Before continuing with the introductory talk that comprised the first part of his art exhibit, or artistic stageshow, as I thought of it, Grossvogel paused and for a moment seemed to be surveying the faces of the small audience seated in the back room of the gallery. What he had expressed to us concerning his body and its digestive malfunctions was on the whole comprehensible enough, even if certain points he was articulating seemed at the time to be questionable and his overall discourse somewhat unengaging. Yet we put up with Grossvogel’s words, I believe, because we had thought that they were leading us into another, possibly more engaging phase of his experience, which somehow we already sensed was not wholly alienated from our own, whether or not we identified with its peculiarly gastrointestinal nature. Therefore we remained silent, almost respectfully so, considering the unorthodox proceedings of that night, as Grossvogel continued with what he had to tell us before the moment came when he unveiled what he had brought to show us.
‘It is all so very, very simple,’ the artist continued. ‘Our bodies are but one manifestation of the energy, the activating force that sets in motion all the objects, all the bodies of this world and enables them to exist as they do. This activating force is something like a shadow that is not on the outside of all the bodies of this world but is inside of everything and thoroughly pervades everything — an all-moving darkness that has no substance in itself but that moves all the objects of this world, including those objects which we call our bodies. While I was in the throes of my gastrointestinal episode at the hospital where I was treated I descended, so to speak, to that deep abyss of entity where I could feel how this shadow, this darkness was activating my body. I could also hear its movement, not only within my body but in everything around me, because the sound that it made was not the sound of my body — it was the sound of this shadow, this darkness, which is not like any other sound. Likewise I was able to detect the workings of this pervasive and all-moving force through the sense of smell and the sense of taste, as well as the sense of touch with which my body is equipped. Finally I opened my eyes, for throughout much of this agonizing ordeal of my digestive system my eyelids were clenched shut in pain. And when I opened my eyes I found that I could see how everything around me, including my own body, was activated from within by this pervasive shadow, this all-moving darkness. And nothing looked as I had always known it to look. Before that night I had never experienced the world purely by means of my organs of physical sensation, which are the direct point of contact with that deep abyss of entity that I am calling the shadow, the darkness. My false and unreal works as an artist were merely the evidence of what I concocted with my mind or my imagination, which are basically nonsensical and dreamlike fabrications that only interfere with the workings of our senses. I believed that somehow these works of art reflected in some way the nature of my self or my soul, when in actuality they only reflected my deranged and useless desires to do something and to be something, which always means to do and to be something false and unreal. Like everything else, these desires had been activated by the same pervasive shadow, the all-moving darkness which, due to the self-annihilating agony of my gastrointestinal distress, I could now experience directly by means of my sense organs and without the interference of my imaginary mind or my imaginary self.
‘I should confess that prior to my physical collapse at this very art gallery I had undergone a psychic collapse — a collapse of something false and unreal, of something nonsensical and dreamlike, it goes without saying, although it was all very genuine and real to me at the time. This collapse of my mind and my self was the result of how poorly my works of art were being received by those attending the opening night of my first exhibit, of how profoundly unsuccessful they were as artistic creations, miserably unsuccessful even in the sphere of false and unreal artistic creations. This unsuccessful exhibit demonstrated to me how thoroughly I had failed in my efforts to be an artist. Everyone at the exhibit could see how unsuccessful my artworks proved to be, and I could see everyone in the very act of witnessing my unmitigated failure as an artist. This was the psychic crisis which precipitated my physical crisis and the eventual collapse of my body into spasms of gastrointestinal torment. Once my mind and my personal sense of self had broken down, all that was left in operation were my organs of physical sensation, by means of which I was able for the first time to experience directly that deep abyss of entity that is the shadow, the darkness which had activated my intense desire to be a success at doing something and at being something, and thereby also activated my body as it moved within this world, just as all bodies are likewise activated. And what I experienced through direct sensory channels — the spectacle of the shadow inside of everything, the all-moving darkness — was so appalling that I was sure I would cease to exist. In some way, because of the manner in which my senses were now functioning, especially my visual sense, I did in fact cease to exist as I had existed before that night. Without the interference of my mind and my imagination, all that nonsensical dreaming about my soul and my self, I was forced to see things under the aspect of the shadow inside them, the darkness which activated them. And it was wholly appalling, more so than my words could possibly tell you.’