Flux

Fuse memory with imagination.

Red Vision (1984) by Leonor Fini

Art is vengeance. I can bend this stubborn world into any shape I choose. These repetitive monsters are goldfish in my bowl. These mountains can be flattened into prairies at a moment’s notice. The murderous fools who work for the predatory clowns who work for the rapacious overlords who report straight to the careless chief are ants running in circles around my flower pots. I don’t need them to lift their eyes to god. I can make them disappear instead.

My torso is clay. A forgetful artist makes whimsical choices when I’m fast asleep. My puppet master is a sympathetic character, genuine but absentminded, temporarily engrossed in a cool art project made of my living cells. Let’s put this village of the damned over here. Let’s repopulate these pretty mountain towns. I wake up in a straight jacket and surrender to a sea of pain, adrift, anointed by pink raindrops. He left before I woke up, on to the next project, already starting to forget.

Art is remembering. I can pull from half a century of bright hopes and longing, like shuffling through tubes of paint for the right shade. Here it is: The canary yellow of your Pinto hatchback. An afternoon in your front seat in late September, listening to your music, driving around your nowhere, asking you questions about your nothing, your cool projects and whimsical choices, your strong opinions and frivolous preferences.

You never asked me anything. That felt normal. I was just a refugee from the village of the damned. When we got to your house, your mother smiled like she felt sorry for me. I could tell she told you not to break me into pieces, even though that was exactly what I wanted.

Art is transcendence through reinvention. Fuse memory with raw imagination. I grab the wheel and swerve the Pinto into a ditch and walk away. I knock on the door of your family home on Welcome Circle (what a name!) and tell your mother: I was built to be broken. Your boy is the one who requires protection. I’ve already ascended from fool to clown. No one had to promote me. I invented a path from overlord to demigod. I can feel this power in my fingertips. I promise to take pity on the repetitive monster you raised.

I still have a flame gun for the cute ones. I won’t do penance for what I feel or what I own.

***

The artist who made me likes one out of ten of my variations on a theme. When that one acceptable melody shows up, I pick up the phone and call my maker. My other nine compositions get on her nerves. But I won’t sing the same repetitive tune everywhere I go, just because that’s the only one she likes. I won’t apologize for reflecting badly on her as an artist. My raucous strings worry her. My fifth movement feels excessive. She doesn’t grasp the atonal blessings of unwelcome feelings. She doesn’t understand that my lagging crash cymbal is exactly as late as I want it to be.

Once that brought me heartbreak. I kept trying harder for a standing ovation. But now I give her space. Not everyone wants everything. Now that I don’t change to suit her whims, I don’t mind that she won’t change, either.

Living inside a fantasy of who someone else should be, what they should say, how they should love you, is a way of hiding from your disappointment in yourself. Seeking total control damns you to a life among flaccid, obedient puppets. Real love is finding strange melodies hidden in the discordant, ambient noise of another soul.

***

Most people greet art with suspicion. Discovering distant planets of feeling means a malevolent alien invasion is on the way. “Are you really surprised?” they’ll ask as the sun explodes into a fireball, as if the sad terrain of preemptive disappointment marks the highest ground. No one wants you to turn their arms into twisted driftwood. No one wants to remember that they were once an ant or a goldfish. No one wants to realize that they’ve been circling the same small bowl for decades.

But I don’t mind feeling powerless and trapped sometimes. I can fuse solitude with conviction. I can drift on a rising tide of uninvited sensations. I can dance like a grateful puppet come to life. I can imagine my way out of your indifference, into your affection, into your warm hands, clay softening by the second. It doesn’t really matter what happens next. I can draw a wider circle and turn your nothing into my everything. Any monster can be a king. Art is forgiveness. I’ll never forget.

---

Heather Havrilesky is the author of the essay collection What If This Were Enough? and writes Ask Polly for The Cut (and here). If you’re unemployed or struggling, email me and I’ll comp you a 6-month subscription: askmolly at protonmail.com. Your support makes this newsletter possible!