The Day I Fell in Love or How an Egyptian King Saved My Life...

Every day is unique but not every day is remembered. Often, we go through life and exist in the mundane, but every so often we're given a glimpse of something more. It's like Prince Rilian in The Silver Chair. For a brief moment in time the veil is removed and clarity remains. That happened to me last Monday.

I slept in (which already makes it special) and woke up making plans to go to the Louvre which was free that day because it was Bastille Day (or National Day as they call it here).

I showed up before noon and made my way inside. There were a lot of people (hey, its the Louvre) but not really any lines. I made it in really fast and picked up a guide. I didn't really care what I saw except that I knew I wanted to see the big three (Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace). I wandered around for a bit until I decided to get an audio guide to help me through the day and lets be honest, not much is cheaper than 6 euro here in France.

I made my way towards the wing where I knew the Venus and Mona were located and began to follow the signs to Venus. That's when I saw her. I don't know if it was her appearance, or the way she was framed by the staircase, but as I gazed upwards, I knew that I had found the woman of my dreams. Time slowed and I decided approach her. She stood at the top of the staircase in the middle of a crowd and I...

OK, overly dramatic, but the effect of the Winged Victory of Samothrace was seriously that sort of time-bending feeling of revelation, a moment when the veil was removed.

I could have not seen one other thing at the Louvre that day and been perfectly content. Somehow the sculptor breathed life and motion into the stone and the removal of the head and arms by natural means only gives the statue a greater mystery and beauty. I stayed there for a long time, moving around the statue and studying it in amazement. I then moved on to look at other works of art, but the image stayed in my mind long after I left and I found myself returning throughout the day. Like someone on the audio commentary said, "It's the form of the perfect angel."



I kept thinking "Why do I like this so much?"

I also looked at several of Da Vinci's paintings and thought of my favorite passage in C.S. Lewis' book The Great Divorce:


“How soon do you think I could begin painting?” it asked.
The Spirit broke into laughter. “Don’t you see you’ll never paint at all if that’s what you’re thinking about?” he said.
“What do you mean?” asked the Ghost.
“Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.”
“But that’s just how a real artist is interested in the country.”
“No. You’re forgetting, “ said the Spirit. “That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.”
“Oh, that’s ages ago,” said the Ghost. “One grows out of that. Of course, you haven’t seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake.”
“One does indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower—become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.”

The commentary talked about Davinci's use of a technique where no hard lines are drawn, the edges of objects are slightly blurred with the background to create a greater realism. I saw this effect when I was walking home in the shadows of leaves.

Da Vinci's painting of John the Baptist was incredible. Such an incredibly dark painting, but the small uses of color give the saint an incredibly powerful luminosity and a mystery.

I gazed at sculpture and was thinking about light and motion and thinking if sculpture is also a study in light, or if it is the study of something else. It wasn't until I left the museum that I realized the necessity of light in realizing sculpture, because light allows all the nuances to be graced by shadow.

With the ideas of light, motion, and form running through my mind, I found my way stumbling through the wing with Ancient Egyptian art. And that is when everything came together. High up on the wall I saw the sculpture of Amenophis IV and I saw through the veil again. I was given the final piece of the puzzle and I instantly understood why I was captured by the Winged Victory.



Amenophis IV is a sculpture of the monotheistic pharoah's upper chest and head. Although his face, hands, and shoulders are beautiful, the rest of his head is absent. Similarly, the Winged Victory is "incomplete" but not lacking. No loss exists in its deficiencies. The detractions give the sculpture power and clarity, focusing the eye on essential aspects (though I am still trying to figure out what those are).

And in that moment of clarity I knew that I wanted to write music like that.

I thought back to my Masters studies. The fascination with corruption always frustrated me. It felt unnatural and I never enjoyed creation by destruction. However, these works of art showed me the power of loss and I found in them what I believe will be a life-long pursuit of form and absence.

The analogy transfers to the spiritual world as well. I have never seen so clearly the power of suffering as it was displayed in those works. A headless goddess and crumbling demigod displayed the the glory given to God through the suffering of his people and the role of that pain into forming more perfect images of His Son.

I walked out of the Louvre 5 hours after I entered a changed person. I still struggle with the balance between artistic inspiration and good old fashioned grit and determination. But I no longer am absent of a vision. I left with a life-long artistic pursuit and the inspiration to pursue it. The veil was lifted and I've left my Silver Chair but the work has just begun. If I learn nothing else in Paris, I've learned enough.

BC