Riffing on shoes and paint

This image is just the scraps from an earlier image.

Dear diary,

You’re wasting yourself. You’re not living up to your potential. The Devil blessed you with talents & you’re not using them. He made you a skillful painter, but you just sit around binge-watching teleplays, so none of your masterworks get created. You don’t even spackle unfinished surfaces when you pass them. You espied a damaged section of sheetrock in your friend’s garage, so you voluntarily demolished half of its northern wall; then you affixed new panels to the exposed studs, but you stopped short of priming them.

You should at least spray-paint your shoes. I’ve heard of people spraying their tennis shoes gold; and I’ve heard of shoes that were painted entirely white. (That’s different from purchasing white shoes from the factory, because store-bought shoes will always have a few details about them that are not plain; whereas if you use bright white spray-paint, not one atom can avoid appearing saintly.)

Now, altho spray-painting one’s shoes is held by tradition to be a less noble endeavor than oil-painting canvases, no one has ever given any reason for this belittling paradigm; so I’ll give it a try. I’m always interested in attempting the impossible.

A virgin canvas demands to be filled with the most profound visions one can imagine. And to consummate these forms of genius requires everything from the meticulous mixing of pigments to the mastering of techniques in application: brushwork, craftsmanship... Also, most paint contains toxins that will torment you into an early grave, where you’ll meet your maker. So, choosing to be a painter of canvas is exactly the same as choosing to be a martyr. Moreover, no one believes in your cause.

Shoe-spraying, on the other hand, is easy. You don’t have to dream up any gods or naked women for them to chase. All you do is aim the can and press the nozzle. A jet of spume will discharge in a conic array and baptize your shoe. And you should shake the can before spraying. Make sure you’re not holding the shoe with your bare hand while you apply the paint, for the spray might tint your skin; and then you’d either have to wash it off, or pretend for the rest of your life that you’re wearing a glove.

Also note, when you shake the can, that it rattles: This is probably because a silver sphere, like the kind used in pinball machines and roulette, got trapped inside the cylinder. And those contents are under pressure.

So we’ve uncovered another dichotomy: Paint = good; spray = bad. However, as usual, this truth is subjective. It’s not unthinkable for a person to disagree with our moral findings here. In fact, most people do not seek out canvases with oil paintings to look at – they’d rather look at canvas sneakers. Especially if those sneakers are glittering gold.

Yet what if a thinker like Magritte were to render a painting of just such a shoe and name it “This is not a shoe”? Would you visit a museum to view this, or would you still prefer to go to the mall instead? At the mall, they have rows and rows of shoes displayed in shoe stores; and their entryways are glass, so that you can see inside.

I guess I’m asking: What’s the difference between, on the one hand, a painting of footwear, even if it’s the golden sandal of God which he lost at the ball; and, on the other hand, a large glass, offering a view of infinite sneakers? I guess the answer would depend on whether the footwear of God is fool’s gold, or simply a glass slipper spray-painted yellow – & also: Was the glass of the shoe store’s entryway silvered, and did the sign overhead read “Footwear Not for Sale”? Because you can fake infinity by using mirrors.

Now I can’t cite any sources, and I don’t want to reveal the names of my informants, but I’ve been told that, among all the canvas artists in this world who use oil-based paint to make their mark, there’s a lone trailblazer who brands himself the painter of light. I have just one question about that descriptor: Does the phrase “of light” indicate that you smear actual photons on your medium, OR are you trying to say that you perform light-painting the way that state-fair personnel perform body-painting? Cuz at our annual festival here in MN we have a booth where you can undress and someone will paint jeans and a t-shirt over your bare flesh, to facilitate the illusion, at first glance, that you are clad, whereas, at second and third glance, it becomes clear that you’re merely aroused. Thus, a “painter of light” might airbrush phantom flesh so that it seems anthropomorphic—for the epidermis of a deity consists of wholly photons (not including angel hair)—so, this way, the gods can walk among us. Or, rather, chase among us. For civility proves but a semblance; an extremely subtle farce. Yes, assuming that there exist non-deific humans—souls devoid of divinity—then they are as nude as we are; the only difference is that they continue descending while we keep ascending the heavenly staircase. Unless it’s the other way around.

[From “Song of Myself” §44:]

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser
     of things to be.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches
     between the steps,
All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was
     even there…