A speedboat turns its way up to the front of the stage. The driver is crouched in an exaggerated affectation of aerodynamism wearing a helmet with a darkly shaded visor. The driver makes raucous, high-pitched speedboat noises. As the boat nears the front, these noises start to break up and give way to engine spluttering. The boat comes to a sudden stop, exaggeratedly jarring the driver forward and back in their seat. The driver gets up from their seat as the boat comes to a stop. “Fucking solar-powered piece of shit! I don’t have a problem with not being able to get something from nothing. But did we really have to invent these stupid machines just to get nothing from something?”

The driver responds to a noise coming from the boat’s cabin down below the bow. “What?” . . . “No, the sun’s not up enough yet. Soon, soon enough.”

Looking around, the driver notices a number of paintings set up on the “shoreline.” To themselves. “We’ve stopped near some sort of painter’s cottage.” Again, responding below. “I said we’re on the right track, getting closer. I can already see some paintings in the darkness on shore.”

The driver reaches down and picks up a thermos full of coffee then gets up on the bow of the boat and sits down. The driver takes off their helmet and sets it beside them, revealing a face with crossed eyes and a patch of snuff residue on the upper lip. The driver then pours some coffee and lights up four cigarettes at once. “Actually, I like this time of morning in this area, when the paintings are still just barely visible on the shoreline before the sun finally comes up over the horizon and we get on our way. There’s something going on there with the sun, the paintings, the horizon, the shore. But we don’t really know what yet. Actually, it’s not so bad that we have to deal with pieces of shit like this one that occasionally throw us back on our own nothingness, our ever more resourceful re-invention of our own nothingness. It’s only temporary anyway. The sun will come up soon. I’m just a little ungrateful and impatient sometimes, within the bounds of reason, I think.”

The driver drinks some coffee. “Ahhh the boats change faster than you can drive them, but the shitty coffee stays the same. Unless our shit understanding and shit appreciation is being worn down and we don’t even realize that nothing’s really quite as shitty as it used to be. That’d be a shame. Actually, if I’m being honest, this coffee is depressingly shitty. Meaning, of course, not shitty enough.”

The driver looks around cross-eyed and happy for a little while until they are taken aback a bit when their stare fixes on somebody on shore. “Hey there, I didn’t see you coming. Good morning. Your paintings look very urban. Thanks for showing me I’m on the right track. Do you mind if I take a closer look?” [. . .] “Yeah, I know it’s early. Well, I’m sorry about that. I guess it was your wishes against mine and, in this case, mine won out.” [. . .] “Thank you, I polish it every day.” [. . .] “Yes, it is getting to be a beautiful morning. Very calm. A bit old-fashioned for my tastes. For me, the calmer and quieter it is, the faster and louder I am able to be.”

The driver jumps off the boat and walks around looking at the paintings. “Yeah, okay. But are you sure you only want one? [begins digging for a cigarette] And you call yourself a fucking painter? [pulls out a snuff tin instead] Maybe you should try some of this instead.” The driver takes a painting off the wall and puts some snuff on it, then offers this to the imaginary person/audience member (who either takes it or doesn’t, the driver then doing the snuff themselves) and then puts it back on the wall. “Ahhh the universal language of snuff. We need more of these universal languages. We need the people to indulge these universal languages. If I might make a suggestion for your next show, snuff is the best press release you could ask for.”

“On that note, do you mind if I say some things about your paintings? You see, I’m taking my speedboat to the city to give a speech and I could use some practice.” [. . .] “No, I’m not a snuff lobbyist. Not a bad idea though.”

“Okay. Hmmm. Where do I begin? Well, take this one, for example. What am I supposed to do with it? Is it coated in LSD or something? Wait, no, that’s not what I meant to say. I can see that it represents a kind of winged goddess, but she lost her wings, simply because there were too many goddesses and not enough seats at the divine table, and then she got the wings caught in an airplane turbine on her way down to Earth, and now she’s posing as a normal homeless person, with towels wrapped around her giant feet, feet like a bear’s, and she’s smoking and pacing the streets before all these stoops painted red, looking to make a quick buck, but there’s this weird sense that the whole world has been locked up, and it’s beautiful like this . . . Or, it’s a swimming pool lounge area and in the background are some buildings where at least one fuck has got to be going on right now.”  

“And this one here. You could probably use it for hang-gliding, or maybe parasailing off the back of my boat. And it looks to me kind of like gasoline smells. There’s this girl in a bearskin shirt, and the bear ripped one of her eyes out, but she still got the shirt in the end, and now she’s sad because she saw a documentary about bears that made her really sad about killing one, but she kept the shirt because the bear got her eye and so that all will not be in vane even though her boyfriend over here won’t even look at her now—because of the shirt, not her eye—and this guy over here doesn’t give a fuck about any of that, he’s just trying to jerk off and take a piss and hail a cab and heil Hitler and heil Franco all the same time.”

“This one is a painting of my sister looking at her reflection in a puddle and she’s thinking about how she doesn’t even recognize herself anymore as two guys fist fight in the background at a magazine stand over the last issue of The Manhattan Art Review. I mean, they happen to be standing at a magazine stand but they’re fighting over their opinions about the latest issue they read online. And then my sister’s like, ‘Fuck, these bros are fighting over their opinions about another guy’s opinions? Pretty typical, actually.’ Then she's good again.” The driver then makes a gesture of ashing a cigarette in the ashtray contained in this painting.

The driver then goes up to the one that looks like a person taking snuff. “I don’t know what this one’s about, and I don’t know what it is about it either, but I like it.”

“Hey, by the way, do you have some tinfoil to spare? We used all of ours up during the festivities last night and now there’s none left for my helmet. You didn’t think my helmet was in case of an accident, did you? I’m driving a fucking boat. No, I try to always wear a tinfoil helmet, especially when I’m around so many paintings and cities. But tinfoil hats are fucking stupid. It’s like using a chocolate bar wrapper for a condom.”

Now rambling on more or less indifferent to the other. “Yeah, thank God for conspiracy theorists. Or should I say conspiracy realists? The less honesty there is in the world, the more conspiracy theories we need. What would we be without them? Just some sparing little titbits of truth, maybe. Hopeless victims of our own resignation to the few really readily available morsels of honest-to-God truth.”

Depending on how the audience has been responding, there are slight differences in the two ways things might now end.

If there has been laughter: “By the way, we’ve been all over with this boat. And everywhere we’ve been, the people have thrown stuff at us. In Japan they threw sushi at us. In Korea they threw kimchi. They threw stinking lutefisk at us in Norway and in Sweden, too. Then in Mallorca they threw black sausages at us. We even took the boat over land and in Berlin some loveable little bastards threw firecrackers at us. That was on New Year’s Eve. And crossing the ocean they threw all kinds of weather at us. And so, our motto became ‘throw shit and be happy.’ And we’d eat whatever they threw at us. Until we went to Canada and they threw actual shit at us. Then we had to come up with a new motto. But then we come here, and you can’t even give us a little laugh? You’re absolutely fucking useless! We’re out of here you . . . you Pinsel head and skinflint!”

Or, if there has been no laughter or negligible laughter: “By the way, what the hell are you laughing at? You know, we’ve been all over with this boat. And everywhere we’ve been, the people have thrown stuff at us. In Japan they threw sushi at us. In Korea they threw kimchi. They threw stinking lutefisk at us in Norway and in Sweden, too. Then in Mallorca they threw black sausages at us. We even took the boat over land and in Berlin some loveable little bastards threw firecrackers at us. That was on New Year’s Eve. And crossing the ocean they threw all kinds of weather at us. And so, our motto became ‘throw shit and be happy.’ And we’d eat whatever they threw at us. Until we went to Canada and they threw actual shit at us. Then we had to come up with a new motto. But the worst is this fucking laughter. Absolutely fucking useless! We’re out of here you . . . you Pinsel head!”

Then the driver puts their helmet on, gets back in the boat, and drives away making the same engine noises as at the beginning.

Text: Luke Schumacher