13.3 – The Crazy Artist’s Club

Like many a heartbroken poet, Marty could always find solace in books, music, and art.  He was starting to define himself as a person, and more importantly, to make choices about who he wanted to become.  In every course of study, he did the work needed to get a good grade, but he spent most of his time studying whatever interested him.  Compulsory homework he usually finished in class, or between periods.  At work, he had to do what the boss wanted him to do.  When he got home, it was all his time.  He was always reading several books at once, and was now using them to escape from his unrequited love for a cheerleader.
 

One of the books was a biography about Vincent Van Gogh called Lust for Life, by Irving Stone.  Having listened to the song Vincent about a thousand times, Marty knew that his art expressed very deep emotions, but that book was his first exposure to the thoughts of the man himself, and his intense obsession with love.  Stone’s masterpiece completely altered his point of view about nearly everything.

It was one of the greatest revelations of Marty’s young life to learn that a man had once suffered so much rejection, but in his relentless quest for love he gave the world an incredible richness of beauty with his art.  The ideas and viewpoints portrayed in those pages taught him to not just to look at the natural world, but to really observe it.  Vincent’s famous misadventures with mental illness have distracted the world’s attention from the fact that he loved a great many things very deeply, and rather eloquently.  To discover that a human being could express such profound emotions through art was an epiphany for Marty.  It framed how he saw the entire world, from the earthiness of a field to the brilliance of a starry night.
 
Through Don McLean’s music, and a great biography, he understood what Vincent was trying to say: how he suffered for his sanity, and how he tried to set them free.  Marty completely identified with his overwhelming loneliness, and ardent need for acceptance and affection.  Vincent’s passion for his ideas awoke in Marty a burning desire to share something of himself with the world; to leave a mark and say, “I was here. I did that. I loved.”  Like many a teenager, he felt as if there were ferocious lions of light and tigers of darkness fighting inside of him, and he was learning how to tame them.  Unfortunately for Vincent, he could not control his own inner beasts, and they ultimately devoured him.  Marty, too, penetrated that deep, dark jungle into which so many young people wander and never come back.  He believed with all his heart that he could rise above the melancholy, and lifted his head hopefully, to search for the way out.  Without someone with whom he could share his passions, or anyone’s affection at all, he self-made the skills that would help him crawl from many a pit of despair.
 
Part of the problem was that there was nobody he could talk to about his deepest feelings.  Mike didn’t share his sensitivity of emotion, and Marge was too busy.  She had grown oddly distant and detached from her own children; choosing instead to promulgate a general sense that she was “everybody’s mom.”  Marty and his sisters were never close enough to discuss private matters, and his father barely acknowledged that he existed.  None of the assorted vagabonds and drifters who passed his way were qualified therapists, and some were just plain weird.  So, he turned to books for information about how to deal with the heated passions surging through his brain like hot water in an engine.
 
One self-help book that was very popular at the time was Your Erroneous Zones, by Dr. Wayne Dyer.  It was a very clearly written explanation of the emotions that were tumbling around in Marty’s brain and getting tangled like clothes in a dryer.  That book helped him to fold his own laundry, so to speak.  It provided a valuable framework in which to observe his own emotions, and what he was feeling at any given moment.  Learning to replace the erroneous delusions with healthy, fulfilling awareness would take much more effort.
 

Marty also discovered Jackson Browne’s album, The Pretender.  The lyrics were so meaningful to him, on so many levels, and the music was very subdued so he could absorb the message.  Like Paul Simon, it was poetry set to music, but with an authentic cadence that was less formal.

“Though the years give way to uncertainty
And the fear of living for nothing strangles the will
There’s a part of me
That speaks to the heart of me
Though sometimes it’s hard to see
It’s never far from me
Alive in eternity
That nothing can kill.”

— Jackson Browne

Marty especially enjoyed a drawing and painting class by the first real art teacher he ever had, Mr. Biagini, who was a stickler for the fundamentals.  A very Italian gentleman with a cynical New York type of wisdom that was remarkably incisive, he had little patience for indifference.  By sheer will, he drove his students to complete a bunch of basic assignments about light and dark, perspective, line and form, color, and shading.  There was no grade, you simply had to do them over and over until you got them right.  If you wanted to make color wheels all semester, you could do that and still get an A.  But you had to do the work.  Sheer boredom led many pupils to master the fundamentals, just so they could move on.  Those who wanted to be an apprentice to the artfulness of humanity chose to stay.  “One may not fail my class, but one may fail art,” as Mr. Biagini used to say.  Marty felt as if he were back in kindergarten.  He fancied himself a good artist, but learning about perspective, color theory, and composition made his past cartoons look more like finger paintings.  After working hard at the new techniques, he was pleased that his renderings were improving.  He was actually learning to incorporate those elementary skills into his own work!
 
Eventually, the students got to do their first paintings.  Marty chose a science fiction theme of two garish aliens about to destroy the earth, in the style of the cover art typical of Amazing Stories in the Fifties.  Mr. Biagini made the rounds of the easels once or twice a period, and usually left Marty’s station shaking his head.  “It looks like a cartoon,” he’d grumble brusquely over his shoulder.
 
“Yes, thank you. That’s the effect I was trying to achieve.”  As Marty was the only ‘published’ artist in the class, he felt entitled to produce a little artful sarcasm for the teacher.  Actually, he was very confused at the time, artistically speaking.  He didn’t know whether he wanted to be an underground cartoonist, a sci-fi pulp magazine illustrator, a Disney animator, or a master of color and form like Van Gogh or Cezanne.  Marty’s muse was hijacked by American pop culture, and he lived in a Looney Tunes world.
 

One of the attractions of art class was Alicia, a girl who was also a former classmate from Lagunitas School.  She had incredibly long, thick brown hair that grew straight down below her butt.  Marty liked how it swayed when she walked.  (Her hair, not her butt… sheesh.)  He blushed at the thought.  She was very artistic in her own right, and liked to draw flowers, plants, and fairyland imagery.  He thought she had exquisite hands, and was interesting to talk to with her elfish face, but she never showed any interest in Marty beyond exchanging artistic ideas.  That was okay; he was used to unspoken female standards he couldn’t meet.  He enjoyed having girls as friends, but what he really craved was a girlfriend – that special someone with whom he could share his deepest artistic dreams and fantasies.  Alicia was a pleasure to look at (in a purely artistic sense, of course), and was even more fun to talk to because she understood art, and especially the mind of the artist.  Marty turned her on to Lust for Life, and she was suitably impressed, but showed no hint of a deeper interest in his thoughts.

“I think we should start a crazy artist’s club,” he announced to Alicia one day, as he set up his easel.  His conversation skills needed improvement more than his painting.

“I think you’d be good at that,” she replied agreeably, never looking up from her work.  And the door closed, ever so softly, in his face.

His other classes were interesting but unremarkable, except for math.  He was at the point where he could take advanced algebra, calculus, and trigonometry if he chose, but his math teacher, Mr. Lewis, was more interested in the athletics programs than in teaching math.  He was the Sports Director at Drake, and acted as though he was teaching advanced algebra only because nobody else would do it.  In a momentary lapse of candor, he admitted to Marty one day that he really didn’t like math – he read the lessons in the textbook the week before he taught them to his class.  His devoted disinterest was a dis-inspiration to many, and Marty usually drew cartoons on the back of the class handouts.   As soon as he got enough credits to graduate, he stopped taking math altogether.  Anyway, he preferred the natural, visible world to an artificial one composed of arcane facts and figures.

“But I could have told you, Vincent… this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”

— Don McLean