El Greco and the Secret Meaning of Pants
I hadn’t been on a job interview in some time, but I wasn’t daunted. Sure, they suck. I understand that. Even self-confident persons reduce to assemblies of gibbering fidgets when they’re required to trot themselves out in flat class competition for a potential employer, good grooming and a clean tack notwithstanding. What can you do? Tell them they look great? Fat lot of good that does. Make a joke? Pratfall? Juggle eggs? Or screw it all, glom onto a bottle of gin, pull their heads back by the hair, and pour the last resort down their gullet.
I didn’t know if I needed focus or distraction. I didn’t want to do what I was doing. I couldn’t see what else to do or where I was going. I’m like that. Sometimes I don’t see things.
I once thought El Greco was a maker of silly putty saints. Figures stretched into deformity. Thin as grace. I didn’t see what was there, though I was the flame of a candle, too. Then, one day in Toledo, Spain, I came across the Church of San Tomé and found the room where hangs “Burial of the Count of Orgaz.” There was no one else there. In the weak light and quiet, or out of it, suddenly there was a symphony. A music of impossible color.
In the days that followed, I exhausted Toledo for it’s every El Greco. Then I returned to Madrid. Though I’d spent days in the Prado before leaving that city, I ignored the El Greco rooms for Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch, for Fra Angelico, Rembrandt, Ribera, and Velasquez, for the dark Goyas. Now I wanted El Greco. Forget the faces and robed shoulders of his figures. I saw by the light within them. Vermillion moved like a wash on the air. Fathoms of azurite. Toasted ochre.
***
I had no pants. No proper ones. Just cut-offs and the baggy drawstring slacks I favored once Jan and I moved to Florida.
“Do you think I need pants?” I asked her.
“Pants?”
“Yeah, do I need them?”
“Not for me,”
“For a job interview.”
“Depends on the job.”
“The college called me back. I spoke to a woman.”
“That’s great.”
“She was amiable.”
“A plus.”
“She could be smug. Smug people can seem amiable at first. Even the most horrible persons are polite on the phone. Especially them.
“Light and bright, Ari. Good attitude.”
“I said she was amiable.”
“Buy a pair of Chinos if you’re concerned.”
“Sure,” I said. “Chinos. I don’t mind. What are Chinos?”
“Target is open late.”
“Are Chinos those pants with built-in belts and that go up to your belly button?”
“What?
“You know I can’t wear something that goes up that high. It makes empty space in the crotch area. It’s unsettling.”
“That’s not what they are. They’re just pants.”
“Ah, just pants.” I arched a brow to let her know I was being sarcastic.
“What about your brown pants?”
“I have brown pants?”
“In the back of the closet. From years ago. You hate them.”
She was right. I found them in the part of the closet I never see, behind the shirts I never wear, and I remembered how much I hated them. Always uncomfortable, they’d become downright mean-spirited. It took a great deal of wriggling to squeeze into them. I couldn’t bend my knees.
“Your ass looks good,” Jan offered.
“They’re a little constricting.”
“Are you holding your breath?”
“Not much.”
“Do they hurt?”
“I don’t think I can sit.”
“Good. Are you going to shave? “
“Shave?”
I hadn’t considered that.. I don’t shave regularly. It’s not that I’m against it. I’ve always admired those magnificently clean shaves rich guys have. I came across David Sanborn, the sax player, in the St. Mark’s Bookshop one time and he had the closest shave I’d ever seen. His chin was a baby’s bottom. All pink and shiny. No pores.
How is that done? Chemicals? Some kind of irradiated, tempered-steel, six-bladed Ginsu razor? Creams, foams, lotions, whatever. I’m not interested in spending that much time with my face. I see it when I wash it. That’s enough.
“Okay, I’ll shave,” I said.
“Don’t do it for me.”
“I’m not doing it for you. It’ll go with the pants.”
“You’re nervous.”
“I’ll leave a little stubble, so I know where to grow it again.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Your eye is jerking.”
“It’s not.”
“Your lower lid. ”
“I’m just tired.”
“You’ll do great.”
“Why are you saying that? I’m not nervous.” My neck was stiff, too, so I rolled my head on my shoulders. “You shouldn’t try to make me feel better when I don’t feel bad.”
“I wasn’t.”
“It could damage my wits.” I pulled at my fingers, loud pops sounding against the crackling my neck made. A soundtrack for a medieval bone chapel.
“Gin and tonic?”
***
Max Dvořák, an early 20th century art historian, rescued El Greco from disdain. He called him a “clairvoyant” whose work made possible modern rebellions against the dictates of figure and perspective, liberating color as the dominant expressive and spiritual element in painting. Art history, for Dvorak, was a history of ideas. And the idea of El Greco that has become part of me rebelled against those brown trousers. I tossed them into the trash. Instead, I pulled on a loose pair of drawstring slacks. They were pale, natural linen and not too frayed at the hem. The same as my jacket. And though my boots were worn and the brim of my fedora slightly stained, I felt good with a fresh shave, having shaped myself a Zappa-like goatee. I slipped on my black wayfarers and wished I had a walking stick.
***
“My entire soul is a cry,” writes Kazantzakis in Report to El Greco.
***
Gin and tonic seemed a good idea.. We had fresh limes from the tree we planted precisely for this drink when we moved into the house. The first one went down fast. The next two were slower.
“I’m not nervous,” I reminded her after some time.
“I know.”
“It’s just that it feels like I’m trying to fool someone.”
“Sometimes you have to put something on to pull something off.”
“So you’re saying it’s a trick.”
“No,” she said with a tug at my drawstring. “But it’s the best thing about pants.”
Mark Ari is a writer, musician, and visual artist. He’s the author of The Shoemaker’s Tale, a novel (Zephyr Press), edits and produces EAT audio chapbooks, and is an award-winning professor of creative writing at the University of North Florida. “Wonder Wheel,” the third in a series of poetry, projection, visual art, and scent installations which he creates with fellow artists Ginger Andro and Chuck Glicksman, is scheduled for this fall at Olfactory Art Keller, NYC.