Nocturne Revival
The falcon-soaring sky is now covered in a thick layer of listless coal-black smoke that twists and turns its way up into the sky; gyrating around the speckled spangled stars that make up the great Texas landscape. Sam stands on the beach and gazes up at the morbid-motif of life and death that is the Texas wildfires burning bright against the backdrop of his childhood: the sea and it’s waves where he’d spend many a summer splashing in the waters and digging his toes into the sea-shell latent sand.
He remembers a story he learned a while ago about the artist James Abbot Mcneil Whistler, who he thought had a rather long sophisticated name. He remembers being tucked into a small wooden-paneled auditorium where his short and sweet art history teacher flashed on the screen a painting entitled: Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. It’s a pretty number if you’ve ever looked at it; one of Whistler’s famous works in which he paints the fireworks display at Cremorne. A beautiful display of twisting smokes and rugged blacks against the backdrop of a fresh night sky that seems to blend in with the waters below. The waters are cracked by lines of red and orange—fireworks reflecting off the mirror of the water-front—specks of yellow falling to the earth: the dashing embers of the grand display falling from the heavens to be drowned in the sorrowful bed of the water as off to the left hand side an explosion of whimsy is just now dying down.
The story goes that Whistler made the piece and then was heavily criticized by another artist. Whistler sues the man for libel and is forced to give a statement on his case in which he describes this not as a view of Cremorne but an artistic expression. He is laughed out of the courts, winning the case but only being allowed less than a penny and required to pay all the his court fees. They say it bankrupted him both physically and metaphorically. Who knows what a man felt though?
Whistler coined this sort of theory too, or was one of the founders of it. Art for Art’s sake: which is by all accounts of our massively uniformed world the most self-satisfying piece of garbage that has ever existed. It’s the sort of thing that makes white boys and girls look up at the sky, paint a picture, write a story or poem, and when they’re asked what their theory on the post-modernistic condition affecting the american youth they’re able to say, “art for art’s sake.” It’s a way of making a point without getting your hands dirty and it’s often misinterpreted by young folk to mean: I do art because I enjoy it. Which is of course true, who doesn’t do art because they enjoy it? Who would ever do art because it hurts? Because it tears into your soul, because it rips you to emotional shreds with each letter you write or each brush stroke you make? Who would ever consider that art?
Sam looks up at the twirling inferno of black smoke against the night sky of his childhood—the twisting blackness that’s covered the already-dark night sky with a blistering void of light. Inside the smoke the hands are sprouting out and towards him; each one is inching closer and closer to him. Hands outstretched, trying to drag him into their depths. Hands against his neck, against his thighs, against his stomach; choking him, hugging him, pulling at his flesh. He can’t breathe, he can’t see, all he can do is feel the roaring inferno of madness running over his body as his mind races to find a purpose for living. The stamp of l’art pour l’art across his body, dotting his precious flesh with the scent of failure and misery.
With his last breath he curses Whistler and his Nocturne; curses all of those so blind to see the strangle hold it’s got on us all. Sam, the falling rocket, enters the void.
