the painting is one of the few possessions that has traveled with me from New Orleans to all my various lodgings in Brooklyn, Manhattan and, now, back in New Jersey. I’ve shed so many other objects that seemed pointless to carry across states and stages of my life. Why have I kept this? Recently a friend, after learning this story, said he thought the painting had “bad vibes” and that I should throw it away. He seemed shocked that I’d kept such a thing for so long.
Our conversation prompted me to do a little digging. Although I’d been told the painter was a rapist, I’d never actually looked into the matter myself. The word “rape” has become such an abstraction, a term one hears in the media so often that it’s become divorced from the brutality of the act. For the first time, I wondered about his victims. Who were they? On the other hand, I considered the possibility that the man was falsely accused. Maybe I should have inquired into the details of the painter’s alleged crimes before I’d decided to take his art home. I thought if I did that now, then perhaps I could make a better decision about what to do with the painting going forward — maybe even throw it away.
I’d kept my receipt from the rodeo and knew the painter’s name, so it didn’t take long to find digital copies of court records outlining his case. In the mid-1980s the man, then in his early 20s, was convicted of two counts of forcible rape and two counts of attempted aggravated rape; he’d admitted to all four crimes against the women from Louisiana and as well as to raping a fifth woman in Mississippi. One record described the “progressively increasing level of violence involved in each offense,” describing how the man stalked his victims, broke into their homes and violated them in a horrific manner I will not detail here.
What I will say is that the information has put the man’s artwork in a new, startling light. Consider this: In the middle ground of the painting – between the foreground cotton baskets and background sky – the artist painted five small houses, with little wisps of smoke rising from each chimney. The perspective is of one gazing at the houses from a distance, maybe crouching down behind those baskets of cotton. Could it be that the painting portrays the point of view of a stalker in the act, one hiding and watching the houses until dark? Do his five confessed victims correspond to the five houses and five cotton-filled baskets? Is the painting meant to be a memorial of some kind, a celebration of the artist’s crimes?
Yet there’s a meditative quality to the painting, bespeaking an inner intelligence and sensitivity that is inconceivable in a rapist, a word synonymous in my mind with “monster.” Of course, as a born and bred Catholic, I should be able to reconcile this incongruence with faith in the divine that beats within the hearts of even the most terrible sinners. And while I tend toward agnosticism these days, a part of me does want to view the painting as a sign of atonement, or as evidence that the human soul – despite its ugly flaws – is inherently good.
Whatever it represents, or doesn’t, the painting is undeniably an object of beauty. And it exists despite acts of unconscionable violence, possibly even because of those acts. For it was painted in prison under a particular set of circumstances that, if altered, might have yielded a very different artwork, or no artwork at all. To wish that the rape never occurred, then, is to wish the painting unpainted. And if such an exchange were possible, if I could go back in time and trade this painting for the rape, then I certainly would.
Today when I look at the cotton field, the smoking chimneys on my wall, I can’t help feeling that I am looking through the eyes of a rapist. I worry that, in doing so, I have somehow condoned him, forgiven him. These concerns are much like those that troubled me six years ago, when I debated dizzily about whether to take the painting home. The only difference is, now, the painting’s mine. I own it.
“You promise, never to tell anyone,” she said, biting her lip. “Not one word.”Please, please, stop writing “god” in lowercase form.Marketers have always sought to ensure that our full range of ethical needs can be satisfied through spending money. Both altruism and egoism are fertile territory for selling more products and services. It goes without saying that Christmas represents a commercial nirvana. But there is also a particular affinity between consumer culture and that January dream of self-transformation.
Ever since advertising agencies first studied how to prompt specific emotions during the 1920s, anxieties about self-improvement have been deliberately cultivated by capitalism. The ‘new year, new me’ mindset of January is a rich opportunity for those wishing to sell us stuff. Our dietary pledges and lifestyle goals leave us vulnerable to the most idealistic advertising messages regarding who we might become over the next year.
Yet there are certain features of today’s marketplace and culture that add an extra bite to the business end of self-transformation, which have only emerged in the last few years.
Firstly, things have become a lot more technological and scientific. In the past, New Years’ resolutions were fundamentally ethical pledges regarding the life one would like to live. They were like marriage vows made to one-self. “I promise to be a person who doesn’t smoke.” “I commit to drinking more water.” In the absence of any other party to be faithful to, such vows tend to dissolve relatively quickly.
Today, however, we live in the age of smart and wearable technologies, whose purpose is to convert self-transformation from an ethical project into a scientific one. In the process, we outsource much of the mental strain of self-control to machines. Technologies such as the ‘smart cup’ Vessyl, which “automatically knows and tracks everything you drink,” provide data on what we’ve been putting in our bodies.
I get it. You don’t believe in a supreme being. That’s fine with me. What anybody believes or doesn’t believe is their call. You may believe that the world would be a better place without organized religion. Having seen organized religion in action, I’m inclined to say you may be right. You may believe that even private, reflective, personal religion is harmful, although I don’t see that myself.
But none of that’s relevant to the topic at hand. We’re not talking about God as a theological concept or God as a historical force. We’re talking about “god,” a punctuational neologism that I hope never catches on.
I’m hopeful, but not optimistic, since more and more writers seem to be using it. A couple of recent examples: Edwin Lyngar, who seems to be a good guy, employs it in an otherwise excellent piece about the aggressive Christianization of our armed forces. Lyngar writes that “a technical sergeant stationed at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada is being denied reenlistment unless he agrees to swear ‘so help me god.’”