Last Sunday my mother and I went to meet an artist. He wasn’t there, despite us calling ahead, so we waited in the park near his house. We sat on a bench whose parts were all made from what looked like a single log.

All of a sudden Jack Layton, the leader of the Federal NDP walked up and said something like, “Hi, I’m Jack Layton, the leader of the Federal NDP. It looks like you two have the best seat in the house.”

My Mom is a political junkie so that was the end of that. She wandered off with him for a while. This is why iPods are handy.

Just as I was untangling my headphones, the Artist came up behind me. “You said you’d be an hour. It’s only been 40 minutes.”

“Oh, uh, hi,” I stuffed the phones in my pocket and extended my hand, “I’m Alex. How are you?”

He stared at my hand for a few seconds. I looked at his. He was holding an empty coffee mug, and his shoes in the other. The shake was impossible, and lingered too long. Long enough that he genuinely considered blowing me off. Eventually he shifted everything around and limp-wristed me, “hey.”

It was an arty neighborhood, and Layton interjected himself, “I love Strathcona. We have lots of neighborhoods like it in Toronto. They take work.”

I took umbrage.

The Artist said, “places like this always take work,” and tried the handshake-thing on Layton.

Anyway, chit-chat chit-chat and we were back at the artist’s studio, sans politico. Paintings on the walls, not murals, but like he needed to test something out before the canvas. Crusting paint and jars and brushes everywhere. Easels. Flop couches for bohemian friends, not us Agents of Commerce. The place was full of things, every surface covered, but for all that he had few possessions.

We were there on business so my attention wasn’t required. When you’re in arty spaces and don’t know what to do, just clasp your hands behind your back and look at things with an appraising demeanor. That’s my go-to trick.

But this time it didn’t work. I couldn’t help paying attention. The artist paused, like he did with my handshake, at every. Single. Point. Of. Interaction. With. My. Mother. He wasn’t being mean or arrogant, he was just thinking very carefully about everything.

Later in the car, a debriefing: “That guy’s your age, Al. I hate it when he acts like that,” Mom said. “He’s either passive, cold, and withdrawn or jumping around with warmth and ideas. Especially around his mother. She’s a gallery owner too. When she came to his show at my place he was a nervous wreck.”

The Rebel Sell tells us that we fetishize the insane — the “fine line between genius and insanity” phenomenon. So, the evidence: symptoms of bipolar disorder or drug abuse combined with a neurosis-inducing relationship with his mother. That’s enough to tie in a pouch around my neck.

“Do you have any of his paintings left? Just one? How much? Okay, sold. I’ll take it.”

Click through for a bigger version.

Immediate buyer’s remorse. Not because of the piece itself, which I like well enough. I am told it is “painterly and well-executed, with a real sense of composition”. I worried about my motives.

I bought the painting because I expect great and terrible things from this man in the future. It is literally a financial instrument indexed to his emotional suffering and talent. I coldly identified what I thought were the prerequisites for artistic success and said, “buy! Buy! Buy!”

A bit more deeply (it’s too hyperbolic and facile to leave it at “I’m a Monster!”), what I’m looking for in the piece — in any piece — is authenticity. That elusive quality that I somehow find lacking in my life. How can something or someone be physically real and inauthentic at the same time? I don’t know. I labour under the idea that not only is this possible but it is largely the case. The map has become the terrain.

So I see that this man might authentically be thinking about the world around him — evidence that he is not a zimboe — that he might authentically be in pain. Moreover, I note that he is my age and our mothers do the same thing. I note he talked to Layton, I was silent. Then I buy a material artefact of his supposed authenticity. The painting is literally a fetish, but not of the insane. It is a fetish of the authentic.

So the painting ends up a souvenir. “Remember that time I met someone real?” Perhaps my problem is with my own inauthentic actions and intentions. Maybe I’m the zimboe. Maybe that’s why I envy real people.