Excerpt from the novel The Longcut — Emily Hall

I was always asking myself what my work was, I thought as I walked to the gallery. As an artist I knew I should know what my work was, I thought as I walked, still I did not know what my work was, could not stop asking myself what my work was, it being impossible to think about anything else. It being acceptable as it was for an artist in my time to make art from anything, with anything, about anything, the world constituting the art world in my time being undelimited in a liberating or terrifying manner, still I could not stop asking myself what my work was, even as I told myself I really should already know the answer. Still there was never any question of the question, it remained an open question, the question of what my work was, which is to say how would I know my work when my work presented itself to me. 

Walking from street to street in the city to a gallery for a meeting with a gallery person—a gallerist, a word I could not or would not say—I continued asking myself what my work was, how I might discuss my work, whatever it was, at this meeting set up by my friend the well-known artist who set up situations. This meeting not being, as it was not, a situation that could be said to be part of my friend’s well-known artwork of setting up situations, even as he had in fact set it—the meeting—up, the meeting unrelated to his work being in fact a meeting related somehow, in some manner, to mine. 

When I had called her—the gallerist—to arrange the meeting set up by my friend the well-known artist who set up situations, this call taking place the morning post a drinks appointment with him at a rooftop bar, she—the gallerist—had hailed me on the telephone in a hoarse manner, her hailing taking place under hoarse voice conditions. Having delayed and delayed and delayed, I had eventually called this hoarse gallerist, delaying while imagining and rehearsing numerous and various one-sided conversation scenarios, then permitting myself, instead of calling her, to prepare and eat oatmeal while looking out the window at the bodega and laundry across the street, watching someone coming out of the bodega, taking something out of a bag, eating it. The idea of relaying anything to a person with a gallery showing work by people who knew what their work was was too abstract, it abstracted too much information on which my hold was already doubtful, forcing me therefore to cling to the specifics of person eating out of a bag in front of the bodega. We were eating together, that person and I, but I was the only one knowing it. My one-sided eating event with the person across the street being much like my one-sided conversation with the gallery person, or gallerist, I came to the conclusion that I might as well call her. 

What I would tell her was a question. 

It was a question, both were questions, requiring time for considering, time for considering being always as it was scarce in the category time, allotment of in the life of the artist. The time allotted for the meeting with the gallerist having been achieved by my taking a day off from my job, calling in sick when sick had nothing to do with it, I was thus walking remorsefully to the gallery considering, even as I continued to ask myself what my work was, the likely expression of my boss on my return the next day, my boss having lately been pausing his generally benevolent affect to look at me with a sort of slant through the glass door of his office whenever I passed by. I was not aware of any reason for him to look at me with a sort of slant, whether it had to do with the number of smoking breaks I took during the time allotted or expected for doing the tasks of my job was something he had not relayed to me or had not relayed in any form I recognized. Further I was trying to keep the number of smoking breaks under control, not being, as I was not, in thrall to smoking so much as to the cognitive processes attached to my doing it, it—the smoking break—being my strategy when I was confronted by a question at my job I did not know the answer to, a strategy of going outside for a smoking break at the end of which, owing to some cerebral or cognitive process, I could answer the question and complete it by moving it into the “completed” column, a resolution thus connected to the cigarette, brought about by the cigarette rather than having been brought about by me. The questions at my job I did not know the answer to were different in every aspect from the question of what my work was, being as they were—the job questions—answerable through the strategy of the smoking break, which the answer to the question of what my work was was not. Whether my boss had noticed or clocked the frequency of my smoking breaks was an open question, even as the security guards at the building where my job took place had noticed and clocked, nod- ding to me in an I-see-you manner whenever I left the building, although certainly the security guards didn’t in fact care and only told me please to move away from the building’s doorway so as not to turn my smoking break into everyone else’s. My boss had not in fact confronted me about my smoking breaks, still however I needed to keep my job, the realities of the category expenses, pressures of in the life of the artist being brought to bear as they did on me in the usual ways. Without my job, I was always having to remind myself, the escalation of problems in the category expenses, pressures of would leave me little time to answer the question of what my work was. I thus had no plans to abandon my job, even with the questions requiring the cognitive processes of smoking to resolve, no matter how alarming the prospect of the crisped condition of my lungs and no matter how often I was made to move away from the building’s entrance by any security guard. 

The question of what my work was thus constantly haunting or dogging me, art being as it was something that could be made from anything at all and could be about or relating to anything at all, how therefore, I could not stop asking myself, did you—I—pluck from the stream of life or ideas the contents of your—my—work or the materials with which to do it. I was pulled however hither and yon by the stream of life or ideas, unable to pluck, unable to sort or sift one thing from another, thus the question of what my work was remained an open question, nothing in the other parts of my life having provided a model for or example of how I might close it, the smoking breaks closing the questions I could not answer at my job being not quite the thing. Further I was hampered or dogged by my mental maneuverings, not being able to stop myself, as I was not, following words wherever they went, not being able to stop myself falling into any ferret hole that presented itself, even as I had somehow learned at some point that ferrets preferred not to dig their own holes but took over instead the holes of others, in any case I was forced to follow any idea or reference down any ferret hole it wanted to take over and try out or else to abandon it—the idea or reference—entirely, some other idea having hijacked my cognitive apparatus, and hope to eventually track down laboriously the first idea in whichever ferret hole I had left it and bring it to its logical conclusion. Logical conclusions rarely being of course available, still I tried. My rarely being able to bring any idea to a logical conclusion being more or less a point of fact. It being always of course possible, it continued being possible, that some idea had continued to vectorially travel on its own without me and was no longer in whichever ferret hole I had last seen it, if I could hope even to remember where that was, it being possible that due to mental maneuverings on some other idea, related distantly but distinctly in a manner I would have to laboriously rediscover, the idea would have decided or been forced to travel on a different vector, or else the location of the ferret hole would have moved, shunted off to someplace not previously represented on the map. Still, often I could not remember my first idea anyway, even laboriously tracking back through all the various hijackings and ferret holes, my cognitive apparatus yanking me hither and yon, tossing me about as if in a clothes dryer, with the additional problem of the apparatus producing the activity being both the thing doing the tossing and the thing tossed. Of being both the fishhook and the lip. Many ideas sometimes having been lost entirely, they in fact, in odd moments, popped up in new guises that I amnesiatically assumed to be something entirely else. The question of what my work was—to say nothing of the ferret holes—kept me awake at night, whether I made the correct preparations for sleep or threw myself into bed like an undergraduate. A smoking break would do nothing to remedy the situation, in any case a smoking break when I was not at my job was not a smoking break but merely smoking. 

My spending the whole of the night picking up and discarding possibilities or working through the possibilities presented by the philosophical objects I was already making but which didn’t answer the question of what my work was left me exhausted at my job on mornings that followed, left me confronted with questions I might ordinarily be able to answer had I not been kept awake all night by the question of what my work was, thus requiring more smoking breaks and thus more slant looks from my boss through the glass door of his office when I returned from my cognitive encounter with the cigarette. My understanding having been previously that he didn’t care how many smoking breaks I took so long as I answered my share of questions and moved them into the “completed” column, I was nevertheless eventually forced to admit that perhaps my understanding was wrong, that it was mis-, I was forced to admit that perhaps he might care after all, thus requiring me as well to care and to get my smoking breaks under control, the way to do this being finally to figure out the answer to the question of what my work was and start to do it. 

In any case, even were the question of what my work was to be answered, still I would need my job, owing to the realities of the category expenses, pressures of in the life of the artist and owing as well to the urgency of keeping myself from polluting the answer to the question of what my work was with considerations of the economic market. Thus it had seemed to me for a time to be efficient to try combining my work with my job, I recalled as I walked to the gallery meeting, by making work out of the tasks or tools of my job—answering questions and moving them into the “completed” column—thus letting my job bear or siphon off any urgency about the category expenses, pressures of or considerations of the economic market, to make my job both the source of the disquiet and the method of alleviating it, my job thus resembling one of those deadlocked puzzles, there not existing without the irritant the art. Which is to say, to make my job my patron. 

In any case in the category expenses, pressures of in the life of the artist, there were scant funds to be used in the category materials, possible. My patron, I had thought, I recalled as I walked to the gallery, could perhaps be persuaded to look the other way as I pilfered some thumbtacks and a roll of tape. 

Whether I had this—my job, my patron—in mind when I began bringing the egg to my job every day was a question among other questions all the while presenting themselves to me as I hauled myself hither and yon, including what was Cambridge blue, why was no aria by Handel as beautiful as “Forte e lieto,” what was difference between perhaps and maybe, when did a handshake begin and end. Did a handshake begin with the meeting of hands or did it begin with the idea presenting itself of wanting to meet a person in handshake friendliness. Did it end when a person became someone whose hand you no longer wanted to meet with yours. 

The egg was not a real egg but one made of granite or marble or something made to look it, heavy in the hand and given to me be an aunt now deceased, its color grayish blue with flecks of black and other blue as well as flecks of something that flickered and shone and changed color, making me feel numerous and various ways depending on the time of day or the amount of light in the room. It—the egg— was kept in a box at the foot of my bed with other objects and clipped-out articles that, like the egg, did not comply or complied poorly with known categories, a box usually piled over with books and with further clipped-out articles and papers belonging to known categories such as bills or medical advice, not yet taken but that I did not feel like filing or putting away for various reasons including laziness. The box of noncompliant things had an air of uneasiness or rather I was not easy with it, the air of uneasiness as I looked at and through it being mine, I had eventually understood, feeling as I did or seeming as I was permeable to the airs and feelings of others not limited to people but including objects, or else the objects being permeable to my airs, taking them, willingly or unwillingly, on. I was certainly prone to think a great deal at that time when considering my philosophical objects about whether things fit perfectly into known categories, categories that could be listed and pronounced and sequenced, or whether they flew or flitted between them depending on the time of day and the amount of light in the room. The egg being an uneasy object, a thing with weight and color, still what was it really. Was an egg not a real egg because it couldn’t be eaten. It belonged, I was often forced to admit, to some known categories, to the category gifts from relatives, deceased, but whether it belonged to the category objects, good to look at was unclear, being as it was that certainly sometimes I liked to look at the egg and sometimes I shoved it back into the box and re-piled the books and compliant papers on top, forcing myself then to think about anything else. It certainly did not belong to the category fire, things I would risk my life for in a, I would not have run back into a burning building to pop it in my pocket, certainly however, at the same time it did not belong to the category chuck, things I could easily, especially when the sunlight moved across the room in a certain way. Thus the condition of having no category or known sequence of categories kept me from chucking the articles and objects but it did not prevent me entering a zone of not understanding what I was looking at, further keeping me in the zone of thinking about zones, even as I had found myself in or remained in those zones for years or more. 

The idea of pursuing the truth of the egg’s category and its relationship to other philosophical objects had led me to pop it—the egg—in my pocket and carry it to my job and put it on a ledge that happened to be attached to a wall near my desk unit, the egg thus being lit up in bright everyday light entering through windows that began by my feet at the floor. The desk unit was not in fact my regular desk unit, being as it was a temporary desk unit I had been moved to by my boss while some repair was being done on a vent over the location of my usual moving of items into the “completed” column. I’m sorry about this, he had said on the day he moved me, he had been really very sorry and indeed had looked a bit sorry, not knowing, as he had not, how long this situation or condition would go on. Thus was the new desk unit a spatiotemporal unknown, its zone of spatiotemporal unknowability being perhaps a factor in my idea of putting the egg on a ledge in order to observe it, an object from an uncategorized zone dwelling in a zone of spatiotemporal unknowability. I thought, that is to say, that I could find out if the zone of not understanding what I was looking at extended in some manner from the foot of my bed to my job, whether it could be said to be a zone of place or a zone of time or a zone of something belonging to the object, something about the truth of the object or its categories, a quality or set of qualities jolted into clarity by the instability of the spatiotemporal unknown. Thus it was impossible to avoid the zone of thinking about zones, the zone of my job thus possibly constituting, as it might, a zone linked to the zone of the foot of my bed by various zones of varying concrete condition. Thus the egg became a double agent crossing the borders of zones, working as it did against the foot of my bed while at my job or working against my job while at the foot of my bed. What the zones of other artists were was an open question, the zone worked in by my friend the well-known artist who set up situations seeming to me to be a zone of self-contained clarity, a zone in which there was never any unclarity about what his work was, his work of setting up situations and seeing what followed. 

At the spatiotemporal unknown I popped the egg out of my pocket and put it on the ledge—a ledge not connected to the desk unit or the window or anything I could identify, a ledge dwelling in the categories architectural features, purpose of unknown and office space, unclaimed territories in—and observed it often throughout the day to see what came up, the observing being an action I was forced to undertake on the sly, the ledge being as it was in the direct line of sight of the glass door of my boss’s office. My boss being thus able to look over the ledge at me at any time of day with any kind of slant he liked. Thus as I observed the egg often throughout the day, I found myself observing as well the face of my boss to see if he was looking at me with a sort of slant and to see if it thus was time to buckle down and move items into the “completed” column in an expedited manner in order to keep my job and not trouble the category expenses, pressures of, the egg thus also taking on the double-agent assignment of helping me to answer the question of what my work was and at the same time to keep my job as I did. 

I walked to the gallery recalling that at the end of the first day of observing the egg between, as best I could, the slant looks of my boss, time having passed, it had not been clear to me whether the egg should be popped back in my pocket and taken back from the zone of my desk unit to the zone at the foot of my bed, if it had passed sufficient time on the ledge with no identifiable purpose adjacent to the spatiotemporal unknown in my office to acquire or signal or be coaxed toward a new zone or a zone I could perceive, or toward a new context, this—context—being a word used often by my friend the downtown professor of visual and media studies, context being a word with some microsliver of difference from the word zone that I was in that immediate moment unable to identify. It had not been clear to me whether the coaxing was the case, I recalled as I turned a corner by a pipe liberating steam from somewhere deeply below the street, a sign propped next to it reading raise plow. It had not been clear to me whether the egg needed more time at my job, unruptured by evenings and nights in the box at the foot of my bed, its place of origin, in order to continue its work as a double agent. And further what if I forgot to take it out of my pocket on any morning or if I troubled the timeline by having dinner appointments with my friend the well-known artist who set up situations or others. I then more or less understood that an egg spending a day on the ledge near my desk might discover one kind of zone or context or truth, a visiting context, whereas however an egg spending two days on the ledge near my desk might discover another and so forth, especially if the light moved across the room in a certain way, eventually perhaps becoming something that belonged to the zone of my job instead of my apartment, glued into context on the ledge near my desk unit as something I could come to ignore. I saw, that is to say, that it was never going to be possible to know the truth about any object. 

***

Emily Hall has been a contributor to Artforum since 2003; her writing has also appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Stranger, and the zine RedHeaded StepChild. The Longcut, her first novel, was shortlisted for the 2020 Novel Prize. She lives in New York, where she edits exhibition catalogues at The Museum of Modern Art.