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That was the last art grade I ever got. From day one the quality most loved about unsure little needy B was that I could draw. I could draw anything. I got in trouble for painting my own room. I painted Pac-Man on the door and "Brandon's Room!" in cheery red above. My toy box was covered in stickers. I drew on paper and sand and dirt. And air. And nothing. And it all. It was my failsafe in school. I couldn't do homework. I go to school for eight hours a day, that is when I should do school work. How much of school is wasted every day doing nothing? How many times and in how many grades have I sat on my hands, stared at the clock, read silently, rested my head on the desk? How much of that could have been augmented by school work to allow me an afternoon of cartoons, an evening of baseball in the backyard, and a night of game shows and sitcoms? I began to obsessively stress over homework and found that the only way not to give myself vomit attacks and breathing malfunctions was to eliminate homework completely. So I skipped it, often times completely. The art made this up. The weakness of teachers is projects. Teachers diagram their projects in the womb and devote their life to education and the proliferation of knowledge so that they might one day ruin entire weeks of our lives with projects. Classmates groaned and arranged study dates. They tried to make videos or build models. They wrote skits. Skits suck. Skits are the worst thing about life. No skit goes by casually. No skit. I drew pictures. I drew pictures of How to Eat Fried Worms as equally and easily as I drew pictures for Brave New World. Peer pressure or Soma. Communist animals. Symbolic green lights. The sirens and the Cyclops. Estella. Ethan Frome's suicidal sled ride and Judy Blume's Fudge-a-mania. They appeared on my paper or on poster board so beautifully and with such quality that teacher after teacher fell before them. A 100 on a project makes up for not doing homework. It gives you that solid B. Honor Roll. Peaceful cartoon time. Teachers who hate you and think you're special. Go watch a skit. Mr. Thrasher had a name like a futuristic extreme sports star but the body of a failing old man, a crotchety wanderer of alternating apathy and fury. He struck a child for gluing a chair to the floor. He stayed until 5 PM some days to help out the kids who wanted it. He taught art because it was all he knew, and it was all he was good at. Sadly, he wasn't very good at art. He could draw a bird. He could draw the shit out of a bird. A cardinal sitting on top of a local Lynchburg landmark. A blue jay flying with some dogwood leaves thrown in for geographic significance. He did what he could and he graded us accordingly. The kids who didn't have artistic ability got As for trying. The kid with artistic ability got Bs because he probably could've done a lot better. The kid thought seriously about burning Thrasher's face in the kiln. Instead of got more and more interested in writing. But I love art. I love it. In the most sincere ways I am moved by the technique of a master artist. I have cried in a museum. I have outwept Jesus in regard to film. Art is an important part of my life and burns me on the inside, and I always thought that was because I was still cooking. I was the raw cookie and God wasn't done with me yet. It was probably something I ate. Too much pizza. And I regret it. Thrasher wasted my time but was a good man. He meant no harm. I did my special projects and six 100 final exams in a row. Words started coming out more than pictures but I kept them both at arms length, because I knew that this is what was intended for me. I was going to be the artist. The cartoonist. "You can design costumes for the wrestlers!" On and on. Casual life. The final straw came at Roanoke College. I was trying to take difficult classes. Organic chemistry and junior English. Make something of yourself, they screamed. For an elective I found "Art" to be a mundane but logical decision. The girls warned me that "Art isn't easy!" and that it won't be like "basket-weaving," the universal go-to cake class that nobody has taken. Art is hard! Art is not hard. Art is internal. Art is the manifestation of your thoughts and movement. It is as much you as your voice and scent. The old man leered at me when he saw my first project. After careful consideration he gave me a C and told me that I needed to let my "inner artist" out. I needed to open up my mind and let the spirituality of the motion take me over. The straight lines should be rounder and the round lines should be colored. Glue-gun this. Put glitter on that. I thought his advice would help me become a better artist. When the nude model shouted with glee and showed everyone my work I was honored. She had a saggy face and pit hair but she was nice and complimentary, and compliments always outweigh pit hair. She wanted to take it home. Keep it. I said sure, as long as I could get it graded first. She never got the picture. The teacher had magic markered a B minus in the top corner. I had drawn her too realistically. I hadn't done what he would've done. I didn't make her face sideways and her fingers attached to melting clocks. I am not Dali. I am not Picasso. I am not Mr. Thrasher and I am not my college art professor. In a world where art is the one thing that cannot and will not be taken away I had it cremated in my trembling hands. Burned down to my palms. My purpose. Raped and denied. "I didn't rape that girl." "I never beat my wife." "I never did those things." A raped girl. A beaten wife. Those things. All done. All forgotten. All tossed away. For what? For nothing. And I became afraid, again for the first time, that I had nowhere to go. You are too good. You are trying too hard. You should relax. You should relax. You should relax. |