We didn’t do the second portrait that night, remember? It was the reason we’d come, and we fell asleep before we could finish what we’d started. Tonight I’m going to finish what I started. And then I’m going to put this in my rearview mirror where it belongs.
Here’s what I don’t understand though. Here’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for a long time. How do you let go of something that lives inside of you? How do you remove something that feels attached to your ribcage and wrapped around your heart? How do you cut that out without losing a piece of yourself in the process?
Art?
Maybe.
That’s how our story began.
With art.
Mine, not yours.
Or was it?
The first thing I asked you was how you felt about art, and do you remember what you said? You said it was a way to tell the truth. And right away I knew. Not because I liked your face—though I did. Not because I was looking for a lover—I was not. But because something about you felt like home.
You inspired me.
And isn’t that where all great art starts?
Isn’t inspiration born in those imaginary moments that incite riots and recognition in our spirits?
Most people think of inspiration as a kind of mystical influence that stirs the mind or the soul, but the verb “to inspire” also means “to draw in.” Specifically, it’s the drawing of air into the lungs. Think about that. Inspiration is how we breathe. It’s how we stay alive.
I told you this once before. We were watching a bird outside the window, and I told you there was something about your energy, in its almost comical melancholy, that inspired me in ways I still don’t know how to explain. But the words coming to me now are these: You reminded me of who and what I am. That is, an artist. Oh, I know, I was an artist long before you strolled into my studio, and I am an artist without you now. But you know as well as I do that artists often feel like hacks. We exist in vacuums for long periods of time and need someone or something that reflects our work back to us in a way that allows us to see it in a different light. To see ourselves in a different light.
You did that for me. You got me out of my head and back into my heart. And that meant something to me. It meant something to you too. I know it did.
At this point in the clip, October puts her sketchbook and pencil down and paces around the room. The camera follows her to the painting above the recliner, the one of the wave crashing onto the beach. She reaches out and touches it, and she laughs, and I know with complete certainty that she’s remembering the night we were there together, and how we thought the water was going to spill out over the chair.
She’s still looking at the painting when she says: After you left, Chris asked me if perhaps I thought I could save you, if that had been the appeal. But I never saw you as someone who needed saving. I saw you as someone who needed to be understood.
She goes back to the bed, picks up the pad, and studies what she’s drawn for forty-seven seconds. Then she says: You know what I missed after you left? I missed your forearms. (She laughs again.) I missed the way we would curl up on the couch at night, drink a little wine, and play each other songs on my computer, and you’d let me trace constellations in the freckles on your forearms. Remember the night I drew them with a Sharpie? You had Lyra and Orion inked on your skin for days.
For a while after you left, I would go outside at night and look for Lyra and Orion in the sky, and if I couldn’t find them, I would tell myself it was because you were holding them ransom in the little connect-the-dots galaxy on your arm.
She uses her fingers to shade a bit and then resumes drawing.
I’m not going to lie. I’ve considered the possibility that I had been wrong about you. I’ve wondered if my intuition had been off. If my senses had completely failed me. (She purses her lips as if she’s still pondering the likelihood of this and then shakes her head.) Whenever I try to convince myself of that, one specific memory comes back to me. That time we went to Inverness for dinner. I was driving up Highway 1 and all of a sudden you started pointing to the left, out my window, saying, “Look over there. Do you see that? It’s a Swainson’s hawk. Up in that eucalyptus.” Then you went on about how rare they are in Marin and how they’re sometimes called grasshopper hawks because that’s their favorite food and blah blah blah; I can’t remember the rest. I hadn’t actually gotten a look at the bird, and when we got to the restaurant I asked you to pull up a photo on your phone so I could see what I’d missed. After some hemming and hawing you admitted that you’d made the whole thing up. (She imitates my voice by dropping hers an octave and mumbling.) “There was no hawk.” That’s what you said. I asked you why you’d lied, and you got all bashful and said there’d been a dead dog lying on the other side of the road, that it looked like it had been hit by a car. (Her eyes get teary and she looks up at the ceiling then back down into the camera.) You didn’t want me to see it. (She wipes her eyes, tilts her head to the side.) You knew it would hurt me and you didn’t want— (She exhales.) Ironic, I know.
Anyway.
As I was saying.
How
