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| Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art, 1976, ex. 7 Alleged to be a portrait of Lucy Tennant. |
It’s a Symposium of Hunter Scholars, Mid-Winter, 2527. In attendance: Eve and Number Three of Brattleboro, Number One of DC, Number Two of Albany and His Mistresses, Elspeth and Andrea. A cozy gathering in the dancing candle light, ages and ages hence. They’ve gathered this way before. Beside the fire, they speak informally about the purpose and progress of their work. The men use numbers rather than their proper names. This is one of the trappings of the academic tradition they practice. The women, on an equal footing in this society, use the names they’re given or have taken on in reflection of their interests or personalities. Much about this future will seem strange to you. Some of it will fit right in with what you believe about humanity. Let them speak:]
“Hunter scholarship is a blueberry patch just now,” said Number Three.
“Mostly attributable to the materials you’ve unearthed.”
“Thanks, One. If not for you, we’d have nothing.”
“Eve?”
“Oh, I agree. We sing and shout.”
“Crank up that Edison and put that record on again!”
“I don’t know, Two. It’s getting fainter and fainter. It’ll be spring before I can get back down to make another cut.”
“We could sing the madrigals.”
“Sure, Eve, we could. But I’m inclined to sit and talk.”
“It’s all the talking that creates the bog. Number Two, we get so bogged down in speculation. All we really know is that somebody made this music many years ago. The legends and stories, the so-called ‘Boston Tales,’ it’s impossible to tell the truth from any of it.”
“You know it’s true, we really have no idea who Calbraith Hunter was, or what he really did.”
“Elspeth, you had that story about his red-headed muse, the one that used to paint the color on right out of the bottle.”
“Oh yes! I love that one, though it’s not a Boston story. Much further out in the “Book of Babes.” She accused him of making things up all the time. She said he was a pathological liar. A bit of a braggart. The red-head, that’s my juice.”
“So true, lady El, so true. You wear your fiery tresses well!”
“Andrea? What say you?”
“The narratives are, one feels, partly things that happened, straight up, and partly things that happened highly embellished, and partly a pack of lies.”
“Fiction.”
“Right. But Hunter calls the whole thing fiction. A novel. He gives himself carte-blanche…”
“Ha! The white card! Love that lingo!”
“…To invent.”
“The music is the claim to fame.”
“Not for every taste. Eve here likes it, it makes her ‘sing and shout,’ but some can only yawn. And barely stifled.”
“I’m a yawner when it comes to the music,” says Elspeth. “I am a fan of the narratives, and am glad, Number Three that you’ve worked so hard to put them in order and bring them to light.”
“I bow to you, my darling El. But I can enjoy the music.”
“You can actually play the music.”
“You make me blush.”
“He makes me sweat.” Eve’s indeed blushed and sweating by the small fire.
“I think the public likes the stories. I hear them told in surprising places.”
“They have their place. They enchant the past and make it seem so close.”
“Not bad for a pack of lies.”
[So they sit and talk, batting back and forth a favorite topic, the shuttlecock of Calbraith Hunter’s work. Yet I can tell you that he’s only in their minds because of luck and twists of fate. So much was lost. I can tell you that the public they speak of is a very small one. There are just not many humans left. The joy they take in ancient music, in music history, is uplifting. Let us turn now to an edition of that labor, The Third Person’s little volume, a parchment bound with twine, the first person narrative of Calbraith Hunter, with interjections by the editors. I’ll be interjecting too…]
