Creative Process part 1
The homework apartment’s internet was shut off unless Hudson had a research assignment to do, so he was stuck with old fashioned day dreaming. He chewed at the calluses on his fingertips. The classical guitar lessons were starting to harden them. But he didn’t want to be a classical guitarist. He wanted to be an artist. To create beauty. Something more fundamental than producing sound. Produce his own small piece of eternity.
He imagined in a hundred years, his now aged grandchildren attending a reception at the Met. Wearing long gloves in shiny futuristic colors and complicated, feathered hairpieces. Hover trays carry morsels of Etruscan Pottery on dissolving toothpicks. The family is sipping champagne and laughing with their dearest friends until the oldest, her hair still a youthful red, gracefully sounds her champagne flute with a salad fork. The room hushes and Delilah begins speaking, remembering her Papa Hudson. How they always had the best dinners when Papa Hudson was the artist. They often ordered art from the Met or occasionally brunch from the Terrapin in Chelsea; there were the holidays spent in the the Vatican museum, feasting on tapestries, busts, murals, oil on canvas, even sarcophagi. But none of it compared to Papa Hudson’s creations. It was all the brilliance and talent to be found at any of these institutions, but with the love and warmth of home-made art. And tonight we were here to celebrate Papa Hudson and to donate a substantial portion of the Van Luven private collections of his works to the institution most recognized for honoring great artists: The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
At this the room becomes a flutter of applause and approving murmurs. Delilah places her hand on the veil covering one the centerpieces of the collection that was to become the Met’s. She drew at the cloth to unveil a blurry image. Something three dimensional, but it was blurred out as though it were being censored by television producers.
Pressing his lips into a thin line and gripping his blazer sleeves, Hudson, eyes shut, tried to focus the image under the veil. If he could just see it, he could make it. He knew he had the talent. He just needed to know what to do with it, what to produce, what his eternal creation would be. The image starts to form into smaller pixels, colors condensing, fluctuating as though a can of paint were on the stove and slowly coming to a boil. Which is where he’d like to put that miscreant Chihuahua, Pocket from next door. The yapping melted the hardening colors and pixels back into puddle. He thought he’d had a flash of it, crisp, just for a flash, but he couldn’t be sure. It was too unlikely, and too easily influenced by the outside world.
