Finally. I finished the uber-triptych tonight, although I think it would be more accurately described as a meta-triptych. It is still rough, and if I ever come back to it, it will probably undergo significant edits. But, for now it is as done as it is going to be, and I am relieved. It was rewarding and grueling. I’ll have more to say about the process in a later post.
So, for those of you who haven’t been following along for the past month or so, this is a triptych comprised of two triptychs and a diptych.
The Body
1. Armor: Scars, Tattoos, Wrinkles
2. Hand Tools: Rings, Calluses
3. Elements: Female, Male, Union
Armor
I. Scars
These disruptions on your arms and forehead, behind your knees, and under your chin, lines smooth and white, hairless, sweatless, are like the skin of a newborn. Injuries packed away in fibrous tissue become invisible in the dark.
Were you pushed over the hood of a car, pushed off a bike, pushed through broken glass? What is it that your skin remembers in those smooth interruptions? I remember falling on gravel, falling on concrete, falling under the calloused fingers of a splintered man.
Keep the lights off: it is not that I don’t want you to see my scars, it is that I do not want to see yours.
II. Tattoos
We mark the occasions with pictures. Portraits, flowers, stars, and symbols tell our version of the story, etched a fraction of an inch below the skin.
It starts with a million little wounds. Paint and blood mix as we are broken, over and over again. The skin is slick and raw, the colors bright, and we walk away with our wound wrapped in plastic. It oozes and bleeds for a few days. Then it is art.
Now, look: a tattoo is just close enough to the surface for everyone to see, and just deep enough to be permanent.
III. Wrinkles
I will be as wrinkled as the skin of a rotting peach one day. Laughing, smoking, crying and so much talking will drag their tracks across my face, but the most important parts of the body are born wrinkled and rolled.
Those creases that will someday overtake my whole body are not just markers of what has been, but what is yet to be created. Everything that is made is made from the memories in the skin.
This is why we come together: for the skin to tell all of the stories we don’t yet know how to tell.
Hand Tools
I. Rings
When the ring slides off, the skin beneath is as smooth and white as the skin of a newborn. I watched you again and again, twist your ring loose like a rusty bolt, pull it up to the knuckle, and then push it back down.
There were promises, fat, round vows that came from our mouths and looped around our fingers. Now, that smooth, pale skin is a mark of tastes untested, obsessions that circle and bind, concealed under steel, platinum, and gold. How long until you felt naked without your ring? How much longer before you felt confined by it? Twist, pull up to the knuckle, push back down.
New promises encircle you: twisting, pulling, push back down.
II. Calluses
The rough places on the hands show where we have been and what we have made. Wire and wood press into the skin until it hardens. Friction and compression, small agitations, become numb spots in the fingers.
The story of the body is a life of injuries. After we blister and peel, armored fingers play instruments, fire a pencil across a page, make things grow in the garden.
There is no other way to create art from this life: it comes through the places on the body we have trained not to hurt.
Elements
I. Female
What has inspired more art than a soft, round body? Cities rise and fall on the gaze of the lover. Battles are fought, won, lost, and men are drawn back across the boiling sea under moonlight to home, to the center, to the splendid magnetism of the womb.
Art begins with a birth. Big, round bubbles rise boiling from the soul, bubbles round like an apple, a ring, my belly, my eyes, and the fat, round promises we use to keep each other close.
The story was always there, inside: apply heat and watch it take form as it rises to the surface.
II. Male
At first it was an accident. Lightening struck and burned away the underbrush; it turned the beach into glass. Then you learned to capture it and make it useful. There are tools and celebrations, cities catch fire and collapse.
You shape the idea by burning away the excess. You cauterize the wound, and reveal the glass that existed in the sand. Your fire unlocks the sculpture in the steel, and makes it bend, glowing red-hot.
Art becomes visible by the light of the fire: still, the sun must set and you dream by the moon.
III. Union
We scream our way through a lifetime of injuries, pulling art out of our wounds. Everyone, look: my life has blown up, the garden is razed, and the only thing I have left to eat is the rest of this apple. This is my story right now. Will it draw you in from the sea, or set our city on fire?
Combine the water and the fire, and use the ash to paint on the walls of this city. Let it stain your fingers, and I will use it to write my story on your back. This is our way. Make a mess, let it burn, and something new arises.
This is the story art tells about our time in the body, and it is the only story: all we want is to dissolve into each other.
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