Dissect This

by Precipitate8

I’ve never wanted to be an artist. No one has more accurately encapsulated the misfortunes of artistic endeavor than our lovable Vincent Van Gogh, whose bitterness was so intense that the mass dispersal of his soul into the heavenly matrix was surely the cause of the world wars that were soon to follow. His paintings now hang in guarded museums, worth unfathomable amounts money, gawked at by nuclear family tourists who make such rogue commentary as, “Look at the pretty flowers Jimmy…”

I once saw an interview with an old Frenchwoman who apparently had worked in an art supply store that Vincent used to frequent. When asked of her impression of the man, she replied, “He was always very rude and smelt of booze.” Vincent died penniless and alone, desperate with unrequited love, never having sold a painting in his lifetime, and of course, missing cartilage. As for his work, he should have burned it before he left. Who in this world deserves that intense inheritance? I would have used a “he who is without sin may throw the first stone” reference, but this is the generation of Jerry Springer, and that sort of thing just gets them excited. And to those of you who ventured out to create art because “no one understood;” well…they still don’t. Even if you can look at some blotchy stars, swirling through the lens of cheap wine, and see the madness…you can still never know the horror it must have been, to have borne the name Vincent Van Gogh.

Too much sacrifice. Nothing is free, and nothing is worth its price. I still remember the night I lost Kyle Standish. A friend of many years who put up with my nonsense as best he could, until he realized I had bankrupted my soul.

We were in a bowling alley, and I had taken far too much DXM and drank far too much liquor to show up in such a well lit atmosphere. I had definitely overdone it…but in those days, I always did. I wasn’t even bowling. My sense of balance was no good, and my use of language was worse. I began doing impressions of David Chappel, a black comic I had recently seen do an amazing scenario ridiculing racist behavior. Apparently though, my rendition was a bit disjointed and the large black man sitting next to us was beginning to take it the wrong way.

Kyle stared at me, unamused, and perhaps with a bit of dismay as I promptly went over to our neighbor and offered to buy him a drink so that he wouldn’t have an unfair advantage with all the other social drinkers he was competing against. And with a dirty scowl, he politely refused. I stumbled back to my friends and announced I was going to buy another drink…an announcement which received nervous laughter from most, except for a pair of cold eyes.

I went to the bathroom, vomited, bought another drink, and returned to the appropriate bowling lane to find them almost finished. Kyle listened to my conversation between bowling turns, occasionally cracking a patronizing smile, but mostly just giving a numbed gaze, close enough to my direction so as to be polite. And it was about this time that it hit me.

There was once a light behind those eyes, an illumination of value and friendship. Something that told me my presence was an enhancement to another’s life, and that I was, for at least one moment, considered of use. And now it was gone. He’d had it with my debauchery and the embarrassment I caused, and the flame was gone. I’d lost him and I didn’t feel like he was the one who’d died. When the flame had gone out, the same proportion of myself had been extinguished, and I felt the benign tumor hanging from my heart. And when the drugs had run their course, I could still feel the dead stare, and I felt penniless and alone. I’ve never wanted to be an artist.