PERSONAL: WATER LILIES BY MONET

We have been sitting here for a long time, contemplating. A single room with a single bench, centered, equidistant from every wall. This entire room is devoted to only one thing, and that one thing is right there on the wall in front of us. Right there. There is nothing else here but this bench and that one thing. ‘Water Lilies’ by Monet, before us in this room, before us in this stillness, before us in our contemplation. A triptych as large as, and larger than, this room that contains it.

Who were you, Claude Monet? What were you trying to capture in life? What were you trying to steal? What were you trying to possess? You never really managed to capture it, did you? And oh, you tried. You spent the last half of your life painting the same bridge over and over again, at different times of the day, different angles, different seasons. Over and over again. The same bridge. And as you aged and your eyesight worsened, your paintings became more blurry, more diffuse, more, well... impressionistic, one might say. Same bridge, a little bit harder to make it out, but there it was... the same old bridge that you always painted.

We say nothing, sitting here, holding hands. Me and my lovely girl. What are you thinking in this space, my lovely girl? What is Claude Monet saying to you? What do you think he desired the most? And for that matter, what do you desire the most? A relationship? With me? A life-long love affair? Ah, my lovely girl.. We enter into the same relationships over and over again. We think this one will be different, but it’s just the same old bridge we’ve always painted. We repeat our patterns, the same scene over and over again, losing clarity and insight as time goes on, each new relationship less carefully painted. Because we are slowly losing our ability to see. Earlier today we encountered Vermeer, the 16th century Dutch master who painted clear scenes of ordinary people in ordinary clothes doing ordinary things. Sublime images, haunting and beautiful. Vermeer tried to capture light. In fact, maybe the only thing he really painted was light, and not the subjects you see in his paintings. He painted the light. Only the light. He didn’t see a table, he saw a table that reflected light. To him, the light was supreme, the only really interesting element, the most important theme of the picture. If there was no light, nothing else in the picture would make any sense or even exist. Without the light, the wonderful light, nothing else mattered. Oh, my lovely girl... to paint our relationship like Vermeer... to capture the light... and only the light.