I Shot Chaz Simpson
(originally posted Jan 24, 2015 w/ additional writing in another post)
“Immature artists imitate.
Mature artists steal.”
- Lionel Trilling
She’d been playing the game for weeks already, months even, inserting herself into the right scenes, smiling at the right people, adopting the right persona. As far as LA is concerned, there is no Medrina Kamaar. Instead, there is sweet, bubbly (and maybe a little bit of an airhead) Sienna James, the friendly nightclub promoter. It’s amazingly easy to get a job as a promoter. You just show up, interact a little bit, show even a faint interest. If people like you, your name spreads like wildfire. On the surface level, where it doesn’t really count usually, Medrina is very good at getting people to like her. And so Sienna is as well. In no time she’s got an actual list of clubs paying her in cash and swag to show support for their establishments and she’s making the right acquaintances.
It’s an assignment; it’s a messy, confusing one involving the LA art scene rather than the music scene. But in this case, Carrie, the girlfriend of the artist Medrina needs an “in” with happens to own a nightclub, and, in Medrina’s mind, befriending her is the more subtle way into her boyfriend’s world. Besides, there are mundane-world Illuminati involved and the last thing she needs to do is open their eyes.
The artist is a man named Sasha. Only Sasha. No last name because he’s just too cool for that. He’s a typical LA hipster who does “upcycle” art, taking trash and supposedly turning it into treasure. In Medrina’s eyes, it’s still trash; it’s just very expensive trash. He’s more than an up-and-comer at this point. He’s paid his dues, played the game. He’s on the cusp of becoming huge in the art world, and already making entirely too much money.
Medrina’s finest acting moment in all this is when Sasha casually tells her a “sculpture” made of red solo cups and some twine has been sold for $10,000.
“They got a deal on that,” she tells Sasha, smiling as genuinely as she can. She looks back over at the piece, cringing. In her head, she’s thinking, ‘That is like, $5.00 in cups…’
All her work, every hangout, every concert, every weird-ass art show, has been building for one night. Medrina has been laying foundations, putting pieces in place to ensure that Sasha’s official opening of his newest collection will flop. Very important pieces, some of them already sold, are going to disappear, Sasha is going to lose it and have a wild, coke-fueled outburst befitting Tony Montana and the Illuminati are going to lose interest in the difficult-to-control artist, deciding he’s more hack than artist. He’s going to take it hard, focus on drugs rather than art, and start to wash up. Then his pieces will mysteriously resurface on the black market, but not before the Dragon has its claws firmly embedded in him. His return to the art world will be their bullshit equivalent of the second coming of Christ, and his pieces will carry an influence they previously couldn’t have had, because this Sasha, new Sasha, has been to the edge and back. He has actually suffered now and has given up the image he was clinging to.
Of course, somebody is going to take the fall for the theft. It certainly won’t be the Dragon, or ‘Sienna,’ regardless of how carefully she’s planned their removal from the gallery. His name is Chaz Simpson. He’s another artist, lesser-known. He probably won’t amount to much. As far as Medrina can tell, his art is merely a copy of Sasha’s, or an echo, perhaps. She’s not the only one who sees this, but she doesn’t comment like the others. Still, she can see the envy in his eyes as Sasha gets praised for making his trash look prettier. If anybody needs to be the fall guy in this, it’s Chaz. It’s just too easy not to pin it on him.
There is the matter of the 17% prediction… Medrina’s confident, though. She’s seen bigger and managed to turn the tide. 17% isn’t very much. She can beat 17%…