Last weekend, Craig and I went to see a gallery exhibition at the Lyth Arts Centre. It’s called “Infinitas Graçias“, and features small paintings from a Mexican church”””ex-votos” made to thank saints for interceding on their part. The art is primitive, childish, and often gory, with blood flying out of people’s mouths or limbs. And, from this cultural distance, it’s difficult not to smirk at some of the subject matter.
From the show’s description:
“This exhibition includes reproductions of over a hundred such works from a church in the mining community of Real de Catorce, where the tradition is particularly strong. They contain images of rural life with animals, vehicles, road accidents, hospitals, murders and family dramas. We see life in a country with no NHS, where religion offers the only hope for those in need.”
As I mentioned here yesterday, I’ve been feeling distinctly out of sorts since getting back from Canada””listless, depressed, hollow. For more than I week, I’d been waiting for the mood to pass, but it didn’t, which was starting to worry me.
It’s particularly difficult to suffer from poor mental health in an age where so much is framed in terms of “manifest destiny”””especially around Olympics-time, where hard work is given as the solution to everything. “Get famous! Be rich! Be number one!” Whatever field you’re in, you’re told that if you’re not winning, you’re just not trying hard enough. How do you “win” your way out of a depression?
I decided to just sit with it and wait it out. But last night, remembering the Mexican exhibit, I decided to throw out a desperate prayer. Not being Catholic, my choice of saints was severely limited, so I decided to make up my own: St Max, named for Maxwell Perkins, the editor who discovered and shaped the work of Lost Generation writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald. My prayer wasn’t especially articulate, more of a pre-verbal crie de coeur like “Get me out of this!”
It worked.
Hey, I know I made it up. But it worked, so I don’t care what the mechanics were here. This was an intractable funk that had me scared, and now it’s gone.
So here’s the retablo I made for Saint Max:
Hell, I don’t even know that much about Max Perkins. I haven’t read the famous biography. But I’ve come to recognise that I’ve got a cast of inner characters who might be Jungian archetypes or voices of conditioning or even little bits of crazy, and they dress up in different personas. I don’t think there’s any actual connection to their real-world cognates; they’re my own internal version of that person, representing something specific.
I think Hemingway was nudging Max’s elbow, too. Last night I sat in bed reading from a huge chunk of lumber containing all of Hemingway’s short stories, and I was moved by the deftness and care with which he attended to little, tiny details of life””the mixing of ice with booze (a favourite of his), the look of the fresh sheets and sparse furnishings in a holiday cabin, the feeling of being a passenger in a train berth at night watching the world go by through a portal. Anything and everything was worthy of attention. Somehow this brought the creative world down to an accessible level in my mind.
Yes, I know: Hemingway“”hardly an easy benchmark to compare oneself with, but this was about invitation, community, not competition. Besides which, Papa has his own weaknesses, like his female characters who all speak like poorly programmed pleasure robots with the nag chip inserted:
“Oh darling, we will have such a jolly time, won’t we? Please tell me we will. Even if it’s a lie, I want you to tell me we will be jolly.” (He lies to shut her up, then takes a drink as they drive in an open-top car and he thinks about the war.)
Today I woke up and immediately knew something was different, like the boiler-tank in my belly had been filled back up with water. I wasn’t scorching and empty, I was full of steam and couldn’t wait to get the day going. None of the specifics are any different, but it’s an entirely different world, an inviting one. The slick slate tiles of the old buildings outside and the grey sky above””it’s beautiful. The weak lick of the gas fire here in the pub, the old couple with the tousled white hair having coffees””I love them. The work before me today””an exciting puzzle I know I am the equal to.
Whatever the cause, thank you for this.