The Mind of a Master

Could you imagine living in a world without colors? It would be like eating food without any flavor: sure, you can get by on it, but why would you want to? It’s a bland, boring, purposeless existence, suitable for animals but not for humans. Humans need something more. Humans need spice in their lives.

That, my friend, is why we turn to art!

Before I found art, my life was utterly unbearable. I was an animal in human form, seeing in monochrome and eating grass; no point to any of it except prolonging my meaningless existence. The need, though, the need for more was still there. Like most other people, I was missing something vital.

Do you know what I mean? Oh right, don’t try to answer that.

Here’s the real challenge, though: it’s hard to find something when you don’t really know what it is that you’re looking for. We all go through life looking for the missing piece that will fill our emptiness, but many of us never find it.  

So it was for me. I tried filling the hole with money, sex, alcohol, drugs; all any of it did was increase my hunger. I could find no real joy in anything. It was a pitiful state and I’d still be trapped in it if were not for art!

I was lucky, you see. Unlike most people, I tripped over my missing piece while I was stumbling around in the dark. It’d taken me completely by surprise, but when it happened, there could be no doubt about what it was that I’d found.

I had found him, and with him I’d found my purpose!

I’ll bet you’re starting to think I’m crazy. Just listen, I’ll do my best to explain.

Though it was over a decade ago, I can still remember that day clearly. It was back when I was in college and I’d been up late in the library, trying fruitlessly to cram for a test I cared nothing about. I was walking back to my spot with an armload of books when I noticed an ancient looking newspaper laid out on one of the tables. My curiosity piqued, I stopped to examine it and was awestruck by the photo on the front page!

I don’t remember the headline, perhaps I’d never read it. I hadn’t needed to. What I was staring at was a glorious work of art, the magnum opus of a great mind.

The genius of it! The arrangement of the piece, the expression captured on his subject’s face, the perfect placement of every masterful stroke. It all harmonized together into a symphony of beautiful humanity that played through my mind. 

There just aren’t words to truly do it justice!

As incredible as it was seeing the piece through the black-and-white photograph, though, I knew that it was only a shadow of the real thing. An element was missing, something... essential. Without it the work was incomplete; I had to see the real thing!

So I sought out the master who had created it.

Not in a literal sense, you understand. Cruel fate had decreed long ago that we would never be able to meet in person. Nor would I be able to lay my eyes upon his original work; it had been destroyed long ago, along with its creator, by self-righteous men incapable of understanding it. 

What though, I ask you, is a meeting of two people besides an exchange of information? We exchange our names, our hobbies, our likes, our dislikes, our experiences, and numerous other bits of trivial data that eventually add up, allowing us to “know” each other. Could not that same data be obtained without a meeting? Could I not learn who he had been, and what had made him tick, by having a “conversation” of sorts with his memory?

And once I knew who he was, would I not be the most qualified to carry on his neglected legacy?

To that end, I greedily devoured every scrap of information I could find about him, even as starving men gobble up the smallest morsels of food with gusto, anything that would contribute to an ever clearer picture of who he was. I found every little bit of it endlessly satisfying, and there was plenty to find: newspapers, books, documentaries. He had left his indelible mark on the world. I squeezed each source like an orange for every drop of juice it would yield, and eventually I found that I knew him better than I even knew myself.

I was ready to continue his work.

The first challenge was to obtain my tools. What is a painter without a brush? A potter without his wheel? You may be surprised to learn how expensive an undertaking art can be, especially when all of us artists are supposedly “starving,” as they say, but we somehow manage. A true artist will do anything for their craft. I dropped out of college, got a job, and acquired my workshop, piece by piece.

My next challenge was in finding suitable subjects for my pieces.  

I was surprised to discover that it was difficult to find people who were willing. Most people were strangely resistant to the idea of being a subject for my art and, given my complete lack of experience, I really couldn’t blame them. After all, who wants to be immortalized in art that isn’t good? As I said though, an artist will do anything for their craft and soon I was having no trouble finding subjects.  

With practice, I slowly became a master in my own right and, in the back of my mind, I had him there to guide me every step of the way.

It was as though he were speaking to me, working through me. He influenced every decision, every movement I made. Pose the subject like this. Turn their head like this. Wait until they have the right expression…. There it is! He told me where to draw my lines, how to let the colors burst out from where they were trapped within the unremarkable canvas.

Such beautiful colors! Whites and pinks, yellows and browns, blues and purples, all of it coming together in a bouquet of indescribable beauty!

Of these colors, my favorite has always been red. The color of passion. The color of sacrifice. The color of life! With each line I drew it gushed out readily, eager to show off it’s brilliance in the light. It spread outward from the subject, sainting them within a ruby halo.

You are growing restless, I see. Sit tight, I’m almost finished. I just want to help you understand.  

After I complete every piece of art, when I gaze upon what I created, I feel what my master must have felt all those decades ago as he looked down at his own work. There is truly nothing like it, seeing a masterpiece that you have created with your own two hands!

It was Emerson, wasn’t it, who said, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” Well, my master had been misunderstood in his time, as I’m misunderstood in ours; but he never let it stop him from trying to help others to understand. 

I will not allow it to stop me either.

I keep working because somewhere out there in the world, perhaps now or maybe a hundred years from now, there may be another who beholds my art and sees what I see. Who sees what my mentor saw. Perhaps it will give their life purpose as it did mine.

Well, anyway, that's all of it. Are you ready?  

No… hush. Hush, now. You’re afraid, but that’s natural. It’s just because you don’t understand. 

Stop struggling like that, you’re going to bruise your skin! 

Patience, give me a moment to sharpen my tools and then we’ll get started. A little bit of fear and some pain but it will all be worth it, I promise.

I’m going to make you immortal.