work as her own. Mark remembered how different the illuminated sign looked after Tanner’s smearing; somehow complete. Then he saw what had changed: the bright colours again! The sign had been cleaned.

So that was it: the dirt had been removed, the sign cleaned, an element the past – their past – wiped out; [REW just like everything else had been wiped clean by the wrath of a jealous boyfriend], but this time anonymously, innocently.

Mark drew in a breath, curbed his rising anger. He looked around: all these people, couples, groups, singles, all submerged in their lives, in the present. In half an hour, or an hour at most, they’d be gone; a group breaking up here, a couple parting there, here someone presently alone off to meet a friend or lover, all moving on in their ever moving present.

But Mark was frozen in a dead past, cut off from people and events around him. Even the sign was no longer the sign: it no longer existed as he had seen Tanner create it. Georg had won. Time had been on his side. Time was always on the side of newcomers. For Mark, time had simply stopped.

He looked around again. Everyone seemed to be doing something: talking, reading, noting down, active – alive. Mark felt his isolation, like winter freeze when you know the bus won’t show. He lit a cigarette, drew in deeply, exhaled. He took a sip of his coffee, tasted, swallowed. His actions, sensations, seemed false. Was it the same for the others? He watched a man drinking coffee like his, saw the steam rise, tried to imagine the smell, the taste, that the other experienced.

A woman over near the stairs was just lighting a cigarette. Mark watched the flame surround and ignite the tip, saw the smoke curl upward. Was she feeling the same dizziness he had? No. She was living, they all were; he, Mark, was acting out life, a ghost [images don’t fit together, don’t work (mutually contradictory)]. A ghost, surrounded by the living, dreaming of other ghosts: ghost-people, ghost-objects – a ghost-past.

But what if he broke with the ghosts? Could he? Undoubtedly, he could. Did he want to? To live again? He wanted Tanner. But Tanner was different too. Because of Georg. That simple? Had Georg changed Tanner, cleaned away his feelings for Mark, or had Tanner himself effected the change? Or was it just time? [elsewhere Men are mortal, but their mortality is partial, enacted by degrees, more or less radical.]

Murder, suicide, or senility, the result was the same. Tanner was dead – long live Tanner!

Mark stubbed out his cigarette, thoroughly, making sure there was no smouldering end. He himself had undergone, was now undergoing, the same process, not yet complete. He looked again at the sign, blinking innocuously, flirtatiously. It was like any other work of art in any gallery or square. Anonymous. He knew nothing of its past, nothing of its creator. It had no past, just an ever moving present, always different, for each time, each viewer.

He got up, paid for his coffee and left.(Still marks on the sign/light new each time)