《渺小一生》:走出門，進(jìn)入一個(gè)沒人認(rèn)識(shí)他、他可以成為任何人的世界。

　 “Mark my words: that kid is going places,” or “It’s so rare to meet someone who’s going to be a truly self-made star at the start of their career,” his father would often announce to Malcolm and his mother after talking to Jude, looking pleased with himself, as if he was somehow responsible for Jude’s genius, and in those moments Malcolm would have to avoid looking at his mother’s face and the consoling expression he knew it wore.

“記住我的話：那個(gè)小子前途無量。”或者“能在一個(gè)白手起家的大人物事業(yè)的起點(diǎn)就認(rèn)識(shí)他，真是太難得了?！彼赣H常常在跟裘德談話后，這么跟馬爾科姆和他母親宣布，一臉得意，好像裘德的才華他也有功勞，而那些時(shí)刻，馬爾科姆都得避免看他母親的臉，心知她臉上一定是安慰的表情。

　 Things would also be easier if Flora were still around. When she was preparing to leave, Malcolm had tried to suggest that he should be her roommate in her new two-bedroom apartment on Bethune Street, but she either genuinely didn’t understand his numerous hints or simply chose not to understand them. Flora had not seemed to mind the excessive amount of time their parents demanded from them, which had meant that he could spend more time in his room working on his model houses and less time downstairs in the den, fidgeting through one of his father’s interminable Ozu film festivals. When he was younger, Malcolm had been hurt by and resentful of his father’s preference for Flora, which was so obvious that family friends had commented on it. “Fabulous Flora,” his father called her (or, at various points of her adolescence, “Feisty Flora,” “Ferocious Flora,” or “Fierce Flora,” though always with approval), and even today—even though Flora was practically thirty—he still took a special pleasure in her. “Fabulous said the wittiest thing today,” he’d say at dinner, as if Malcolm and his mother did not themselves talk to Flora on a regular basis, or, after a brunch downtown near Flora’s apartment, “Why did Fabulous have to move so far from us?” even though she was only a fifteen-minute car ride away. (Malcolm found this particularly galling, as his father was always telling him brocaded stories about how he had moved from the Grenadines to Queens as a child and how he had forever after felt like a man trapped between two countries, and someday Malcolm too should go be an expat somewhere because it would really enrich him as a person and give him some much-needed perspective, etc., etc. And yet if Flora ever dared move off the island, much less to another country, Malcolm had no doubt that his father would fall apart.)

如果弗洛拉還住家里，他也會(huì)輕松一點(diǎn)。當(dāng)初她在貝休恩街租下一間兩室公寓、準(zhǔn)備搬出去時(shí)，馬爾科姆曾想過要當(dāng)她的室友，但她若不是真的聽不懂他的百般暗示，就是根本在裝傻。弗洛拉似乎不介意父母硬要占用掉他們太多的時(shí)間，這表示他就有更多待在自己的房間弄模型屋的時(shí)間，而不用在樓下的休息室陪他父親看那些沒完沒了的小津安二郎的電影。小時(shí)候，馬爾科姆曾因?yàn)楦赣H比較疼愛弗洛拉而傷心怨恨，那實(shí)在太明顯了，連一些世交朋友都會(huì)說他偏心?！胺欠哺ヂ謇??！彼母赣H這么喊她（或是在青少年的不同時(shí)期，喊她“強(qiáng)悍的弗洛拉”“兇猛的弗洛拉”或“犀利的弗洛拉”，不過總是帶著贊許的意思），即使現(xiàn)在弗洛拉都30歲了，還是特別能得到他的歡心?！胺欠哺ヂ謇裉煺f了一件超聰明的事情?！彼麜?huì)在晚餐桌上這么說，好像馬爾科姆和他母親平常都沒在跟弗洛拉講話似的；或者，在弗洛拉公寓附近的鬧市區(qū)吃過早午餐后說：“非凡弗洛拉為什么要搬得這么遠(yuǎn)？”即使只有十五分鐘車程而已（這件事尤其令馬爾科姆火大，因?yàn)樗习挚倫壑v起他小時(shí)候如何從格林納丁斯群島移居到皇后區(qū)的種種精彩故事，說從此他總覺得自己像是被困在兩個(gè)國(guó)家之間，還說有朝一日馬爾科姆也該移居到國(guó)外哪個(gè)國(guó)家，因?yàn)槟钦娴目梢宰屗麄€(gè)人變得更豐富，給予他一些迫切需要形成的觀點(diǎn)，等等，等等。但換了弗洛拉，別說要搬離這個(gè)國(guó)家，只要她敢搬出曼哈頓，馬爾科姆都很確定他父親非崩潰不可）。

　 Malcolm himself had no nickname. Occasionally his father called him by other famous Malcolms’ last names—“X,” or “McLaren,” or “McDowell,” or “Muggeridge,” the last for whom Malcolm was supposedly named—but it always felt less like an affectionate gesture and more like a rebuke, a reminder of what Malcolm should be but clearly was not.

馬爾科姆沒有小名。偶爾父親會(huì)用另一個(gè)也叫馬爾科姆（Malcolm）的名人姓氏喊他——“X”，或是“麥克拉倫”“麥克道爾”“馬格瑞基”。馬爾科姆的名字應(yīng)該就源于馬格瑞基，但感覺這樣喊他不是出于關(guān)愛，而像是一種指責(zé)，提醒他馬爾科姆該是什么樣，而顯然他沒做到。

　 Sometimes—often—it seemed to Malcolm that it was silly for him to still worry, much less mope, about the fact that his father didn’t seem to like him very much. Even his mother said so. “You know Daddy doesn’t mean anything by it,” she’d say once in a while, after his father had delivered one of his soliloquies on Flora’s general superiority, and Malcolm—wanting to believe her, though also noting with irritation that his mother still referred to his father as “Daddy”—would grunt or mumble something to show her that he didn’t care one way or another. And sometimes—again, increasingly often—he would grow irritated that he spent so much time thinking about his parents at all. Was this normal? Wasn’t there something just a bit pathetic about it? He was twenty-seven, after all! Was this what happened when you lived at home? Or was it just him? Surely this was the best possible argument for moving out: so he’d somehow cease to be such a child. At night, as beneath him his parents completed their routines, the banging of the old pipes as they washed their faces and the sudden thunk into silence as they turned down the living-room radiators better than any clock at indicating that it was eleven, eleven thirty, midnight, he made lists of what he needed to resolve, and fast, in the following year: his work (at a standstill), his love life (nonexistent), his sexuality (unresolved), his future (uncertain). The four items were always the same, although sometimes their order of priority changed. Also consistent was his ability to precisely diagnose their status, coupled with his utter inability to provide any solutions.

有時(shí)候，應(yīng)該說經(jīng)常，他擔(dān)心父親似乎不太喜歡他，甚至為此郁悶，這讓馬爾科姆覺得很蠢，就連他母親也這么覺得?！澳阒赖卣f那些話沒惡意的?！泵看胃赣H又在贊嘆弗洛拉的種種優(yōu)越之后，她便這么說。而馬爾科姆總是哼一聲或咕噥兩句，表示有沒有惡意他根本不在乎——他很想相信她，但也很不高興地注意到，母親跟他提到父親時(shí)，還是叫他“爹地”。有時(shí)候，越來越頻繁地，他對(duì)自己花那么多時(shí)間去想父母親的事很火大。這樣正常嗎？這樣不會(huì)有點(diǎn)可悲嗎？畢竟他27歲了！住家里就會(huì)發(fā)生這種事嗎？還是只有他會(huì)這樣？當(dāng)然，這是搬出去最主要的理由：他就不用再那么幼稚了。到了夜晚，當(dāng)樓下的父母親進(jìn)行睡前的例行程序時(shí)（洗臉時(shí)老舊水管發(fā)出的砰砰聲，關(guān)掉客廳暖氣時(shí)發(fā)出空洞的悶響以及接下來的一片安靜，比任何時(shí)鐘都更清楚地顯示那是11點(diǎn)、11點(diǎn)半還是12點(diǎn)），他會(huì)列出他明年必須趕緊解決的事項(xiàng)：他的工作（陷入停頓狀態(tài)）、他的愛情（不存在）、他的性取向（懸而未決）、他的未來（不確定）?？偸沁@四項(xiàng)，雖然有時(shí)先后次序會(huì)改變。同樣一致的是，他有能力精確診斷自己的狀態(tài)，但毫無能力提出任何解決方案。

　 The next morning he’d wake determined: today he was going to move out and tell his parents to leave him alone. But when he’d get downstairs, there would be his mother, making him breakfast (his father long gone for work) and telling him that she was buying the tickets for their annual trip to St. Barts today, and could he let her know how many days he wanted to join them for? (His parents still paid for his vacations. He knew better than to ever mention this to his friends.)

次日早晨醒來時(shí)，他會(huì)下定決心：今天他就要搬出去，叫爸媽不要來煩他。但等到他下樓，碰到母親在幫他做早餐（他父親早就出門去上班了），母親說她今天要買他們年度旅行的機(jī)票，到圣巴泰勒米島玩，問他能不能晚些時(shí)候跟她說要加入幾天（他都不敢跟朋友說，他跟父母出門度假時(shí)，還是由他們出錢）。

　 “Yes, Ma,” he’d say. And then he’d eat his breakfast and leave for the day, stepping out into the world in which no one knew him, and in which he could be anyone.

“好的，媽。”他說。然后他會(huì)吃完早餐，走出門，進(jìn)入一個(gè)沒人認(rèn)識(shí)他、他可以成為任何人的世界。

　 2

　 AT FIVE P.M. every weekday and at eleven a.m. every weekend, JB got on the subway and headed for his studio in Long Island City. The weekday journey was his favorite: He’d board at Canal and watch the train fill and empty at each stop with an ever-shifting mix of different peoples and ethnicities, the car’s population reconstituting itself every ten blocks or so into provocative and improbable constellations of Poles, Chinese, Koreans, Senegalese; Senegalese, Dominicans, Indians, Pakistanis; Pakistanis, Irish, Salvadorans, Mexicans; Mexicans, Sri Lankans, Nigerians, and Tibetans—the only thing uniting them being their newness to America and their identical expressions of exhaustion, that blend of determination and resignation that only the immigrant possesses.

每個(gè)工作日的下午5點(diǎn)，以及周末的早上11點(diǎn)，杰比都會(huì)搭地鐵去他位于長(zhǎng)島市的工作室。工作日的這趟路程是他最喜歡的：他在卡納爾上車，看著列車在每一站被填滿又被清空，乘客族裔與人種的混合也不斷變化，每隔十個(gè)街區(qū)，車廂里的乘客結(jié)構(gòu)就會(huì)重組，變成各種刺激而荒謬的組合：波蘭人、中國(guó)人、韓國(guó)人、塞內(nèi)加爾人；塞內(nèi)加爾人、多米尼加人、印度人、巴基斯坦人；巴基斯坦人、愛爾蘭人、薩爾瓦多人、墨西哥人；墨西哥人、斯里蘭卡人、尼日利亞人。他們唯一的共同點(diǎn)，就是都剛到美國(guó)，而且一副精疲力竭的樣子，只有移民才會(huì)有那樣混合了疲倦、堅(jiān)決和認(rèn)命的表情。

　 In these moments, he was both grateful for his own luck and sentimental about his city, neither of which he felt very often. He was not someone who celebrated his hometown as a glorious mosaic, and he made fun of people who did. But he admired—how could you not?—the collective amount of labor, real labor, that his trainmates had no doubt accomplished that day. And yet instead of feeling ashamed of his relative indolence, he was relieved.

在這些時(shí)刻，杰比會(huì)很慶幸自己運(yùn)氣好，同時(shí)也會(huì)為自己的城市感傷，而這兩種感覺，對(duì)他來說都是少有的。他不是那種會(huì)歌頌紐約是一幅燦爛的馬賽克鑲嵌畫的人，而且他會(huì)取笑那些歌頌者。但他欣賞（怎么可能不呢）這些同車的乘客辛勞一天必然會(huì)達(dá)成的勞動(dòng)量，真正的勞動(dòng)。相對(duì)而言，他的日子可就過得太安逸了，但他并不引以為恥，反倒松了口氣。

　 The only other person he had ever discussed this sensation with, however elliptically, was Asian Henry Young. They had been riding out to Long Island City—it had been Henry who’d found him space in the studio, actually—when a Chinese man, slight and tendony and carrying a persimmon-red plastic bag that sagged heavily from the crook of the last joint of his right index finger, as if he had no strength or will left to carry it any more declaratively, stepped on and slumped into the seat across from them, crossing his legs and folding his arms around himself and falling asleep at once. Henry, whom he’d known since high school and was, like him, a scholarship kid, and was the son of a seamstress in Chinatown, had looked at JB and mouthed, “There but for the grace of god,” and JB had understood exactly the particular mix of guilt and pleasure he felt.

這個(gè)感覺，他只和亞裔亨利·楊討論過，只不過所謂的“討論”極其簡(jiǎn)略。當(dāng)時(shí)他們一起搭地鐵去長(zhǎng)島市（其實(shí)，當(dāng)初就是亨利幫他找到這個(gè)工作室的），看到一個(gè)精瘦的華裔男子，右手食指最后一個(gè)指節(jié)吊著一個(gè)沉重的柿紅色塑料袋，好像他再也沒有力氣或意愿提得更牢了。他走過來，跨坐在他們對(duì)面的座位上，雙腿交叉、雙臂交抱，立刻睡著了。他跟亨利從高中時(shí)代就認(rèn)識(shí)，他父親是唐人街的裁縫，兩人都常拿獎(jiǎng)學(xué)金。那一刻，亨利看著杰比，用嘴型無聲地跟他說：“要不是上帝恩典，我們也會(huì)一樣的。”杰比完全懂得那種罪惡又高興的感受。

　 The other aspect of those weekday-evening trips he loved was the light itself, how it filled the train like something living as the cars rattled across the bridge, how it washed the weariness from his seat-mates’ faces and revealed them as they were when they first came to the country, when they were young and America seemed conquerable. He’d watch that kind light suffuse the car like syrup, watch it smudge furrows from foreheads, slick gray hairs into gold, gentle the aggressive shine from cheap fabrics into something lustrous and fine. And then the sun would drift, the car rattling uncaringly away from it, and the world would return to its normal sad shapes and colors, the people to their normal sad state, a shift as cruel and abrupt as if it had been made by a sorcerer’s wand.

杰比喜歡這些工作日傍晚的地鐵之旅的另一個(gè)原因就是光。列車隆隆駛過大橋時(shí)，陽光就像某種活物般充滿車廂，把乘客們臉上的倦意一洗而盡，讓他們仿佛回到初抵這個(gè)國(guó)家的時(shí)刻，那時(shí)他們還年輕，覺得自己可以征服美國(guó)。杰比看著那樣的光像糖漿般充滿車廂，在乘客的額頭染出溝紋，替白發(fā)髹上一層金，把廉價(jià)衣料的刺目炫亮撫平為一種光輝而細(xì)致的色澤。然后太陽移動(dòng)位置，列車毫不留情地隆隆行駛，把太陽甩在后頭，于是整個(gè)世界又恢復(fù)了平常的那種凄慘色調(diào)，乘客們也回到平常的凄慘狀態(tài)，那轉(zhuǎn)變殘忍又突然，簡(jiǎn)直像是魔法師變出來的。

　 He liked to pretend he was one of them, but he knew he was not. Sometimes there would be Haitians on the train, and he—his hearing, suddenly wolflike, distinguishing from the murmur around him the slurpy, singy sound of their Creole—would find himself looking toward them, to the two men with round faces like his father’s, or to the two women with soft snubbed noses like his mother’s. He always hoped that he might be presented with a completely organic reason to speak to them—maybe they’d be arguing about directions somewhere, and he might be able to insert himself and provide the answer—but there never was. Sometimes they would let their eyes scan across the seats, still talking to each other, and he would tense, ready his face to smile, but they never seemed to recognize him as one of their own.

杰比喜歡假裝自己也是他們中的一個(gè)，但他知道自己不是。有時(shí)車上會(huì)有海地人，這時(shí)他的聽力會(huì)忽然變得像狼一般靈敏，從周圍的低語中辨識(shí)出克里奧語中那種稀里呼嚕、唱歌似的聲音，然后他會(huì)不自覺地望向他們，看著那兩個(gè)跟他父親一樣生著圓臉的男子，或者那兩個(gè)像他母親一樣有著平坦闊鼻的女人。他總希望自己能碰到一個(gè)極其自然的原因，好跟他們講話（或許他們正在爭(zhēng)辯某個(gè)地方該怎么走，這樣他就可以插嘴告訴他們答案），但從來沒有過。有時(shí)他們一邊交談，一邊用目光掃視周圍的座位，杰比就會(huì)很緊張，準(zhǔn)備露出微笑，但他們好像從來沒認(rèn)出他也是他們中的一分子。

　 Which he wasn’t, of course. Even he knew he had more in common with Asian Henry Young, with Malcolm, with Willem, or even with Jude, than he had with them. Just look at him: at Court Square he disembarked and walked the three blocks to the former bottle factory where he now shared studio space with three other people. Did real Haitians have studio space? Would it even occur to real Haitians to leave their large rent-free apartment, where they could have theoretically carved out their own corner to paint and doodle, only to get on a subway and travel half an hour (think how much work could be accomplished in those thirty minutes!) to a sunny dirty space? No, of course not. To conceive of such a luxury, you needed an American mind.

當(dāng)然，本來就不是。就連他也知道，他跟亞裔亨利·楊、馬爾科姆、威廉，甚至跟裘德的共同點(diǎn)，都比跟眼前這些人要多?？纯此核诜ㄔ簭V場(chǎng)站下車，走三個(gè)街區(qū)到以前的玻璃瓶制造廠，那里現(xiàn)在是他和其他三個(gè)藝術(shù)家合租的工作室。真正的海地人會(huì)有工作室嗎？真正的海地人可曾想過要離開他們寬敞的、理論上可以在里頭畫畫或閑晃的免費(fèi)公寓，只為了搭半個(gè)小時(shí)地鐵（想想這三十分鐘可以完成多少工作），到一個(gè)有陽光的骯臟空間？不，當(dāng)然不會(huì)。要領(lǐng)略這樣的奢侈，你就要有一顆美國(guó)人的心。

　 The loft, which was on the third floor and accessed by a metal staircase that made bell-like rings whenever you stepped on it, was white-walled and white-floored, though the floors were so extravagantly splintered that in areas it looked like a shag rug had been laid down. There were tall old-fashioned casement windows punctuating every side, and these at least the four of them kept clean—each tenant was assigned one wall as his personal responsibility—because the light was too good to squander to dirt and was in fact the whole point of the space. There was a bathroom (unspeakable) and a kitchen (slightly less horrifying) and, standing in the exact center of the loft, a large slab of a table made from a piece of inferior marble placed atop three sawhorses. This was a common area, which anyone could use to work on a project that needed a little extra space, and over the months the marble had been streaked lilac and marigold and dropped with dots of precious cadmium red. Today the table was covered with long strips of various-colored hand-dyed organza, weighted down at either end with paperbacks, their tips fluttering in the ceiling fan’s whisk. A tented card stood at its center: DRYING. DO NOT MOVE. WILL CLEAN UP FIRST THING TOM’W P.M. TX 4 PATIENCE, H.Y.

這是LOFT改裝的工作室，在三樓，上樓要經(jīng)過一道金屬樓梯，只要有人踏上樓梯，總會(huì)發(fā)出敲鐘般的叮咚聲響。工作室里白墻白地板，不過地板碎裂得太嚴(yán)重了，于是有些地方看起來像是鋪了粗毛地毯。室內(nèi)四面都有高高的老式雙扇窗，他們四人各自負(fù)責(zé)保持一面墻上窗子的干凈，因?yàn)楣饩€太好了，不能讓灰塵糟蹋掉，何況租這里當(dāng)工作室主要就是因?yàn)椴晒?。這層樓有一間浴室（臟到難以形容）和一個(gè)廚房（稍微沒那么恐怖），而樓的正中央是一塊劣質(zhì)大理石放在三個(gè)鋸木架上所組成的大桌子。這是共享區(qū)，哪個(gè)人若是手上正在進(jìn)行的計(jì)劃需要額外的空間，就可以使用。過去幾個(gè)月來，這張桌子上沾了一條條粉紫色和鉻黃色的顏料，還滴了珍貴的鎘紅色顏料。今天桌子上罩著幾條各種顏色的手染透明硬紗，兩端用平裝書壓著，硬紗的邊緣在吊扇的微風(fēng)中顫抖著。中央倒放著一張對(duì)折的卡片：干燥中，勿移動(dòng)。明天下午會(huì)清理掉。請(qǐng)包涵，謝謝。亨利·楊。

　 There were no walls subdividing the space, but it had been split into four equal sections of five hundred square feet each by electrical tape, the blue lines demarcating not just the floor but also the walls and ceiling above each artist’s space. Everyone was hypervigilant about respecting one another’s territory; you pretended not to hear what was going on in someone else’s quarter, even if he was hissing to his girlfriend on his phone and you could of course hear every last word, and when you wanted to cross into someone’s space, you stood at the edge of the blue tape and called his name once, softly, and then only if you saw that he wasn’t deep in the zone, before asking permission to come over.

這個(gè)空間沒有隔間，不過他們用防水膠帶把它均分為四等分，每塊五百平方英尺[1]。那藍(lán)色膠帶隔開的不光是地板，也包括墻面和天花板。每個(gè)人都會(huì)異常警惕，尊重別人的領(lǐng)域：你會(huì)假裝沒聽到別人的空間里發(fā)生了什么事，即使他正在跟女朋友輕聲講電話，而你每個(gè)字都聽得一清二楚；如果你要進(jìn)入別人的空間，會(huì)先站在藍(lán)膠帶邊緣，輕喊一聲那人的名字，等到你看出他不是處在深入忘我的狀態(tài)，才開口問他能不能進(jìn)去。

　 At five thirty, the light was perfect: buttery and dense and fat somehow, swelling the room as it had the train into something expansive and hopeful. He was the only one there. Richard, whose space was next to his, tended bar at nights and so spent his time at the studio in the morning, as did Ali, whose area he faced. That left Henry, whose space was diagonal from his and who usually arrived at seven, after he left his day job at the gallery. He took off his jacket, which he threw into his corner, uncovered his canvas, and sat on the stool before it, sighing.

此時(shí)5點(diǎn)半，光線非常完美：奶油黃的陽光稠密油亮，充滿整個(gè)樓面，仿佛列車載著他來到了一個(gè)昂貴而充滿希望的地方。工作室里只有他一個(gè)人。他旁邊空間的理查德晚上有酒保的工作，上午才會(huì)待在工作室，對(duì)面空間的阿里也一樣。而空間在他斜對(duì)角的亨利，白天在畫廊工作，下班后到這里通常是7點(diǎn)。杰比脫掉外套，扔在角落里，然后打開畫布，坐在畫布前的凳子上，嘆了口氣。

　 This was JB’s fifth month in the studio, and he loved it, loved it more than he thought he would. He liked the fact that his studiomates were all real, serious artists; he could never have worked in Ezra’s place, not only because he believed what his favorite professor had once told him—that you should never paint where you fucked—but because to work in Ezra’s was to be constantly surrounded and interrupted by dilettantes. There, art was something that was just an accessory to a lifestyle. You painted or sculpted or made crappy installation pieces because it justified a wardrobe of washed-soft T-shirts and dirty jeans and a diet of ironic cheap American beers and ironic expensive hand-rolled American cigarettes. Here, however, you made art because it was the only thing you’d ever been good at, the only thing, really, you thought about between shorter bursts of thinking about the things everyone thought about: sex and food and sleep and friends and money and fame. But somewhere inside you, whether you were making out with someone in a bar or having dinner with your friends, was always your canvas, its shapes and possibilities floating embryonically behind your pupils. There was a period—or at least you hoped there was—with every painting or project when the life of that painting became more real to you than your everyday life, when you sat wherever you were and thought only of returning to the studio, when you were barely conscious that you had tapped out a hill of salt onto the dinner table and in it were drawing your plots and patterns and plans, the white grains moving under your fingertip like silt.

杰比租下這個(gè)工作室超過四個(gè)月了，他很愛這里，比原先預(yù)想的更愛。其他三個(gè)共享這個(gè)工作室的人，都是非常踏實(shí)、非常認(rèn)真的藝術(shù)家，這一點(diǎn)讓他很滿意；他在埃茲拉的那層樓里絕對(duì)沒辦法工作，不光是因?yàn)樗嘈抛约鹤罹磹鄣慕淌谟谢馗f的“你絕對(duì)不能在你打炮的地方畫畫”，也因?yàn)樵诎Ｆ澙哪菍訕抢锕ぷ鞯脑挘車偸怯幸欢寻氲踝铀囆g(shù)家，不時(shí)會(huì)來打擾你。在那里，藝術(shù)只是某種生活方式的配件。你畫畫、雕塑或搞一些很遜的裝置藝術(shù)，是因?yàn)檫@樣就可以名正言順地穿著舊T恤和臟牛仔褲，很諷刺地喝廉價(jià)美國(guó)啤酒、抽昂貴的手卷美國(guó)香煙。然而在這里，做藝術(shù)是因?yàn)槟氵@輩子真正擅長(zhǎng)的只有這個(gè)。平常，除了一些短暫的時(shí)刻，你心里想的事情跟其他人沒有兩樣：性愛、食物、睡覺、朋友、金錢和名聲，可是在內(nèi)心深處，無論你是在酒館里跟某人親熱，或是跟朋友吃晚餐，你總想著你的畫布，各種形狀和可能性像胚胎般在你腦子里漂浮。每幅畫或每件作品都會(huì)有一段時(shí)間（或者至少你希望有）讓你覺得，那幅畫的生命變得比你的日常生活更真實(shí)；不管你人在哪里，只想回到工作室；你會(huì)不知不覺在餐桌上倒出一堆鹽，在上頭畫出你的布局、樣式或圖面，白色鹽粒有如粉砂般在你的指尖下移動(dòng)。

　 He liked too the specific and unexpected companionability of the place. There were times on the weekends when everyone was there at the same time, and at moments, he would emerge from the fog of his painting and sense that all of them were breathing in rhythm, panting almost, from the effort of concentrating. He could feel, then, the collective energy they were expending filling the air like gas, flammable and sweet, and would wish he could bottle it so that he might be able to draw from it when he was feeling uninspired, for the days in which he would sit in front of the canvas for literally hours, as though if he stared long enough, it might explode into something brilliant and charged. He liked the ceremony of waiting at the edge of the blue tape and clearing his throat in Richard’s direction, and then crossing over the boundary to look at his work, the two of them standing before it in silence, needing to exchange only the fewest of words yet understanding exactly what the other meant. You spent so much time explaining yourself, your work, to others—what it meant, what you were trying to accomplish, why you were trying to accomplish it, why you had chosen the colors and subject matter and materials and application and technique that you had—that it was a relief to simply be with another person to whom you didn’t have to explain anything: you could just look and look, and when you asked questions, they were usually blunt and technical and literal. You could be discussing engines, or plumbing: a matter both mechanical and straightforward, for which there were only one or two possible answers.

他也喜歡工作室里那種明確、意想不到的友好氣氛。有時(shí)周末剛好每個(gè)人都在，在其中的某些時(shí)刻，他會(huì)從他畫中的濃霧里走出來，感覺到所有人因努力專注而呼吸急促，近乎喘息。然后他可以感覺到空氣中充滿他們散發(fā)出來的集體能量，像瓦斯，可燃燒且?guī)е鹞叮屗薏坏冒堰@些氣體裝瓶，等到他覺得沒靈感的時(shí)候（他會(huì)呆坐在畫布前好幾小時(shí)，好像只要盯得夠久，畫布就會(huì)自己變出某種明亮而充滿能量的東西），就可以從里頭吸幾口。他喜歡完成等在藍(lán)膠帶前、朝理查德的方向清清嗓子的儀式，然后再跨過邊線去看他的作品，兩個(gè)人沉默地站在作品前，只需交換寥寥數(shù)語，就能完全明白對(duì)方的意思。你以往花了那么多時(shí)間向別人解釋你自己、你的作品（作品的含義，你試圖達(dá)到的目標(biāo)，為什么你想要達(dá)到，為什么你選擇這些顏色、主題、材料、手法和技巧），一旦碰到一個(gè)完全不必解釋的人，真是一大解脫。你只要耐心看作品就好，等你提出問題時(shí)，它們通常是坦率、專業(yè)、沒有弦外之音的，就像在討論發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)或鋪設(shè)水管——很具技術(shù)性且直截了當(dāng)，只有一兩個(gè)可能的答案。

　 They all worked in different mediums, so there was no competition, no fear of one video artist finding representation before his studiomate, and less fear that a curator would come in to look at your work and fall in love with your neighbor’s instead. And yet—and this was important—he respected everyone else’s work as well. Henry made what he called deconstructed sculptures, strange and elaborate ikebana arrangements of flowers and branches fashioned from various kinds of silk. After he’d finish a piece, though, he’d remove its chicken-wire buttressing, so that the sculpture fell to the ground as a flat object and appeared as an abstract puddle of colors—only Henry knew what it looked like as a three-dimensional object.

他們四個(gè)人的表現(xiàn)方式都不同，所以彼此間沒有競(jìng)爭(zhēng)，一個(gè)錄像藝術(shù)家不必?zé)雷约罕裙ぷ魇业氖矣严日业酱懋嬂?，也不必?fù)?dān)心某位策展人來看你的作品，結(jié)果卻愛上了你鄰居的。然而，有一點(diǎn)很重要，大家也尊重其他每個(gè)人的作品。亨利做的是他所謂的解構(gòu)式雕塑，用各種絲制品塑造出奇異而精致的日式插花。不過他每完成一件作品，就會(huì)拿掉支撐的鐵絲網(wǎng)，于是雕塑摔到地上，變成一個(gè)平面對(duì)象，像是一攤抽象的色彩——只有亨利知道原先立體的模樣。