incredible cat

5. Mr. Landlord's slag circle

The morning light shines through the window at the corner of the stairs, piercing the sleepy Zhou Ping's face.

Zhou Ping rubbed his temples and staggered up the stairs, only to find Mr. Landlord standing beside him.

"Yes, the painting is not bad." The landlord touched the painting on the switch, and every line in the painting fascinated him, "Did you draw it?"

"No..." Zhou Ping wanted to deny it, but found that there was a strange-looking pen on his swinging right hand at some point.

"Isn't this the pen I hid in the basement? Why is it in your hand?" Mr. Landlord snatched the pen from Zhou Ping's hand, took out a purple handkerchief from his pocket, and wrapped it tightly.

Zhou Ping looked at the suspicious eyes of the landlord, and told him exactly what happened last night.

"So, this picture on the electric switch is your mother's dying face?" After hearing Zhou Ping's bizarre story, the landlord took out a pack of tissues slowly from the pocket of his suit without any doubts. Wiping the tears hanging from the corners of the eyes of the woman in the painting, he closed his eyes with red eye circles, and water stains stuck to his long eyelashes, greedily nostalgic and unwilling to let them fall, "No wonder, I see The people in the painting are so familiar."

The landlord leaned his waist against the handrail of the stairs, raised his head, took out a pack of Liqun from his trouser pocket, picked out the best-looking cigarette and lit it.

"You know my mother?" Zhou Ping went to the bathroom to wash his face, then came out with a bucket and a broom, cleaned up the vomit in the living room on the first floor, and said to the landlord.

"I know." The landlord said in a tone that was about to cry, "but not only know..."

"Have you ever liked my mother?" Zhou Ping interrupted the landlord.

"Yes." The landlord stroked his hair, suppressed the crying in his throat, and tried to calm himself down, "Can you give me this painting?"

"Okay, as long as you don't care about me scribbling in your room." Zhou Ping cleaned up the house, took out a large bottle of Nutrition Express from the refrigerator, and poured it on the glass with his name on it. in the glass.

"I still have to worry about this matter." Mr. Landlord walked to Zhou Ping, picked up Zhou Ping's glass filled with Nutrition Express, and drank it, "However, if you can still draw such a Painting, even if you paint on the ceiling, I won't care."

"Really?"

"Silly thing, do you really want to draw again?" The landlord flicked Zhou Ping's forehead with his fingers, "Without that pen, you would never be able to draw such a picture in your life."

"You look down on me so much? Your paintings are not necessarily better than mine." Zhou Ping rubbed his aching forehead, looked at the glass that was licked clean by the landlord, and said angrily.

"It's just that I don't want to paint. The best paintings I have drawn have already been burned at your mother's funeral." Mr. Landlord breathed a puff of smoke into Zhou Ping's face, which made Zhou Ping cough uncontrollably stand up.

"But you seem to be wearing something different today." Zhou Ping covered his mouth and nose, fanned the smoke that kept coming, and noticed that the landlord today was wearing a blue suit with a "LK" pinned to his chest. "The badge with the words, a pair of successful people's demeanor.

"You just found out." Mr. Landlord took off the "LK" badge pinned to his chest, and on the back of the badge was a painting of a masterpiece by the Dutch painter Escher - "Gallery", "You know what this painting means Is it?"

"I don't know." Zhou Ping shook his head. This painting uses a few simple lines to draw a person and a gallery. The person is looking at the gallery, or the person is a painting in the gallery.

"Then let me tell you." The landlord drew a circle on his chest with his fingers, "This painting is about those trash artists who can only spin around in place and can't move forward. There are many such trash artists. When artists come together, it becomes a strange circle that can compliment each other and be spiritually self-sufficient."

Mr. Landlord pinned the "LK" badge back to his chest, and continued: "And I am one of these trash artists. I create together with many trash artists, appreciate each other, and then gain false confidence, and then continue to create, and The LK organization is the aggregate of these waste residues."

"After staying in this kind of organization for a long time, I will feel at ease to make some artistic creations that cater to the trend without my own thoughts, and then listen to the polite praise of my peers, and I will have the illusion that I am very talented." Mr. Landlord said deeply He took a deep breath of the cigarette, puffed out his cheeks and held his breath, and then exhaled a long-lasting smoke ring, "But a real artist must go through a boring and lonely practice like an ascetic to reach the peak of his art. People like us just can’t do it.”

"I don't understand a word, so put it simply." Zhou Ping washed the glass that the landlord had drunk, poured another glass of Nutrition Express, and lay down on the table to drink it slowly.

"Then let me put it simply." The landlord kept clearing his throat, as if he wanted to spit out the dirt in his lungs, "Scrap artists like us hold an art exhibition by themselves, because they are afraid of knowing their true strength Instead of letting real professionals see it, I called my colleagues, that is, members of this LK organization, and asked them to encourage me, and today I am the protagonist of this exhibition."

"It sounds pitiful." Zhou Ping closed his eyes, put his hands on his chest, and shook his head, looking like a young man.

"No, people who know that they are scum are not poor people." Mr. Landlord pressed Zhou Ping's shoulders, with a preaching posture, which made Zhou Ping, who was used to his hippie smiling face in the past, very uncomfortable, "Because this kind of strange circle does not only exist. Among those who call themselves artists, they exist anywhere in the world in various types, maybe in this small three-story villa, or in the M high school called the college entrance examination factory. People in circles are rarely aware of their true condition because they are surrounded by other people in similar situations."

"Dizzy, you can't understand what you're talking about." Zhou Ping finished drinking the Nutrition Express and poured the glass into the sink to wash it. At this time, there was a rapid doorbell ringing outside the door.

"They're here." The landlord arranged his clothes, arranged the paintings in the living room one by one, and opened the door in a calm manner.

There is nothing to say about what happened afterwards. A few people carrying guitars, some holding stone statues, and some people holding paintings like Mr. Landlord entered the house. They looked ordinary, their works were ordinary, and their conversation was ordinary. But every sentence is full of professional terms that Zhou Ping can't understand.

These people talked and saw the picture on the switch—the picture of a woman lying on a hospital bed crying, and they all closed their mouths in unison.

Because this painting is really good. Although it is only a few simple lines, it conveys the living conditions and inner emotions of this character to the hearts of everyone present at a glance. When they see this painting Afterwards, I deeply realized that no matter how hard I tried, and how I borrowed the skills of classic artists to revise my works repeatedly, I couldn’t reach this level.

So some people's freehand brushstrokes are worth hundreds of millions, while some people's drawings that have been modified for several years are worth nothing.

Because the former has been tempered countless times, after absorbing many things, he has understood the mystery of it alone, turned the things of the predecessors into his own, and condensed the complicated skills into a few simple strokes, giving people a kind of The feeling of being ingenious and clumsy; the latter is to repeatedly smear a bland, empty thing with a technique that is not known at all, giving others a feeling that it is extremely gorgeous at first glance, but pale and empty when you look closely.

"Did you draw this?" said the sculptor standing on the landlady's right hand tremblingly.

"No." The landlord said flatly.

The sculptor glanced at the landlord, then at the painting, heaved a sigh of relief, and an unknown smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

"This painting was painted by him." The landlord pointed to Zhou Ping, and immediately the whole room became more silent. This silence spread to every guest's face like tarsus maggots, no matter how they felt in their hearts. Denial, can not escape.

"What, it was drawn by a child." All the muscles on the guitarist's face worked together, holding back an extremely awkward smile, "The drawing is not bad, but it is far from a professional painter, right? .”

"Yes, yes." The painter standing on Mr. Landlord's left hand stared at the guitarist's gaze for a while, then opened his mouth with difficulty, and responded with wandering eyes, " Children still have to study hard, and don't delay their studies because of painting."

"That's right." A group of guests echoed what he said in unison.

The landlord bit his lower lip, trying not to let himself laugh out loud, and then looked at Zhou Ping with meaningful eyes.

"Talk slowly, I'm going to school." Zhou Ping picked up his shoulder bag and walked out the door on his own. After walking a few steps, he suddenly turned around and shouted at the guests in the room One sentence, "That's just my graffiti, I don't care about painters or something!"

After the people in the room heard this sentence, their interest in looking at the painting, together with the spiritual pillars that supported their lives all these years, collapsed in an instant, and they stood there like logs one by one.

"My friend's child, rebellious period, ignorant." The landlord laughed, went to the refrigerator to get homemade herbal tea, trying to break the awkward atmosphere in the room...