Someone recently recommended that I read a book entitled “My Name Is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok. It’s a book about a Hasidic Jew who is an artist, and his artistic gift is not valued by his community. Like the boy, Asher Lev, I often feel like my art isn’t “pretty,” and so people won’t like it. I often think that my art makes people feel things that they don’t want to feel. And I wonder how much of that is all in my head.
The Artist Residency is beginning at Mars Hill today, and this year I am gratefully going to be a participating artist. As this week of creative play and labor begins, I want to embrace the freedom to draw what is inside of me. ”The world isn’t pretty. I won’t draw it pretty.” I want to use a passage from the book as a guide as I begin the journey, and I’d like to share it with you now.
To give a little background, Asher Lev’s mother is in the middle of a deep depression after her brother, Yaakov, has died. At this point in the book, Asher is six years old, and the drawing that he speaks about is of his father talking on the phone with someone about the hardships of the Jews in Russia.
Toward the end of the meal, I said abruptly, “I made a drawing today, Mama.” My thin voice sounded loud in the smoky silence of the kitchen.
My father had been sitting tiredly over his food. Now he looked at me, startled.
“Yes?” my mother said in a dead voice. ”Yes? Was it a pretty drawing?”
“It was a drawing of my papa on the telephone.”
“On the telephone,” my mother echoed. She looked dully at my father.
“Asher,” my father said quietly.
“It was a good drawing, Mama.”
“Was it a pretty drawing, Asher?”
“No, Mama. But it was a good drawing.”
Her eyes narrowed. They seemed tiny slits in the blue-gray darkness of her sockets.
“I don’t want to make pretty drawings, Mama.”
She lit another cigarette. Her hands trembled faintly. An odor rose from her, fetid, cloying. I put down my fork and stopped eating. My father took a deep breath. Mrs. Rackover stood very still near the sink.
“Yes?” my mother said. Her voice was sharp. ”I want the pennies now, Yaakov.”
“Rivkeh,” my father said. ”Please.”
“You should make the world pretty, Asher,” my mother whispered, leaning toward me. I could smell her breath.
“I don’t like the world, Mama. It’s not pretty. I won’t draw it pretty.”
I felt my father’s fingers on my arm. He was hurting me.
“Yes?” my mother said. ”Yes?” She stubbed out the cigarette she had just lit and began to light another. Her hands trembled visibly. ”No, no, Asher. No, no. You must not dislike God’s world. Even if it is unfinished.”
“I hate the world,” I said.
“Stop it,” my father said.
“You must not hate, you must not hate,” my mother whispered. ”You must try to finish.”
“Mama, when will you get well?”
“Asher!” someone said.
“Mama, I want you to get well.”
“Asher!”
To this day, I have no idea what happened then. There was a sensation of something tearing wide apart inside me and a steep quivering climb out of myself. I felt myself suddenly another person. I heard that other person screaming, shrieking, beating his fists against the top of the table. ”I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it!” that other person kept screaming. I remember nothing after that. Sometime later, I woke in my room. My father stood over my bed, looking exhausted.
“Mama,” I said.
“Your mama is asleep.”
“Mama, please.”
“Go back to sleep, Asher. It’s the middle of the night.”
I was in my pajamas. The night light was on near my desk. The slit of window not covered by the shade was black.
“No one likes my drawings,” I said through the fog of half sleep. ”My drawings don’t help.”
My father said nothing.
“I don’t like to feel this way, Papa.”
Gently, my father put his hand on my cheek.
“It’s not a pretty world, Papa.”
“I’ve noticed,” my father said softly.
My pledge for this week: To draw the world as I see it, not as others want me to see it. May it be good, even if it’s not pretty.
