This week I read The Monument, a young adult book by Gary Paulsen. In it a recently adopted 13 year old girl encounters an artist, Mick, and it changes her life. She looks at her small Kansas town through Mick’s eyes and sees everything in a new light. Her leg brace and coffee-colored skin set her apart from the other kids her age so that a tag-along dog she adopted, Python, is her only companion. Mick gives her a book about Degas to study.
But even with that, even with the beauty, I was still trying to work, trying to see the colors and the way Degas had drawn things until I turned the page and just stopped, stopped dead.
It was a painting of a group of young women practicing ballet, called The Dance Master. The wall in the room was green and there was a big mirror on one side for the dancers to see themselves. In the background there is a raised platform or bleachers for people to sit and watch and dancers are everywhere, practicing, stretching, fixing their costumes. On one side there is an older man leaning on a cane–an instructor–and he is watching them, studying them, and still I would have been all right except for the girl.
She was standing to the side of the dancers but almost in the middle of the painting and she is watching them, worried about something, with her hand to her mouth, and I looked at her and started to cry.
She looked like me, or sort of like me, but that wasn’t it–at first I didn’t know why I was crying. Then I thought of what they were, all of them, dancers, and that all of what they were was gone.
The painting was done in the late eighteen-hundreds. They were all gone. All dead. I wanted to know the girl, wanted to watch them practice. I wanted to see the dresses move and hear the music, wanted to know which ones the dance master picked for performance and if the girl who looked a little like me was one of them. I wanted to talk to them and ask them how it was to wear the costumes and dance and dance and dance without one stiff leg. I wanted to know their dreams and hopes…
It was a painting of a group of young women practicing ballet, called The Dance Master. The wall in the room was green and there was a big mirror on one side for the dancers to see themselves. In the background there is a raised platform or bleachers for people to sit and watch and dancers are everywhere, practicing, stretching, fixing their costumes. On one side there is an older man leaning on a cane–an instructor–and he is watching them, studying them, and still I would have been all right except for the girl.
She was standing to the side of the dancers but almost in the middle of the painting and she is watching them, worried about something, with her hand to her mouth, and I looked at her and started to cry.
She looked like me, or sort of like me, but that wasn’t it–at first I didn’t know why I was crying. Then I thought of what they were, all of them, dancers, and that all of what they were was gone.
The painting was done in the late eighteen-hundreds. They were all gone. All dead. I wanted to know the girl, wanted to watch them practice. I wanted to see the dresses move and hear the music, wanted to know which ones the dance master picked for performance and if the girl who looked a little like me was one of them. I wanted to talk to them and ask them how it was to wear the costumes and dance and dance and dance without one stiff leg. I wanted to know their dreams and hopes…
A Living Pencil 