|
ART THERAPY
(c) Paul Scot August (RetroLounge) - 2006
It was not an unpleasant feeling. The first time that it came over me, I was walking South on Michigan Avenue, which is not in itself unusual except for the fact that I had just come from a particularly stressful lunchtime session with my therapist — the fifty minute miracle, I call it — and should have been walking North, back to work, but like I said, I was walking South. I began experiencing a sensation; an awareness, if you will, that I was indeed walking in the right direction and was in fact on a quest for something. Maybe, maybe not. I couldn't tell. But I went with this feeling, which is what my therapist has told me to do. So I walked for a few blocks on pure instinct until I saw the Art Institute across the street. Actually, I spotted the bronze lions on each side of the front steps. They are, I suspect, the models for the concrete replicas that stand next to the steps of the flat my ex-wife and I lived in before It happened. It being what those doctors called a breakdown. I like to think of it as my mind merely giving out under the burden of carrying around the heavy facade of false happiness that I had built up and maintained throughout the years. Like I said, my mind is not at fault; it just needed a rest. It was tired.
After I spotted the lions, I gave in to the urge and crossed the street. I had not been inside the Art Institute since my last grammar school field trip but had always had an appreciation for true art. So after pausing next to a lion and allowing my eyes to caress it, I climbed the steps and went in. I was in luck. It was Tuesday and admission was free. I checked my backpack, grabbed a map of the museum and walked past the guards and up the stairs. I paused next to a Rodin bronze to catch my breath and decided to sit on a nearby bench to get my bearings. People were rushing all around me in every direction, but my mind was focused. I stared at the Rodin, a figure of a man from the waist down, and the muscular bronze thighs came alive. They seemed to want to run up the stairs as much as I did. It was exhilarating. After a few minutes, I opened the map and knew that there was something on the second floor I needed to see. It wasn't a voice, like before, but more of a sensation. I bounded off the bench, slipped through the gallery doors and came face to face with Georges Seurat, or rather with his painting, Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte. It was startling. I felt minute in its presence. I just stood there for a few minutes in front of it and stared in awe. I then walked up close, and it faded into a raging swarm of little dots, a swirling mass of color. I stepped back again and the scene returned to focus. I did this three or four times, then sat down on the bench and started laughing, lightly at first, and before long I was roaring loudly. Now some people may find this inappropriate in a museum, but I didn't. I mean, besides the dots, there was this lady in the foreground with a monkey on a leash. A monkey, of all things. Isn't that ridiculous? After a few minutes, I noticed that it was well past my lunch hour and I needed to get back to the mailroom, and as the guard was eyeing me suspiciously, I got up and made my way to the exit.
When I got back to work, I felt serene. Now that was something new. Ever since I can remember, my mind has been cluttered with depressing thoughts flying about in every direction, but few staying around long enough to be considered coherent. That's why I was working as a sorter in the mailroom. The doctors didn't think I could do anything else and my therapist agreed with them. The repetition sometimes drove me crazy, but I could manage to do this job even with those voices in my head screaming at me that I couldn't. Actually, I had become used to their negative chorus. But my mind remained quiet that whole afternoon. At five I left work and stopped down the street to buy some paints and brushes. I remember whistling as I walked to the El stop to catch the train home to Evanston. That day, instead of striking up some intelligent conversation with the person sitting next to me, I just smiled and stared out the window at the neighborhoods and backyards. When I got home my landlord was standing on the front porch. I usually didn't care much for him, but that day we talked about the weather and the chances the Cubs had for winning the pennant this year. He said they will never go anywhere without some good pitching. He's so brainless sometimes. I smiled, tapped the brim of my cap and told him to just watch, they'll win it this year. After a time I went inside and instead of making dinner for myself and reading my mail in front of the television like I usually do, I started painting. Yes, I am going to be an artist too. I had forgotten to buy canvas, so I used the living room wall instead. I painted my own self-portrait and it covered half the wall when I was finished. Exhausted but satisfied, I sat in front of it and felt calm for the rest of the evening.
When I awoke the next morning, the chorus was back with a vengeance. At that point, I decided to return to the Museum. But that day, a different painting caught my eye; Paris, A Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte. Like the Seurat, it was huge, and I felt like I could walk right into it and get rained upon. It made me sad (it was raining the day It happened) and I was overtaken by a sudden depression; that bleak kind of melancholy that seeps out of your brain and drips down into your veins to be mainlined to your extremities. I sat there for the whole hour, imagining the neighborhood, the people inhabiting it, their troubles and pain. This depression remained with me the rest of the day. All this came from only an hour in front of a painting of a rainy day.
Well, I'm not stupid. I saw the pattern forming here. I could use these paintings to regulate my moods. Taper myself off of those drugs the doctors had me on. And that's exactly what I did. I don't know about you, but I've become tired of the Thorazine shuffle. I've done enough recreational drugs in my life to know that I would rather not have to be required to take these new ones. My theory was that I could go to the Museum every day at lunch hour — it's open seven days a week — and see the paintings I need to see to even out my moods, the way one can counteract the effects of too much cocaine by adjusting the intake of valium. Well anyhow, that was my theory.
After a few weeks, I found that this process also worked to enhance a mood that I thought was beneficial. For example, one day when I was feeling particularly blessed, I went in and found the European section from the 1600's. There, in all its glory, was The Assumption Of The Virgin by El Greco. Now this has to be seen to be believed. The canvas is set seven feet above a marble altar, surrounded by a floor-to-ceiling gilded frame with Corinthian (I think) columns capped off by a gilded fascia with gold dentals, you know, those things under a roof line that look like teeth from a distance. Its enormity made me feel so insignificant. I stood there for the whole hour and stared at it and the other huge religious canvases. They gave the room a pious sort of aura, if you believe in that sort of thing, and I do. It was really ethereal, and I walked out of there feeling very spiritual.
That day I came to see how my theory could be applied to many of the other paintings, too. For example, Chagall's White Crucifixion for when I was feeling too calm and wanted to see a world in turmoil, Picasso's Old Guitarist for when I wanted to be in my own 'blue period' or Hopper's Nighthawks for when I wanted to see someone else's loneliness and forget my own. This worked. I had tried it for weeks with great success and I was now painting more myself. All the walls in my living room were covered with my work, and I was starting to work on the other rooms. I was sure that I could follow my theory and someday be a great artist instead of a mail sorter. That was, Vincent, until I found you.
I remember the day it all began. It was a Tuesday, after my therapist appointment ("Are you still taking your medicine?" he asked. "Of course I am" I lied). I was wandering the rooms that contain the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, working on a foul mood that I can best describe as tortured emptiness. And there you were, staring at me with the same look of despair in your eyes that I was feeling. I loved you at once and wanted to know you. That painting was one of twenty-two or twenty-three self-portraits you did those two years you were in Paris. I knew this because I went to the gift shop and bought a book on your life. After that, we formed an instant kinship and we spent my allotted hour together. I returned to work with the book in hand and as we were not very busy, I read it. We have a lot in common, you and I. We both have red hair and beards. We both have experienced turmoil in relationships with our families, friends and especially with women. You spent time in that asylum at St. Remy, and I spent time up at Lutheran General's psych ward. I read that, like me, you suffer from hallucinations and the thought of death haunts you. They say you are afflicted by a sense of your own failure, which you suffer in the recesses of your very being. I can relate. And here's the kicker; we both have brothers named Theo. Of course, mine calls himself Ted, doesn't support me and we don't write each other, but I still think its an uncanny coincidence. I found out a lot from that book. You did all your paintings in a five year period, allegedly as a means of resolving your internal conflicts. That's amazing. In a mere five years, you painted over 550 pictures, plus drawings and an enormous amount of letters, before, at age thirty-seven, while walking in the very field where you painted Cornfield with Crows, you committed suicide by shooting yourself in the chest. That was good thinking. I guess if you paint that many self-portraits, you learn to respect the head and face and instead put a hole in your misshapen heart. When I was finished reading the book, I felt for the first time in my life that I wasn't alone. I began spending all my lunch hours with you and even longer on weekends.
One afternoon my boss came up to me and asked me where I was going during lunch hour every day. I told him that I took a bag lunch to the museum, that I was going to be an artist, being very careful not to tell him about my theory. Bosses and doctors just don't seem to understand these things. He told me he had been watching me and thought it was time for a promotion and a raise. He's a great guy, my boss. He's got a degree. He asked me if I wanted to start delivering mail to the offices in the building. Sure I did. I was feeling good, you see. I knew I could do the job. Besides, I needed the money to buy paint. That next morning I began pushing the mail cart through the hallways and in and out of the elevators and past conference rooms. I never knew that company was so large! I met friendly secretaries and these nice people in suits said hello to me in the hallways. Each afternoon I drove the mail van between our two downtown locations. I felt important. Life was good. So good in fact that I stopped seeing my therapist on Tuesdays so I could spend that day with you too. He wasn't all that happy, but I knew he wouldn't understand my theory, even if I told him. I mean, come on, the guy wears a bow tie. And the insurance company will save money now, too. And so I met you for lunch every day at noon. You always had an encouraging word for me. You never acted surprised when I told you about things. You always said you believed in me. I couldn't wait to see you. I needed you. And then I couldn't wait to get back to work where they needed me. My boss said I was doing a great job and that I could look forward to a promotion to shipping in a few months.
But then, after a few more weeks, something happened. I had begun to stop in at the art galleries along Michigan Avenue with snapshots of my work. I was going to let them buy them. Nobody seemed interested and most of them had laughed at me. One afternoon I called a salesman a hypocrite. What could he possibly know about true art if he had never painted himself. I was physically thrown out of the gallery onto the sidewalk. I was so mad that I came back after work and broke one of their front window. The alarm went off, so I had to run all the way to the train station. After that, the feeling began to change.
The next day, you started to get short with me, like you weren't interested in me anymore or something. You started talking only about yourself. You! You! Always you! You didn't seem to care about my mornings or about my job anymore. You stopped asking me about my paintings. You even stopped asking me about the Cubs. I began to get resentful. But the more you told me about yourself, the harder it became for me to leave you each day. God knows I tried. But I kept coming back to work every day late from lunch. My boss was getting unhappy with me. He just never understood me. I couldn't figure out what went wrong with my theory. The longer I stayed with you, the worse I began to feel. It seemed I was building up an immunity. I thought maybe if I looked at your other paintings for awhile, things might even out again. Each day last week, I moved to another of your works. On Monday, it was your Bedroom at Arles. It was supposed to give me "a feeling of perfect rest", according to the plaque on the wall, but all I found was turmoil. On Tuesday, it was your The Drinkers. That one was way too ghostly for me. The three men's clothes seemed to move as I watched them drink from their glasses in front of a sky full of swirling grey-white clouds. The next day, your Fishing in Spring, which formerly brought on a peaceful feeling, with its lone fisherman relaxing in his boat while a single horsedrawn carriage crosses a bridge in the background, brought only an intense emptiness and longing to somehow fill it. Thursday, I read the plaque on the wall next to your Garden of the Poets, which said it was supposed to be "A place of release, where the imagination was freed by the growing plants and the brilliant hopeful light of day". All I saw was lots and lots of green, like something gone rotten and moldy. No offense, but this was upsetting because it had been my favorite, aside from you, of course. On the train home that night, I tried to explain my theory to the woman sitting next to me, but she got up and moved. I kept talking anyway, but I don't think anyone was listening. When I got home, I couldn't eat, sleep or paint. I tried watching television, but it just pissed me off. That's okay, I can always buy another one. I sat on the floor all night, until it was time to leave for work.
That morning my landlord was waiting on the porch for me. He said I was two weeks late on my rent. I told him I had the money in my apartment, so he followed me back inside. As I got my checkbook, he started yelling at me about tenant responsibilities, late fees and the need to repaint all the walls. He called my paintings a mess of shit. I turned around to look at him, but he was lying on the floor. I guess he did have brains, because they were on the floor next to him. I didn't know how that happened, but I was late for work, so I dropped the baseball bat, grabbed my Cubs hat and coat and locked the door on my way out. I worked all morning and at lunchtime I rushed out to the museum.
That brought me back to you; a place I have come to not only fear and hate, but also crave. I sat in front of you every lunch hour that week, but felt nothing but hostility. That day all I got from you was silence. Cold, stone-cold silence. Why did you stop talking to me? Why did you just stare at me with those blazing eyes, fanning the flames of my own despair? Oh God, even you abandoned me. I left the museum and ran back down Michigan Avenue to work, threading my way through the crowds of yuppie scum and bag people. I was late again and my boss was waiting for me. Was he upset! He called me into his office and starting yelling at me about trust and responsibility and the chance he took on me. What did he know? He didn't understand that I'm an artist. He didn't work for a living like me. He just stood around telling us what to do. God, he made me mad. Him there looking so self-important in his grey suit and paisley tie and his shiny new tasselled loafers standing there with his business degree hanging on his office wall next to his Nagel prints and his desktop full of cute little golf games and pen-and-pencil holders and golf balls laying on the floor and his putter leaning against the desk where I could reach it. I remembered my follow-through. I ran out the door, grabbing the keys to the mail van and got in the elevator. I drove out of the parking garage squealing the tires and turned up the street, but I guess I wasn't paying attention to my driving because the next thing I knew the van was stopped and I was staring down at the crushed side of a black Saab convertible. I jumped out of the van and started running until I got lost in the crowd.
Somehow I ended up on the museum steps. I took the stairs two at a time and then paused at the doors to catch my breath. I entered slowly, walked up the steps past the Rodin and directly to you. I sat down on my bench and just stared at you. I sat there for two hours. I felt your sadness mirroring my own, our longing to be famous in our own lifetimes (you never sold a single painting, for God's sake!) and our knowledge that we would have to be sacrificed for the future of our art. I was sobbing, which is probably why I didn't notice the two guards watching me. As I stood up and walked towards you, I guess I pulled a straight razor from my coat pocket. The next thing I knew, I was being wrestled to the floor and punched into unconsciousness by the two guards, the razor sliding harmlessly across the floor. When I woke up, I was strapped to this bed here at Lutheran General, still groggy from the injections they keep giving me. There's a police officer outside my door at all times. They say I am being charged with murder, grand theft auto, leaving the scene of an accident, assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, and get this, attempted destruction of a museum masterpiece. I tried to tell them I wasn't going to cut you. A year after you did your self-portrait, you would cut off part of your own ear. I wasn't going to add to your hurt. Really. I tried to tell them, but they won't believe me. It was me I was going to hurt. Slash my wrists; never my face, never yours. I know you would believe me, if only they would let me see you again. You were the only one who ever understood me. Help me, Vincent!
RL
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
