Love Songs for the Deaf

                                                                 Monday

I can paint anyone and make them look good.

Except myself.

Why this is the case remains a mystery to me. Right now, for example, I’m studying my jawline on canvas. It looks anatomically correct, but that isn’t my jawline. It doesn’t feel like my jawline. I scrape a bit with a palette knife. I smudge a little with my left forefinger. Better.

But still not right.

I have to walk away from this thing or I’ll go crazy trying to create the real me with oils and acrylics. A thought rattles around in my head. It whispers, and I don’t want to listen. It insists. I push it down, like the bully I am. It’s still talking, telling me why I can’t paint myself.

Maybe a stiff drink will silence her.

It’s a her.

Ronnie.

                                                          **************

I begin to work on another piece: my interpretation of Veronica Swokowski. Ronnie, the love of my life. Ronnie, who left me. Ronnie, who won’t take my calls at 3:00 am. Or any other time, for that matter. She hasn’t blocked my number yet, so there’s still hope, right?

I know better.

The good thing about being an artist is that you see truth where others don’t see it. The face is a prime example. Ronnie’s face told me that we’d never be together again. That’s the face I’m also interpreting, in two dimensions, with all the shades that an infinite melancholy can muster.

The bad thing about being an artist is that we understand infinite melancholy. The purveyors of alcohol and anti-anxiety drugs love us for that.

I stare at a picture I took on my phone. Ronnie, blowing me a kiss. I shrink it down and place it on the right side of her face, just above her right eyebrow. I shift it to the left a little. Better. I stare at another picture I took. Ronnie, in bed, barely awake. Smiling at me through eyes that haven’t yet accepted that a new day has arrived.

The placement of this picture takes me ten minutes. It takes me another five minutes to shrink it down to just the right size. Big enough to work with, but small enough to look like nothing more than a small blob of color if you stand at least ten feet away. Since this is all being done with software, I don’t know if it’s gonna look good when I print it out and frame it and look at it ten or more feet away.

It will, I tell myself. I’m a little too firm in my belief here, and I know that. But it has to work. It simply has to work.

I feel the tingle again. The one that scares the hell out of me. A creeping desolation. A whisper. What if it doesn’t work? I can’t think of that right now. The only art improved by desperation is poetry. Ronnie disagrees. Of course she does.

                                                         **************

                                                               Tuesday

The jawline is better, but now the nose bothers me. It flares, and I swear I didn’t do that on purpose. I can’t flare my nose.

Ronnie used to tell me that she could tell if I were angry just by looking at my nose. I still don’t believe her. She could tell I was angry because I’d yell, and I’d say vile things to her. I’d apologize later, but it never had the effect I wanted it to have.

Chipping away, she called it. The armor of love was being chipped away every time one of us said something hurtful to the other. That’s pretty poetic, but she’s a writer, so it makes sense. Sort of.

I don’t think love supplies you with armor. If anything, it weakens you. You do things you wouldn’t normally do if you weren’t in love. You drink less, go to bed earlier, eat regularly. Sex becomes a thing, not a treat. You lose your edge. All your edges.

The nose will have to wait. The eyes need attention right now; I have them in my mind. A blue that reminds me of a Bruges sky in summer. It’s a color I’ll never forget. It won’t let me. Some colors are that way.

I have a secret technique that I use for eyes and hair: cigarette ash. Adding a small amount to oil-based paint adds a certain patina of age, but it also adds a sort of gritty glide to the brush. It gives thin lines the proper substance. A small thing, perhaps, but it makes a difference.

Ronnie doesn’t smoke, so that was a bone of contention. A damn dinosaur bone of contention. She said it was like kissing an ashtray when she kissed me after I smoked a cigarette. I asked her how many ashtrays she had kissed in her life. Things went downhill from there.

The eyes are good. Very good. Too damn good. I’ll leave them for now. That Bruges blue may be too good to use on the likes of my eyes. To be determined later.

I have a picture of Ronnie with a cigarette in her mouth. She was being a goof, and it was very sexy seeing her being a goof. Ok, I’m using this pic. I’ll shade it with a little red and put it on her lips. Right at the edge of the lips, where the sex appeal is supposed to end but doesn’t.

Color, shrink, place. The mosaic is coming along nicely. It’ll be a hoot to gaze at when it’s finished.

Maybe. I always think this when I have more than two drinks in me, which is often. Ronnie drinks like a fish.

Wait! I have a picture of her fishing! It goes in!

Ronnie says that we have to move on. I know what that means. She met someone else. Probably a guy, though she isn’t averse to spending some quality bedtime with a woman. A bisexual dynamo, I would call her. She would wrinkle her nose when I said that. I could never tell if it bothered her or pleased her.

You wanna know what I think? I think that bisexuals have twice the chance for a bad relationship. I guess my pessimism is showing, but I consider it realistic thinking.

It’s a little past 3:00 am. I stop for the day. The night. Whatever. I need a half dozen drinks and a cigarette or two. I also need Ronnie but I push that thought down and stomp on it. I know I don’t deserve her, but she doesn't deserve me either.

That’s what I tell myself.

                                                         **************

                                                             Wednesday

I used to dream about her often. Now, it’s about once a month. This time, I didn’t dream about kissing her or holding her or feeling her whisper in my ear. This time I barely saw her, but she was speaking to me, an impish, knowing smile on her face.

She called my work something odd: love songs for deaf people. I laugh and tell her that anyone can buy my work, deaf or not. She tells me that isn’t what she means. I ask her what it means. She tells me to figure it out.

She haunts me, even in my dreams.

Now I’m stealing lyrics from a Dutch rock band. I’d like to think I’m better than that.

Ok. Hot tea, cigarette. More hot tea, another cigarette. Time to work.

I look at my self portrait and grimace a little. The jawline still bothers me. The blue in the eyes give me an angelic aspect. I don’t mind that, but it isn’t me. I remain undecided about the eyes, and the nose definitely flares.

I sigh, have another cigarette, and abandon the portrait for now. I can work on Ronnie. At least that’s going well.

The hundreds of pictures that I need for my interpretation of Ronnie will all have to be resized and trimmed, many of them recolored, and put in the right place. In the end, it will be Ronnie, in profile. She’s at her best in profile.

                                                        ______________

She came into my life like a fragrance.

I have a picture of her favorite perfume. Kilian Paris Love, Don’t be Shy. Weird name. But I took a picture of it because I wanted to buy her a bottle for Christmas. $275. I bought her a fancy fifty-five dollar pen instead. She doesn’t use it much.

Another chink in the armor of love. Another brick in the wall. Another line stolen from a rock band.

I go back to my self-portrait and I see what’s wrong with the nose. It’s the texture. I used a palette knife to give it body, but it’s all wrong. I scrape off the paint and reapply it after thinning it out. I use a sable brush because I’m old fashioned, and because it allows for a silky smooth application. Now, for a little burnt umber. A little cigarette-ash eggshell white there…and there.

Better. Definitely better. No flare. That’s my nose. The one that used to inhale all the magic that Ronnie so effortlessly provided.

                                                          ______________

I came into her life like a rampaging Visigoth.

It was at a bar. Her current boyfriend had grabbed her by the arm and was yanking her around. I walked up to him and punched him in the face.

I’m not a physically violent person, but you just can’t use your physical strength on a woman. Yell at her, sure. Call her a bitch and whore, yes. She can fight back with words. Even when you play dirty in a relationship, you have to be fair about it.

She came home with me that night.

We were both pretty drunk, but she stayed with me from then on. Even our massive hangovers the next day couldn’t dissuade us from a year of semi-domestic bliss.

I find another picture to use in the mosaic. Ronnie in one of my painting shirts, drinking coffee and flipping me off. See what I mean? Domestic bliss.

                                                         ______________

No scars.

Ronnie had no scars, nothing to mar – or enhance – her skin. Odd, that. But I like to think that I left her with some psychological scars. I mean, if you can’t leave an ex-lover with a few wounds, what’s the point?

She left me with plenty, bless her. I treat them with alcohol and a stout denial of my faults in the relationship. It seems to work. The problem is being sober and at loose ends. That’s when the tsunami of guilt comes rolling along. Hey, how ya’ doin’? Gonna destroy your soul, buddy.

Yeah, it’s like that.

                                                        **************

                                                           Thursday

A self portrait is an act of narcissism and, at the same time, an act of self-flagellation. You have to love yourself and loathe yourself in equal measures to do it right.

I’m not doing it right. The ratio of how much I love myself to how much I despise myself is wrong. I just don’t know which way.

Also, I’m still bothered by the “love songs for deaf people” comment that Ronnie said to me. Sure, it was a dream, but it has to mean something, right?

I don’t like how I look, which is odd. I’m an artist, and I should like the uniqueness of my face.

I don’t.

Ronnie would never sit for a portrait, but I painted her anyway. From memory. It made her angry, and then she stayed irritated until I painted over it. More domestic bliss.

It took me a few weeks to figure it out, but I did. She didn’t want anyone to interpret her other than herself. The inner soul, she claimed, was sacrosanct, and no one had the right to interpret her without her permission. I disagreed with her. Another conversation that ended with slamming doors.

So why am I interpreting her now? Because I can. Because she is lost to me, no matter what I tell myself after a few drinks. I wasn’t able to hold on to her, but I can damn sure hang her on a hook.

It’s a puzzle, you see. Forming all the pieces of pictures to fit the profile I see. Each piece just so, the sum of the parts greater than the whole.

I said that right. You figure it out.

Like I have to figure out the love songs for deaf people. It eludes me, like the perfect color for my eyes. Bruges blue is fine, but it isn’t me. Not quite. Do I really care?

That voice whispers to me again. And, like before, I have to pummel it into submission. I don’t like to pummel.

It’s 3:33 am and I call Ronnie. No answer.

Thankfully.

                                                       **************

                                                            Friday

I pause my work on the self-portrait, and on the interpretation of Ronnie. I still don’t understand either person well enough to finish.

I need to travel, find that perfect blue for my eyes. Maybe a Montana sky will work. Maybe a Pacific lagoon. Hell, I might find the perfect color in an outlet store that sells cheap fabric. That sounds about right.

Ronnie and I will have to wait. The muses are playing hard to get. The muses, in fact, are staying away from me as if I have some disease.

My mood is a color. Bruges blue.

Just needs a little cigarette ash.