Think-Painter: Love, LSD and the Original Thought

By Raymond Duane

Quinton Moss is the Think-Painter. Martina Thorpe is the woman he loves. Martina's father, Kensingham J. Thorpe, is a chemist, philosopher, and the world's foremost authority on the brain.
The professor has devoted his career to searching for the first thought, the original synaptic interplay that created thinking. Everyone possesses this thought in their deep subconscious. "It's the instinct that drives us to seek each other," the professor says.
He knows the Original Thought is in us, and he believes he's found a way to it.
"They are paintings. Not paint like oil or watercolor. They're electronic, kind of alive."
"Alive? They're not alive."
"In a way they are. The human body is all electric and chemical. These paintings connect to it like a second body."
"What?"
"Not a body, of course."
"Of course."
"More like another mind, the artist's mind."
Colby didn't comment. He knew a little about think-painting. It wasn't a modern art form. It had been around since the late 21st Century. Few people in the art world took it seriously because there weren't many good think artists.
Some critics considered it free thought unfettered, as compared to other computer-assisted designs in which the machine was a direct partner. When it came to think-painting, the computer network was more like a canvas. A distinction that Colby didn't comprehend. He wasn't in any hurry to figure it out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond Duane
• Release date: May 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005567903

Raymond Duane

Born in antiquity, I was raised with Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott and Mark Twain. I'd spend Friday nights with my grandmother and she would read to me. With sound effects and excitement.All I've ever wanted to be is a writer and dreamed of being Ernest Hemingway. (I got the drinking part right.)I worked for the college paper; was founding editor of a weekly newspaper; and I did a lot of magazine work, including for adult entertainment.That experience formed the basis of Noodle Boy in Porn Valley, which is very blue and very "adults only."My fantasy books are for Jill, my wife, who loves dragon stories with strange creatures and magick. Sword and sorcery, with a blend of mystical philosophy about life and love. She and I wrote a dragon story titled Fort Jafra and we're working on a follow-up.She and I published Unfinished Faces, a book of my poetry and her art. I also have written a few cookbooks. My characters like to eat.These days, I'm in rural Central Valley, with Jill, three dogs and five kittens I found in a discarded box in the walnut grove.

Book preview

Think-Painter

Love, LSD and the Original Thought

Copyright © Raymond Duane 2022.

All Rights Reserved

Quinton Moss is the Think-Painter. Martina Thorpe is the woman he loves. Martina's father, Kensingham J. Thorpe, is a chemist, philosopher, and the world's foremost authority on the brain.

The professor has devoted his career to searching for the first thought, the original synaptic interplay that created thinking. Everyone possesses this thought in their deep subconscious. It's the instinct that drives us to seek each other, the professor says.

He knows the Original Thought is in us, and he believes he's found a way to it.

Table of Contents

Atmospheric electricity crackled in Adlyn …

Adlyn and Colby took turns …

On the big day, Adlyn and …

Quinton and Martina's relationship had …

In the computer lab at …

At the hospital, Adlyn was …

Quinton Moss spent the day …

Caught in a horrifying image …

No school, no free ride …

Quinton loved India, where he …

Moss made his way back …

In the computer lab, plenty …

At the hospital, Colby's bed …

Experienced going back into his …

Marina spent that night at …

At the hospital, Adlyn talked …

The afternoon before the party …

The event started at half …

Moss' bicycle was an antique …

Moss delayed use of 3D …

The old courthouse was the …

That night after dinner going …

Author …

Atmospheric electricity crackled in Adlyn Rose's brain. The mental lightning sparked without an accompanying rumble and disappeared before she could figure out what it meant. It did mean something, because those kind of cerebral flashes are always important. Takes a little remembering what they were to know what you're supposed to think. That's the way it was for her. She had the thought, and then she had to wonder for a while before anything came of it.

Now she had to let it go. She was perturbed at her husband for lollygagging on this important morning. It was here, their trip to the world's first think-painting gallery. Time to get out the door.

She had read about the event in the newspaper. An actual newspaper, in fact, paper and ink, and a rubber band around it on the sidewalk every morning in front of their cozy three-bedroom house on Curry Street in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Tell me again where we're going, Colby asked as they packed the car.

He asked to annoy her, she knew. He was a teaser, always happy, smiling, looking on the bright side. Serious enough to have a sense of humor. Part of what made him a good teacher. A history teacher, with an appreciation for the past and an eye toward tomorrow. So they got a newspaper with a rubber band.

You know why, my essay was chosen.

That's not what I meant. He smiled.

The day was heavy and moist, with clouds gathering for another thunder storm. Sweaty and buggy. Squirrels skittered in the grass and jumped on broad tree trunks, some did high-wire acts on the telephone lines. The neighborhood cat, a big, short-haired gray mouser, lounged in the middle of the street, certain to be run over. Somehow always there, unconcerned.

You know perfectly well all about the Ether Garden, voice rising. More than just an art show. It's not a museum. You don't walk around and look at the paintings. You get to go inside them.

So they're not really paintings.

They're paintings, with that bite of the lower lip she does when he's getting to her.

That look she got — pouty, smart, aggressive, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail the way it was then, biting her lip — a natural wonder, nothing better to get his juices flowing.

She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman in the world. None compared. He knew that wasn't true, that other men had other tastes, but for him, she was all that mattered. Tunnel vision for Adlyn, and he loved to get her goat. He put on his best skeptical face.

They are paintings, defiant. Not paint like oil or watercolor. They're electronic, kind of alive.

Alive? They're not alive.

In a way they are. The human body is all electric and chemical. These paintings connect to it like a second body.

What?

Not a body, of course.

Of course.

More like another mind, the artist's mind.

Colby didn't comment. He knew a little about think-painting. It wasn't a modern art form. It had been around since the late 21st Century. Few people in the art world took it seriously because there weren't many good think artists.

Some critics considered it free thought unfettered, as compared to other computer-assisted designs in which the machine was a direct partner. When it came to think-painting, the computer network was more like a canvas. A distinction that Colby didn't comprehend. He wasn't in any hurry to figure it out.

He did know that he and most everyone he knew didn't appreciate computer-generated art as much as that created by hand. Everything made by hand was seen as being better. He had to admit that 3D printing blurred the distinction.

Creating a think-painting took a lot of brain power. Not smarts, necessarily; although, that undoubtedly helped. Brute strength in the gray matter was what it took. Muscular synapses.

The artist uses a headset to make the painting — paints with his mind, the literature always emphasized — and then at this new gallery, at the Ether Garden, people would put on another headset and experience the creation. That part was new. No one had ever done that before.

It's thinking the artist's thoughts, what he thought when he did the painting, Adlyn said.

Not thinking the same thoughts. That's impossible.

We think the same thought a lot times. Remember in that bookstore when we both picked the same book off the bargain table? That's thinking the same thoughts.

No it's not. That's thinking alike. That's not the same thing. No two people think the same thoughts in the same way. That's what I'm saying.

Maybe so. At the Garden, you get to experience them as the artist thought them while creating. The brochure says it's riding the moment of creation.

That might be an exaggeration, letting his disbelief slip through. Colby lived in a modern world, but some things weren't believable, no matter how electronic they were.

It's old, but it's new. The place hasn't even opened yet.

Then what's your hurry?

Adlyn looked at her husband, felt herself bite her bottom lip and stopped. Didn't want to give him any encouragement because then he got that searching look, gentle and probing. Then he would kiss her and talking would stop.

Relax, Adlyn. We have a thousand miles to go before we get there. More than a thousand. Way up in north-central New York. We have time.

He wasn't dragging his feet or being unenthusiastic. Colby was supportive and loving. She wasn't mad at him, only eager, and a little anxious, too.

She had always wanted to be an artist, ever since she was a little girl, but she hadn't been able to discover her medium, the right way to express herself and create her art.

She tried to describe to Colby her excitement at seeing that newspaper article about the gallery. She couldn't get the words right. The story screamed that here was her chance, the one thing that would propel her toward her aspirations. Seeing it in the paper made it all the more real. Better than reading through the E-rack.

The newspaper. She always thought how old it was. The oldest media in the world, but the content was new every day, and so it mixed yesterday, today and tomorrow in a rough-edged package. The industry had been left for dead dozens of times throughout history.

Adlyn wanted to be a think-painter, if she could get herself focused with the necessary intensity that the art demanded. The single thought, the press clippings and articles and whole books on the subject talked about. She was working at it, after a fashion. She didn't have the headset and software, but she did have paper and pencil, the way Quinton Moss started.

Moss was the featured artist at the Ether Garden. Not featured in any way he considered important, according to what she had read. He had the most paintings in the gallery. Everyone thought he was the best, or with the potential to be the best, whatever that is, Moss was quoted as saying.

She read that one profile of him. It was in a local Sulpend Valley newspaper, the place where the gallery was, and although there were lots of stories about him, think-painting and the Ether Garden in publications and on websites that covered such topics, there wasn't anything as detailed from any other outlet.

You're the artist of my love, with that cute leer he gets when he wants something.

Nothing's going to happen tonight, Colby.

They left at 7 o'clock in the morning, in their little beige SP Zero, like driving in a bubble, or rather a dome with a flat bottom and big wheels. Colby liked it and never thought of getting a newer car. It took them where they wanted to go, never broke down, and had an internal system that ran on compressed air, with an electric backup and regenerative braking.

For many years, electric cars and air cars had been battling for automotive supremacy. The government had backed electricity. The industry had a lot of money, and it took people a long time to accept engines running on air, compressed or liquid. Electricity dominated the early alternative-fuel market, and were still the most popular of vehicles. The SP Zero and other trendy airCars had begun to attract buyers.

The federal interstates were magnetic pathways that charged eCars while they drove. Industrial air compressors were available at rest stops. The federal government charged the drivers for the miles they traveled, with little black boxes that calculated the mileage, and annual registration inspections recorded them in the proper forms.

The SP Zero was a quiet model built before the government mandated that the alternative industry make its cars noisy so pedestrians could hear them coming. A lot of people died stepping into silent traffic.

Some makers made the engines sound like studio versions of old-time muscle cars, or synthesized music like industrial rock (the same thing to Colby's ears), birds chirping, lions roaring, jingles and chimes, and all manner of simple noise signaled the coming of alternative cars. The tuneful smorgasbord didn't satisfy Washington lawmakers, who clamored for a uniform standard, for reasons no one outside the political beltway understood. So-called musical cars were all the rage. An international commission was studying the matter.

The SP Zero reached the eastern side of Georgia not long after two o'clock. They stopped in front of Augusta National Golf Club, so Colby could get a look at Magnolia Lane and drive around and peek at the private course. Adlyn got behind the wheel so Colby could gawk at his golf mecca.

As they drove away, he turned around and gazed until the course disappeared.

Part of their travel plan was not booking rooms at hotels so they could stop when and where they wanted, except Colby insisted they stop in places that had historical interest for him. It's your destination. The journey is mine.

So poetic, laughing, and she agreed. She only cared about where they were going, not how they got there, except she wanted it to be sooner rather than later.

They carried several maps and a road-trip guidebook for reference, which led them to Shane's BBQ not far inside South Carolina. Darn near a shack, not impressive, but the dirt parking lot was packed long after lunch hour.

Ragtime piano, bluegrass and a bit of country sounded from corner speakers loud enough to accompany conversation and clacking tableware. People sat at wooden tables, or at a big bar whose top was carved from a single tree.

Flowers in a vase on each table. The vases didn't match, some were smooth glasses, others were cut sharp, some colored, some plain, and a couple pure white. Posters from high school football teams, and faded newspaper articles about the restaurant. Put all the money in the food, the kitchen