Art forms

September 2, 2013 by Oddment 6 Comments

Several months ago, I was one of five writers sitting around the dissecting table, the bones of paragraphs strewn about, muscles of terse descriptive phrases exposed. We viewed the specimens with renewed resolve and despair. Also with egg salad sandwiches and chocolate cupcakes.

We spoke of our upcoming summer and the perceived impediments to writing. I said I had walls to paint. Two of the five burst into rhapsody: “I love to paint!” The thrill in their voices was real. Can we extrapolate that in every gathering of writers 40% will be lunatics? Have their brains been twisted by revisions, their perceptions dulled by analogies, their childhoods misspent with the Thesaurus?

I’ve had ample time to ask these questions as I’ve been felled by full paint cans, skinned by the ladder, splattered by brushes, and shackled by edging tape. As I struggle to disentangle myself from the drop cloth, which has also grabbed the ladder, I lose my sense of the horizon and tip the tray of paint, which goes the way of all things: down. Mostly over my feet. “I love to paint!” is not what I say.

What is it that causes people to love to paint? Is it a rush from a quadrillion shades of white? Is it dances with ladders? The delicate interplay between plumbing and roller? The up-close voluptuous curves of the toilet? The absoluteness of the baseboard line?

What am I missing here? To me, this is mess and mayhem, bruised shins and rudely awakened muscles, slobbering brushes and drooling cans. What’s to love? It occurs to me that there are those who would ask the same question about writing, and I am forced to shrug weakly and capitulate to the inexplicable.

Not a box of chocolates.