basically:
one of his daughter's friends,
a guy he met at a swap-meet,
and a homeless woman who
had one of his postcards in
her shopping cart. if he could
he would gather the three together
and scold them for liking something
of his that some would call a gift
and others would say robbed the creator
of the time it took to produce someone
so lacking in other "talents."
all he knew is that,
when looking at one of his paintings or another,
something was missing -
the something that defined genius
or facility or a deeply perceptive
way of organizing the world. he wanted
what he lacked. he was thinking that,
if he could just focus on - let's say
the foreground of a landscape so that others
could see that he really "got it" that he understood
all the layering and foreshortening and all the other
artistic tools it would take to render space in a coherent
fashion and to fool the eye if you will - he could
die happy and know he wasn't a charlatan
at least for the three that liked what he did.
things became fuzzy for a time and it was probably some
synaptic shorting-out that disabled his reason and his memory
to recall the lessons taught by the masters of his youth -
the guy that ran the scout-house, or the guy that
conducted the baseball team, or how about the one-legged
man who coached ball AND taught school. they didn't really
know that he could do anything but pitch badly and run slowly. they
thought he was just a kid looking like all the others - concerned
with the snow cones at the concession stand or the razzing from opposing
players with whom he attended classes. there were foreign things at work
in this world of suburban experimentation with housing and schooling - there was
the sense that the elders of the previous generation knew that they had
somewhow spoiled a whole generation of misfits who couldn't do
anything and never really wanted for anything. there was a generational
remove from the land and from agrarian reform and a connection with the dust from
which one came and to which one returned.
pictures became important - more so than the printed word. the flickering pictures
holding a whole generation in a spell - hostage with no ransom set nor expected. this artist guy (with the three fans) - he knew how little he really knew. he knew that he lived inside a vast grid and that one move in any direction and he would be hurled from the grid, never to be seen again. he so wanted to leave the grid and live on his own, but connectivity was his craving
and everything he touched he demanded to know intimately - like being close to something would salvage the remainder of his tattered inner-workings (won't stoop to use the word soul).
at the end - after many intervening years, when one-by-one all the he believed, felt, and loved had been snuffed out or exposed as a lie - he was shrunken down into the footprint of his own cadaver - starving for meaning, resolution, and love. he took his only possession at the end and, unfolding it carefully, plunged it deep deep
into his chest.
(c)jim hill (4-12-2012)
