Stream of Consciousness Episode Fifteen: Culpability of Genius

Stream of Consciousness by Pineapple | Content Warnings

---

The invitation read No photography and No filming. It had even warned, in tiny little fine print, that there would be dire consequences if this rule was broken, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’d gotten kicked out of an event.

It was for a gallery opening in the west part of town, where the uppity, artsy aristocrats have their showings. Exclusive and one night only. Black tie and invite needed.

I’m not really sure why they wanted me to come. I’m big in the online scene, if I say so myself, but not this kind of shit advertised on the card they sent. This was fancy, high-brow stuff you needed a degree to talk about. When I searched him up—Luis Bernath—I found raving reviews of his “haunting portraits” and his “unique statements on humanity’s relationship with technology.” One article read that he was a genius that captured the essence of human expression like no other before him.

I’m just a dumb boy who got lucky and blew up on social media. A street artist. #Lowbrow. Accessible to the general public. I literally take pictures with a camera phone. My most popular piece is a mural of overlapped smiley faces in different colors. My personal philosophy is that art is for everyone, and museums should be free.

So, when the invitation came and said no sharing on social media, I couldn’t let that slide. I don’t know how they got my info, but, well… I was determined to make the best of it.

I put on my best suit, my best shoes (which still weren’t that great). I did my hair. A (girl)friend of mine insisted I wear “guy liner” and came over to put it on before the car Mr. Bernath so graciously sent picked me up.

It was uncomfortable the whole way. I don’t like being catered to and having someone open the car door for me was too much.

When I got to the venue—the artist’s own house, I guess—the door was once again opened for me. I walked up the wide, sloping stairs to the front of the house. The place was like a Spanish-style estate, the kind of thing from a biopic about dead movie stars or artists from the 50’s. Pretty sure I watched a movie about Frida Kahlo that looked like this, with the colorful tiles and the greenery that curled around the arches I could see behind the gates.

Security stopped me outside the door. A few reporters were hovering around, trying and failing to interview people. They, notably, ignored me until I handed the bouncer my invitation. He was a big, bulky dude. He patted me down and took my phone and ushered me through the gates before the reporters could get a chance to shove a camera in my face.

Shining, neatly dressed guests were wandering around the perimeter of the room, appraising the artwork hung on the walls. I could see Luis Bernath, standing by the table that had been set up for refreshments. He was shorter than me, his shoulders folded in on himself like he wanted to disappear and his suit big enough that it might swallow him whole. He was sipping at whatever was in the fluted cup in his hand, eyes darting around the room like he was keeping a look out for predators.

This was the man they attributed genius to. His thinning hair was just a bit too messy to be purposeful, and he was sweaty under the attention from everyone dressed better than him.

But when I finally looked at the artwork, I could almost understand it. Each one held more character than Luis Bernath himself did.

Eyes in paintings and photos are sometimes dead-looking. Practiced or performative. But not these. There’s that spark of life in them that can really only be seen in the greats. A realistic expression—something so difficult to capture. It’s like… the way young women look when they’re taking a selfie in one painting of his. In another, it’s the conspiratorial way a naughty kid looks around before doing something he knows he’s not supposed to do. Then, that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look when some punk gets caught breaking the law and they’re not sure if they should try to bargain their way out of it or just apologize and accept their fate.

I could see all these contemporary moments, something so specific people in the future might not recognize it, but they’ll be able to see the emotions of vanity, of mischief, of panic thanks to Luis Bernath and that… thing.

I didn’t realize I’d followed the path of artworks away from the party. There were a few other stragglers, debating over whether the subject of Sony Handycam Hi8 (1998) was laughing or crying. And, well, that moment was as good a time as any.

They’d taken my professional art phone at the door but not my personal cell. I pulled it from the space in my belt where I’d had it tucked against my back. I tapped on the camera app.

The camera wasn’t as good, but it was decent enough. I snapped a few pictures of my favorite pieces. Once the little group fawning over Sony Handycam left, I even worked up the courage to take a little video of the space. The layout of the gallery, the size of the canvases, the way they sat against the terracotta color of the walls of the house, and Luis Bernath in the archway of the room, shaking so badly his drink was spilling out of his cup.

I felt like iPod Touch 4G (2010). Caught in the act.

I let the phone slip from my hand into the sleeve of my jacket. A practiced trick from my school days.

But Luis Bernath just whimpered. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he said. His eyes were teary, and when he went to wipe them, the glass distorted his face. “Ooh, I wish… I wish you hadn’t… I’m so… Ohh, I’m so sorry.”

“I…” Apologize? Run?

Luis Bernath dabbed at his eyes with his sleeves, simpering, muttering in a voice so pathetic I couldn’t even understand it.

“I’ll see myself out.”

I got my work cell from the security at the door and called an uber. Safely tucked in the backseat of someone else’s car, I retrieved my personal phone from my sleeve. I started to click through the photos and videos.

And, well… it wasn’t good. I’m fine at taking photos, but there was a reason that they’d had the rule in place. In each photo, in each video, I saw the people in the pictures. No—not just them in the paintings, but them them. The them that must have sat for the portraits. The them that… did exactly what I did, maybe.

Standing next to Sony Handycam was a girl, subtly taking a video of me with the concealed camera in her bag. She was, as it turned out, crying, unlike what the group at the gallery had decided on. I know now because I could hear her in the video I took. “Fucking hell,” she sobbed, “not another one.”

I swiped to the still photo. In it, she’s digging in her bag for the camcorder.

She’s not the only one, either. There’s the hipster with the iPod Touch, too, looking bored out of his mind. Other people from other paintings. I could hear their voices in the videos I took. Varying levels, like they were there. Like they filled up the room. They talked more than anyone else at the damn party.

But worst of all? Right before the cut to black, when I dropped the phone down my sleeve, it caught a shot of Luis Bernath. There was… something behind him. Something menacing. Something that looked like it would kill Luis Bernath if it didn’t need him. It looked like static, a distortion on the video, but it was the only thing the camera couldn’t capture. At that point, I had to turn the phone off.

Once I got to my apartment, I downed three cups of water before I scared myself in the mirror with my smeared-ass makeup. I wiped the eyeliner off. I took a shower.

I convinced myself I was being stupid, that it was some kind of elaborate installation. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in some weird mind trip gallery with drugged refreshments. I was sure I’d look at the videos and photos the next day and be able to see the tricks, but I didn’t get the chance.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of crying. It’s a small apartment. A studio. But it’s not like I hear my neighbors that often. And this was clear. I knew it was in the room with me and I recognized it.

It was the same pathetic whimpering from the gallery showing earlier that night. It was Luis Bernath and his impression of a sad puppy.

“Whyy… Why did you have to…” he cried. “Why did you have to do it…? I asked you not to… I t-told you…” He hiccupped, rubbing uselessly at his eyes.

I sat up in my bed and stared at him. “How did you get in here?”

Luis Bernath started wailing. “Why did you do this to me? Why…”

It’s not that I could see the thing behind him. Above him? More like all around him. It’s just that it was… unseeable. Like it had been in the photo and the video. The air surrounding Luis Bernath was distorted in a way that made it look like it was hot outside. Like he was a sketch scribbled out in ballpoint pen on black construction paper. All texture and no color.

He covered his mouth to keep the sounds from coming out, to even out his breathing.

The thing flared like he’d added gasoline to a fire. It took up the whole room. It was a boogie man, and I was four years old again.

“I don’t want to do this,” Luis Bernath said between his fingers. “Why are you making me do this?”

“I’m not making you do anything!” I scooted as far away as I could from him and the edge of my bed. I grabbed my phone from my nightstand, ready to call 911. “You broke into my apartment on your own!”

“Don’t you feel bad? Shouldn’t you feel sorry and apologize?” He sniveled. He finally looked up at me. He was crying still, but mixed in those tears was contempt. “You took the photos when I told you not to, and now you’re yelling…”

I scoffed. “Are you serious?”

He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. The shapes behind him flared.

“Is this what you need to do art?”

Luis Bernath started to stand. His legs were skinny and shaking, still in the oversized suit he’d been wearing at the event.

I could feel myself shrinking as he got up. He was getting bigger, and whatever it was behind him was getting stronger, more powerful. He was sobbing out incoherent words.

“They called you a genius.” This thing was going to eat me. Chew me up and spit me back out on the canvas so Luis Bernath could reap the rewards. “Is it worth it?”

He covered his ears. “It’s not my fault,” he said. “You did this—you—”

“Why put yourself through it if you don’t even like it?”

There was a pause in the movement. A crinkle in the medium of the monster.

“Do you think that someone has to suffer for art? Is that it? You think you have to suffer for art?”

Luis Bernath covered his mouth. I could hear his whimpers anyway. “We all have to suffer and I—” He took a step towards my bed. The monster behind him didn’t move. It twitched when the finger hovering over my phone touched the screen. “—I have to protect it—”

“Take the photos,” I said, and threw the phone. “Take the whole damn phone.”

It hit Luis Bernath solidly in the foot. He looked at it, then back up at me. He started to kneel down and pick up the phone.

“I don’t want anything someone had to die for.”

The shapes around him loomed. The monster bent with him, circling, consuming. It covered Luis Bernath until I couldn’t see him. And then I couldn’t see the thing that was distorting my vision. It was gone. There was a buzzing I hadn’t noticed in my head that was gone too, like I’d fixed an old lightbulb that was on its way out. A weight off my chest. I could breathe easy, but I knew it wouldn’t last long.

The next day there was an article about Luis Bernath’s last work. A self-portrait he’d done after the gallery opening, before he killed himself.