Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [103]
Parra turned to the table and her face stilled. To the room at large she said, “Should we begin again?” She linked her arm through Connie’s and drew her to a chair, squeezing her shoulder as she seated her.
“I feel that Bolivar’s work emphasizes the individualistic, places style over the whole yin-and-yang. When Jackrabbit works with Bolivar, I feel a political thinness in Jackrabbit’s work, never there when person works alone.” Luciente sat with hands folded.
“Such a crit is too general to be useful,” a fat person with a bass voice said. “How can Bolivar respond to such vague slinging?”
“In their recent holi, the image of struggle was a male and a female embracing and fighting at once, which resolved into an image of two androgynes. Yet the force that destroyed so many races of beings, human and animal, was only in its source sexist. Its manifestation was profit-oriented greed.”
“Luciente crits justly,” Barbarossa said. “In truth, I didn’t think of it. But it seems to me the holi should have related the greed and waste to the political and economic systems.”
The old person with the glittery black eyes, Sojourner, shook her head. “Every piece of art can’t contain everything everybody would like to say! I’ve seen this mistake for sixty years. Our culture as a whole must speak the whole truth. But every object can’t! That’s the slogan mentality at work, as if there were certain holy words that must always be named.”
“But do we have to be satisfied with half truths?” Barbarossa asked.
“Sometimes an image radiates many possible truths,” Bolivar said. “Luciente appears to fix too narrowly on content and apply our common politics too rigidly.”
“Our common politics gives running room for disagreement,” Luciente said. “I like to be clear about political distinctions.”
“A powerful image says more than can be listed. It cannot be wholly explained rationally,” Jackrabbit said. “What does a melody mean?”
“Yet a work has gross meaning we can agree or disagree with,” Luciente said.
“Our history isn’t a set of axioms.” Bolivar spoke slowly, firmly. “I guess I see the original division of labor, that first dichotomy, as enabling later divvies into haves and have-nots, powerful and powerless, enjoyers and workers, rapists and victims. The patriarchal mind/body split turned the body to machine and the rest of the universe into booty on which the will could run rampant, using, discarding, destroying.”
Luciente nodded. “Yet I can’t see male and female as equally to blame, for one had power and the other was property. Nothing in what you made speaks of that.”
“You have us!” Jackrabbit raised his eyebrows. “That’s so.”
“What we made was beautiful,” Bolivar said. “Weren’t you moved? A holi is composed of an hour’s images. You’re not respectful enough of beauty, Luciente.”
Sojourner said, “Luciente leans far in the direction of one value and Bolivar in the other. Yet instead of looking at each other with pleasure and thinking how much richer is the world in which everyone is not like me, each judges the other. How silly. You could enrich each other’s understanding through Jackrabbit, who is drawn both ways—as to everything that moves!”
“I don’t think the holies I make with Bolivar are better or worse than I make alone. I think Luciente looks at them more critically,” Jackrabbit said.
“We all owe you feedback, and it’s a pity Luciente’s critting waited until now to come out. We fail you as our artist,” Barbarossa said. “If we don’t crit you, how will you grow?”
The fat person spoke up. “What do you fear, Luciente, that you watch carefully when they work together? What makes you nervous?”
Luciente covered her face with her hands, frowning with thought. A full five minutes passed. Connie stole a look at Parra, presiding over the table but not butting in. She felt a melancholy belief that she