Something Like An Eternal Debate

I was talking to the painter Michael Bell and the poet Sheryl Rubenstein at the party for the one-year anniversary of our Chelsea blog.  The New York light, orange at sunset, was streaming in through the west-facing window, much the same as it would have seventy years before when Thomas Wolfe lived in this very room. (Photo from Lisa Chamberlain's Flickr set)

There was a reporter from the New York Times at the party, taking notes.  “It’s nice that someone is finally paying attention to all this,” Michael said with a sweep of his arm, “all this creativity going on around here.”

United in our thankless plight, we all agreed that it was patently unfair, this misunderstood toiling in obscurity that we seemed doomed to endure.

“Who do you think has it worse,” Sheryl asked, “writers or artists?”

“Well,”  I said, “at least people don’t think they could just crank out a painting like they think they could sit down and write a novel if they felt like it.”

But Michael said, “Oh, yes they do.  They think they can just throw down paint.  They don’t think there’s anything at all to color theory or technique.”

“But it’s so much more obvious that you’re creating something,” I protested.  “An object of beauty.  I know damn well I could never paint anything.  But people use language every day, and they probably figure their office memos are just as good as anything I write.”

I thought Sheryl would back me up, but strangely, she agreed with Michael.  “They especially say that about abstracts,” she said.  “When they see one they say, Oh, if you like that you should see what my child paints!”

“Yes, but that’s almost a cliché,” I said.  “People have been saying that for years.  But these days, of course, they’re joking.”

“I don’t think so,” Sheryl said, and she and Robert both chuckled.  I was facing right into the streaming light.  I could scarcely make out Michael and Sheryl’s faces for the glare.  I saw merely their dark silhouettes: they were shaking their heads back and forth in unison.  I broke out in a sweat, less from the sun’s heat than from the realization that they were right.

I sighed.  “You know, there was a lady in the lobby saying that very same thing just the other day,” I said.  “I don’t think it was your painting, Michael, but maybe it was Philip Taffe’s.  Besides that, she was a nice lady, from North Carolina, a tourist of course.  And now I’m feeling really bad about this.  Because I just burst out laughing right in her face.”  (Ed Hamilton, 2006)