Sense Memory

THE ARTIST (any gender).

There was a disconnect in the first grade. I'd gotten bored of the Legos all of the other kids loved so much. I was far more interested in Lewis Carroll than The Bernstein Bears. And somewhere along the way, an empty box on Saint Valentine's Day came to hurt deeper. When I'd discovered someone had torn a page of Charlotte's Web and put it back onto Mrs. Mullen's shelf, a piece of my heart broke and somewhere, a violin string burst.

You see, the artist feels things differently than most. (S)He is passionate and broken and ecstatic and expressive and sad and joyful and youthful and rosy-cheeked and his/her hair stands on the back of his/her neck when (s)he is anywhere near a stage, canvas, library, a piano, a guitar, a cello, a blank sheet of paper white as snow. (S)He is alive and dying at the very same time and when the door closes and someone leaves, that pain, it gets stored away, tucked in a pocket, a sleeve, a memory, a magic if. And somewhere the smell lingers forever and ever until (s)he uses it. If ever.

Some memories go unused. Like this one:

I was eleven years old when I was discovered eating my lunch in a second-floor janitor's closet. I'd been getting away with it for three whole weeks. And Mr. Brady told me I could stay while he rinsed the mop out. Someone had spilled paint in the art room and the water ran bright red for a while. Like blood. Mr. Brady told me I looked relieved when the water finally ran clear again. And it's true. I finally somehow eventually remembered to breathe because I'd been remembering this:

Memory. Eight years old. Pushed off my bike because I was tra-la-la-ing the Peer Gynt overture. I wasn't sure who had knocked me off as my glasses were shattered. My mother found me, after dusk, hiding in the Petersen's azalea bushes nursing a bloody knee. I'd thought it would taste like ketchup but instead it tasted like this:

Sucking on my mother's wedding ring when no one was looking. And coins. And my father's cufflinks. It was dull. Cold. Flavorless, but bitter. I wanted those germs. Desperately. They'd keep me home from school if I was lucky. Home, where I could watch my mother chain-smoke on the front stoop.

Memory: Six years old. The third time my mother had given up cigarettes. The smell had always been on our hands and on the walls and in the carpet and on our clothes, no matter how much detergent my father used. He hated the smell. Begged her to stop. Bought her the patch and the gum and it seemed to be working but sometimes, when she thought he wasn't looking or paying attention, she'd go outside. She'd hidden them in a hanging plant he never remembered to water. Her Marlboro Reds. I'd forgotten what it smelled like but when the nicotine came in through my open window like a ghost I knew exactly what it was.

Memory: I am young. 28 years old. When my mother dies of lung cancer. My father had sat in the hospital room for weeks and I was in New York. Rehearsing Chekhov. When the phone call came I opted to miss one run-through and half of a tech rehearsal in order to be at the funeral. The director said, of course, go. Be with your family. But I'd wanted to stay. Afraid that if I bottled up one more picture or place or smell or taste to use in a play or a story or a painting or a poem someday somewhere I would go insane. That if I stored it away in my being all of my memories would boil and brim over.

Memory: I am at Gisanti's Funeral Parlor on Merrick Road. I am smoking a cigarette outside. My father sees me through a window and shakes his head. I flick it away, not even half finished, and go back inside. Go on, I tell him. Say it. But he doesn't say anything. He just holds my mother's cold, hollow hand. And looks at her for a while. Crying. Not making any noise, just... crying. The tears keep coming and I keep hoping that they'll stop. I offer him a tissue but he ignores it. He just keeps looking at her and crying and eventually I hear him say, I'm sorry.

Memory: Age six. Back in my room with the smell of tobacco wafting in through my open window. And the sound of my father screaming at my mother words I've said in a speech by David Mamet. I climbed into the back of my closet, behind the shorts and the shirts and the pants and the jackets and the scarves, and I put on my my walkman and listened to Peer Gynt over and over and over until...

Until I learned to paint, write, draw, act, sing, reach, live & die, laugh, taste, dream, cry, breathe, see, create, dance, blacken white & whiten black and express myself. There were journals and scrapbooks and half hour showers where I'd discover notes & octaves that I didn't know existed. And when my voice changed and hair began to grow and I felt things I didn't understand I would write. Or sing. Or paint. Or draw. Even though I wasn't any good at it. And sometimes I would touch myself. Because I was curious. And somewhere, Alice was eating tarts and drinking fizzy drinks and I-- I was just-- I was here. In Land. No Wonderland. But if I explored and lived I'd see stars and rabbits where there were supposed to be clouds.

Memory: a recent one. I was at my nephew's birthday party and he'd asked me to lay in the grass with him. He wanted to tell me what he saw. He was very good at reading the clouds. And I'd realized that the clouds had become white. The clouds had become fluffy. The clouds had become something I'd never seen them as before: clouds. Nothing more, nothing less.

Memory: another recent one. I was in the rehearsal room with Uncle Vanya. And I was helping Aleksandr Serebryakov into his coat. And the coat felt light, almost weight-less. Until it hit his shoulders and his wrinkles wove their way into the fabric and somewhere another piece of my heart broke and somewhere else, another violin string burst.

Memory: yesterday. I was painting. My hand shook a little more than it used to and from the piano cello guitar playing, writing, touching myself, creating, drawing something inside of my hand had broken. A string. A muscle. A joint. A nerve.

Someone would have to help me into my coat somewhere someday. I would understand the gout and the rheumatism and maybe even Aleksandr Serebyakov's pride, too. Pride that I was still going kicking moving breathing living being.

These are the ways that I see things. Middle age came early. I was nine or ten when the onset began and the blood began to flow, long before I'd known it and long before any hair had grown. But death. Oh, it's here, now. It's palpable. I saw Him looking back at me from the painting, where a little white had dropped onto the purple. I left it there.

Maybe that's what happens to an artist when they're gone. The paint, paper, stage, canvas, sky. All goes white. Blankness. Back to neutral. Still.