Morning all, I hope you are having a great morning. I am doing okay. Had a strange dream about a talking rooster named Stanley. That is literally all I remember about the dream. Just Stanley the talking rooster. Well I also remember not liking Stanley very much. He was not a friendly talking rooster. More like a propaganda spewing rooster. But enough about that. On to the prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
Oh I like where this is going. It feels more like a short story than anything longer, but there is nothing wrong with that.
Thursday, June 11th: It took years to master.
It took years to master. He knew that. Everyone told him that and seeing the results he believed them. There simply was no way to learn that sort of technique in just a few days. And yet that was what the advertisement promised.
He too could paint like the old masters in just a few days.
It seemed suspiciously optimistic. Yet his friend Ralph promised it was true. He knew a guy.
Well, his friend knew a guy who knew a guy who went through the process. He went from barely being able to play ‘Mary had a little lamb’ on the piano to easily playing the most complicated piano classics from great orchestral masters in simply days.
John wasn’t convinced.
Ralph mentioned the testimonials.
Not only were the advertisements featuring satisfied customers but people were invited to watch those who underwent the transformation. The ads felt as though they could be actors, but Ralph suggested he go to one of the demonstrations anyway. Finding himself with a free weekend, he went.
John sat in the crowd feeling their excitement bubbling around them. A video showed a person stumbling through a child’s piano piece and needing a metronome to perform. Even then, it wasn’t a great performance. Then the same person came out and played something from Beethoven, then Chopin followed by Mozart and then Handel. The crowd went wild.
John found himself more disturbed than he expected.
The next demonstration was from the violin. It too showed inept performance on video followed by an expert performance in person. Again, the crowd went wild. John’s feeling of something off grew. He looked around and saw he wasn’t the only one not wildly cheering. Others looked slightly disturbed as well.
He made eye contact with a few and they exchanged knowing and unease glances.
Then came he artistic demonstration. The video showed someone painting. To John it looked less inept and more as though someone was beginning to learn. They had yet to find their own artistic expression and were frustrated that others found it. Maybe because it was something he still struggled with that he saw it. It seemed less inept and more as if they needed to give themselves time to practice, to learn who they were as an artist rather than copy others.
Then the artist moved to the stage. In a matter of moments he replicated a Picasso and then a Renoir before stepping back pleased, paint spattered and victorious. As though he won some sort of race.
John found it infinitely more disturbing than the music.
He backed away a step. Replication. That is what was done. Exactly as claimed. But at what cost. The man on stage no longer had his own artistic talent, budding as it was. He was nothing more than a human photocopier for what other people had done.
It was the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.
Ten til Midnight 