‘The industry follows this kind of…dichotomy.’ spoke an aged lady, spectacled, at an Arts convention, sitting cross-legged and sage-eyed on a flip top chair inside a knitted orange sweater du cashmere. She tapped tipsily on the stem of her wine glass, the stem leading to the bowl and to the rim stained with dry purple lipstick smudged within sticky fingerprints, dried and crusted in place from her wine sopped breath blowing against the bowl like a humid West wind.

‘Yes. A dichotomy…’ she repeated, pausing to gurgle purple grape nectar inside her throat and clearing the way for further dichotomies and verbal platitudes. ‘Artist and Audience. Artist. Audience.’ She alternated between the words as if weighing them upon a see-saw in her mind, hidden somewhere inside a cranium covered by tightly curled orange hairs all bunched together like cellophane. ‘That’s what this industry follows.’ she said. About the only thing followed by the audience was the whirring of the ceiling fan above their heads. Strange contraption, that. You can lose yourself in its spin.

She cleared her throat and raised her glass to the ceiling, allowing her sweater to bounce importantly and said:

‘This wine is simply fantastic. Thank goodness for wine!’

Wine-damp air smogged the windowless chamber, billowed forth through the cracks of her purple lips. The audience, a balding and struggling crowd of creative aspirants, now remembered the potent liquid carried between their fingertips, and many cheered and extended their cramped arms towards the ceiling.

‘Thank goodness!’ shrieked one, optimistically.

‘I love me some wine!’ shrieked another, optimistically also.

Their gutteral utterances impregnated the room with yet more pungent wine-smoke. It curled the nose hairs of all those steeped within it, too merry to notice altogether.

‘I want to thank each and every one of you. Your devotion to art is what keeps this ball rolling. Excuse me.’ She paused to sniff at the rim of her glass, hopscotching her nose around the stained edges. She poured a portion down her throat, then swallowed. Her coloured cheeks were lifted by a grin that conveniently matched the bend of the glass still dangling from her lips; two pieces of an intimate puzzle. Lit by a ceiling lamp habitually reserved for the exposition of Greek museum sculptures, the runny hues of her skin radiated a warm translucent purple. ‘Never stop giving.’ she said, consuming yet more of the potion that seemed to replenish itself incessantly.

Approving murmurs bounced between crowd and patent mahogany walls, reverberating too between the patterned frames of cubist paintings suspended there. The happy echo gave way once again to thoughtful glugging, signalling between bright clinks of glasses the sheer understanding extant between all of those present; an understanding not entirely owed to, yet predominantly carried by the noxious vapours in the air exchanged now by applauding bald pates and a ceiling fan revolving faster and faster.

‘Never. Stop. Giving.’ she stated once more, prophetically, see-sawing dizzily in her chair. It was the last thing the audience heard before seeing the dichotomy between the wooden floor and her swaying head bridged with a loud crash. It shattered upon impact like glass.