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Blogs by Joseph W. Montaperto
A FINISHED PRODUCT 8/7/2022 4:01:54 PM
This is it! Joey and Na-Na are finishing up their masterpiece on the art room wall! This Sunday night is our last one, and we’re back in the art room. This is it! The finishing touches. Rummaging through his huge ring of keys again, Na-Na picks out a distinctive looking gold one, the smallest key in the pack, and heads over to Silverstein’s art closet. I’m puzzled, because I know that nobody has that key. Silverstein was the only one who had that, and he guarded it like Zell, the Nazi dentist from the movie, The Marathon Man, guarded his diamond stash. Maybe that’s what I’ll call Silverstein from now on - Zell. Ha, yeah he’d like that. Zell.
Na-Na opens it up, the closet - and I can’t believe what I see! More colors than I could ever imagine. Some of which I had never seen or even heard of before. Bright colors.
Tangerine. Sky Blue. Burnt Auburn. Teal. Bright pink, and that’s just to name a few. Cans, and tubes and tubes of brand new paint. What the hell was Zell doing? Hoarding paint for his old age, or something?! This is ridiculous. I look over at Na-Na. He’s smiling like he’s just scored a pound of heroin. For free. We set up everything, and hungrily divide up the paint, like we’re gangsters from those old, Superman TV shows, after a bank heist.
“Listen, Peanuts - one for you and one for me, see?”
We do our spliff thing, and I get up on that ladder feeling giddy and free, a myriad of fresh paint at my disposal.
Etta James is again wailing away in the background, and everything eventually just morphs into a sea of bright colors. It becomes almost psychedelic, the high from the ganja turning it all into a dreamy ambiance.
In my imagination, I’m one of those hipster artists from, like, the 1920s or 30s, wearing a beret, and hanging in the Cotton Club, or one of those funky speakeasies in Harlem. Great black musicians jamming, the energy wild, intense, and cutting edge. You feel, somehow, like you’re either watching history - or making it.
I don’t even know where all these images are coming from. Maybe from some of those old photos I saw in that jazz book the Professor was showing me a while back? All I do know is that I am so locked in. What had before just been outlines and forms, are now coming to life with depth and clarity. As I mix the array of paints, I find just the right shade for Esperanza’s skin tone
Again, we work through the whole night, and when dawn hits, we know we got to get out of here. It’s Monday morning, and the staff will soon be arriving. We finish up as best we can - mine all bright colors and flash, a testimony to love and beauty. Na-Na’s masterpiece recreating the darkness of that night, of that world. Violent, muted colors, with brilliant splashes of red creating a metaphorical contrast. Somehow, though, it meshes - the two pieces. The opposites say something, are connected in a sort of profound way. Although, it is far from perfect. I mean, I don’t think you can ever be totally satisfied, but I believe we both came away with a deep sense of achievement. We’ve created something meaningful in only about eighteen intense hours. Yeah.
I leaf through, The Prophet, which I had brought along with me this time, and I begin searching for something to jump out at me. Something that would tie up the significance of the whole thing. I find something interesting under the heading, Speak To Us of Beauty.
“Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her, unless she herself be your Way and your Guide?
And how shall you speak of her, except that she be the weaver of your speech?”
I ponder that for a few minutes, letting it soak in, and circulate through me. Alas, it doesn’t strike me in a way that really summarizes what I’m trying to say. It just doesn’t hit it. With dawn pouring in, I decide to put down the first words that pop into my head. It’s a phrase that comes from an Etta James tune, one that really touched me.
At Last, I Found a Dream That I Could Speak To.
Na-Na writes down:
By Whatever Means Necessary.
I don’t know where he gets that from, and have no inkling how much I will become connected to it later on.
“Hey Na, man, check it out - should we sign our names?”
He stares at me for a couple of seconds.
“I mean, we’ll be totally busted if we do.”
A defiant smirk crosses his face.
“Let’s do it.”
We sign, clean up the paint, I snap a few pictures with my mother’s Polaroid Instant Camera I had carried with me. Then we gas out of there, to get maybe an hour of sleep before I have to return. No way I’m going to miss this morning.
