The Nature of Matter and Its Antecedents
By Steve Martin
 

I was taking a meeting with my publicists, trying to figure out what to do next. Marty suggested that the audience wants a Steve Martin to be doing a comedy right now. Tony said that a Steve Martin should do a nice cameo in a drama, "kind of an award thing." Michelle's idea was different: "What about doing a scientific essay? This is what the public wants right now from a Steve Martin."

"I still think a comedy is what ... wait, how do you mean?" I said.

"Well, maybe something on matter, or the nature of matter, I don't know. Cruise is doing something on reverse DNA, you could do something, too. Maybe better."

"The problem is it's not matter I'm interested in. I'ts prematter. The moment when it's 'not soup yet,' when it's neither nothing nor something."

"Steve, isn't that really just semantics? You're talking about something existing prior to existing."

"Now you're talkin' like Bruce and Demi. Did you see their piece in 'Actor/Scientist'? I would love to attack their semantics angle." Michelle inched forward. "Why don't you, Steve?"

I remembered when Stallone turned in his first "Rambo" draft. Through all the rewrites, he was also quietly submitting his notes on the irregular movements of explosive sound. He conjectured that explosive sound will travel faster through air already jarred by another explosive sound, having the bizarre effect that if two explosions are simultaneous, a perceiver will hear the farther explosion first.

The studio head told me later that the studio wasn't so confident in the script, but the scientific work was so fascinating they decided to let Stallone keep writing. Sly asked for no public acknowledgment, but diligently spent hours in sound-editing making sure the movie corresponded to reality.

I took my shrink to lunch and ran over my fears of doing the paper. Do I publish it in American Scientific Journal or sell it to The Enquirer along with copies of my divorce decree? She told me of the personal rewards of doing something for no other reason than to do it well. My other shrink disagreed. I have a call in to my third "tiebreaker" shrink.

That night I was in a limo with Sharon Stone having sex and I stopped for a minute with the question, "Can something be in a state of being, but not yet exist?" Sharon crossed her legs as only she can and said something so profound that everything in me just locked up. "In Swahili it can," she said.

There was my answer to Bruce and Demi: only in English and other Latin derivatives must a thing exist prior to its existence. Sharon's publicist leaned forward and said, "Go on, Sharon." She explained further: "After all, you're not talking about a grape become a raisin, you're talking about the interstitial state between pure nothing and pure something." I looked down. I was still tumescent. Then she added "Who made your sunglasses?"

"They're Armanis. I saw them at his store in Boston but they were on sale so I waited and got them at Barneys at regular price."



We finally arrived at Orso, where we met Goldie and Kurt, Tom and Nicole, Travolta and Sly. Our table wasn't ready so we yanked some tourists off their table and took their food.

We talked through the evening, Sly astounding us by coming up with 17 anagrams of the word "the," Travolta amusing the table by turning our flat bottle of Evian into gassy Perrier by simply adding saltpeter and rubber shavings and Kurt and Goldie discussing their cataloguing of every damn grasshopper in Colorado. Tom mentioned that he could cure a common cold in four seconds with a vacuum gun if only he could figure out a way to keep your ears from blowing out of your head. Sharon was just plain fun in a bottle. One of our publicists commented it renews the soul to do something you only publicize a little, and we all acknowledged the truth of that. Of course, every time the waiter or a fan would approach table, we quickly turned the topic of conversation to Prada leather pants, because, that night anyway, we decided to keep our little secrets.

I thought about my paper. As much as I wanted to be know for my science writing and publish under my own name, I also knew it might cost me a Nobel if I did. The committee would probably be disciplined if it gave an award to any man who has worn a dress to get a laugh. I would probably publish under a pseudonym, like Stiv Morton or Steeve Maartin. My reverie was broken by Nicole, who asked the table, "Why do we do it, this science?" No one had an answer, until Travolta stood up and said, "I don't really have an answer."


* From The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, March 2, 1997, late edition, section 6, p. 80, col. 1.