Empire of Light (8 page)

I could’ve performed a Google search to make sure there was, indeed, a Caravaggio in Cleveland, but I wanted the surprise. I want to experience the discovery of it all, as if I found it hiding behind an old wardrobe in my parent’s attic.

I walk the grounds of the museum and pass by an original casting of Rodin’s
The Thinker
perched on the stairs leading up to the museum’s entrance. His legs are blown off and the base is horribly disfigured, plumed out by a bomb set by a member of the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group back in the seventies. The town decided not to restore it, leaving it as is like some sort of statement on the destruction of meaningful objects. The statue now sits disfigured; a symbol of how public art is vulnerable to “jerks with agendas.”

I burst through the CMA doors, drop a few bucks into the donation bin, grab a map and head in the direction of the gallery called
Baroque
. I stand a good twelve yards from the entrance, but even from here I can recognize the word “Caravaggio” in bold letters on the gallery sign.

Wow! Could this really be a gallery full of nothing but Caravaggio paintings? I go giddy as I roll up on the room, but as more of the sign comes into focus my hopes are dashed on the rocks.

The Followers of Caravaggio

“Shoot,” I whisper to myself.

This is like showing up to a concert and instead of getting U2, you get the tribute garage band from around the block. They were smart to put the word “followers” in the title and not “students.” The man was too goddamn cantankerous to have students. The only way you could’ve leaned from Caravaggio was to bite his style and risk him giving you a beat down.

But you gotta feel for his imitators. How could you possibly go back to your old ways after seeing his style? I imagine a Caravaggio victim lying in the street, nose beaten to a pulp, screaming at the top of his lungs as Caravaggio swaggers away.

“It was fucking worth it, asshole!”

I cautiously enter the gallery, still hoping there’s a Caravaggio hanging in the room somewhere. Out of the corner of my eye I spot the gallery jewel piece. It’s a crucifixion scene, massive and dark. If there’s a Caravaggio here, that’s it.

But I try to ignore it. I want to save it as my ace in the hole. Instead, I scan the other paintings, and I sincerely try to give them their due, but they’re too much of a dick tease. Screw it. I make my bombing run on the jewel piece that reigns over the room like a king sitting at the head of his Christmas table.

The Crucifixion of St. Andrew - Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio.

“Yes!” I punch the air in celebration.

Epiphany. I’m an art geek. Did I really just punch the damn air for a painting? I can just imagine what my old football coach would say if he saw me now.

Tisse, I don’t know you anymore. Go put a damn skirt on.

The painting is of St. Andrew who was crucified for trying to convert the Greeks to Christianity. He survived for two days, hanging on the cross while preaching the gospel to upwards of 20,000 people the entire time. The crowd was so moved that they demanded his release, but Andrew wanted to die on the cross like his savior. When his executioners tried to take him down they were instantly paralyzed by God, allowing Andrew to die on the cross as he asked.

A miracle.

I remember Edgerton’s charge.

Take pictures, you little pyromaniac. Back to basics. This is a camera, a simple light box. Feed the box of light, Mr. Tisse, and see miracles.

Sure, my spakin’ brand new Kodak digital would give me a crisp and clean pic, but my bet is the image from this ancient box might be more haunting. I steady the camera, line up the Caravaggio in my sight and click the shutter.

FLASH!

A brilliant light envelops the room.

“What the hell?” I mumble to myself as I rub my eyes, trying to clear my vision of the dazzling array of spots lighting up my retinas.

Where the hell did that flare come from? There’s no way in hell this old box generated a nuclear flash like that.

After several seconds, the spots finally diminish enough so that I can see a longhaired guy maybe eighteen-years-old standing beside me, a hippie wannabe wearing sandals, jeans and a Doves concert t-shirt.

He reeks of weed and body oils.

Slung around his shoulder is a messenger bag with the logo,
Courier Art Supply
.

“Did you see that light?” I ask still trying to rub the spots from my eyes.

“Oh, yeah. Intense, right?” he says.

“Where the hell did it come from?”

“Not sure. I think Caravaggio cut a hole in his roof to allow a beam of sunlight to pour through,” he answers, indicating the artwork.

“What? Wait. No! Not the light in the painting. I meant the flash!”

“Didn’t see any flash. You alright, man?”

I try to ignore the fiber optic cobwebs in my head as I look around in a daze, attempting to find the source of that explosion of light.

“Maybe you should have a seat, dude,” he says, guiding me to a bench.

I sit and closely examine the camera, struggling to figure out exactly how Edge managed to conceal a flash within this housing. A full minute passes before I realize that the hippy is still attempting to have a conversation with me.

“I said, I saw you diggin’ on the painting!” He speaks loudly as if I’m hearing impaired.

I’m blinded, not deaf, fool.

“You know what I like about it? There’s no hope in his light. There’s no God in that painting,” I say.

I finally look into the face of this kid for the first time. He’s younger than me, but there’s an old soul way about him. It’s his eyes. Sunken and glassy, they seem older than the rest of his face. If I had to guess, this kid has been smoking
love boat
. Weed is bad enough, but having it soaked in embalming fluid before sparking will leave you looking like this guy.

“Let me ask you something. How would somebody like Michelangelo have painted this scene?” he asks.

“I don’t know, man,” I answer abstent-mindedly, turning my attention to the camera.

I want to take this damn Brownie apart. And what the hell kind of film was Edge talking about anyway? It’s all I can do to stop myself from prying open the back of the camera, but since I don’t know anything about the retrofit, I could ruin everything. Edge would kill me.

For the second time, I almost forget the kid is there. I look up to find him gazing at me, obviously not accepting my dismsive answer.

“Michelangelo?”

“Yeah, Michelangelo,” he repeats enthusiastically.

“Well,” I sigh. “That guy was all ‘Cecil B. Demille.’ Right? He probably would’ve had a beam of sunlight cutting through these majestic clouds, bathing Andrew on the cross in some ethereal brilliant light. Maybe some angels dancing around his head like some 90s boy band with their dicks covered by banners—”

“Yeah. A lot of bullshit,” he interrupts. “The miracle isn’t bullshit. Right? But the Disney-fication of it is bullshit. Think about how much easier it would be to sacrifice yourself if you had an angel sitting on your shoulder, whispering in your ear,
Easy, cowboy. Everything is going to be cool. Just gut it out a few more hours and then you’re hangin’ in paradise.
Shoot, that’s no trick, man,” he says, staring down at his sandals.

The kid starts to rub at the palm of his right hand, blood spilling from it and onto the pristine wood floor.

“Shit!” I exclaim, scooting the hell away from him.

“Try being murdered when it’s so dark that even though your eyes are wide open in panic,” he continues, “you still can’t see into the eyes of the soldier nailing your hand to the cross. No angels appear to comfort you, and all the evidence at that moment tells you that there is no God. Or if he does exist, he sure doesn’t seem all that concerned with your pain. Yet, you believe in him
anyway
. Now that’s faith.
That
is faith. That’s my belief system in that blackness,” he says pointing to the painting. “But you know what I’m saying.”

I have no goddamn clue what this guy is talking about.

“Dude. What the hell is going on with your hand?”

“What?” he asks as he gazes down at it, mysteriously now not a drop of blood to be found, neither in his palm nor on the floor.

“Your eyes still messing with you?” he asks sincerely.

“I guess. I thought I—”

“You know what you need?” he asks, interrupting me. “I’m kind of the Johnny Appleseed of art around here,” he says as he digs around in his messenger bag. “I work at this art supply store, and the boss likes to convert new customers with some freebies.”

I set the Brownie onto the ground as he hands me a brand new sketchpad and a pouch full of drawing pencils, kneaded erasers and a sharpener.

“If you like Caravaggio so much, then you need to sketch his work. Kind of rattle around in his boots for a bit.”

Still a bit confused by the flash and the blood I
know
I saw pouring from his palm, I can only speak like a monosyllabic idiot. “Thanks?”

“Name’s Andy,” he says, offering his hand.

“Jason.” I take one last look at his hand before shaking. It looks as clean as the board of health. I grasp it. Strong grip. Cold. However, as I gaze into his old eyes while he holds my hand, I am instantly at ease. I feel like I’m gripping goodness and times gone by.

He gently lets go, and I take the opportunity to divert my eyes by admiring the bitchin’ sketchbook he just gifted me. I run my hands across the cloth cover, so soft I could sleep on it.

“I can’t believe you just hand this stuff out, man.”

I look up, and the kid is ghost. Gone.

I slowly shift my gaze skyward, hoping to God I don’t see the dude crab walking on the ceiling with his tongue flicking in the air.

A little kid suddenly runs into the gallery, shrieking, followed by his parents. Normally I’d be pissed at the commotion, but right now I welcome the sound of earthly clatter.

The sketchbook.

I quickly flip through it hoping to find a clue pointing to which art supply store Andy worked for. Instead, I find an inscription on the inside cover.

Spread the word, Jason!

Andrew

Now just when the hell did he have time to write this? I turn my gaze to the painting.The eyes. Man. The eyes remind me of Andy’s.

The Brownie camera sits innocently at my feet. Maybe Edge is experimenting with some new photochemical shit more potent than love boat. It’s funny because when I hold it, I often get the same feeling I had when shaking Andrew’s hand. I wonder what has been witnessed and imprisoned within this vintage little light-capturing device?

I open the pouch Andy gave me and find a pencil, a light 2H in hardness, to begin my sketch. I might as well do something as I sit here trying to wrap my head around all of this.

But I’m struggling. I’ve taken my share of life-drawing courses in my day, and I’m a fair storyboard artist, but sketching this painting is kicking my natural ass. The scene depicts Andrew hanging from a cross with his executioner on a ladder, paralyzed, forced to watch the life seep from his eyes. Witnessing the event is an old lady with a giant goiter protruding from her neck. Bitch looks like she swallowed a rat.

As I sketch the painting, I become seriously depressed at my severe lack of talent. My drawing looks as if it were drawn by a drunken illustrator, making a living drawing counterfeit Jughead Comics in the Philippines.

It reminds me about how I left AFI in failure.

I put my pencil back into the bag and begin to work my pliable eraser, twisting it around my finger and stretching it, contemplating how much of a loser I am.

“What’s that?” an angelic voice asks.

I look up to find the little boy who ran into the gallery earlier, now hovering next to me.

“Is that Play Doh?” he asks.

“Naw. It’s an eraser.”

“We don’t have any erasers like that at school.”

“It’s a kneaded eraser. You can roll it into a small point so you can erase little lines. Or roll it into a fat ball and take out entire parts,” I say as I manipulate the eraser. “And it even cleans itself.”

“Really?”

Good grief, I feel like the guy from that goddamn Shamwow commercial.

I take the dirty eraser and start to stretch it, roll it and stretch it again. The more I work it, the cleaner it appears until, almost magically, the ball of rubber is clean.

“Wow!” the boy says.

“Feel it.” I hand it over to him.

“It’s warm!”

“Yep. The warmer it gets the better it erases.”

“That’s soooo cool,” he says. In a world of Nintendo Wii and iPods, I just found the one kid that can still be amazed by an eraser.