Painting

Dreams are often removed from the rule of permanence that we hold true for the reality experienced in a waking state. Dreams are divorced from the physical laws of chronological and material constraint that are realized as “natural” in the conscious, thinking state. Dreams share a fine line with nightmares: where the line sits is entirely left to the imagination. Would it be a dream, or would it be a nightmare, if I were to be visited by my father? He had left me without notice ten years ago, but I don’t know this in the dream. In the dream, I am unaware of his second family, his debts, his ephemerality. Unencumbered by what I know of him now, I am blissfully sharing a picnic with him, like we used to. I decided this was a nightmare upon waking, for the dream would haunt me throughout the week as an alternate reality that we could have shared. 

Though we hold no power to choose our parents, in a liberal society the power is ours to decide on a partner. I decided long ago that I wanted to find the antithesis of my father. I merely wanted someone nice and predictable. When I found him, soon before I fell in love, I realized I had found much more. We had picnics. We had Melba toast and wine salami on Centre Island as the peachy summer sky melted into dark nothingness. We shucked oysters at the little park facing the gigantic box on sticks that we’ve since learned was OCAD. In his presence, I felt at home, comfortable, and free to wonder, not thinking twice about the permission to dream.

He, too, is like a dream, a wonderful illogical series of happenings over which I have no control. I remember him in fragments, like an album on scratched vinyl, skipping over verses, leaving the music up to interpretation. I remember him fancifully, such that he has become my muse. In the valleys of his cheek bones, the clarity of his irises, the satin of his hair, I find feelings that I wish to preserve as static tangibles, as shapes impressed onto a canvas sheet, waiting to be photographed, seen, and admired. My muse is at once both tragic and flawless, I decided as a concession to the pains of loving him.

This concession is a necessary one, for without it, I would know that he no longer met my expectations, and that would drive me mad. The expectation of flawlessness has been modified to accept celebrated depictions of virtuous characters who have fallen from grace. They are flawless not in their being free of error, but they are flawless in their beauty, their fallibility. What depth can one possess without deep-seated fears and anxiety? I have superimposed this rule of tragic flaw being necessary for a good narrative onto the narrative of my lived experience. I do so not to glamorize complacency, but instead to stay sane and to forget that this all can change. Unlike a dream, an ephemeral experience controlled not by will but by imagination, I can leave him in the conscious reality we share. I can do anything, and yet, I choose to believe.

Though I have immortalized him as a muse, he seems to remember me, as of recent, only on a whim. He says he loves me, and that may be so. But it has grown harder to accept how often he forgets, and how little he tries to remember. When I remember the time in which he used to write me letters, when he was less abrasive to the touch, I realize something about myself. 

I borrowed the artistic style of Sam McKinnis in making this portrait. McKinnis photographed the musician Lorde for two days in his studio to achieve the reference shot for her Melodrama album cover. I thought Lorde’s cover felt effortless, with her easy gaze framed by loose brush strokes of charcoal waves mixed into the crisp edges of her sheets. My subject, by contrast, is rendered in glacial tones that convey coolness. His half-lidded gaze conveys, at least I thought, the same ease. Crouching over him, I momentarily forgot that he was posing for a photo. But this expression is manufactured by my vocal expectations. We were not lackadaisical, lying under the dying glow of sunlight after a day’s work spent in starched button shirts. The arrangement was effortful, and he was easy enough to comply, but not quite easy enough to be as relaxed as he looked. But I choose not to remember this.

I want to believe that loving is easy and effortless for as long as I uphold my part. Loving him is like a dream in that the experience cannot be consciously controlled. He is, in a way, the embodiment of a dream: an imagined reality. 

There is an idea of who he is.

Some kind of abstraction, but there is no real him.

Only an entity—something illusory.

And though I can forget his cold gaze…

and he can hold my hand and feel flesh gripping his…

and maybe I can even sense our lifestyles are probably compatible,

He simply is not there.