Ooooh, these are nice, very nice. I dont play with games, but I like this so much. My daughter come, and she walk good. Then Tanya put them down and was drawing again. I thought she had already forgotten about me, but as she was going over the jagged marks of the barn with Watermelon, she said, Im drawing a barn. The place I grew up in when I was a little girl. My daddy said, when peacetime come to the horses, then we all sleep. Sleep, sleep good, you think? And then she stopped drawing and looked at me like she wanted an answer.
Sure, I said, sure, and she smiled and all the warmth I liked came into her face, and then she went back to drawing.
The next day was Friday. In auto class Barry said his parents were leaving for some Mormon thing and he was thinking about a get-together at his house that night, not a party but a group of people to celebrate the full harvest of his plant. I said I would think about it, but I knew it would be him and April all over each other.
After school I went to the Art League like I usually did on my days away from the Towers. I had a class from four to seven
and another from seven to ten. It was me and a bunch of older people and one young Asian girl who was pretty good. There was one model per class. In the early class the model was a guy named Ogden who was about fifty-five; his body was muscular but his skin hung a little loose. The teacher, Mr. Wilson, walked around with his gray beard and bald head, and denim shirt tucked into his jeans. He would lean over and give suggestions to people.
I was drawing in a different way than I usually did. Usually I would try to be as exact as possible, like a Renaissance painter, but all that seemed like bullshit suddenly. The drawings of Tanya did something to me. I think I had really captured her, they were my best drawings, but it didnt mean anything. Everything was changing, things felt different, but I wasnt sure why. I was drawing Ogden in a much looser way than I usually did. Usually I would just do one drawing per pose, but I was doing five to ten and letting them drop on the floor. Mr. Wilson stood next to me and held his chin in his hand.
Going fast. Really fast, he said. I said I was and kept drawing.
You know, Picasso drew fast, he said. He could draw a dove in sixteen seconds, and theyre great, right?
The doves? Yes.
But that sixteen seconds had six decades of work behind it, he said, then he dropped his hand from his chin and smiled through his beard. Most of the other students had heard him because he talked pretty loudly, and they all approved of his wise observation, grunting and saying, Ahhh, and Oh, how true, how true it is. Wilson went on: Picasso started off painting in a classical style, but it was only after he had mastered the masters that he broke tradition and became Picasso. He knew he had all the skill of Raphael at age sixteen, but that wasnt enough. Technical skill is never enough. He needed to find his voice . We all have a voice or a style, but it takes practice, practice to find it. The technical stuff needs to become second nature. Everyone agreed with this part too. Wilson said quietly to me, You remind me of Sylvester Stallone. I stopped drawing. Wilson went on: I used to go to art classes with him. He was always trying to break away from classical form.
One of the ladies spoke up. Sylvester Stallone, the actor ?
Thats right. Hes a huge art enthusiast and not a bad artist either. Everyone was surprised and talked about it for a bit. Someone said that underneath all that muscle he was actually a really intelligent guy. He did write Rocky, after all.
During the Stallone discussion, Ogden held his pose. I tried not to listen and draw, but something had gone out of me. I picked up a few of the drawings that had dropped to the floor. They looked like a kids drawings, except they were of a naked man.
In the second class we had a woman, Beth. She was about forty and large: her breasts hung heavy and low so that the skin stretched thin at the top of them, and her belly had folds. She was great for drawing, but I wasnt in the mood. Wilson had killed my motivation for the fast drawings, but I didnt have the patience to do it the old meticulous way either. I wanted to leave but I didnt know where I wanted to go. I just drew her belly and shaded it and went over it again and again until it wasnt any good. I thought about bodies decaying and my own life shriveling.
Wilson was going on about his near-death experience again. He had had open-heart surgery six months before and almost died. He loved to talk about it, and the ladies and old guys loved to hear it.
. . . Its true. I dont care how much attention we devote to the body in here, I know there is a spirit, I experienced it. Whatever it is that makes me me had lifted away from this earthbound state and I was on my way, I was on my way. He was laughing at his own enthusiasm and some of the women were laughing too; a few had stopped drawing to listen. Excuse me, Beth, for talking about the body so much while youre posing for us, but I think we should all think about this while we draw the body. The body is the vehicle for the spirit. We cant draw the spirit, we can only draw physical things, but through those physical things you might be able to intimate something of the spirit underneath . At least try, dont just draw Beth, draw her soul . Because its there. I am telling you, when I was going toward that light, something said, Cy, nope. Nope, nope, nope, youre getting a first-class tickeroo back to earth, you better do good by it.