White Matter

Graeme - Kurt's story

First impressions are a fascinating phenomenon. In neuroscience, in particular, they provide a rich source of empirical data, representing a step change in our neural state from which one can make detailed studies of what changes where. Take an image, for example: a blond-haired man, large-framed with a broad face and a guarded smile. Dispatch it into the labyrinth of the self, into that array of neural interconnections that encodes a vast web of interlocking memories and learnings, the gestalt from which our personalities are emergent. From the resulting cascade of associations – an overgrown boy, childhood encounters, facial tells – comes an entire body of knowledge. Provisional, quite possibly wildly inaccurate, and yet so complete in itself that, if asked, we could offer opinions on the person concerned – their personality, their status and intelligence – with some confidence, however misplaced, in the accuracy of our answers.

My first impression of Kurt Jones was a photograph in a glossy art gallery catalogue. Of all the contenders in the world, you may well ask, why did we choose him to be our first?

The short answer was that he happened to be available. It was the art dealer, Kohei Taniguchi, who put his name forward. I had initially argued against.

I listened to what Kohei had to say about him, read the short bio that accompanied his photograph – apparently this was the closest he had to a conventional CV.

"But he's an artist," I said when Kohei had finished, using the term as shorthand for all my misgivings.

Kohei contrived to look offended.

"A washed-up artist at that," I added.

Kohei hadn't held anything back when presenting Kurt's credentials. Quite the contrary, he had relished telling the story in all its gore and glory. The facts as he presented them suggested the man was damaged goods, not at all suitable. "No, no," said Kohei, shaking his head. "The facts don't matter. You're not choosing facts, you're choosing a person!" He literally wagged his finger at me. "You say you want someone who is unencumbered? You say he comes with too much baggage?" He shook his head again, never at any point losing his impish grin. "Trust me, no one travels lighter than Kurt. He's your boy. He's had a setback, that's all."

A setback? The man had given up his life's work. It wasn't something I could ever imagine doing.

"But isn't that what you want," Kohei had come back at me. "That flexibility?"

Kohei's no scientist. I'm not sure he even understands all that clearly what it is we are trying to do. Or cares that deeply. I don't mean by this that he is stupid; far from it – it's just that he's following his own particular path to enlightenment. He'd been very useful in the early days – helping me liaise with the Japanese side of things, working his network of contacts to flush out potential investors in the company, something Lance would have found difficult to do on his own.

So, not exactly an expert on our work; but he had earned the benefit of the doubt when it came to the judgement of character.

The question was easily resolved in any case: the final decision lay not with us but with Lance Coriolis. It took him the space of a single interview to be convinced. He hired Kurt on the spot.

Those were days of relative innocence, before we knew what was coming. After everything that has happened since, I really have no choice but to concede the point. When it came to Kurt Jones, Kohei knew whereof he spoke.

Once Kurt had started working for us, I had ample opportunity to observe him for myself, including from time to time by engaging him in conversation. At one point, I even asked him the real reason why he had given up on art. Odd as it may sound, there may have been an element of compassion in my query. This was near the end, the pair of us trapped and isolated, waiting in constant fear for what might await us once the door to our cell was finally unlocked.

I knew the story of what happened at the gallery – Kohei had told me everything – but this only explained Kurt's withdrawal from public life; it didn't justify his giving up the act of painting altogether. He must have been through great trauma, it seemed to me, to abandon something that had formed such a big part of his life. I reasoned that to discuss these matters now might be therapeutic, might induce a process of displacement whereby our current situation of chronic and prolonged fear (which could rightfully be blamed on other people) might supplant this psychic baggage that I assumed Kurt to be carrying (which, frankly, was nobody's fault but his own). What I mean is, it might offer an advantageous perspective, analogous to the idea that sticking pins in someone's hand might distract them from the pain of having their leg sawn off.

In reply to my question, he told me a story: "You must have heard about processed food being bad for you," he said. "Apparently one of the reasons is because it is, in effect, semi-digested. It's more fattening than the same amount of unprocessed food because more of the calories make it through to be burned as energy or stored as fat. With a raw carrot, say, a large proportion of the energy it contains gets consumed by the process of digesting it.

"Well, the same thing applies with art. The whole premise behind it is that reality is not its own best depiction. That I, the artist, can do better. I can look at the world and digest what I see, and then serve it back to you, reprocessed.

"Once I realized this, the idea kept nagging at me. I decided my patrons were no more than intellectual gluttons, looking for their next sugar rush. After that, I couldn't look at a canvas without getting visions of sea birds vomiting up semi-digested fish for their young. It put me off the whole enterprise."

This made me laugh.

He later confessed that the story was not strictly a true one, the thing about the digestion of processed food being something he had heard about many months after his exit from the art world, told him by one of his New Age friends from that well-meaning but misguided group of protestors who brought us to the public's attention much earlier than we were ready for.

Kurt's story, I suspect, was chosen mainly because it was the sort of thing he thought I would like to hear. That is revealing in itself, I suppose. But his telling of it also reminded me of what Kohei had first said about him, about his lightness of being.

And imaginary or not, I could see it was one of those stories that might come to feel true, if only it could be given the time to do so.