Have you seen my Masterpiece?
It's out there somewhere, right? Welcome to the hunt.
This rapidly aging index finger noodles out, long and slender, imagining itself to be a pianist-quality finger—you know, delicate, graceful, posh—rather than what it is. A hack finger. It is a hack finger on a hack hand that chops and whacks at things with vicious intensity and rare success.
Hunting. It is hunting with its hunting party, a ragtag bunch of bony knuckle-crackers that believe instinct is the ultimate tracker. What are they tracking? Masterpiece scat.
This rapidly aging finger is currently aching its way toward the letter P. The letter P is a lone drop of scat that begins a word, which in turn begins a sentence, then a paragraph, which is perhaps the start of at least something.
The start of something great?
Perhaps. Perhaps this time will be the time.
Masterpiece scat has no odor, which I suspect is how you can tell the difference between it and actual shit. I’m not sure because, in truth, I’ve only ever found the latter. But I’m getting off track because woohoo! when I get back on the trail of that potential masterpiece you won’t stand a chance. When these hack fingers catch up to this elusive beast, the echo in the valley will be the thud of its body hitting the ground. I won’t kill it, of course. Just tranq it. I have a vision of me riding it on a beach, ala Black Stallion style1, so I won’t kill it.
Who would deny me my Arabian horse frolic?!
In a perfect future, my proud masterpiece will run wild and free along the shorelines of the world. You will feel the thundering through the soles of your feet, I’m sure of this. You will feel it everywhere in your body.
This thing, this thing, it will reach down your throat with the ease of vapor and twist itself around the throb of your pulsing heart and it will squeeze it like a dog toy with the squeaker removed. You will be completely incapacitated by it.
You will think, “I never knew she had it in her” and I will think that, too. Because until it happens, I know it’s possible that I 100% don’t have it in me.
Maybe I only have an apprenticepiece? Or journeymanpiece? I fear most people never move past the internpiece stage. Most people give up. Go to a museum. Look at the masterpieces that already exist. It’s easier when someone else has done the work. No examination of scat is required, just pleasant reflection on beauty.
I consult my GPS. Will I ever see the top of Masterpiece Mountain? Will I find the cave in which my elusive emotional support animal resides? Because this masterpiece will need to support me. If not financially, at least mentally. I need the touchstone of its existence to give my toil meaning. To squash the constant questioning.
What am I doing? What are any of us doing? What is a masterpiece anyway? Do people who make masterpieces know they’re doing it as they’re doing it? Or do they make one accidentally and then spend the rest of their lives trying to make another? How much learning must we put toward it? Is there luck involved? Does the wind change and suddenly, there before you, is a beautifully startled sexy beast? Oh, what luck that would be.
And so the hunt continues.
You. Struggle in the daily. Keep stringing and singing the words, wielding the paintbrush, striking the notes. Whatever. I am applying my lemon juice to the secret message. I am sifting the river sand in the pan. I am mixing metaphors like a saucier.
Not for money, not for fame, but for the hunt of it.
This thing, this thing. Remember the thing? It will be supreme and sublime. It will be the best piece of toast you ever had. Metaphorical toast. Maybe you don’t eat carbs so it’ll be something else—but it’ll be something.
It has to be.
And maybe it will start with this letter P or maybe it will be the letter T. Or maybe even S? There are a lot of letters—26 alone in my alphabet—and by themselves, they don’t do a whole lot. The trick is in the stringing. The knitting. The looming. The making of the masterpiece, whatever a masterpiece is. By my standards, by your standards, by gut standards. Because I want it to be judged. I want someone to truly hate it. I want someone to truly love it. I want someone to say the literary equivalent of “my kid could paint that.” I just want something. Anything.
Peck. Peck. My hunting party noodles on, thrashing through the brush and following the trail. Words, sentences, paragraphs. Searching for the in. The cave. The top of Masterpiece Mountain with its fog of potential hiding my view of the summit.
But wait.
Hack fingers on hack hands hover.
Speak!
What if the exam is not the final submitted piece but the lesson itself?
What if it’s the job of us all to struggle and sweat our way through jungles, to continually catch and release imperfect creatures, changing our bait and ourselves along the way? What if the lesson is adapting our styles throughout our lives and learning and accumulating knowledge and skills as we become who we are supposed to be? And what if it’s just the act of making things that matters while accepting that we may never make anything great at all?
Guys! Guys!
Shit.
What if I am the Masterpiece?
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen2
This week’s amends…
“There’s a concept in Buddhism called “anatta.” It means “no-self” — that the self is an illusion. It’s a bunch of projections and it doesn’t really exist. And yet, we base our whole identity on it […] I work in an industry where self is everything. The constant hum in LA is, “How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?” And if you’re there, you live it. And if you’re in this business, you live with it all the time — this desire to be a public figure, and then it happens, and then suddenly you’ve created this Self, this Thing, which exists even apart from who you really are. So imposter syndrome starts to happen, where you don’t feel you deserve what you’ve got and one day people are going to find out you don’t have any talent and you don’t really have any character. They’ll find out how weak you are. And it’ll all be over…”
-Harold Ramis,KCRW interview.
I’m not quite finished with this half-hour3 interview, but I had this quote saved in my files since 2014 and I guess I’m finally listening to the source. :)
The blurb for it is:
“Is it a long way from directing Caddyshack to making movies about transition, like Groundhog Day and his newest, The Ice Harvest? We'll ask director Harold Ramis.”
On Rotation: “When I Paint my Masterpiece” by Bob Dylan
I love this song. It’s not my favorite Dylan song, but it’s right up there and it seemed fitting.
Normalynn Ablao “shapes penne, coils of spaghetti, and stuffed tortellini, creating piles of yellow pasta from tightly looped yarn.” Patterns for these (and other foods) are available. Go nuts!
Via Colossal
This was sent to me by pretty-much everyone last week.
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
I’m showing why my fingers are rapidly aging here. This is the only thing I remember about this movie from when I was a kid.
I realize that it’s extremely egotistical to think that making something great is even a possibility in my lifetime, but that’s the kind of thinking that’s needed to get me to sit down and do anything. Humble chutzpah—that’s my motto. (That I just invented.)
Thought this was a two-hour interview, but only 30 minutes.
You definitely ARE the masterpiece! <3