Whistle Pig did not generally indulge in self-doubt. Oh yes, it is an indulgence: a pleasant wavering submission to the fact that you are not good enough, which is of course easier than manning up and refusing to pussy-foot around life’s challenges. Whistle Pig, if you will look past the irony of the phrase, preferred to man up.
But he had always allowed his confidence some leeway when it came to art. For all his trying, the Pig’s artistic endeavors had never proved aesthetically appealing. And so he had a room full of canvases stored away somewhere, maybe to serve some future utilitarian purpose along the lines of tinder.
But shame on you, Piggy dearest! Realism is for the general population, the people who need to look at a painting and see a human being staring back, a recognizable, average, everyday human being in all its boring entirety. Reach beyond that superficial understanding of painting as a visual genre. When has art ever really been about what the painter sees? Allow me a brief foray into hippie-dom: feeling, my darlings, is at the root of all the great masterpieces.
And so it was, in a moment of clarity, induced—obviously—by his drink of choice, that Whistle Pig made a final attempt at art. How the brush did dance! Skipping across canvas with unrivaled fervor, he poured out the story of our modern age. It spoke of pain. It spoke of angst. It spoke of heartache and unrequited love. And it spoke of happiness and love fulfilled and passion and really good whiskey. It was, in short, an opus for the ages.
It now hangs behind a bar somewhere. No museums or galleries for this one: none of the destinations of those pretentious elite who feign understanding of almost everything. A painting of such magnanimity deserves to be viewed by those who really truly can enjoy the finer things in life.
Rye drinkers, my sweethearts, raise a glass to art. You are the true connoisseurs.
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