Telling
Stories:
the Art of Iain McCaig
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© Iain McCaig |
Act Two:
McCaig Interviews McCaig
The door to McCaig Mansion is not welcoming. It is bare of decoration, hardly more than a slab, and plain white. A metal ring in the center is both knocker and doorknob. I have rapped it several times, but no one has answered and I'm beginning to wonder if I've come to the wrong house for the interview. It could easily be; there is no number outside, and the nearest neighbours are miles away on a winding, deserted mountain road. If this is the house of Iain McCaig, mythic artist and film-maker, it is as different from his ebullient, baroque imagery as a house can be.
I decide to give up. Slamming the knocker one last, hopeless time, I turn back to the road and the darkened mountainside. The night is truly night way up here, with no human brightness to fool me into a false sense of security. I can't see a bloody thing. Then, without warning, my shadow leaps from my feet, wrenched by a blinding quadrangle of light spilling from the doorway behind me. I can't hold back a shriek.
A bellow answers mine, and I spin to confront it. A backlit figure jumps away from me and for a moment we are both poised for flight. Then the silhouette in the doorway begins to snigger, bending to retrieve a small unlit cigar that has fallen at its feet. "Leapin' thunder lizards," it says gruffly, "you scared the carprolite out of me." Then, somewhat less pleasantly, "You must be that interviewer guy. Figures." My small, hunched-over host stomps away, and I am left with an open door and a wounded ego. Well, Mr. McCaig, it is the interviewer who has the last laugh. We of the word are mighty. I think of adjectives that will reduce you to nothing, and walk boldly into your lair.
My host is nowhere in sight. The house looks as though he has just moved in. There are no pictures, no decorations, nothing but the bare necessities. A light bulb. A very functional wooden chair in front of an ancient television set that has an axe cloven into the screen. "Gave it up ten years ago," the gruff voice explains. "Fucking commercials."
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© Iain McCaig |
I turn, meaning to glower, but it's all I can do to stop my mouth from flapping open. I feel the shriek returning. The stunted cigar-sucking thing in front of me is not McCaig, but a midget tyrannosaur. It smiles a picket fence of steak knives, and looks me over as if I were a bowl of snack mix. "So you're here to interview my Master, eh? What about? Drawing? Animation? Conceptual firm design? . . ." The creature works the last words out of its mouth as if it had suddenly discovered an annoying hair under its tongue.
"St--St--Storytelling," I manage.
"Storytelling? Mother of Godzilla, what the hell does he know about storytelling?"
"Well, um, he's a narrative artist. That means telling stories in pictures--"
"Hey! Did I ask for an explanation? What, do I look extinct to you? Narrative, from the Latin narrativus, to talk, and art, from artis, Old French. It's called Hrrrhrrghrrhrr in tyrannosaur, you know. Bloody mammals."
I fight the urge to run and hide under a fern-tree. I look around the empty hallway, the walls as white as a blank sheet of paper. "So . . . is your Master at home?"
"Yeah, yeah, he's home. But he's got deadlines. Capiche? He's working." The creature closes the door behind me, not a pleasant feeling. "So he sent me to deal with you."
"And you are? . . ."
The creature thinks carefully. "Yes," he concludes at last. "I am. I suggest you leave metaphysics out of this and stick to those storytelling questions. And hurry up. I got a program to watch."
I swallow hard and perch myself on the wooden chair. It is surprisingly more comfortable than it looks. I try to relax. Pulling my notepad and fountain pen out, I stare into the creature's eyes. They are yellow and slitted. A nictitating membrane slides across the surface as they glare at me. I decide to study the fascinating white walls instead. "Uh, yes, well, let us start, if we may, with Mythic Structure--"
"Get your ape butt out of MY chair."
"Oh!" I jump up so fast the chair tips over. It hits the ground with an unhealthy crack. The hind leg splinters before my horrified eyes.
I am thrown aside. The tyrannosaur studies the damage. A moment of shock and silence. Then it turns to me with trembling lips.
"The Master gave me that chair" it says, "as a reward for not eating the last Interviewer. I was to get a rug for you. Persian. Red." The Tyrannosaur's tiny hands writhe nervously. At last, they twitch the cigar out of its mouth and flick it away. "Oh well."
There is a flash of teeth, a whiff of fetid saurian breath and the feeling of biting into a rare steak, only in reverse. It is mercifully short. When I open my eyes, I find myself once more outside the house, facing an empty slab of doorway, only this time in the broadest of daylight.
Other people are crowded around me. They press eagerly forward, as if I were myself the artist come to be interviewed. They all float a little off the ground, and have notepads and fountain pens, cocked and ready. A white-faced young woman holds a microphone towards me.
"Did you get it? The secret of Storytelling? Did he tell you?"
I am at a loss for words, but the others misinterpret my hesitation, and begin to chant, "Tell us! Tell us!"
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© Iain McCaig |
I look at all their hopeful faces, and try to tell them the truth. No, McCaig has no answers. He doesn't know the first thing about storytelling. He's just an artist, so whipped by deadlines that he employs a ferocious people-eating tyrannosaur to guard his door. I try to tell them this, but I look at their eager faces, and I can't find the words.
"Yes. Yes," I find myself saying. "hold on. Here it is. He told me everything. Listen. It goes like this: Once upon a time, in a land far, far away . . ." I make it up, watching their eyes. This is what they've come to hear. A story. When I'm finished, they smile and sigh. One by one they thank me, and vanish.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. When I open them, I find myself sitting on the broken chair inside the front door of McCaig mansion. Only the chair is not broken. The room is different, too. There are pictures on the walls now, paintings of people and dinosaurs. Flames burn in a giant fireplace and the smell of strong black tea steams from a clay cup in my hands. Celtic music lilts in the air, Loreena McKennitt, I think. As I finish the tea, I notice that Mr. McCaig sits in a chair opposite, laughing.
"Well now," he grins, taking my cup. "Reckon you already know everything I know about narrative art. Plenty of books out there about structure, narrative drive and all that other stuff. The rest is just dreaming and scribbling, you know."
He escorts me to the door, made of rich, redwood paneling now, carved with intricate shapes. As he pulls it open, chimes tinkle. We stand outside, looking into the warm evening, streetlamps bright on the redwood trees and the California suburb outside. "Love to stay longer," McCaig says "but can't.
Deadlines, damn 'em and bless 'em. Must get back to it, or they'll eat me alive."
I close my eyes, breathing in the glorious night. "Is that really all you know about storytelling?" I ask.
But the man is already gone.
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On Storytelling |