Fractal Cello

—— This printer of ours...
—— Go on, I can tell some philosophical hobby-crafting is pending — what about it?
—— It's just that it can print out ANY picture...
—— That's the idea, isn't it?
—— I mean, in principle, it can reproduce (with limited but slavish similitude) ANY two-dimensional art, past or future, which makes me wonder how does ANY picture look like?
—— ANY is empty, a "nothing yet", unlived, and so, more than dead. I am not sure it is supposed to look like ANYTHING. And even if it were, it would've been inhuman.
—— It may be more foreign than dead things but it is not itself dead. On the contrary, ANY is a possibility, the source of all life's particulars.
—— You would say something like that, wouldn't you? Looking for greener spiritual pastures ad absurdum. But I can see you would like to try it...
—— What?
—— Paint like a printer. Start from the top-left corner and work your way across and down, but stop as soon as it no longer looks like ANY picture. Work atomistically, like the God of the Sciences, let the particles precede the Design. Yeah. I think you should do it. You paint and I'll write. I'll play with your pomposity.
—— Like a pompous little sniggering Goddess of small earthly things?
—— Uh huh.
—— I suppose I deserve it...
—— You do, and admitting it won't help.

—— This reminds me of what Vera told you...
—— I hoped you forgot that.
—— "Yours must be the most elaborate artistic procrastination", she said.
—— But there is a point to it: the program downloads a random image off the Internet and punctures a hole in it. By the time I first get to see it, exactly half the image is already missing. I then draw into the hole. I try to remember the missing half for the first time.
—— OK, so it's like coffee residue, tea leaves, inkblots?
—— Except drawing into the hole rather cruelly reveals some of the absent memories as memories of absences.
—— Then it's like the blind spot, or rather, its opposite: blind spot is a hole you do not see because it is absent "without edges", whereas the act of filling in the hole in the picture by drawing into it reveals the memory as nothing but "edges" — like drawing the dearest person from memory and realising she is not “there”.
—— I know what you mean. That's what’s most discouraging about drawing for most people, which is wrong. It should not be about things you can remember but about things you cannot forget. That's probably what style is: habitualised management of absences.
—— Do you find these edges in writing?
—— I think they find me.

Colour Pages

—— Don’t make me. I’m not good at it!
—— Enough of your grey pictures! Give me something in pretty colours.
—— Don’t get me wrong: I love colours. I like singing, too, but I’m bad at both. They show too much.
—— For my love?
—— OK then, I’ll make a few.