After “The Painting Told Me What to Do”
by Ron Nyren
(Originally published in 100 Word Story)
Four columns of fire burn in a green landscape, haloed by white emptiness against a sky of black smoke branching down. Slim naked trunks dance inside flames, spindly branch heads peering out to ask, why aren’t you on fire, too? Perhaps tree is only another word for fire, a fire so slow it fools our eyes. Or else why do they look so spry? They reached upward for so many years, each year a careful ring, and now they leap. The flames say, we’re coming for you next, to toss you as high as you said you wanted to go.
In honor of “Midwest Surrealist” Sylvia Fein’s 100th birthday, the Berkeley Art Museum put on an exhibition of Fein’s work, exploring such characteristic themes and motifs as water, trees, eyes, cats, and the cosmos.
Three Bay Area writers, Ron Nyren, Maw Shein Win, and Sarah Stone wrote 100-word stories inspired by Fein’s fantastical imagery. And Evan Karp scored each of their readings to his own musical interpretations of the stories and the paintings.