Night Light

By Steven D. Bennett

Artists Becker, Giles and Sugiyama began their journeys together, but time and talent have taken them on separate paths. “Sugi” has been hailed as a genius, Giles his equally-famous critic, Becker content to remain the peacemaker.

As Sugi’s projects become more ostentatious, stretching for miles in the sky and ocean and desert, so much more does Giles seek to keep him grounded. But the vicious critiques only serve to push Sugi to greater visions. Equally irritating to Giles are Sugi’s cult-like followers, who are drawn to his projects to erect camps, refusing to leave.

When Sugi loses his wife and son in an accident, sympathy for him and anger at Giles cause both men to leave the limelight. Sugi reemerges months later to unveil his next project. Financed by eccentric billionaire Lassiter and his space exploration company, the project, dubbed NIGHT LIGHT, will use the ashes of his wife and son—and anyone who wishes to send the ashes of their loved ones--to create a work of are Sugi says will change the face of the moon!

Becker is intrigued, Giles shocked. In a new vlog, he voices his concerns for Sugi’s safety, though privately his true concern is that Sugi might succeed. If so, he will be elevated to a place in history which Giles will be reminded of every night of his life.

As the work begins, life-threatening dangers arise, supplies diminish, and Sugi races the clock as Giles watches, aware that Sugi will either attain artistic immortality or learn that fame on such a cosmic level is too high for anyone to reach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven D. Bennett
• Release date: Jul 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463966273

Steven D. Bennett

I was born in Boston and grew up in Connecticut and San Diego, which gave me a good background in both history and tanning. I have four children and six grand-children, remarkable in that I am only 35. The fact that I have been married for almost 36 years is the result of an in-utero wedding and honeymoon. I have published many short stories, poems, songs, and recently wrote and directed a musical melodrama that was performed in the San Diego area. With six books under my belt (THE PATH OF DAYS, TRACE THE DEAD EYE, HUMOR OF THE GOSPELS, HUMOR OF THE GOSPELS Daily Study, THRONE and THE CHUCK-IT LIST) I am looking for a bigger belt to stuff the seventh, which hopefully will be completed in time for the Christmas season. It is about a writer who finds to his horror that a mistake he made on page 47 completely invalidates the plot, forcing him to thus track down and kill anyone who has bought the book lest they spread the truth about his miniscule talent. It is titled DON'T READ THIS! and looks to be a best-seller, unless people take the title literally. Fortunately, nothing I write can be taken literally. It is also fortunate I did not stay with the working title: DON'T BUY THIS! Personally, I don't buy a word of it. I also have a blog, I Wandered Off the Tour: A Journey In Self-Publishing, which contains my thoughts and experiences through the tormenting process of creation. Other than writing, I like listening to the same dozen albums and re-runs of the same dozen TV shows I've heard and seen hundreds of times, to the endless delight of my wife.

Book preview

NIGHT LIGHT

by

Steven D. Bennett

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Smashwords Edition

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Copyright © 2020 by Steven D. Bennett

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Pedestrian?

A small line drew crookedly across Giles’ face. It seemed apropos.

His vlog, Shadings, had become the cornerstone of critique in the art world with over a million subscribers to his channel, his studio a mere twenty feet from where we sat in his apartment overlooking Manhattan and the comforting New York skyline.

I had particular interest in his current subject, as it involved our mutual friend of over twenty years, Kenny Sugiyama. Known for avant garde and somewhat ostentatious works, his latest was a thirty mile stretch of wooden walkways in the Arizona desert which connected the facades of stores and homes, like an endless ghost town stretching beyond the horizon. Named Desert Bones, it was said by the artist to represent the emptiness of life and the endless search to find meaning.

"There are flashes of brilliance in his work, Giles intoned, swirling his glass of madeira on the screen and mimicking the movement as we watched. The structures in Desert Bones are flat to the eye, yet viewed standing on the plank walkways appear to have depth and dimension where none exist. There is more here than meets the eye, apparently, given the groups of people who have not only come to experience the work, but show no signs of leaving. These are not merely homeless or faux bohemians or his rabid base of fans, but people of all types who have made an elaborate tent town intermingled with Sugi’s own.

"His two previous offerings, Cloud Oasis, which sought to sculpt a heavenly city in the sky with gigantic inflatables, and Souls Afloat, which did the same on the sea with sturdier material, attracted the same type of cult worshippers, the lonely and lost, searching for personal connection in a society that increasingly interacts impersonally. Perhaps it is this desperation which leads them to accept anything remotely resembling art. They are by all accounts, and almost inevitably, growing in proportion to the simplicity presented.

"So if Desert Bones does contain more than we see, and in some ways is reminiscent of the works of Gonsalves, Moretti and Reutersvard, though not the magic of an Escher or Dali, the promise of greatness is obscured by the landscape. There may be brilliance, but no heart, which is the element which separates the good from the great. Perhaps Sugi hasn’t quite come to ‘Termes’