I held the ladder while Wallace Stevens climbed it, considering each barefooted step with a disdainful caution.

He firmly planted the corner of a white bed sheet, which he insisted was, in fact, an “economical canvas”, with his hand as he removed one of the two nails from the left side of his mouth.

After about three different configurations of hammer, nail, bed sheet, he grabbed the nail firmly with his thumb and index finger, holding the bed sheet with the side of his palm, and hammered the nail through the sheet into the wall.

“You see, Michael,” he muttered through the right corner of his mouth.

I had insisted that he could call me, “Mike,” but he adamantly refused by means of sheer stubbornness rather than through direct protest.

“You see, Michael,” he affirmed, almost in spite, having fully descended from the ladder, “It is important that an artist continually expand his horizons.”

We each picked up a side and moved the ladder as he continued, “For we represent our own imagination, and must do it in every way that we can.”

He climbed the ladder once more and more quickly nailed the sheet in place, having mastered the art of holding three things simultaneously.  After he climbed down the ladder, I briefly considered asking him where to put it, but thought it wiser to use my imagination.

He pulled a chair to face away from his makeshift canvas as he declared, “I said it once of poems, but I think it’s true of all art: it must resist the intelligence, almost successfully.”

He sat down in the chair, loading a shotgun.  His voice began to trail off, almost as if he were convincing himself, “Because after all, the artist is the maker of meaning.”

I protested that I had seen Nathaniel Hawthorne interpreted by feminists and Shakespeare interpreted by Marxists.  Certainly, this must mean that the artist hardly holds domain over his own work, and thus must strive to make it stand on its own.

“The artist is the maker of meaning!” He barked – the assertion with malice spat in enough volume to extinguish the largest of supernovae.

With that he put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe, splattering his brains all over the white bed sheet.

I guess I can’t really argue with that.