People Trying to Write in Art

by Lili Loofbourow

(After an unintended hiatus, the Stuff in Art series is back.)

“Something’s not right.”

“Maybe if I hold it like this?”

“In the beginning was the Word, and I planned to continue it on the backside of this piece of paper but there doesn’t appear to be one.”

Matthew: “Hold up — is that a fish?”

Mark: “But COULD you sew a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment?”

“Go away, sweetie.”

“Not right now, Sally.”

“OK, OK — I’ll tell him you said hi.”

Solomon: “Dear diary, Abishag blabbed. I called her a jewel of gold in my memoirs. A jewel of gold IN A SWINE’S SNOUT, more like. Yeah.”

Wen Shu, Bodhisattva: “Our cherished beliefs are only — dammit, Algernon, where’d you put the parchment?”

John: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away. The hired hand’s girlfriend, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep but has a nodding acquaintance with the wolf, offers to broker a deal between the wolf and the shepherd, cutting her loser boyfriend out. She is incidentally very pretty. She effects a merger: effective immediately, the wolf will guard the flock in sheep’s clothing in exchange for a 12% stock of the shepherd’s net profit. She’ll get a monthly transaction fee, not that she’ll need it, because I — the shepherd, that is — will support her. The hired hand’s a patsy now though he doesn’t know it. The girlfriend, a skilled accountant, convinces him with some deceptive math that the new arrangement will benefit him. The hired hand dreams of his bakery, far from sheep. The shepherd smiles. You like working for me, Ebenezer? I’ll be the David to your Uriah, the Littlefinger to your Stark.”

Luke: “Really, John?”

Phillis Wheatley: “What rhymes with ‘you are all terrible’?”

“Seriously.”

Titus: “Oh my god… writing is so. hard.”

“You said it, broseph.”

Jerome: “NOT FOR MEEEE.”

Previously: An Interview With Comedian Heather Gold

Lili Loofbourow is a writer splitting her time between Oakland and Austin. She tweets as @millicentsomer.