Untitled — “Is Magic an Art Too?”

Translated from the Persian original.

A friend asked me, is magic an art too? I wanted to say art is magic, then saw that it was a routine, trite answer, and that I don't really know what art is myself. Off the cuff, in a way that would dodge answering and add a bit of humor too, I replied, art has no owner, period. Suddenly, inside, I felt pity for art. For a few moments I identified with it. If art were a person, it would surely be someone important and well known. It could talk, it would certainly have rights and could protest, take a complaint to court that so-and-so has impersonated me, or be a woman someone had taken advantage of, or give interviews in the media and drag the other party's name through the mud. Why even a person: if art were a brand, it would have its own look and a classy logo, it would have exclusivity and tiers for selling or licensing its mark, it would have an owner. If art were a machine, a car I mean, it would surely take skill to use, it would need care, someone would check its gas and water and oil, there'd be someone to fuss over it. This damn thing doesn't even cost anything to keep. If art were an animal, or a solid body, or even a code or a password, they'd crack it. Anything else, at least you could see it and strangle it, hear it and switch it off, drink it and digest it, give birth to it and bury it alive. Rid it of itself. If art were pain, we'd hand it to all these poor suffering souls who are in pain every day, to bear art alongside it. If art were science, it would have its own backers, and if anyone laid a hand on it, every lab in the world would pile onto them and get to the bottom of it. If it were trial and error, people would make time for it. And it would have a name, too. Art itself was that very trial and error that went off to Europe to study to become a science, but over there it fell captive to licentiousness and debauchery, and now it's neither this nor that. If I say art is nothing, I'd be lying, because nothing doesn't find this many owners. If I say it's something important, that's laughable too, important things get expensive, become unreachable, end up belonging to big people, and again it couldn't have this many owners. If I say art is a word, hardly anyone would disagree, but then I'd have to say what kind of word, I mean, is it a noun, a verb, an adjective or a preposition or a pronoun... which it isn't either. I searched the dictionaries for a word with such freedom and abandon. The behavior closest to the word art is the behavior of the word thing. You can call anything a thing. If you don't quite know something, say thing. If you deliberately mean not to use some word, say thing instead. When you're writing something that even you don't know what it is, say I'm writing a thing. The use of thing is strangely close to the meaning of art. The same ignorance, or unknowing, that's in the content of thing is there exactly in art too, and in the way it is interpreted and the way it affects the brain and the heart. But if I go into the heart of the matter with an interpretive eye, thing is probably the handiest word in the Persian language. Just like art.

Art comes in handy.

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