Simon Grue, painter, and Tally B. Washington, jazz drummer, are in a room along with six other individuals. Each of these individuals is an academic scholar in some capacity. The remaining four individuals take on roles as an industrial designer, interior decorator, clinical psychologist, and cultural anthropologist, respectively.

Washington is playing a melody on a hollow African Log while the others are conversing, drinking, smoking, etc. Grue is seated before paints and a blank canvas. Washington has a particular song in his mind in which he begins to continue the corresponding melody. Grue paints in the style of accidents, meaning that his artwork is made of splatters and non-directed markings, like the style of Kandinsky or Pollock. Grue creates his work in the company of these scholars as it aids in his process. As Washington begins to play the drum more quickly, Grue prepares to make his mark. As Washington plays a specific rhythm pattern, RUMP-TITTY-TITTY-TUM-TAH-TEE, Grue splatters the paint, and it mirrors the sound.

Grue’s artwork becomes a phenomenon.  People become capitated by the splatter as it encapsulates the sound of the drum. Those who see the image can hear the sound. Psychologists quickly adopt the image as therapeutic treatments, like ink-blot tests. The sound also adopts meditative properties. In addition to becoming a therapeutic treatment, the image and symbol of the sound become commercialized and are visible essentially everywhere. The original intellectuals find themselves obsessed with the symbol themselves so much so that they opt to understand its underlying power.

Grue, Washington, the designer, decorator, psychologist, and anthropologist discover that Washington’s ancestor had been a witch doctor with power to put the entire world under his spell. They conclude that this is what is happening through the chant and its visualization in Grue’s splatter painting. To undo this effect, the team conducts a ritual with flares and demonic-like imagery. During this ritual, Tally plays a new melody on the drum and Grue creates a new painting.

The new painting is revealed and almost immediately all previous effects of the original painting are undone. It is revealed that while the original sound and work embodied the entire universe via witchcraft, the new sound and artwork are the antithesis, and embody the negation of all that exists. Thus, the new artwork and sound counteract the effects of the visualized and verbalized RUMP-TITTY-TITTY-TUM-TAH-TEE.