Do you like art?

1.

Two waitresses, one American, blonde & the other a brunette with a sleeve of black inked, entwined tattoos running down to her wrist. Both good at their jobs and friendly. 
This was just after I had thrown my back out so I had to drink beer standing up outside on the street, supporting myself against the side of the building while my wife read her New Yorker and drank her Bloody Mary. The brunette's comment was, Maybe you are over explaining what's happening with these letters of yours. Just now, the more you said, the more I thought whoa! What's happening with this guy? Why is he being so shady? Thanks, I replied, This is what I need to hear. I am always trying to refine my approach. And of course I am always trying to be less shady. 

2.
A couple sitting in the Woolpack pub. The man wearing an LA Dodgers baseball cap and the woman with a nose ring. They were sitting by the fire, drinking rum and cokes & this time I simply said to them, do you guys like art? Sure, the man replied. This established, I gave them a letter & kept the explanation very brief. The waitresses were right. It seemed like a much better approach. 

3.
The bartender at Arcadia liquors. She was thin, blonde with intense blue eyes, 32 & receptive to the idea once she had absorbed what I was saying and realised there was nothing suspicious about it. She was getting ready for the afternoon shift, prepping the bar, juicing limes for pre-made cocktails. She was also trying to be a writer although she was more interested in creative non-fiction. In other words, memoirs. She told me that she came from a religious background, that her work would explore this kind of upbringing. I said, Oh yeah? What? Like the Mormon church? Or the Church of Scientology? expecting one of those restrictive and claustrophobic religions. No, regular old Catholicism, she said. We talked quite a bit about the act of giving a stranger one of my letters. We both agreed that our conversation probably would never have happened if it hadn't been for the letters I was about to hand out to the people in the bar. So, they serve a dual function as a piece of fiction and as a topic of conversation. Sometimes people just need a shared experience to kick the conversation. After I had finished patting myself on the back, we talked about how a great number of people get stuck in creative shells. How half the battle is finding a way to extend yourself beyond the safe zone of your friends & family & creative peers whose encouragement is valuable but biassed. 

4.
The group of four smokers, male and female, well dressed, sitting in the smoking area at Arcadia liquors.

5.
A Lesbian couple sitting at the front window looking out onto Botany road. Sure, said the one nearest to me. We'll take a letter.

6.
A young guy standing on the train platform in Redfern, maybe 30 years old? His hair in a ponytail, listening to music on his phone. Absolutely, he laughed, I'll take one.

7.
A young woman in a plaid shirt and blue jeans, standing near the door as the train exited the tunnel into bright sunshine and we crossed the overhead section of track, over Woolloomaloo, heading towards King's Cross. She listened to what I had to say and then said, no thanks. I'm fine. She smiled and looked uncomfortable. Absolutely no problem at all, I said. I backed off and stood there, a metre away from her as we resumed our anonymous roles and continued on our journy. I put in my earbuds back in and listen to music, holding on to the yellow rail as the train was sucked into the side of the hill and began to approach the Kings Cross Station. I didn't feel embarrassed. Well, maybe just a little bit. Although I had confidence in all my letters, I knew a segment of the public just wouldn't be interested. Some people wouldn't appreciate having their privacy punctured. Besides, I didn't know anything about this woman's life. I had zero context. Maybe she had been through some shit recently and didn't want to deal with people walking up to her, completely out of the blue & trying to thrust a letter into her hands. This is probably why I don't generally approach lone women because what I do could easily be interpreted as a bit sinister. One or two of the passengers in the compartment looked at me with some mild concern. The vibe was awkward. Of course, it was. Anyway, the train slid into the station, the walls and signs rendered as solid objects as we came to a standstill, the doors opening and this woman moved away, threading into the crowd as she headed for the exit. 

8.  
Nick the barber and his friend Rob. I was sitting in a closed barbershop, which had been in operation for 30 odd years. Nick was also involved in various art projects. The barbershop is full of his paintings which are made from tiny pieces of tape, plain multicoloured electrical tape, forming a kind of Mosaic image. This is highly competent and interesting work. I had come to the barbershop intending to slide a letter under the door, as I had done several weeks before but standing there, letter in hand, the door had opened and there was Nick. This was the first time I'd met him. I introduced myself and explain what I was doing and he said, Oh that was you, was it? referring to the previous letter. He went on to say, some of the boys read it. We had no idea what was going on? I didn't know if it was addressed to me or what.Although he looked younger, Nick was in his early fifties, broad-shouldered, dressed in denim. He invited me in. We sat around and talked about art being ethereal in nature nowadays, disposable, transient, how people have moved away from seeing an object, a song, a collection of words as something worth investing their time it. We have become dependent on our phones, on processing large amounts of information at a faster rate, including images and texts. The idea of art seems sort of superfluous when advertising so skillfully appropriates everything and regurgitates it back into the culture.  We talked about the experience of giving over something tactile that has no obligation or price or conditions. Something that you receive, read and leave for someone else. Or like the woman on the train, choose not to engage with. (I told them about her). I also told them I had been scanning the train station in Redfern earlier & I had seen about a hundred people waiting on the different platforms for their trains. About 80% of these people were looking down into a device of some kind or listening to music on a device. (No snobbery here: I was also listening to music. An Ian Brown album). This, of course, makes you wonder about the way that society has changed since the introduction of the smartphone and how people in public do not interact in a personal way that much anymore. We are too busy with our devices in public spaces. In the past being in public might have involved activities such as observing people, talking to people, employing strategies to avoid other people. These days most people, including myself, are focused on the personal, inner world of their phones. It is funny that the internet connects yet shrinks our lives at the same time. Mick and Rob told me about their families, they both had kids,  and about the history of the barbershop. I told them about my marriage and we drank beer. Rod was Trinidadian. Like the lady from Trinidad I talk on the day of the Sydney Writers Festival, he did ask me, what about the end game? What do you get out of all this? There has to be something in it for you. Of course, I said. I want to be acknowledged as a writer. As having an original idea (to say otherwise is ridiculous). I told him about getting my shit out of the purgatory of my hard drive & off the damn cloud & out into the world in one form or other. I also told Rob that the only other person who'd really asked me about this had been a 60-year-old Trinidadian woman on a bus with her husband. Rob laughed at this. I wasn't sure it this said something about people from Trinidad? Perhaps that, as a people, they were generally astute and realistic? I couldn't figure it out. I asked Nick about cutting hair and he showed me a 1960s poster with illustrations of about eight different styles of men's haircuts, all classics, short back and sides. We listened to an older kind of reggae, with female backing singers, although I really don't have any idea what of what it was because I don't understand that genre music at all. We talked about punk rock, the DIY aesthetic, Bob Dylan. Repetition and appropriation in art. I liked everything in the barbershop & that included the old stereo system with a brushed metal casing, knobs and buttons, the barber chairs, all of which looked like they been installed in the 60s, the stacks of paintings against the walls. The papier-mâché dicks (another project that Nick had been working on and which I had seen in his window when I walked past) & all the other collected clutter filling up every nook and cranny.  The boys drank cans of Guinness and I drank my Brooklyn Lager IPA, which I sort of regretted getting after the third bottle because there was an overload of flavour & I was starting to crave something light, like a Corona. Anyway, wrapping up our little discussion on my art project, we agreed that this conversation wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for my letters and therefore it was a least an interesting idea in that it worked on a number of different levels. I did mention that I would probably be writing about this experience the following day. Unless I was reading their reaction incorrectly, they both seemed to take a mental step back at this point. This was another way the project threaded in and out of the real world. We soon started chatting again. No harm, no foul. What was my likely readership anyway? A few people here and there. Like I told them, a significant part of my idea/project dealt with breaking the fourth wall in public places and interacting with people. This being the case, of course, I was gonna use these interactions as fodder for my writing. By then I was starting to get tired of talking about my letters because it seemed fairly egotistical to rattle on and on about what a fucking star I was for coming up with my little idea. Instead, I started asking them questions about their wives and kids. The thing began to taper off. When Rod got up to leave, I did the same thing. Thanks, I said to Nick, and have a good night.

9.
A couple standing in the doorway of a pub on Oxford Street, either smoking a cigarette and waiting for somebody or waiting for a bus. Do you like art? I asked. Sure, said the guy. I was pretty tired by then so I didn't go into the whole sales pitch. I just handed them a letter , said thanks & walked off.

10. 
I remember this old guy I was talking to outside a pub once. Actually-and scarily enough-this was two years ago now. He was a large man, fat like Orson Wells, dressed in a black trench coat, with grey coils of hair going in all directions off his large head and salt and pepper stubble on his chin. He was smoking a cigarette in the sun and we were talking, just bullshitting, and he goes, so you're telling me you want to be a writer? And that you're 45 years old? He took a drag of his smoke, the dangling ash breaking, falling on his lapels, cascading down the fabric, as he laughed and shook his head & said, well you better make your move pretty fucking soon kid.