GEORGE AND HIS DEMONS.

AN ARTIST AND HIS LIFE IN PARIS.

My art is my god, said George. My easel is my altar, my brushes and oils the body and blood of my soul. Turpentine is in my skin and cloth; it seeps into my very heart. I frequent the cafés of Paris with my canvases and girls; the nights are spent with both, each in turn absorbing me piece-by-piece, touch by touch, kiss by kiss. I linger over them in deep thought; touching and dabbing with my brush or hand, feeling the art come forth like a child from the womb. My models sit and stare at the starkness of my room, the squalor of my studio, they make love to me in my lonely hours, they pose for me when the muse demands. I smell their scent, it sours my dreams, it seeps into my flesh, my nostrils drink their vapours like cheap wine. I know the streets of Paris like a child knows its mother’s breast, can walk the streets with a steady step, sit at tables with an artist’s eye, feel the girls with my knowing hand, speak of art as a priest his god. My sister Agnes prays for my soul from her holy cell, her words are sin and salvation, her eyes on her Crucified, the Bridegroom of her sexless bed. She has no time for art or the liberation from an empty tomb, all her ways are white and pure, her hands cold as ice on a winter’s day. My father has disowned me like a wasted coat, a lost soul, an awful stain; he has his words set in stone, his hands heavy with his holy book, his feet stuck in the mire of his dead god’s flesh. My mother died of cancer; her screams haunt me night and day, her wasted flesh like dying fish, her eyes empty of all but pain and guilt. Ingrid carries my child, she swells and sings like a whale at sea, her eyes large and blue like a summer’s sky. I lick her limbs like a lion at feast, bite at her lobes in my lustful hours; I kiss her lids, her fleshy lips, her fruitful thighs. I capture her in my art, spread her wide and deep, and bury all before me in the oils and paint. Laws and history make criminals of us all; time has no sense of right or wrong, all is senseless in a godless world. I walk the streets that Degas walked; sip the wine of the bloodied grape, eat the flesh of the dead and wasted in the dark cafes; sing my song with my lustful girls, feel their loneliness in the touch of my hand and sight of eye, and their lips speak of things that would squeeze my father’s brain and bring him ache and pain. Pray for us my sister in your holy hours, think of us on your bended knee, reach out for us with your saintly hand draw us back from the dark land.