The Art Collector

Of all the worlds I slip through to find new art works for my collection, this one: the one they call Earth, has produced some of the more interesting pieces.

Often, when I walk through my halls, alone or with guests there to admire my collection, I am struck by how these primitive cultures seem to be able to capture so much… vitality, seem far more alive, then we who like to believe we are civilised.

Still, as the centuries slip by, and I get older, Earth too has changed, even started to move towards some sense, some idea, of what it would be like to leave the primitive behind.

This… maturing… of the Earth planet has meant a change in the kind of pieces I now gather for my collection. As the planet Earth stumbles – often blindly – away from the primitive, there has come a certain new quality in the pieces I collect.

My latest piece, who was called Jacqueline Bennett when she lived on the Earth, seems to have some extra quality about her, compared to, say, a piece I collected about a millennium before, back when the art works hardly had names at all, just sounds the tribe gave to tell one another apart.

The newer pieces have something about them, though, that means they are not without charm or even beauty. They are more self-conscious, more aware of themselves as works of art; I think that could be the difference. They take much more care of their bodies these days. The groom and clean and exercise themselves, so for those of us with the fine aesthetic sense to appreciate them as the works of art they – so obviously – aspire to be, they have become quite impressive works. Consequently, so many people come to examine and appreciate my collection that I feel the hunting down and capture of these pieces is more than worthwhile, and - even at my advanced age – I still think there are more out there left to collect.