Morning all, the last prompt of the week is here. Let’s see what comes out of it. Fifteen minutes on the timers pleese.
This is so not where I thought this was going to go.
Friday, October 23rd: The time had come.
The time had come. Anna found herself wracked with nerves. She saw the crowd gathering and saw the triumphant, almost smug looks some of the others were wearing. Her dancing nerves froze to ice.
‘This is not going to go well,’ she thought. She suspected it from the outset. She was told she was worrying for nothing. That her nerves would die down once things were in motion.
The question,’ what’s the worst that could happen,’ had been tossed around repeatedly in the last few months. Currently she had a long mental list of exactly what could happen. It grew longer and more disturbing as time ticked past. Rather than assuaging her fears, events piled them up. Now in the courtyard she saw the draped forms of the artworks created.
While everyone was gathered for the big reveal, she had seen them beforehand. While there were others who thought they were magnificent and cutting edge, it had not escaped her that those praising the pieces were the ones who would make money regardless of what happened.
She wasn’t so sure about them. She knew that art was about pushing boundaries. That wasn’t news. This didn’t seem so much like pushing boundaries as much as deliberately pushing buttons. She had grown up around art and to be honest, much of this seemed more like a childish expression than artistic endeavor. Like frozen temper tantrums placed on plinths and celebrated.
She was told she didn’t understand, that the political statements were too difficult for her to grasp. She ;listened to their explanations and often it seemed that the political statements they were trying to make were things they didn’t particularly grasp. They seemed to have gotten someone else to give them a once sentence summary of complex issues and then only extracted a few garbled words from that summary to use as a focus.
‘Even then they seemed to focus on shock value rather than messages.’ Anna suspected that was what the smug smiles were for. They expected the audience to be shocked and appalled. Then they could claim no one got their artistic expressions.
It all felt like a set up.
The problem was, that she wasn;t certain those present would settle for mere grumbles. She was worried that the shock value they seemed intent on causing would lead to real violence.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Steve said. Anna looked left. She hadn’t heard him come up.
“Not down with the others?” she asked.
“I pulled my piece,” he told her. “I didn’t want my name on the list.”
“So I’m not the only one worried?”
“These people aren’t artists,” Steve told her. “They want to pretend they are, and they are likely to be disappointed in today’s results. Tempers may be frayed later.’
“The crowd?” Anna asked.
“Has been warned,” he told her. “I took pictures down once I realized what was happening. They won’t get the shock and outrage they expect. Everyone is prepared. No violence will ensue.”
She frowned.
“I promise,” he told her. Steve winked and below they saw the time had come for the big reveal. The sheets fell as the pieces were presented. When they fell there was a moment of silence, then the laughter began and the smug smiles began to slip.
