There’s a pivotal scene in the second novel of the trilogy Confessions of St. Augustine where the narrator after being told he has TB now questions the importance of his paintings. Throughout the narrative he reflects on the painting above as well as similar ones and those that would belie them – self-portraits in his prime contrasted with a recent painting of an old man that he sees as possibly prophetic. If one merely considered the titles of each of the three novels in the trilogy – The Mendicant, The Militant, and The Missionary – it would almost seem to be a foregone conclusion he goes far beyond the depiction of the young man in the above painting. It’s also the first painting you see of him back when he starts his narrative in the very beginning of the first novel – The Mendicant – titled Portrait of an American Wiseguy. As he changes, so do the self-portraits, some introspective, some mere alter-ego fantasies:
And so I end up painting some militant looking guy who ends up looking like a frigging DRUG LORD GOOD GRIEF SCHMITT HE’S WALTER MITTY’S ALTER-EGO YOU IDIOT – you’re not creating great art here you’re creating yourself?….. or at least reinventing yourself…… or at least until you found out you were dying…………
…and so I painted some damn snow scenes? What’s that mean in the scheme of things? – my life is filled with trivia – there’s still the constant cacophony that demands my attention day after day……….. can’t even die peacefully……
..so do I paint that instead? That which disrupts and even demands?…. the pulsating music of my kid’s tape player or some neighbor’s down the hall who both think I want to hear their music instead of my own thoughts? and what about the the crap that occurs every day? My son, my ex, my life.. is ONE BIG DISTRACTION AND MAYBE THAT’S ALL MY PAINTINGS ARE IS ONE BIG ATTEMPT to keep that distraction from driving me crazy – to find sanity in the midst of insanity and maybe that’s my only link to sanity and if I actually painted the way I thought I’d really go over the edge and if I were an abstract expressionist I’d go completely mad and maybe I’d just be throwing whole buckets of paint at the canvas in an explosion of self expression-ha… because maybe I have a lot to say… yeah and maybe that’s the problem.. I’m stuck with these paintings – that can’t say it… they merely preserve my sanity.. or merely anesthetize my PAIN OR PERPETUATE MY DREAMS BECAUSE MAYBE THAT OLD MAN IS REALLY THAT YOUNG MAN?
Or that young man is now that old man?…………
…. because after all, is life life without those dreams?
Because what are those dreams? Are they a lie? Or a greater truth? Heaven will be beautiful…. so shouldn’t any foretaste of Heaven also be? Isn’t that what the promise holds out? Heaven? The symbols may differ, but isn’t that what they mean? The need for Heaven?….
“Consider the lilies of the field”…am I no more important than that? “All men are like grass and their glory is like the flowers of the field, the grass withers and the flowers fall” – is that all I’ve done with my life? Created myself as an object of beauty – in life! – and hope and pray I can stay in that oh so fragile state for as long as possible? So I can bask in my own fleeting glory just a little bit longer? Is that it? Is that all I’ve done and still am doing? But you, Lord, through the bills won’t allow me to? – the alimony, the child support and all the rest? Instead I’ve got to madly paint – good or bad – stuff that may or may not be any good, as long as I’m doing it? But all for what? What? WHAT?….. An artist is supposed to suffer? Like Van Gogh? Or better yet, a Christian is supposed to suffer. Like Christ… to be refined as silver and gold? So that our works are not mere wood, hay, and stubble? But rather purist gold?
But this – this? Is pure as gold? This? This? Or is this wood, hay and stubble? Or is it merely the means and it’s something else that is the gold? The fact that I’m doing this for no other reason than I think that’s what You want? But wouldn’t it make more sense to just be a Mother Teresa to some leper colony out in the middle of the AFRICAN DESERT OR SOMETHING!
I mean where is the peace that passeth understanding here? I got the latter part of that statement down, I don’t understand a DAMNED THING – but what about the former? The peace? And would that make a difference? Maybe it’s my very turmoil that creates the peaceful, which maybe in turn says something – that there can be a peace that passeth understanding… it’s just that I’m not privileged to be a part of it… and
And anyway, our narrator at this point begins, as the title of the third novel The Missionary would suggest, the next stage of his pilgrimage.