CONFERENCE OF TWO

© 2000 Art Thomson & Nin. Nin's title for the same piece is Doomsayers.

This is an attempt to conjure up our meeting of ideas and thoughts by the means of the internet, on Sunday July 16, started at 23:44 GMT.
For brevity and precision, the length of conversation has been abridged.

Art	Yes, I have read his words. Whenever he is compelled to admit that he doesn't know, he does so with an inflection suggesting that it isn't worth knowing. When, on the other hand, he thinks he knows, he does so with a suggestion that others do not know and will not know. This I presume is the face of a man who recognizes his potential enemy in everybody he meets. He is like a water-diviner and tread the desert with a rod, and shouts his triumph with every flicker of the instrument.
Nin	Aren't we all? I even almost conclude that people talk and write because of that very reason -- that they believe they know something, that they somehow have to tell everyone else that they know that thing, that they don't give a damn whether other people has been knowing it for ages or equally convinced that it's just a useless little garbage, with a secret hope that maybe, among the oceans of idiots out there, someone would uphold it as the bible.
Art	My dear lady, the call of literature isn't, I'm afraid, falling that low. From the days of Chaucer to the modern authors, I have faith that despite the the perceptible tint of commercial ventures in everything, the artists are the last fellows who are holding on the old sage's wisdom of creating for the purpose of fulfilling the void souls, and other similar reasons. This is not the man we are talking of, but the others who are nobler.
Nin	You are, Mr. Thomson, sir, is right! The so-called "literature" is really not falling that low. In fact it is not falling at all, because it has been there at the bottom of the gutter from the very beginning! Who's gonna write a crappy tale back then when the Lords and Ladies were still allowed to roam around intimidating people in England and Italy and France, if not for some patronage, i.e. the equivalent of this: $ ? Spare me the commercialism-bashing, would you. I'm already kinda broken-hearted right now. It's gonna be hell if I must also puke.
Art	Do you dare striking us as one of your own enemies?
Nin	You mean you.
Art	I have gotten a financial reward as well for my art; yet I dare say that my motivation was not in the least commercial. There must have been one of them who was eager for a fast dollar, presumably in the interests of freedom of the press and art. I have known several authors in England that would never as far as jolting down a word if it is for financial reason. They would rather starve.
Nin	And the remaining Spice Girls would then hold a concert for the hungry. Come on, whom are you kiddin'? My motive is purely personal. Says me. Got my drift? By the way, I would vote against Spice Girls in Wembley. Having Chelsea there is bad enough.
Art	When I was with a band of fellows in Huddersfield, it was a theatrical group, a show I had written was a big success, which led people to believe that I was an up-and-coming drama author. Only I knew that my ambition did not lie in that direction. I was too wedded to poetry. Nevertheless, the temptation was great, and I had to exert my strength of character to resist.
Nin	Lucky you. I wrote a few plays in High School and while the show went on I was desperately seeking my character, whether it was strong or not. People said those were kind of "success" because people laughed, but I figured that I didn't want to get laughed at. Though writing comedies could, alas, bring nothing else. I'd been everything in between now and then, but it had never crossed my mind that I do what I do now because it's kinda "higher", "nobler", or whatever than the paths I left behind. "Ambition" too is nowhere.
Art	Whether it is acknowledged or not, dear, ambition must be there, or else we would not do what we are doing, would we?
Nin	Art, I love you, okay? But I'm afraid I'm gonna kill you next time you say "we" which drags me in your "we" and yanks me off my inexistent "we", i.e. "me". Ambition? Yup, I've got it once. My ambition was to be the President of the United States. So what?
Art	It is consoling me that I realized for the first time that the most difficult acceptance in life is the realization that there is no arbiter and no appeal. We are condemned to rub shoulders with injustice in our lives, and we are often judged by our acceptance of the fact. The spirit in which we manage it can be said to be a measure of our maturity.
Nin	I'm afraid you're right. Because I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Art	Serious thoughts are our play fields aren't they? Average people do not give a thought over justice, injustice, and the things you are, we are, obsessed with daily. It takes a poet and a thinker to ruminate and yield the result to the public, even though the latter does not want it.
Nin	My notion of "the public" consists solely of an inflammable Irish in Santa Monica. You know I'm really sick of the words like "the public", "the people", "us", "we".....Do you really, honestly, think that just because you give words to some people's unspoken stuff, you're somehow a better being than them? Seriously? 'Cause I don't.
Art	Are we not having a measurement of excellence? But of course, you only read Dickens.
Nin	Yup, and you know what? Dickens is better because he wrote for the money and said so.
Art	Dickens, and I am not going to savour a notion to make a fool of myself by criticizing a classics or a master, was a mere story-teller. It was different with, say, John Dryden, Victor Hugo, and others.
Nin	A "mere storyteller"? Ouch. What is a novel if not a story? I don't mind killing all of your excellent English critics if they really believe that a writer is better than the other "because he is a mere storyteller and the other is....what??"
Art	A good novel is embedding the human achievements in it.
Nin	Sure, sure. And I am the Queen of England.
Art	The article "Lonely" is a good article in the same way, would you resist this acknowledgement as well? :)
Nin	Y-E-S.
Art	My "The Idyllic Scenery of Old England" had been read by several friends in London and they have made the wind in my sails also.
Nin	Great. If you think it matters, what they think.
Art	I do not mean that I am writing for myself, I merely do not find it possible to sell myself to the enslavement of Mammon, so to speak. I am quite naturally craving my fellows' appraisal. I believe that you should acknowledge it, with a humble heart indeed, that you also want the readers to appreciate your works.
Nin	Of course I will admit that I want nothing but the so-called "appraisal" from anyone who browsed over my trash -- over my dead friend Art! I don't want to say it over and over like a broken radio transmitter -- you know exactly why I write and what I think of the so-called "appreciation" as shown by "the public". Gosh, I miss my public. If my public is at the beach, will that make me a beach reading? Thinking that I'm so wretchedly talking nonsense with you now while all I want is -- by the way, how's your drama project going?
Art	I was flattered and quite delighted, and as so often, foolishly free of qualms about the magnitude or the difficulty of the project. I am hoping for your assistance if you do not mind; art is created by a correspondence of the artist and his fellows.