Creation

Where are good ideas born, in the heart or in the mind? Do we stumble on them by chance, or are they the product of a life’s pursuit?

S. is crying. I can hear her mewing down the hallway, or is that dream? The universe slowly comes into focus. I am lying on the couch. Mentally I do an inventory of my body, muscles and bone locked together in a delicate dance. How long have I been here? I look over at the clock. Its 6:30. I try to sort out reality with little success. Why is it so dark?

“Are you sleepy honey?”
“Un-hungh.” She replies crawling under the saddle blanket that is haphazardly strewn across my torso. Where did that come from, and why are me feet so cold? I give her a gentle kiss on the top of her head as she snuggles in close to me. There is a one in a thousand chance that she will actually fall asleep.
“Good night honey.”
Twenty minutes later we are watching cartoons on PBS.

Four hours have passed. A shadow darts across the peripheral. Was that a cockroach? I stare at my keys. There seems to be a few extras. I begin a mental countdown of the various locks to which I am given access. “Where does this go?” Unperturbed I flip through the lot again, landing solidly on my office key, the key to the back door, and finally the one to my studio.

Walking into my studio I immediately begin making a mental inventory. Piles of refuse, bits of paper and canvas, and a bag of fabric scraps litter the floor, drill and hammer, stencils, markers, and a stack of stretched square canvases unceremoniously dumped in the corners. Gingerly picking my footfalls through the debris of creation I take my place in front up the upended pile of canvas. This is going to take a while.

The rasp of the drill fills the room; discarded canvases are sorted into uneven piles all around me. I have been shuffling these cards like a Vegas dealer for what seems like an eternity, waiting for the shift boss to relieve me. I have managed to pick nine basically square canvases from a pile of over sixty and have organized them into a three by three grid and have begun to fasten them one to the next.

I painted this collection almost six months ago. It was intended as a monument to frustration, canvases, stretched and painted then stacked one on top of the next till it rose, like Ozymandias’ pedestal from floor to ceiling.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t use pizza boxes. Now that would have been something. They could have been dripping with old sauce and cheese instead of paint.” I brush the memory of this critique away like an old cobweb before my face as I prop the coupled canvases against the wall.

Stepping back my eyes move with wonder across the painted surface. Each canvas is an articulated work in its own right. I had originally painted then so that the drips would give depth and texture to the edges of each canvas one pile one on top of the next. But here, the swaths of paint, the discordant colors, the irregularity of the square suddenly seemed to leap off of the canvas.

Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news.

“Crap!” I said. I was never going to be able to over paint this. It was too beautiful. I stood for a moment in total wonder at the accidental creation I had concocted, like Frankenstein’s monster I had breathed life into useless parts. I wondered for a minute what people would say if they saw it. Would they see it through my eyes, or would it be the useless bits and pieces rescued from the cutting room floor, patched together in the vain attempt to resuscitate them? “I will never be able to explain this to the faculty.” I reluctantly thought. But I wasn’t going to paint over it either. Defiantly I turned back to the fifty or so remaining canvases, rolling up my sleeves and setting in anew.