"A month before you came to see me! What have you been doing?"
"Working."
"Secretive—as always." "I'll give you an itemized account. Had to find a place to live and paint, get a job to do both, and take another look at New York."
"What kind of job?"
"I went down to see Bitot—he's the Frenchman I worked for in the Mail's art department before I went to Europe. In fact, I got my Paris job indirectly through him. Along with a smattering of French he taught me enough about lithography to get by. Well, he knows a man here who's gone into making artists' colors—seems there's an art renaissance."
The two men were laughing.
"It's a workable arrangement," the man was explaining. "I can work half days supervising the grinding of colors, so I can count on some daylight to paint."
"I don't think much of that arrangement. You ought to have full time. Why don't you use this studio, I can work in the house, or you can have the top floor which has nothing but boxes of books now. Denis will bring your meals when you don't want to have them with us."
Silence, then the man's voice was filled with warmth as he said, "Thanks, it's a decent and seductive offer—but I've come back to disentangle myself from—people—and art movements. Perhaps, off by myself, I'll become a personal art movement with a little meaning all its own."
Lucy, dressed and waiting for a good time to go in, was puzzled. What did the old song "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own" have to do with being an artist?
"Well, any time you change your mind—I should have thought you'd find Paris a—well—more congenial atmosphere in which to paint and live."
"It's the congeniality that's paralyzing. It's easy, sitting at cafés boozing, or nights whoring, all in the name of art. It's fun but after a while the only work you do is in bed. And when you don't produce you justify—all art is baloney—the war shot all values, the only true value being that there are no values. Dada! Affirm negation. Everything, everyone, is rotten, corrupt, without meaning. Especially your painting which doesn't have to mean anything to anyone but yourself—if yourself at that."
