[lit-ideas] Re: portraits of angry Jesus

Eric,
Where's the rest of it?
Carol
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric Yost" <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 10:28 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] portraits of angry Jesus


> Marlena in Missouri
> ready to order multiple copies of Eric's book for our booktalk
> collection...if he'll just finish it...
> _____
>
> Okay, since you didn't ask for it.
>
> Here is a scene from an old novel I completed in 1997. The comic bad guy
> is a painter obsessed with portraits of angry Jesus. In this scene, he
> is having a moment of enlightenment, which is particularly repugnant to
> him, and also cleaning out his medicine chest. -EY
>
> _____
>
>
>
> Unknown to his trendier acquaintances who really didn't want to know
> anything about him, Wayne harbored a strict envy for the work of Warner
> Sallman, whose Head of Christ is perhaps the most popular painting of
> the century. In the torturous Sunday School of his youth, Wayne had been
> intimidated and tracked by Head of Christ's eyes.
>
> There was no getting away from white, middle-class Head of Christ. Its
> purity and rigor were rife with impossible demands. His angry Jesus
> portraits were a way of countering Head of Christ, maybe even a way of
> reclaiming his youth, although he would not see it that way. He hated
> Head of Christ, and would have had it unpainted if he could.
>
> Wayne had, at times, called the 1-800 How Am I Driving number, and
> complained, claiming the 1-800 How Am I Driving truck was parked in a
> bus stop while its driver was handing out Xeroxed Head of Christ
> posters. Did this, Wayne asked, represent the policy of The Buzz-Less
> Beer Company, which the driver putatively represented?
>
> As his own series of (mysteriously foul-smelling) Jesus paintings
> progressed, it bothered Wayne that people mistook fantasy images of
> Jesus, like Sallman's white middle-class Head of Christ, for historical
> pictures. People actually thought Head of Christ was Christ. He didn't
> hate that thought; he just thought it was funny. Nor did Wayne hate the
> thought that Sallman's Head of Christ was an American spinoff of Leon
> Lhermite's L'Ami des Humbles of 1892.
>
> He did hate the thought that he would have to break away from his own
> painting, stop the only work he'd enjoyed for over a year, just to
> rescue Marty Hatboy. He hated the complexity that Hatboy brought into
> his life. He hated to be reminded of Slabtown. The power of Hatboy's
> sculptures didn't phase him: Wayne was not a sculptor. But he hated the
> success of others, and Hatboy had been very successful.
>
> The door buzzer cut through Wayne's hatred and through the scratchy
> intercom, Wayne heard Wilmot Kane's frantic voice. Because of this tone
> in Wilmot Kane's voice, Wayne knew that he'd always have the sexual
> upper-hand with him. Kane, who in other company might be masculine,
> abrasive, noncompliant, with Wayne became servile and hysterical. Wayne
> hated that, and punished Wilmot Kane by manipulating him.
>
> "Wayne, let me in."
>
> Wayne threw a bedspread over his canvas and reluctantly opened his
> apartment door to Wilmot Kane. Kane looked wrinkled and older, a growth
> of stubble on his oily cheeks.
>
> "I'm going to the police, and turn myself in," Kane said, "and I thought
> I should let you know."
>
> "You're what?"
>
> "I don't want to be part of any murder, and that poor women on TV
> without her husband, without her man . . . " Kane stopped as though
> about to start sobbing. "I don't want to be any part of this, I . . ."
>
> "Stop flipping out man. I know where he is, and I'm going to get him.
> You hear me? I said I'm going to get him; he's not dead. I know where he
> is. We'll be the heroes who rescued him."
>
> Wayne hated Wilmot Kane's hysteria more than his servility, hated having
> to calm him down. Now Wilmot Kane was looking at him like a dog whose
> owner has just decided not to throw it in the bathtub. "You know where
> Marty Hatboy is?"
>
> "That's right, and I'm not telling anyone where until I'm ready to go
> get him. So go home. I'll call. I'll leave a message on your machine."
>
> As the door was closing behind Wilmot Kane, Wayne Felker immediately
> launched work on Jesus Fallen Among Thieves. He thought he could taste
> chocolate on the back of his throat, and wondered why. He really was
> falling in love with this painting, more than anything else he had ever
> done, as though this were the only thing he had ever done. Maybe this
> was the only thing he had ever done. Wayne had read about crucial
> moments, turning-points, landmark events of personal growth, another
> artist's sea change into a rich and strange new style, chrysalis into
> successful butterfly--he hated those stories until now that they seemed
> to be coming true. For the first time, Wayne Felker was in love.
>
> He was out of cocaine again. Worse he was crashing from weak speed he
> had hustled from a hooker in a bar. The edges of his world slowly turned
> black and gray as the ebbing speed flooded his need with its yellow
> fire. This is hell, he thought, his face clenched like a fist of 
> parchment.
>
> For Wayne Felker it would have been just another day, had he not created
> Jesus Fallen Among Thieves. The painting expanded before him, burning in
> glory. His wall was stretched into a cyclone of motion. It was an
> apocalypse of failed robbery. Downed thugs resembling Sam Tripp and
> Fusby Puppyshins lay in crumpled ocher and blue folds. Frayed figures
> received the coup d'grace. A very angry Jesus strode forth like some god
> of battle taking notes for a travel brochure. He was playing for keeps 
> now.
>
> Wayne looked at the painting and saw a message to himself. Painting this
> would lead him out of pain and into a fresh and new life. He stood back
> from it, thoughtlessly mouthing an ocher brush, and let it dream again.
>
> He dreamed it deeper. The clash between Jesus and the robbers literally
> took forever to resolve. It didn't need help or encouragement. It was
> here for good. This indomitable angry Jesus came for Wayne.
>
> Wayne hated having moments of insight and his hatred grew. He felt like
> cheating a cab driver. He wanted to steal a wealthy matron's purse, drop
> a lit cigarette in a mailbox, drug Kane and rob him, seduce wealthy
> widows from New Jersey, and snort pencil-sized lines of coke under the
> porn screens at the gay bar on 10th Street. He wanted to set false
> alarms, drop stones from tall buildings, drown swans. He didn't care
> whether time was on his side or the color of the weather, his was a
> focused drive to bite his own pain, as a trapped animal will gnaw its leg.
>
> Watching himself repeated as an Angry Jesus, Wayne kept sucking on the
> ocher paintbrush. When the taste of the oil paint first registered in
> his consciousness, it came not as a taste at all, but rather as a grim
> resolve. The taste of oil paint insinuated itself more fully, and
> Wayne's hatred became distracted by the growing, bitter and caustic
> taste. He realized what he was doing. With an expression of mad
> revulsion he spat and tossed the paintbrush against a far wall. The
> paintbrush hit the wall and bounced, crashing through one of the top
> windows. Wayne rushed to the bathroom and began rinsing his mouth.
>
> Lorti was going to have his legs broken, just like the window. Time to
> floss. After rinsing his mouth almost a hundred times, he examined the
> medicine cabinet for his favorite wax mint floss (five years old). If
> death must come, let it come with clean teeth. When he moved the floss
> he found an aspirin bottle he knew he'd used to store drugs. On a whim
> he opened it. Hidden among the aspirins was a tiny glass vial
> quarter-full of white powder. Wayne's eyes widened and the sunlight
> opened before him. This was bliss! Here was something he could not hate,
> this deep gift satisfaction, part discovery, part reward for caution.
> Finding the vial made him a man again.
>
> Smiling and giggling, Wayne Felker danced his way to the kitchen. He
> found a clean plate, put it on the kitchen table, and laid out some
> lines on it. He couldn't use dollar bills because his wallet was
> missing, so he clipped up the cover page of Popular News magazine,
> extracting a rectangle bearing the face of a vocalist. He rolled this
> into a little tube, and snorted the lines right from the plate. Half of
> the powder remained in the vial and he put it in his shirt pocket. When
> he looked up again he was flying.
>
> Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was playing in a nearby apartment. The voices
> flowed together, forming their own passionate church. Wayne was a god.
> From him flowed magnificent torrents of vital energy. He was a
> spiritual being now and felt it all throughout his body. From his eyes,
> a sudden flash of golden sunlight seemed to soar above existence itself,
> comprehending, participating in the mysterious unfolding of being.
>
> "Oh fuck," exclaimed Wayne to his empty room. "I'm having a vision."
>
> He always regarded hallucinations as unfair competition with his
> paintings. The chorus of voices from the Beethoven next door rose in an
> awesome chorus, like voices of the blessed entering heaven. He was set
> free, mighty, unassailable, seeing as deep as the life-force.
>
> Wayne sat in front of his painting smoking borrowed generic menthol
> cigarettes. An element remained to be completed. It needed something.
> Wayne thought of flight and thought of the pigeons in Hallam's
> apartment. They just broke in like they wanted something. At least they
> wanted something. Pigeons. He decided to put them in his painting,
> flying as one big semicircle over the head of the angry Jesus, lofting
> away from the struggle on the road to Damascus, more than the usual gray
> wilted v-shaped blurs, prouder and clearer. Pigeons. He worked on the
> borders of the image, the pigeons fanning outward and away.
>
>
>
> (c)1997 Eric Yost
>
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