LACK OF CONFIDENCE GAME

To the one-hundred and fifty million Americans who suffer from insomnia:

I have a solution for you!

Anyone who has ever had the great misfortune to sit through one of David Schoffman's powerfully tedious lectures can tell you that there is no better remedy for addressing a sleep disorder.

Like Samuel Johnson's description of Paradise Lost "none ever wished it longer than it is."

Often, while traveling through the States, my good friend David invites me to attend one of his talks. With all his faults, Schoffman remains a practical man and to supplement his income, avails himself of the podium whenever the opportunity presents itself. My general formula is that for every five demurrals I'm obliged to say yes once.

The problem lies, I believe, in David's squeaky insistence on the viability of painting to communicate meaning. He pretends that the formal language with which he was educated remains coherent despite all the evidence to the contrary. He speaks of "space" and "mass" as if these terms had an objective, unambiguous definition. He refers to Cézanne as if the arcane logic of pictorial geometry was accessible to an audience of graduate students. He honestly believes that the term "figure/ground" means anything at all to an audience of upper middle class museum members.

Luckily for David his tenuous status as a minor art star remains bankable enough and he can rely on several speaking engagements a month. In effect, it doesn't really matter what he talks about, his audiences remain faithful having gained the right to report that they bore witness to 'intelligence.' In fact, the more technically incomprehensible his lectures are the more rarified they appear and in turn render his audiences (in their own eyes, at least) into smug self-assertive cultural cognoscenti. David picks up a few bucks and like a night at the opera, his public gets to brag how smart they are.

As they say in America, it's a win-win.