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DAVID LESTER ART

Normal History Vol. 88: The Art Of David Lester

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

Veronica tells Lesley she’s writing a fable using jungle animals who have a problem that there appears to be no way to solve.

“It’s a trap,” says Veronica. “The animals are posited opposite each other, and yet trapped together in the problem. Parting ways won’t solve the problem. The problem would remain and parting would cause another problem, so they have to understand the problem completely and figure out a solution. The jungle animals discuss these things and they agree that the problem feels like a puzzle piece with nice clean edges. They tell stories about other jungle animals, species different from themselves, and they make the problem slightly different—more extreme—to see it from other angles. They superimpose variations of the problem onto the other animals to see what they do. They try to understand themselves, inventing possible ways to approach a solution.”

“Where does the fable part come in?” asks Lesley.

“I’m not sure how a fable works,” Veronica says. “But I think maybe all these critters could be in the Trench, the Home Front Tent and the Parisian Cafe eating pies, which could have various symbolic attributes—metaphorically filled pies. Sort of like the story I told you about the alligator with the paper cuts on its lips and how its blood turned the river red and how the elephant wanted to be like the giraffe, but knew better than to vote for the giraffe when the guy in the Speedo twisted his moustache and tapped the clipboard with his stubby consensus pencil.”

“I recall the story, but it used to have a lion and a baboon in it.”

“The elephant curled his trunk up and under,” Veronica continues. “And the guy in the Speedo throws his briefcase over his shoulder, which results in the alligator getting the paper cuts on his lips, the blood from the cuts that turn the river red.”

“I’m still not sure this adds up to an official fable, though,” Lesley says.

“Well, the thing is,” says Veronica. “This happened on the same day as the story about the man who, carrying his girlfriend’s groceries to the car, made the comment about not being able to open the trunk of the car with his penis, and his girlfriend didn’t get it because, well, who would?”

“Not me,” says Lesley, laughing. “I do not see any connection between a penis and the trunk of a car. At all.”

“Right, she didn’t get it either, but she wondered if it had something to do with the part in the story about the elephant; the elephant had a trunk, and a penis is a sort of a trunk.”

“Um, that’s a bit of a stretch,” says Lesley.