Astounding Magazine - Inspirational Short Stories

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Author:R.J.Xavier

I would like to write in this magazine, articles that readers find interesting and useful. This magazine is about literature, the arts, science and history.

The Painter

Many years ago I tried my hand at painting, like most people who start out my paintings weren’t always good, and many of them were just plain bad, but of course they all looked good to me. I was one of the people in this world who can’t see anything bad in anything they paint, (many people have this weakness but for them it is not anything they paint but anything they do) and unfortunately I had this weakness. It was perhaps an inability to judge rather than a high opinion of myself, in any case it felt good to draw hundreds of paintings almost as good as Vincent Van Gough and a few even better than him. So I wanted to see the Director of one of the few companies that buy paintings. It was perfectly built building with several floors of Teak and it did not have an elevator but a finely built staircase. In every floor there were marble statues and paintings of every kind, oils, acrylics, water colors and drawings that took my breath away.

But there was also a certain coldness, perhaps it was the air conditioning, but the receptionist was so distant that I felt she would have regarded me a little better if I had worn shoes and worn my best shirt. And the sales girl though friendly was nervous, and I wondered whether it was my overly enthusiastic way of speaking or whether she was looking over my shoulder to see if someone was coming. And strangely there were few people in the building but the people who worked there. Assertiveness is something I was practicing on then, and I wanted to give the impression I was important in case they take my position lightly, so in my best voice I asked the sales girl how many paintings they sold everyday. She thought about it for a minute and said “the question you must ask is how many paintings we sell a month”. The manager of the fifth floor a big middle aged man with a thick moustache spied on me, perhaps he was worried I would lift a painting, he walked up to me and was engaged in small talk, but lost all interest in me when he realized that what I really wanted to do was to sell rather than buy, and he walked away without a word.

But what really surprised me was the director, a women of such singular plainness that I wondered whether she was perhaps the principal of a leading girls school who was a near relative of the director, who was standing in because the director was ill. She considered the paintings poorly and at first rejected one of the paintings, and seemed to accept the other three. She considered again and rejected another, and a while later decided all four were not good. She said that compared to the paintings they had on display some by well known artists two of my paintings looked childish, and the other two looked like posters so the customers might think they are not genuine paintings. What I really wanted to ask her is which customers was she talking about for in the three hours I spent in the building I hadn’t seen any. Then she said “I could accept it but they would end up in a corner in this building and probably get lost”. And then she said in her perfect accent “If you come again make sure you make an appointment first.” But what really blew the wind off my sails was as I was walking away the paintings tucked and heavy in my hands she asked in a very firm voice “weren’t you the one who called and complained about our water color paper.”

About three years earlier I did complain but I was impeccably polite and I did not know that she was the director. I went home disappointed and did not paint for another week, but then a strange thought came to my mind. What if the director was right, what if my paintings were really not good. And in any case assuming that she accepted it, and it was eventually sold to a customer (I get my 70 percent and the company gets 30 percent only if a customer buys it), I would make very little money on it because the materials used for fine art are very expensive, and in the island I live in few people would buy a painting and the few that do would pay very little for it.

I decided to paint something that would cost very little, but at the same time look as good as an expensive painting. I tried for a month but could not achieve it, but one day in a small shop I bought a pen, which was only as expensive as an ordinary ball point pen but the flow of ink was so fast that it could be used for quick drawings. I used this pen to draw on paper larger than the A4 size. I also developed a quick method of drawing which meant my output would be at least 5 drawings per day. My drawings resembled etchings and had a strange energy to them, and as far as I know I am the only person who uses this method of drawing.

When the director saw my drawings it only took her a few seconds to accept all ten. And a customer bought all ten the very next day. The drawings cost only a hundredth as much as my earlier paintings and I can draw fifteen times as many, and because it is so cheap almost everyone wants to buy. And the lesson I leant from it is “if at first you don’t succeed try again, but make sure you use a different method and also you never fail until you fail to try”

Paul Cezanne

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is one of the Post Impressionist painters that many people have not heard of. He was known as the “hermit from Aix” and he lacked confidence and resolve to become a successful artist. His friend Emile Zola, who later became the well known novelist, encouraged him to go to Paris.

In Paris he visited the Louvre and copied the work of Titian, Rubens and Michelangelo. Cezanne’s early work suggest that Impressionism which had broad prominent brush strokes, bright colors and which sometimes had a rough look that made it look incomplete even when the artists had finished painting was something that came naturally to Cezanne. For although he had a strong artistic sense, he lacked the discipline and concentration needed to paint like the old masters. But more importantly, according to Zola, although he did not pursue it further Cezanne had been a promising poet during his days at College Bourbon, so impressionism which is all about painting from ordinary life would have appealed more to him.

Portrait of Achille Emperaire (1867-1870), drawn when he was 28 years old shows a man sitting in a chair, it’s a proud solemn face but with a kind expression on it, it’s is perhaps how many people would imagine a good king to be, but the body is disproportionately small and frail. This is a portrait of a fellow student at the Atelier Suisse, a hunch backed dwarf who Cezanne greatly respected. Like most of his paintings at that time it was rejected by the Salon of 1870.

Some of his paintings look utterly ordinary, but are very pleasing to the eye. The Chateau de Medan, (1879-1881), was Zola’s summer house in Medan. It was painted when Cezanne was 41 years old and is a painting of a river behind which there is a riverbank. The river bank appears quite steep and climbs up to a group of trees and houses. These too appear to be on a hill which climbs up to a cloudy sky. The composition in this painting is simple. There is no aerial perspective in it, which makes things that are further away to fade. Perhaps this is a conscious decision by the artist to make it more interesting, or perhaps it was drawn in bright sunshine which reduces this effect. The brush strokes are prominent and are slanted to one side. The colors used are minimal. There is an inviting green for the trees which covers a big portion of the painting. There is yellow ochre for the river bank, and a lighter shade of it for the houses.

The river is painted as a shadow of the trees and the riverbank and so has only these two colors applied with horizontal brush strokes. The roofs of the houses are a dull pink, except one big house in the right hand corner which has a blue roof. The sky itself is cloudy, so is mostly white, with touches of light Prussian blue. The only other color in this painting are touches of yellow for the top of some trees. One reason this painting looks so good is we have all been to a river that looks like it, perhaps it was during childhood, perhaps we never really went there but saw it somewhere and imagined that we did. And this is one of the characteristics of Cezanne’s paintings which although sometimes painted in an utterly ordinary painting style manage to capture the interests of the beholder.

The Sea at L’Estaque, 1876, is an even better painting for in it the composition is also good. The landscape is diagonal to the sea, and jagged tree trunks are used to create tension. In it you get the strange feeling of sitting on the branch of a tree, which is on the top of a hill and looking down at the trees and houses and the sea stretching below. Like so many of Cezanne’s paintings it has even lighting, which makes it pleasant for there are no dark gloomy areas in the painting.

Cezanne’s Still Lifes are perhaps the best paintings of its kind by any artist. The gorgeously painted fruits, the tables, parts of chairs, the unarranged table cloth, the pots, bottles, fruit baskets are so skillfully painted that, when you see such a picture you get the feeling that it was partly copied or at least inspired by Cezanne. Basket of Apples 1890-1894 (detail) is a good example of it, but still it does have the drawback of not having the great emotional content of many of his landscape paintings.

Near the end of his life Cezanne did endless paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire. These had a strange cleverness to them. In these Linear perspective, which makes things that are nearer bigger and things that are far away smaller, seems to have been ignored but somehow the paintings seem just “right”. Perhaps different colors were used to get this effect. It seems clear that no other artist used this technique before or since. Among the last paintings he did was Mont Sainte-Victoire, Seen from Les Lauves, 1904-1906, it seems part abstract, squres of color could either be houses, trees or even rocks, the mountain itself is not clearly defined and seems to merge with the sky in the left hand corner. The sky has large patches of green, there are dark areas of the painting that could be almost anything. Taken in parts it is a messy painting, but when it is held at a distance and viewed in its entirety, it seems the most powerful, and the most beautiful picture he ever drew.

Of Singers and Songs

A song is the window to the soul and the singer is the person who takes us there. About one in 30 people can sing quite well. They can sing in a tune well enough that only an expert can find anything wrong. Their timing is good enough that only a good drummer can spot it. About one in 300 people can sing so well that even a professional can’t spot anything wrong with the tune but can spot other mistakes in the presentation. About one in 3000 people can sing so well that that even a professional would find it difficult to find anything “technically wrong” with it. So are one in 3000 people really good singers? The answer is no.

Some really talented singers sing in such an icy manner that it all but freezes the audience. They do not capture the emotions of the listeners or excite them. Sometimes the song is just plain wrong for a particular audience. The energy of the song is transferred by the singer to the audience, so a singer who does not have an enthusiasm or liking for the song does not connect with the listener. Some singers have unusual voices that somehow capture the imagination of the audience. Perhaps it is certain vulnerability in the voice that people like. So some really popular singers don’t have “good” voices in the traditional sense of the word, so in some strange way a bad voice can be an asset.

A colleague of mine goes to singing auditions all around the country but gets rejected in the first round every time. His timing isn’t perfect, and the voice is rough and low, and there are times when he is off pitch, but he sings with such enthusiasm that it is very entertaining. A singer like this cannot make a mark in the music industry, but for pure entertainment value he is much better than many well known singers on Television. And it is a pity for singing is all about entertaining.

What was said above about singers can equally well be applied for songs. Songs create a world of their own, sometimes happy and at other times sad. Some really good songs leave an after taste that makes you want to hum it on your way home. Some hit your mind in a strange way but it is difficult to say just how. Some beats make you tap your feet and some make you stand still and think. Lyrics play an important role in any song, some lyrics are really good poems, but some that have a direct meaning are still very good. Many of the Beatles songs fall into this category. Some are really short stories like Kenny Rogers “The Coward of the County”. It is true that different people like different songs, but a really good song would be liked by everyone, which goes to show that in a very fundamental way we are all alike. And when a good really good song meets a really good singer – we have a Number One.