Dive Right In byJames Flanagan

On the canvas, the sun glints off the edge of the pool where the turquoise water meets the azure sky. The palm trees almost sway in the sea breeze, the water shimmers as if tickling the sides of the pool. In a dimly lit room, towards the back of the museum, a single spotlight in an otherwise empty gallery focused its beam on a painting of a swimming pool.

To the left of the painting sat a lifeguard.

He wore the typical red shorts and a yellow T-shirt with a flotation device strapped across his back. He sat with his arms crossed in his tall chair surveying the room. A child ran across the room from entrance to exit and the lifeguard bellowed.

“No running near the swimming pool!”

The parents of the child, following closely, harrumphed at the lifeguard, as if his nonsensical statement in the silent museum was out of order. They ignored the painting as they rushed after their whippersnapper.

This was no ordinary lifeguard. This was Daley Innsbruck, a performance artist of some renown, writer, and producer of such viral hits as Man in Unusual Places With Unusual Things On His Head and Flight of the Ripped Cords. He sat in the gallery on this day for one of his most audacious acts. Glancing at his hidden cameras ready to catch all the action, he hung a few towels on some hooks. He waited patiently for punters to meander, in their gallery gait, through his exhibition.

A couple, both dressed like candidates for early retirement, entered the gallery, and the woman gasped. “Wow, that is so realistic. I bet you could almost just jump in.”

“Why not try?” said Daley. “It’s the name of the painting after all.”

“Hyper-realism is overrated,” the man said as he approached so near as if to sniff the canvas.

“ ’Dive right in’ by Daley Innsbruck, ” the woman read from the caption. “I like it. I bet they have a reproduction in the gift shop,” she said as she hurried her man through the exit.

Daley slumped in his chair. “Almost,” he whispered.

An older man with three teenage girls ambled into the gallery. Two of the girls rushed up to Daley, while the third clung to the arm of the gentleman.

“Oh, how cute, this painting has a lifeguard,” said the scrawny bookish girl with the ginger hair.

“He’s not real,” said the plucky one with the blonde hair. She poked him in the leg, Daley twitched, and the girl yelped. “Oh!”

“Why does the painting need a lifeguard? That’s a bit silly isn’t it?” the ginger asked.

“Try jumping in, “Daley replied. “The gallery takes safety seriously. It won’t seem so silly when you are splashing about.”

“You mean we can jump in?” the plucky one asked, eyeing the towels hanging on the adjacent wall. She took a step back and rocked back and forth, ready to leap into the painting.

“Miranda!” the old man scolded her. “Show some respect. This is an art gallery.”

“Actually…” Daley tried to interrupt.

“Sorry Daddy,” Miranda said as she stepped back from the canvas.

The four punters wandered off.

From beneath his chair, Daley uncapped a bottle of water and splashed it across the floor in front of the painting.

Ten minutes passed before another group approached Daley’s exhibition.  A lady in high heels held hands with a man wearing an expensive suit who looked as though he would be equally happy making you millions on the stock exchange or driving you to bankruptcy. A bruiser of a man wearing a leather jacket and a ‘don’t f**k with me’ attitude followed closely behind.

Daley scampered out of his chair to towel down the water in front of the painting.

The man with the leather jacket scoffed at the lifeguard. “Painting leaking, is it mate?” the bruiser asked.

“No, that is just from the splashes, when people jump in.”

“You tell’n me you can go swimming in there?” He turned to the couple. “Can you believe this joker?”

“You have to believe. That is how it works.” Daley telegraphed a knowing wink at the guy.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

The lady leaned closer to the caption. ‘Dive right in’, ” she read.

“I’m game,” said the bruiser.

“Just remember, you have to believe.” Daley stepped back from the painting to give him room. He took a step to the right so as not to block the view of his hidden camera.

The bruiser took three skips and leaped into the painting, and … Bosh! His head met the painting and he collapsed back to the floor. Daley imagined what it might look like in slow motion, like a tennis ball collapsing as it met with a racquet.

The bruiser shook his head, as though animated stars were floating around it, and looked up at Daley with the eyes of a toddler wondering why his Daddy had just hit him.

“You stopped believing, didn’t you,” Daley said. An inspired thought bloomed in Daley’s mind for a soundtrack for his video. Don’t stop believin’, by Journey echoed in his ears, as he helped the man to his feet.

“You’re an idiot,” the suit said to the bruiser. ‘I can’t believe you fell for that.”

“I can believe it,” the lady giggled.

“No, it’s real, you just have to believe,” Daley repeated and bit the inside of his lip to control himself. “Why do you think the gallery hired a lifeguard?”  He tapped his chest with pride.

The bruiser had a nice shiner growing across his forehead and would have decked the lifeguard if the lady hadn’t led him from the gallery, still laughing.

 “Success breeds success,” snickered Daley as he splashed some more water on the floor. He had only just started mopping it up when another bunch of people entered the gallery. The noise of the previous viewers had started to draw a crowd. Seven people entered at once, with several more following. Daley licked his lips at the prospects: a teenage boy shaped like a linebacker for the Packers, a nervous guy looking for all the world like he wanted to impress his date, and his date looking for all the world like she could model a bikini in the background of his picture.

“The last group enjoyed quite a splash,” Daley said, looking up from the floor. “You have to believe if you want to ‘Dive right in’.”

Bosh.

“Believe!”

Bosh.

“Someone please belieeeeeve!”

Bosh.

“This is going to be great,” Daley tittered to himself, already editing together the montage in his head. Like a preacher in a dodgy church hall, he continued calling on his faithful viewers to run into the painting, and they kept running in.

Bosh.

Then the man arrived.

He sauntered into the gallery like a grizzled cowboy entering a saloon. He had a dark look about him, largely due to the dark trousers, dark overcoat, and dark hat, hiding his dark eyes. He palmed his way past several bodies as though they were standing between him and the bar. He put his hand in front of the next attempted diver, holding him back.  

“My turn,” he said.

Daley felt the tingling of electricity in the air. The man seemed to crackle with it.

“I know all about you, Mr. Innsbruck.” The man kept walking until his face was three inches from Daley’s. The smell of pickled herrings surrounded them. “And I know all about this painting. I know things even you don’t know.”

“Mr. um… Do I know you?” Daley backed away at the same rate that the man approached maintaining that three-inch gap. At this distance, the man looked soft, like a renaissance portrait. The light reflected from him at a strange angle.

“I’m the Locksmith.”

“And?”

“You seem to be having trouble with your painting.”

“Get out of here, you old boozer.” Daley dismissed the man and turned his back on him.

The Locksmith shoved Daley towards the painting. “You don’t deserve to wear that uniform. You’re a thief and a hack.”

Daley glanced at the crowd thinning out. He was losing them. “I am a real lifeguard,” he pleaded.

“Prove it.”

The Locksmith regarded the painting with awe that should have been reserved for a masterpiece. He swiped his hand left to right across it, as if he was feeling the texture of the canvas, becoming intimate with it. His fingers jittered with excitement. He took three steps back and ran headlong into the painting.

Into the painting.

Daley’s mouth hung loose as he watched the man splash into the swimming pool, dive deep, and surface further into the painting. His arms splashed about — no thrashed about — as he struggled to keep his head above the water. His arms tired quickly as his head bobbed below the surface again.

“Holy Mother. He’s drowning.” Daley cried out.  The remaining onlookers each yelped, squealed, or shrieked in their own unique ways.

A woman grasped Daley’s arm with a fierce tug. “Well, aren’t you going to do something? You’re the lifeguard!”

Daley wasn’t a lifeguard. He was a performance artist, a moderate swimmer, at best, with a vague recollection of CPR.

People were looking at him. Expecting him to do his “job”.

“Oh, Hell’s bells.” Daley snatched his floatation device and took a running leap into the swimming pool. He closed his eyes. “Believe. Believe. Believe.”

He landed with a splat as he dove deep and scrambled for the surface. His heart raced. Where was the surface? Why wasn’t he floating? And why did it seem like he was swimming through … paint.

He waved his arms about, left and right until he finally found the surface. With a big gasp of air, he twisted three hundred and sixty degrees looking for the man. Locating him, he wobble-paddled across the pool to turn him over into the rescue hold. He struggled back to the edge of the pool.

“What do I do now?” Daley slapped the man’s face. It had worked in The Abyss, he told himself. Nope, nothing. He checked his pulse. Nothing. He checked his breath. Nothing — but a lingering smell of herrings. CPR, then. “There was a song with the right beat. What was it? Funkytown? No. Staying Alive. That was it.”

Daley reached for the breastbone where he estimated the heart might be and pumped to the beat he remembered. “Staying Alive, Staying Alive. Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah, Staying Aliiiiive.” And breathe. He held the nose and breathed. It was all coming back to him. “Staying Alive, Staying Alive. Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah, Staying Aliiiiive.”

Daley heard voices.

“I love the poignancy of the contrast between the tranquil pool in the background and the desperate pair in the foreground with one giving CPR to the other. Remarkable.”

“The lighting reminds me of a Magritte … “

“Staying Aliiiive.” Daley kept pumping the chest and breathing into the guy’s mouth. He didn’t know what else to do.

A splutter.

A gurgle of water-paint came gagging out of his mouth. Relief flushed through Daley like a laxative had done its business.  He rested his head on the man’s chest while he gathered his composure.

The man’s eyes flickered open, and a smile crept across his face. “I knew you could do it.”

“You knew this would happen?” Daley tore at his hair and clenched his fist in the face of the man whom he had just brought back to life. “It was just supposed to be a prank.”

“I guess you’ve been pranked then.”

More voices floated in, like the voice of God was surrounding him.

“I really don’t care for the lazy scenery — palm trees over a glistening swimming pool — it’s just so cliché.”

“But the focal point is the two men brawling on the edge of the pool. Can’t you see this inversion of the lifeguard’s role is a social commentary on the British tourist?”

 “How did you do it?” Daley screamed at the dark man. “Is this magic or something?”

“Turn around. As long as it is unlocked we can leave. Just leap out. And believe.”

Eventually, Daley managed to look back out of the painting into the darkened room, like a window into another world. Large luminous faces stared at him, admired even. Floating on the surface of that window between worlds was a large deadlock across the middle. It had been swiped to the right, his left, and had been open when he had leaped into the pool. Daley was entranced by the magical deadlock hovering like a ghostly barrier between him and the gallery.

“How did you open it?” Daley turned and asked.

“I’ll tell you when you admit that you stole the painting and put your name on it,” the Locksmith replied.

Daley could see the woman who spoke about the British tourist reach out and almost touch the painting as she swiped her hand to the left. The deadlock crackled with electricity, followed her finger, and clanged shut.

DIVE RIGHT IN (2017). It is often remarked that the hyper-realism of Daley Innsbruck’s last self-portrait ‘Dive Right In’ from his 2017 collection was a deliberate ploy to draw the viewer into the same anguish that is so apparent in his eyes. The artwork, an acrylic on canvas 245x245cm, shows the artist himself desperately trying to tear at the middle of the painting as if to leap out into the real world. A man, perhaps his lover, lies in repose on the edge of the swimming pool dangling an arm into the cool waters. Of particular note is the texture of the water that shows a realism that has rarely been reached, and reminds this critic of the classic brush strokes of Gustavo Silva Nunez…

James Flanagan

Image: dark interior of an art gallery with a man sitting in front of a row of paintings. – pixabay.com