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Here, in the yellow light, each word pulls me closer to my destiny. As you can plainly see, I’m slowly working my way out of the thicket. The only life I’m left with, as I look at the span I’ve managed to traverse, is the one I gave to Beauty. Correction: I could say, the one I gave for Beauty.
Along with the England of my youth, Beauty has been relegated to some small sphere of the past-tense. Yearning to free myself of guilt, I can only envision the vast overturning of many a rock. I could go back, sure I could, and the spiral I’d see coming up the road, would, damn-well, still be there:
Each month, unfurled, in a dream-weave; a monument, erected in honor of the out-of-control; a simple, yet unbalanced, affair of the heart; and, a churning of all things illuminating, distorted into something gross, something unheard of, revealed.
No getting away from it, I’d say.
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Beauty entered my life, pretty as they come, on Christmas Eve morning. [After all the peddling it would take to get to this part of the story, I wouldn’t have had enough air left in me to complete the journey. In any event, I continue slowly, acknowledging this long-winded flight of fancy, which in the aftermath can only attest to my present state of mind. God knows.]
My life turned out to be much more subtle than what could be gathered in words alone. If I could speak freely about my History, with all its implications laid out as testament to my present condition, there wouldn’t be any great leaps gone unnoticed.
In respect to the craft of painting, I was single-minded; selfishly aligned to my own vision of what constituted a fine work of Art. My business was the business of creation; however, when it came to outspokenness, or the opinion of another painter in the field, I kept my own council within myself,withdrawing fully from the spectacle at hand. [To put it bluntly, I’ve seen a lot of crap hung upon a gallery wall. At times, its taken all the powers of an Apollo not to spit on the canvas, while shouting the word “shit” towards the rafters.]
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As so much of personality resides close to hearth and home, I suppose whatever restraint I’ve developed can be traced to my upbringing:
As a child, I tended to be happiest when in my own thoughts. You could always find me off in some corner somewhere, colouring or sketching.
Another factor, which can be traced, added, to the stew, is the fact that in our humble, working-class, flat, children were born to be seen, not heard; even if we were heard, we wouldn’t be able to get a word in sideways, for all the bickering that went on, back and forth. Without compromise, Art became everything. My solitary ways, and the taunts of Others, caused me much grief--but, no matter.
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I could have ruined myself against a cliff-face; however, I still managed in my young life to hope-against-hope, plow ahead, full speed. Within this City, my adopted home, every brushstroke was an appeal to clarity, and sanity; a consummate vision, born out of solitude.
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For the past few days I’ve been gazing at the photographs of ghosts and muses. For once in my bloody life, I feel responsible toward something more than my own scars, and the unacknowledged wounds which underlie them:
They’re the dark spaces sitting between each word on my computer screen; tinged in a shade of yellow, as yellow as my own skin.
Each space....
....as present as my ragged breath.
Everything ends with her.
Why not go back? I could trot of the befuddled, fog-bound, cityscape of London; bring all the bloody skeletons out of the closet. I could go back, as a beginning, as far as my Childhood. If I wanted to write a full-fledged autobiography, and not a memoir, (as such) the Church of England’s pea-soup afternoons would finally get the airing out they deserve.
[Along with, Father Allsworthy, (another, “gentleman”) who in his black robe, sermonized to all of us lost souls. With reverence, we’re pressed together in our pews; looking up at him, up there, on the alter. In the chapel, all grows in silence. We sit upon our transgressor backsides, taking in fully his strident words; his full-throated oratory.
Meanwhile, the workers, with their all-too-hung-over-heads, bowed in prayer, try to erase the previous nights misbehavior. (“Lookie-there, Steven: If ain’t ya father there, among them. Haw-hoo-Haw, the rummy!”) Ho-hum, sez I: I remember my rebellious adolescence, running with the gang.]
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On second thought, considering the revisionist attitude I’ve been prone to in my present circumstances, flipping through the Early Years would take up way too much time. Nevertheless, I must say the prospect of doing so seems to be as inescapable as everything else in my past.
[Speaking in general terms, the choices we make in life, sometimes comes down to a set of unspoken wishes and longings which can only be moved by the most subconscious of desires; some of these wishes going far back as our Childhood, they say. Thus, like a child, born in the age of Freud, I could now, if I so desired, examine my early life as if it were only a prelude to my eventual undoing. With wide eyes, I could peer into “the Family Romance,” and expose all the uncharted chapters these naked confessions hold back. Disclosure cannot be held back.]
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Indeed, Father Allsworthy’s confessional seems all the more real to me now: As light fades in my loft, and the only glow left to guide me is the ever-present illumination emanating from the center of my computer screen. The time I have to deal with is my own.
The choice is mine alone.
To tap out words:
I’m much better at holding a brush in my hand than putting one word next to another. I’ve spent the greater portion of my life speaking in various hues of mixed paint. So, in the final analysis, my time spent on the page doesn’t seem to be a matter of time so much as it does a final confrontation with my own darker nature. (It is almost as if the struggle to get started, the struggle to articulate my relationship with Beauty, is a vast field, fenced off by too many posts, too many voices, and too many noises; each one of these apparitions of the past are clamoring to get out. The past, in its solidity, is looking to reach some sort of alliance with the present.
When I held Beauty in my arms, I knew where I began and ended--in both, the physiological sense, as well as the psychological sense. Within the rudiments of Love, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell us we were One. Time lost meaning. When she was with me, I knew where I was. I suppose one of the singular truths of this relationship was the one that had welded our souls together; the way in which we transfixed each other in powerful ways. I could go on-and-on about this; the seemingly strung out passions involved; the daily nestling, snuggling, and caresses, we gave each other. There was, also, obsession when we weren’t together: The waiting; the full, dark, strokes of applied paint; the muffled moan, and the silent phone. All of it, come crashing through the door, bursting in colour, and oh-so-vivid with life.
None of this has faded. Private matters scream from all sides. All I see is Beauty. The public Self disappears when you are in love. You begin to see each other in the same light, but differently; all of this in order to see yourself fully.
I don’t know where I begin or end anymore.
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My early life, before there was Beauty, has been tucked away safely within a tomb of my own making. I‘d even go as far to say, the only thing keeping me grounded in New York City is the life I remember with Beauty. Mattering less and less, time is stretching itself. I want so much to tell it all; including, my dreams, and night sweats, and the paranoid visions of a pounding at the door. At the same time, I want to hastily shrink, grow small, and fade away. I want to hide my sins, my body. I want to see my life grow microscopic, insignificant. [Even as I hold the vision of Beauty in my dreams, a dead man’s voice screams out at me; a dead man’s finger points at me, curses me.]
All within the same breath, I want to inhale every contradiction I’ve set for myself:
In every instance of revision, I’ve mustered the feeling of guilt it takes to cover over my own callousness and cruelty.
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It’s only been lately that the impulse to “tell-it-all” has become more than an impulse. I’m truly into it now; the motives are more involved than just the truth of it all. The truth, at times, can be irrational. Nothing is ever spur of the moment. In every human interaction there are choices to be made. Hiding never brings one happiness.
I’ve found out all of these things the hard way.
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The one I’d like to speak to, if only I could, would be her husband. His face stares back at me from a newspaper clipping. I cannot escape his face. It’s a deadened face, given nobility, in its suspended animation.
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The silence of the photograph, the very truth it reveals, puts me in mind of every falsehood I’d showered upon his invisible presence; every palpable notion of evil I’d projected upon his very life.
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The impulse for any writing, I believe, is to give back, or bring forward, something which ultimately illuminates a given situation, a given time or place.
In my own experiment with words, what I’m seeking is a kind of absolution for the hurts I’ve meted out; all the false steps I’ve taken: All the unseeing bits of deceit, festering into something evil and hidden.
Thus, these words shall ultimately lie hidden also. On the day these words reach the eyes of Others, I shall be long gone away from this world.
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If the man in the photograph could speak, what would he say to me? Better yet, what can I, the one who feels responsible for his death, possibly do to reclaim what little humanity I’ve discarded? What can I say to him? Can my point of view be anything but a ruse, (read: a rationalization, par excellence.)
In the scheme of things, I’m sure Beauty’s point of view would contrast greatly with my own. I don’t even know her whereabouts. I’m still trying to unloosen the truth from among all the lies she told me.
My dreams tell me I still love her very much. As night commences, I want to forgive her everything. It’s easier to forgive, than it is to forget.
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As morning comes, I close my eyes and cannot help seeing her image before me. I cannot let go, it seems, in the same way she did. Her daily appearance is so stark, so real; not at all ghostly, or fleeting. Only with the light of day, does my support weaken. I embrace a killer each day.
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I want to bare my soul. See an opening. Peel back the layers of falsehood. I want to hide my beginnings, while at the same time have them slowly revealed, exposed. All these words are gravitating toward a contradiction.
Life is lost to me. I’ll never walk in heaven. Time, beautiful time, no longer matters.
Beauty was all.
Now, I write for those who have not known Beauty.
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[end, Number One]
(To be continued...
*****
It occurred to me, as I walked those two blocks to Cee-Cee’s:
Maybe, this transformation (metamorphosis?) I’ve undergone is only the fateful outcome of a promise-filled, yet banal, solitude. Outside of any fear I’ve carried [about perpetually being alone] a thin layer of solitude could be discerned, always present, pushing me ever deeper into withdrawal.
What developed in this creative solitude, I’d devised and mastered, was a distinct indifference towards any fear of aloneness:
I was comfortable in my solitary surroundings; separateness from others no longer mattered to me. The nib, while sketching, or the brush, while painting, became the center of my life. The aloneness I immersed myself in carried a distinct echo of ease, comfort. What I found, to my utter delight, after months of concentrated effort, was I could transcend the paired realms of resignation and depression. It was from this contrary nexus of solitude (so much, like a womb, it was) I’d managed to shut out, completely, the outside world.
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The voices.
The chattering mouths.
All telephones; and, answering machines, disconnected.
All laughter, and sadness and world events, and more sadness; and, conflict and further chattering, [No celebrities, and useless non-real conversation] on television.
All relationships, [family, and especially, friends] pushed aside, for an extended vacation.
In a word, “Everything” other than Myself, or what could be put on canvas; what could be touched, with a brush, in Art. Whatever creativity I possessed, [and, there are those who still dispute any notion of creativity in my Work]; whatever, small beer talent I might’ve pursued in my Liverpool days, attached itself to my aloneness like a pair of hot tongs, refusing to let go. I had only myself to fall back on.
And so, from that moment forward, a small part of my secret soul dominated each canvas.
The forty paintings I dried and leaned against the white walls of my loft, were the penultimate expression of my singularity of purpose. A huge piece of myself, previously lying dormant, was revealed with each small dab of the brush.
I just couldn’t see it.
I just wouldn’t see it.
Swept up, within my own passion, I became blind to every subtlety of Self, residing in these dark Works of Art. The subtext of these paintings was inspired by my own deeper secrets, revealed. I was bound, and at the same time boundless; a flashing yellow light of inspiration. It was this, and this alone, carrying me forward.
Working alone. Working at a breathless pace. Discovering myself, more alive than ever before.
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This was a heady time for me. Each shallow part of myself seemed to thicken into something expansive. It was more than I’d ever hoped to become. There was too much promise staring me in the face; too much gold-leafed framing to be done. I knew there’d be no turning back now; there’d be no turning away from these paintings, and the eventual impact they’d have upon the public’s perceptions.
These paintings would eclipse the Museum of Modern Art’s unveiling of Ian Rodgers’ work. Rodgers’, “Beauty,” would become a pale-skinned comparison. [This is what I thought, felt, and gathered, with each boundless, unclouded, step I took towards Cee-Cee’s red-brick building; carrying, a white and green colored bottle of sack-cloth wine, humming a tone-deaf tune, and not giving a Christmas fig about it. Who heard? Who cares? I was gone upon myself, flying. As free as ever from solitude. Way too happy for my own good; and, walking into something I didn’t see, didn’t expect.
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When you’re full of yourself, you can assume anything.
I didn’t know that then.
It would take Beauty--lovely, Beauty-- to teach me that.
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[End of Part Four]--08/08/09.--William H. Balzac.--Deer Park; New York.
Christmas, and the New Year to follow, would provide me with an unexpected gift; a gift beyond the one I cultivated during my four months absence from the world. [However, even in these arrogant days, I carried myself as if this gift were expected. When the gift arrived, in the form of an Artist’s Model, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Up to this point in my life, Beauty was known to me as a painting. She was the iconic subject of Ian Rodgers’ most famous work; a gift, frozen in time].
Memory, for all its faulty wiring, attaches itself more fitfully to situations lived outside of dates. Only History, and the study of Great Events, ties itself so firmly to a set of dates (i.e.: The exact day, place of an event, or Historical Period/Era.)
Personal history, on the other hand, is made up of many days and nights, never recorded as a specific date. As a result, memory can be fickle, fluid, and inevitably, faulty. Memory, clings tightly, to feeling and emotions, at times like maps of scar tissue. [Even the beloved’s soft flesh can be incorporated into a skein of memories.]
It is a different history I’m gathering here, [in scope, personal and private] without adherence to any calender dates, or complete coherence. The exact day, and my memory of the exact day, be it December 20th, or December 21st is of little importance in the grand scheme of things.
I’ve always had a problem with numbers; my brain could never wrap itself around them in any useful way. All calculations are a fog, alas!
I’ve lived for painting, and nothing more.
That is, until I met Beauty.
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A Clarification:
Dates elude me. Sequences elude me, also. I’ve never taken care with numbers: They are like the many nights I spent with Beauty, only much more elusive, now that time has passed, and I’m alone. And yet, I am filled with reminders, remembering, with such clarity, all the small details of our first meeting.
I’d first seen Beauty as a painting. Then, with a fateful night, she was brought to life, transfigured, and made all too real. Beauty, flesh and blood.
Now, as I piece together those four months of painting, I’m not quite sure if I’d finished the Work on the 20th or the 21st of December. [I guess it matters little, in the scheme of things; however, I know,in retrospect, it makes for a confused narrative.] I guess I wasn’t born to be a writer. Every moment of my life has been invested in the here and now experience of living: It’s tones, colours, shadings, objects, and bodily figures, were all of what mattered.
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In the Classical sense, I’ve always been a dreamer, rooted to the role of Outsider, and clinging to the Archetype of the Creative Loner.
[I see, when conjuring this image:
The Artist, in his garret-loft, penniless, but obliviously happy with his paints and mistresses.] My Childhood was indicative of this stance toward the World; each moment of cruelty inflicted by Others, (“What ya doin’ ya little bugger,” was followed by a good, hard shove, and the sketch pad flying to the curb and landing into the muddy, puddle-jumping, curb, smacking with a disconsolate smack and splash. The bully-boys, with their clenched fists, and manic eyes, bloodies my nose.)
All of experience, taught resolve; a girding up, of any wall I could build around my determination. What I needed was one other person in my life who did not scorn my separateness, my fixation upon the lives of Artists. [When I wasn’t drawing, I was reading books: Biographies of the lives of Artists; textbooks, devoted to technique; Cezanne, Renoir, Degas; and, even, a sprinkling of Goethe, Emerson, and, the theory of Frederic Taubes. All of these Representative Men became idealized heroes in my quest.]
The visual side of life, a rendering of the “Seen, became a measure, a yardstick, I could use to sublimate everything gross, cruel, and hurtful in my life. My peers didn’t understand this. In my love of creative solitude, they perceived something queer and unmanly. They never left me alone. I wanted companionship, and all I found from them was ridicule; validation for my efforts, wasn’t small beer to contend with. All of these slights did nothing but draw me further away; deeper into my own world, a deeper, kinder world.
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I’m more firmly grounded in the experiences, and situations, which time presents. Understanding doesn’t adhere itself to the rendering, or recalling, of dates.
What I believe is this: Understanding is made up of experience.
Only recently, have I been able to see the paintings as Beauty must have seen them. To really “see” the paintings, one must enter the Gallery without any preconceived notions of what one will see: You must be naked of all expectations; you must come to these paintings, trusting your own judgment; you must see the paintings as an empty house: the viewer, filling in the spaces of light with their own bits of darkness, or bursts of colour. The objective portion of the painting, and the response, (like a dance) is completely subjective. The emotional reaction-- as in an undercoating, revealed--is the effect (affect?)--of collision; a merging of two sides.
Beauty, I’m sure of it, could see all of the loosened inhibitions, and mental contortions, I’d put myself through in order to create these paintings. Without question, she saw “me” in those forty canvases.
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[Easy, Steven. Take it slow. Take a deep breath. Stand back. Fill the emptiness. Step back, and breathe deep.]
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It takes a loosening of thought to “see” these Works for what they are. There is a distinct, emotional response to consider. The nakedness ia only a half-a-frames-worth of realism. There is nothing abstract in these paintings; nothing left to the imagination. What reeks from these paintings is “desire,” plain and simple. What I couldn’t see was a fallen nature exposed.
Beauty, saw it all. In taking me in, she had taken it all into her life.
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“You won’t regret it.” Is that what Rodgers said?
Way too late. Regret had entered the picture. Regret would never help Beauty, or I. If Beauty could feel regret, would she have entered my life? Would she have come to my bed? Would she have taken the chances she took?: Never. Never in a lifetime.
Regrets are scattered bits of blown paper; reams of dreams and memories. [Clothes, lying by my bedside, and Beauty lying in my bed, and Beauty telling lies. Each and every motion, movement and turning, steals time; a draining of all awareness of place--our bodies, merged and connected, together again, in forgetfulness.]
I will only reveal the truth in these pages. [In my imagination, she hears these words I say; reads these words I write. I imagine, she can see me in her dreams. Does she dream of me? Am I a nightmare of a passion spent?]
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I purchased a nice bottle of red wine; a large, green bottle, enshrouded in white netting.
The Twenty-Third of December: I can see that night so clearly now. I walked the three blocks to Cee-Cee’s loft-apartment. There wasn’t any reason to regret this invitation. I’d be among friends; some, more friendly than others, but friends nonetheless.
[You thought you’d repudiated the Past, Steven. Oh, how blind you were in your thinking, your arrogance! Didn’t you see that extra-something possessing you? Didn’t you see what you were walking towards? You must have given fully of your soul in those painting in order not to see, recognize, the false twin she would present to you.
The streets were cold and silent; never giving you a glimpse of what would be. You didn’t know your own secret self, Steven; your own secret knowledge. You were ready for Beauty; ready for anything: Power, love, and (God, help me) recognition.]
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I had lived too long without love.
And so, in order to be whole, I made a pact with myself:
Before Beauty, Art sufficed.
Up to this day, my creativity, my Art, had suffered from an absence of heart. With the Work behind me, I’d enter into full relationship with the world. I wanted a partner, a companion. I needed a woman in my life; in my arms, and in my bed.
I was half-consumed with madness. There was a sadness, a disconnect, and an expunging of the past, showing itself within each and every painting. The walls were crying out to me; a pile of sketches; a stacked ordering of canvases, giving validation to the singular life I’d carried within myself, and the world.
The canvases carried a shadowy presence; a presence I didn’t take note of the first time ‘round. Long after the paint had dried, the traces were still there.
Remembrance and redemption walk hand-in-hand along the City streets. I can place myself back on its sidewalks:
A silence to the snowfall and the walk to Cee-Cee’s and that flask I carried, all return to my mind’s eye (an Artist’s eye) with equal measure. Without a hint of inhibition my memories spill out; the revelations life provide, for all their colour, are comfortable in their denial. [Never, small-beer, Steven.] The visions, floating to the surface, seem fully aged; I’ve encapsulated them in redwood frames in order to hold them in place. They do not have to be hidden, or covered in cloth. A memory, in all its nakedness, can no longer be denied. [Knowledge, it must be said, can be painful; and, I was blinded, with eyes closed, by my arrogance.]
Had it been any other day, I might’ve cursed my own vanity; (“To be vain is death to the Artist.”) however, on this day, Rodgers’ epigram was turned on its head.
Upon those days, preceding Cee-Cee’s Christmas Party, there wasn’t an inkling of doubt within me; every small aspect I carried along with me was shining with a brilliance, an aura, only Masters assumed. It was, “one-up-on-the-pegboard,” and I viewed the world with shoulders back. (This is truly how I carried myself. I truly believed in the gifts I’d been given. I found myself completely in awe of the Work I’d accomplished.)
Reflecting now:
I could not see the faults of tone, the subtle textures of the work, for what they were; I could not bring myself to see any element of vanity, ego-bound, as I was. Above, in my loft, the paintings had become the centerpiece. I’d spent too much time, four months, in loving myself; never gaining so much as a minute of opposing self-chatter. I’d abandoned each and every critical voice; painting, on my own, and letting the sketches guide me. For once, my Art brought me a solitude and pleasure I’d never known before.
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Four months of intense creativity:
And, in that time I’d unleashed only a fraction of what would be brought to light in the years to follow. (This change in attitude would become ever more pronounced, deepened, in ways which only brought further rewards.) Without any scruples, I’d plunged head-long into a dangerous affair: A new life arose, dictated by the give and take of pleasure and pain. I walked the streets as if the street itself were paying me tribute; becoming, so bloody grandiose in my own vision, I couldn’t see my own separateness, my own body, moving amongst others.
[The container of Self was completely full; loosened, was years of half-formed objectives, given a weight, a clarity, only now, realized.]
Looking around me, I felt as big as the City itself.
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I can chart the progression of thought-processes, word-for-word:
Going further back is no longer an option. You’ve had your past, Steven; and, finding it no longer to your liking, you’ve plumbed the depths for the last time. You’ve managed to silence every voice. You can forget the hurts, wrongs, and slights. The solitary tears were a lubricant, and rightful loosening. You are, today, a new man: no longer a child, crying in the night. You’ve burned away every fear. It’s time to move on, move away, in another sense. You can live again, renewed. Love again, Steven. It is time.
Or, so I thought.
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December 20th, 1989: Sitting upon the plush velvet couch and clicking off the previous years and unloosening the grip upon every pain, every moment, of quiet, in a long night of screams and curses and broken dishes and beatings; unimaginable, in their power to wreck havoc upon a home. (Sitting there, on the couch, and recalling every echo of compassion which might’ve reached out in my young life. Each stark vision, matched by a silent knowledge, never revealed so openly; silent knowledge, matched by the next turning of remembrance, rumination.)
I was stilled upon the couch, never moving; just letting the recall come, easy as snowfall, as cold and dispassionate as the starkness found in those forty paintings, stacked. The space I occupied hadn’t changed; however, I had. I wasn’t seeing things clearly, but it didn’t seem to matter.
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[You remember the conviction you held, as you emphasized and underlined and highlighted each and every small terror inflicted upon you. Those two evenings, leading up to Cee-Cee’s Party, were an absolving of all past wrongs carried out, or commissioned. The future was what you wanted to see: The Gallery, the paintings hung, and maybe, just maybe, a lover, or two.
Now, your England is gone and buried. To those who have lived within them, the shiftless forms of poverty are well known. The truth is: There are never more powerful ghosts, less forgiving, than these. In my heart was a wound which couldn’t be healed.]
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