“The models are getting friction burns from the suits. And they can’t even begin to stand up.”
            “Oh yeah, I was thinking about that, that they wouldn’t be able to stand. Is it funny to watch?” He is sitting at a desk in a small studio in New York, video conferencing with his main assistant, a well dressed and motivated woman in her early thirties. She picks up her laptop to angle the camera towards a woman in a bikini, who is inside a clear inflatable suit, which is shaped like an obese man. An assistant begins unzipping the suit to free the visibly unhappy model. Several other bikini-clad women are standing around, in bathrobes, and more transparent fat suits are hanging on a clothing rack. The artist giggles at the not quite real-time image, covering his mouth with the first two knuckles of his fist.
            “It’s not going to work like this,” the woman says matter-of-factly.
            “Um, what if we filled the legs of the suit with clear silicone, so they’re heavier?” The bikini women are supposed to bob around in a swimming pool. It will be filmed from directly overhead- a professional film camera is waiting on a crane by the pool.
            “Clear silicone would be really disgusting, don’t you think?”
            “I don’t think disgust is a real emotion.”
            “Okay, so you want me to tell them that disgust is not a real emotion and then submerge their bodies in silicone?”
            “Well, this isn’t a beer commercial. Sorry. Maybe I should just come down there. Tell them to wrap for the day, I’ll be there tomorrow.”
            “Do you want me to book you a flight?”
            “Oh yeah, would you?”
            “I’ll send the itinerary to your phone. Don’t forget your interview.”
            “Okay, great, thanks.”
All of his art is about becoming invisible. It has made him an art superstar. He married a rock goddess, who recently left him for his friend. He has had all of his body hair removed. He worked with engineers to create a robe that makes it wearer invisible, using tiny cameras and fabric video screens. He has made a helmet that fills your entire field of vision with nothingness. He has created a world to surround these works: a surreal movie series shot entirely with strangers off the street, with the highest production value and least possible planning. His graduate thesis was to hide in closets throughout his campus for days at a time. His favorite colors are clear and reflective. He still talks constantly to the rock goddess and his friend; he is not sure if he is hurt by the affair- its unfolding has always seemed reasonable to him. His friend, also a musician, is much more like his wife than he was. He has never had much luck with love; he can never get over himself enough. In dating, he can never feel a sense of conquest, he is always the conquered; every person he has loved through his life, even just kissed, got to steal a part of him. It’s not that he doesn’t want anyone. He wants at least one person in every room; he is always looking for someone to fall in love with during the time allotted. But actually choosing someone- even just long enough to sleep with them- seems to him like self-deceit. The rockstar was the only person with the credentials to own him, so he married her, and loved her and lived indulgently with her. In a way, he is glad she’s gone, he is glad to feel the pain. He has always been happiest when his desires are amorphous, a confused but powerful soup. Even committing to projects is a betrayal of this precious force, but obsession overrides his desire to be free. He closes his laptop and checks his phone.
            The artist is at an interview with a major art magazine. The interview is filmed, perhaps to be shown on the internet, capturing the eccentric mannerisms he has been allowed to cultivate over the years.
            “All of my works are failures,” he says to the interviewer. She is leaning towards him. Despite his romantic inaccessibility, perhaps because of it, the artist has been seductive to many women and men throughout his life. It is because he is unaware of the difference between seduction and communication that he is seductive. To his admirers, he is a big beautiful animal perpetually emerging from the woods, doe-eyed, without any idea what is going on. He believes what he is saying- that all of his works are failures. Every completed artwork reflects back a childish mediocrity, like the posters of Lamborghinis and lone wolves in his childhood bedroom. The thing he is after is not a thing at all. It is a negative space; its magic-eye boundary is defined by all of the something that surrounds it. The feeling is one of massive fullness, indescribable energy and meaning. It is a universal fetus, a dense kernel of anti-meaning. But he knows better than to describe this publicly.
            “I want to help people overcome the fear of death.”
            “You’ve been described as an all-American. You grew up wealthy, went to an ivy league, excelled in varsity sports. How does this impact your art?”
            “I am the product of a steady stream of praise, love, and good fortune.” He is not answering her question, but it is a stupid question intended to provoke him. Why should you be weird when you have everything? This question is at the root of much of the public’s interest in him.
            “You were a male model prior to becoming an artist.” Now it is not even a question. The interviewer looks closely at the intense flora of freckles on his face for a second. She glances away, and imagines, accurately, that they cover his entire body. This visualization causes her to partially close her eyes.
“Art is more about seeing that what is actually seen. In the future, paintings will be empty picture frames that alter the viewer’s perspective when looked through.” When he leaves the interview, he steps into the bathroom to change wigs, from a blond surfer-cut to a short tousled action-movie style. He is well aware that this action will be noticed and will be included in the interview, but he is uncertain if this is why he is doing it.
            The artist still rides the train. While he is one of the most famous people in the art world, he is still anonymous in society at large, hardly anyone even knows his name, let alone what he looks like with a wig on. A hipster boy in a Santa hat is standing towards the end of the train, looking stern and unhappy. Two teenage Latina girls are standing beside the artist, insisting on each other’s beauty. They are pressing against each others thighs, and almost kissing. He can feel the heat of their arms in his ear. People talking on the train free him briefly from the tyranny of his internal monologue. He is captivated by almost any conversation, because everybody else is not him. In the future, anonymity will be the most valuable commodity. I should have said that one at the interview, he thinks. No matter how successful he becomes, everyday for the artist is an emotional rollercoaster. There is no oppressive force for him to rail against. Half the day he thinks, “I am in the greatest position of privilege ever given to a human being. I am a seer, a shaman.” The other half he thinks, “I am a gigantic joke. I am a self-absorbed, lonely, and completely useless appendage of modern culture.”
The rock goddess produced an entire album of music that is obviously about him.  At home, he listens to a couple of tracks from it. He is frying some eggs and looking out the window as the winter sun sets over New Jersey. His apartment is a multimillion dollar loft in Tribeca. He knows the famous people, and they get together to have interesting conversations over meals. But the feeling of density, that they are breaking new ground together, is over. They are all professionals, their lives are just lives, and they do not need each other. His phone hums and vibrates. It is his ex-wife.
“What’s going on?” she says, with her adorable foreign accent.
“I’m making eggs. I need to go to LA tomorrow for the fat-suit bikini thing.”
“Ah…”
“Where are you?”
“Back in Jamaica. I went snorkeling today.” She has had an obsession with snorkeling for years; she moved to Jamaica and built a recording studio so she could snorkel in her free time. Eventually it will bore her and she will move on. She tells him that his friend- her new lover- is still on tour, now in Japan, but will be coming to Jamaica at the end of the week.
“How’s the tour?” he asks.
            “It’s just a tour. He’s tired.” Soon the artist can tell that she is thinking about her music, drifting away from the conversation, even though she called him. He is starting to drift as well.
            “I should go. I’ll call you from L.A. if I have time.”
            “Cool. Bye. I love you.”
            “Love you too.”
As he comes into the airport, he gets goose bumps and waves of euphoria. Somehow his early desires to be primitive have made him more able to love modernity than anyone. The airport always promises to deliver him like a lover, to leave everything behind. He becomes a discreet entity, not even taking carry-on luggage. The airplane forces his universe to shrink to the size of his body. The time spent with no control of his destiny is some of his best thinking time. It would be okay if I died now, he always thinks while in the air. When he was with the rock goddess, they often traveled in her private jet. The scale of her wealth dwarfs his- she produces things that people actually buy, and has been much shrewder in her finances. Now in the security line they warn against making jokes about bombs. It’s funny to see the airlines admitting that humor exists, even if it is to forbid it. The evolution of airline policy fascinates him. The disappearance of airline food somehow seems defensive; not just to cut costs, but refusing to be the butt of second-rate comedian’s jokes for eternity. Rather than remove the no-smoking icon, which implies that at some point we may be able to smoke on the plane again, they leave it permanently lit.
            He always gets indigestion in Los Angeles. He thinks it is compensating for the lack of weather. Intestinal storms brew, internal thunder resounds. The weather should be outside of you, not inside. As he is driven along the freeway in a shiny black Lincoln, they pass a dusty SUV with the words “wash me” rubbed onto the back windshield. We have thought this joke was funny for fifty years because the dirt, the reason for the statement, allows the statement to be written. The medium is the message. “Have I begun to think of art as merely a formula?” he wonders. Often he is concerned that he is nothing more than a collector of clever noticings. “What about when I can’t notice them anymore? I’m just a cleverness jock, and I’ll be put out to pasture. I might as well have stayed with hockey.” At the warehouse, the artist, a few assistants and an engineer resolve the fat suit issue. They design and fabricate clear rolling anchors to keep the girls upright in the water. However, later that night the artist is reviewing the previous footage, and decides the models look best floating on their backs in the fat suits, as they were originally. The video image will be projected into cones, which make it appear that the girls are being sucked into black holes and then spit out again as they move around the pool. It will be shown at a foreign biennial. He is in the screening room with only his main assistant. His ex-wife calls.
            “…So they kept playing anyway, even though rain was sweeping across the stage in sheets. It was really beautiful.” She is describing the last night of shows in Japan. “He looked like a messiah with his wet hair in his face. You will be proud when you see it.”
            “I’ll watch it online when I get off the phone. I’m excited, it sounds great.”
“Do you need anything else?” the assistant mouths quietly as she hoists her bag onto her shoulder.
            “Oh…ah, no. Go ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow for the reshoot. Thanks for staying so late.”
            “Call me back after you see it,” his ex-wife says through the phone.
            It takes a second to reconnect to what she is talking about. It is very difficult for the artist to divide his attention between two people, even though he is always trying to do it. “Okay.”
            He opens up his computer and searches for his friend’s band name, with Japan, and rain. A ten minute pixilated video loads, and he watches it. He really wants it to be good; he imagines it as a rare moment of eloquence and perseverance, the band and crowd sticking it out for something important. But it doesn’t live up to his expectation. He neglects to call his ex-wife back because he doesn’t know what to say, except to repeat his hopes as if he hasn’t seen it. People come to concerts like religious events, but they know that no miracles will occur. The ultimate irony of the world is that authenticity is the most ethereal substance. Fans watch a delayed video feed through binoculars, the sound system amplifies the fireworks. His friend’s band entered this tier of the music industry with a sense of humor, employing armies of green headed alien backup dancers; his friend would leap out over the crowd in a clear inflated ball as he sang the lead. This was actually the inspiration for the obese fat suits, although the artist does not remember where any of his ideas come from. Now the band is stuck with this immense and cumbersome production, hardly different from the bands that they were mocking.
            Before he heads to the small apartment on his complex, the artist walks across the tarmac into another large warehouse, where his most expensive project ever is slowly being assembled. He flicks on several giant bays of fluorescent lights, and walks around the deflated beast.  It is a personal airship, with a donut shaped balloon of clear and reflective plastic. He has fantasized about it since his early twenties, and worked with a staff of aeronautics engineers to build it over the last ten years. It is designed to stay aloft almost indefinitely, concentrating the heat of the sun too make hydrogen for lift and power. He will be the first human to truly live in the clouds. He will manage his art empire as a virtual being, through satellite feeds. He will finally get in some serious TV watching. Being around the airship gives him enormous peace; it helps him to believe that he has evaded his greatest fear- that his mind would harden with age. He believes that a manner of immortality is gained each time the world sees itself through his eyes. Everyone who knows about the airship has tried to convince him not to build it, saying it will be a personal Hindenburg, it is a suicidal impulse. It has cost a dangerous amount of money, straining his relationship with the gallerist who made him what he is. He wonders if the rock goddess left him partly because of it, because he never abandoned the fantasy of living alone in the sky.