Monument Maker, page 12
Harder.
A day trip on bicycles to visit the Tadeusz Kosciuszko Monument outside the village of Montigny-sur-Loing, Kosciuszko who was an architect and a builder of fortresses, a Polish national hero and a combatant in the American Revolutionary War, Kosciuszko whose body isn’t even there, at all, in this tomb, or in any single place, his embalmed body which, as part of some kind of misconstrued memorialising, not to say a kind of attempt to spread his influence as far as possible, to expand his protectorate by the separation of his organs and the transport of his body, flitted between a church in Solothurn, Switzerland, some other stupid church in Krakow and a crypt in Wawel Cathedral, his internal organs buried in a separate plot in a graveyard in Zuchwil beneath a single memorial stone, and his poor suffering heart, all enlarged in the tangle of his life, briefly on display in a terrible museum in Switzerland before returning, still lonely, to a chapel in Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Kosciuszko whose fake tomb this is, a simple door, in an arc of stone, by a busy roadside, a door that would open onto the catacombs beneath the Forest of Fontainebleau, a forest whose paths are of ash, of fine stone, ground down, of black sand pathways crossed with the trails of slow-worms and of horses’ hoofs and of wild boar and of our footprints now, too, because it is too soft to ride a bike over and we feel as if we, too, are descending into the catacombs of Kosciuszko and wait for his ghostly hand to rise and to drag us under as we make our way along La Route de la Grande Vallée, Kosciuszko who had only his ghost left to bury, and so this door, this simple door that allows entrance to a ghost, and whose ghost makes the forest around here electric—listen—the forest is singing with the kinetic energy of a ghost in a labyrinth who never stops pacing and who gives life, up above, to slow-worms and to dragonflies and to mosquitoes and to bees and to my Flower and I, that day, what is the opposite of a plague, a benediction, what is the opposite of a curse, Kosciuszko, what is the opposite of a ghost, a corpse, yet once you were all these things, I think, in this forest, your poor suffering body now separated into dragonfly, and slow-worm, and dung beetle, and ashes, but also light, high light on the treetops and flowers, as though on a rack, not a cross, the same rack that deformed your heart now works on mine, as I feel myself, too, give way, in sorrow, for that day I had received sad news, Kosciuszko, that my sister and her husband would separate, that my sister would be alone with her children, that my brother had threatened her husband with a hammer, but really it was a showerhead, he had turned up at his door after her husband had assaulted her and told him that next time the hammer would speak, though it was only a showerhead, a showerhead that he had grabbed on his way out as a makeshift weapon, I felt proud and sad when I heard this, when he called me on the phone that morning, proud and sad because there was an echo of our father in his actions, our father who art in heaven, and I walked through your forest, Kosciuszko, with my heart as heavy and as lonely as your own, at all of the madness and sorrow of this world and everything we put each other through, and the pointlessness of it, the pointlessness that I knew, truly, was the point, the emptiness that I knew, truly, was you, God, you, Holy Ghost, you, Kosciuszko, you who are the patron saint of the torn apart, and I walk through your forest, ankle-deep in your ashes, again, on that day, and my sorrows are heavier, and my sister is long dead, and her husband forgotten, and my brother estranged, and my heart, too, in another country, hidden, deep, in a forest, in another summer, Kosciuszko, and on the way back, on the forest path, we pass a stone on which is engraved a primitive church, a simple house, and the sign of a heart.
The churches are potentially much more powerful today than they ever were precisely because the vast majority of people no longer know what they signify. We are confronted by an implacable mystery, in stone. This is precisely the work of the church, and what it signifies. These are the Pyramids. This is Africa. Here is Dogon mask, church. This is art that predates art, which is monument. What does the church of Saint-Laurent at Grez-sur-Loing stand for? Another summer. Stone. Mystery, implacable. Sound your bells!
Art should reproduce “reality” as exactly as possible, is what the non-artists say.
Art should remake “reality” completely, is what the artists say.
Art should speak of something beyond “reality,” is what the spiritualists say.
Art should speak of the beyond that is “reality,” is what the realists, and the dreamers, say.
Painting is what Picasso calls it, never “art.”
Gods, and saints, is what the prehistoric calls it, never “art.”
Modernism must be got out of the way, Picasso says, in order that timelessness may come through.
Goya’s The Third of May 1808 in Madrid, painted in 1814, is one of the great masterpieces of religious painting. Why? Because of the quality of light, and what it gives, and what it takes away, both of which are incomprehensible. Most everything in the picture is lit by an impossible moon, it would appear, which in turn is lit by way of an impossible sun, except for the hero, the central hero whose body is lit by a mysterious cube, a lantern, it seems, but a mysterious illuminated ark all the same, and its light takes up the hero of the body, except for his head, which remains in the moon, and inside the box is death, which is spoken in light, inside of which is a head, a disembodied head, which is the body of the hero, projected. Picasso considered the painting to be under a spell, a supernatural spell, and he compared the crucified stance of the hero to the skeleton of a bat, which is the ancient of nightmares.
At the bottom of the garden, in the bright sunshine, a young girl in a black swimming costume with a thin red belt is floating down the river on an inflatable unicorn. And the young French boys have so much energy. They stop the traffic to leap from a bridge, they play frenzied games of badminton, they launch a bottle at a swan, dance in front of the young girls in the flesh-pink bikinis, perform handstands and then disappear, downriver, on the strength of the tide. My Flower floats out on an inflatable ring with the motif Mud Master on it. She is proud and wants to be watched like a little girl as she splashes water on her shoulders and kicks her legs and waves to me from the distance. Now the young girl in the black swimming costume is learning from the boys about splashing, and recklessness, and daring, an arm folded across her chest in concentration, a single finger in the corner of her mouth. Picasso said that God has no style. Ridiculous. Young girl, you are where God begins. But what he meant, really, is that God contains all styles and yet has no single fingerprint through which to recognise his work, which is called multifarious and called omni, and that it is down to us, as co-creators, to specialise and to swagger and to style and to create forms that without us, without this constant duetting between what is given and what could be, simply would not exist. And that this is love and suffering and divine communion, and all kinds of girls. The elephant and the squirrel, Picasso calls it. A real hodgepodge! In that case, down with style, holy architect! Sound your bells!
Then this: Picasso, according to contemporary commentators, considered the great, archetypal themes of art to be birth, pregnancy, suffering, murder, the couple, death, rebellion and—possibly—the kiss. These themes, according to Picasso, predate civilisation. Crucially, he claimed that they could not be conjured, that they could not be forced on a work of art, but rather must be encountered, in the process of creation, and then, and only then, are they transformative and unequivocal and must be reckoned with. Are these not, then, the qualities of God, the sign of his eternal presence, his signature in this world? Is this not God’s style? For as in our relationship with God, we cannot approach these themes. Rather, these themes must seek us out. We do not seek; we are found. But I would add one more, one further power of God that is mirrored in his fingertips and that is a source of great freedom and of great suffering, too: betrayal.
Today is 21 June, a national music day in France. Outside our hotel, on the corner next to the bridge, a white teenager with dreadlocks is playing guitar through a practice amp and singing a song by Blind Willie McTell. “Delia, Delia, how can it be? You say you love them rounders, but don’t love me.” His name is God’s Own Singer of Songs.
As we sit in the garden a girl swims over the river to us and calls the name of my Flower. It is Katarina the Bitch, an old schoolfriend, and my Flower jumps into the water to greet her. The two of them embrace and then float there on the spot, talking. She has moved to a village along the way and is having a housewarming party at the end of the month. She wears sunglasses while she swims. Later, my Flower tells me how she and Katarina the Bitch would kiss and rub themselves against each other on her mother’s bed and tape-record their moanings. Then they would play them back and masturbate together. It is national music day.
I hate the smug saints sitting smugly in the small provincial churches, smug, bored of heaven already, sainted by mere saintliness, and would disembowel them. I much prefer the saints whose heads are missing, whose arms run like sand into the pockmarked walls, whose eyes roll in their heads, whose ears are cut off, whose bodies are dislocated, who have used it all up for a single glimpse, not for a tenured position in heaven, for who would not be bored of heaven after a month or so of these platitudinal faces, these equivocal expressions, this dampened sense of calm, and who would not be eager to get back into the game, just as the greatest religious art, the gravest churches, are time-wracked, terrifying, and unreconciled, in conflict with creation, towers raised in passionate confusion against themselves, fortified with demons, drunk on stone, and yes to everything, yes to no is a stone tower rising up, is a monument to the glory of God despite the glory of God, for what need has God of glory and peace? Sainthood is in permanent exile from heaven, is in turning away for the love of God. For what is this sun and moon, this light of death? It is cathedral. The only heresy is to be less than life, which is hell, and heaven, and nothing in between: the Christians to the lions.
It is national music day. In the village of Nemours the castle is all stopped up with concrete in order that it can’t hear a thing. In the village of Grez-sur-Loing the houses are shuttered and silent. In the village of Bourron-Marlotte there is swaying in the streets. A band is set up in the road, outside of the rock n roll bar with the pictures of Marilyn and B.B. King on the walls. There is the sweet sticky smell of fried mussels in the air. A fat girl with an off-the-shoulder dress and appealing sunburn is drinking from a hip flask as the band soundchecks. The drummer wears one of those awful head mics and a T-shirt cut off at the sleeves. The bassist (five- and six-string bass; this is France) has a permanent fag in his mouth. The lead guitarist, a young man in a Hawaiian shirt, is inaudible. The rhythm guitarist and vocalist sings “China Girl” by David Bowie in a pained, soulful voice. The lead singer is a crusty young woman, painfully thin, in yoga pants, trainers and a vaguely oriental dress. She has shaved the back of her head and wears her long hair over it in a bun as she dances on the spot and holds one finger to her ear. The usual crew are inside the bar drinking and refusing to come out. In the street the families are gathering. A father and son sit at a table, the son muscular, ordinary, and with a tattoo on his bicep that I strain to read. What does it say on his arm? I ask my Flower. My Flower reads it from the corner of her eye. I am the hero of the story, she says, I don’t need anyone to save me. He looks exactly like his father. Already, the servers are looking stressed, although no one in the crowd seems to care about the speed with which they bring out the fried mussels. I need a clear passageway, the bald server despairs, I need a clear passageway. There must be at least fifty people here, sitting at long tables or standing leaning against the wall, like a contemptuous young man who shakes his head at the band’s lame take on Pink Floyd, a little punk with a backwards baseball cap who flagrantly picks his nose, and now the fat village rocker has arrived, with greasy permed hair and a black blazer and a huge beer gut in a grey T-shirt and a beautiful blonde wife in a straw fedora with a white bow on it, and he is telling someone about auditioning a new bass player, he is talking about getting back in the game, while his two little kids run riot and topple from benches and bang their heads on tables and his beautiful blonde wife just stares into space, it’s enough that she is his wife, in this village, and the other waiter, who is dressed completely in white and who holds his tray high above his head so you can follow his speedy movements throughout the crowd, is boasting to a table of cute girls of his ability to speak three languages, none of which the girls can speak and so are denied the full effect of his sophistication, and now the band are playing Bob Marley and the rhythm guitarist and vocalist has switched into a Rasta hat for the occasion, exodus, he is singing, movement of the people, and someone is filming the show, down the front an elderly man, all dressed in black, is preserving it forever, how many times will he rewatch it, and my Flower rolls her eyes and says, this band is really crap, and it’s true, the drummer is particularly awful, the singer gets the words wrong and misphrases every line, the saxophonist, who has appeared on stage from out of nowhere, is clearly drunk, and yet everyone is singing along, at this approximation of music, at this weird staging of fun, and a couple arrive at the table next to us, it has been reserved for them and their two angelic children, I say angelic because of the quality of their skin, which is pockmarked and swollen, and the quality of their eyes, which are wide and indiscriminating, pools of unreflecting light, and who stare in wonder at a green-coloured drink, at a plateful of fries, at a bouncing ball, at the light show projected onto a white transit van behind the band, and as the presence of angels inevitably makes us question ourselves, I wonder if I am less than the moment, if in my cynicism I have mistaken ideas for reality, and I say to my Flower, what do you want, a more professional presentation, and she laughs, and I realise that in ourselves, alone, we are no match for the creator, because if it were down to us we would have everything work out just as we wanted, which isn’t how we wanted it at all, and how boring would that be anyway, and thank God for this constant duet between what is given and what could be, thank God for upsets and for imperfections and for failings, thank God for his tenderness, too, I think, as I catch sight of the profile of the man next to us, the father of the saintly children, and I see they have inherited his skin, I see how they have grown from their father, in angelic imperfection, because at first I think he has tribal piercings all around the lobe of his ear, which seems completely out of character with his staid appearance, his neat hair and beady spectacles, but then I realise that his ear is rotting, his ear is rotting and coming off his head, the side of his head is eaten away with some kind of flesh-devouring infection, and his rotten ear hangs loose, and soft, and liquid, and I can’t take my eyes off it, do you see it, my Flower whispers, do you see it, I can see it, I say, and I try to look over him and past him, and he is laughing and holding both his saintly children in his arms, and the three of them are dancing to the most perfect version of “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty there has ever been, which is now, without judgement, which seems miraculous, now, when received by an ear that is no longer an ear, when worded by a word that is no longer a word, and the music is the eraser of the words, holy music, and the world is no longer an idea, and values are no longer values, and what is here, right now, is, and has no words, and we are no longer formulating, this ear that is no longer an ear is no longer hearing, this singer that is no singer whatsoever is no longer singing, this fat rocker is no longer boasting, this bald waiter is no longer stressing and now “We Built This City” is no longer the worst song in creation.
Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God goes like this: God is a thing that nothing could be greater than. Therefore he must exist, because a thing that is greater than everything else but that does not exist would be a lesser thing than a thing that is greater than everything else and that does exist. But, but. If there were anything that God wasn’t, that God couldn’t be, then God would not be greater than everything else. Therefore, if God exists, then there is nothing that is not God. That’s no longer Saint Anselm talking; that is me, Pierre, God almighty.
It is Midsummer’s Day. The boring Swedish artist who looks like Robert Creeley has been joined by his girlfriend, who is a painter, and the Finnish friend who is a cartoonist who claims he is a graphic novelist, and an older Swedish couple, who are also painters, and their friend Doris. They invite everyone to celebrate Midsummer’s Day with them, which is a big deal in Scandinavia. In the morning the women leave to gather flowers and the men are left to erect a maypole, which in Sweden is a large wooden cross decked in foliage. The older Swedish painter and myself dig a hole in the ground using a metal trowel and a spoon to remove the dirt. I joke that it is like Escape from Colditz but the old boy just looks at me blankly from behind his round spectacles and beneath his idiot white cap. Together we raise the cross in the garden and fill in the hole with soil and with large stones that we hammer down into place. Miraculously, the cross stands. The women return, the boring old boy’s wife, and Doris, and Robert Creeley’s girlfriend, whose name is Anne, and my Flower, whose name is Flower. They hold bundles of wild flowers in their arms and they sit on chairs in the garden and bind the flowers in wreaths that they intend to wear on their heads and that on the older women look macabre and terrible and seem to wilt straight away like a sick joke but on my Flower and Anne look bountiful and bashful. I wander to the edge of the garden, where the Finnish cartoonist is building a fire. We chop some wood together while the old Swede stands around hopelessly. Creeley is too timid to help out with the men, so he stands with the girls as they make their bonnets. The Finn intends to cook aubergine wrapped in foil in the fire. I despise aubergine, it is the vegetable of impoverished students lacking any aesthetic whatsoever, which is this Finnish cartoonist with his dreadful shorts and his socks and cap for sure. He offers me a beer and we stand and watch as some French guy in shorts trembles on the parapet of the bridge over the river, too afraid to jump in. The night is coming on.
