When I Paint My Masterpiece

This summer, I watched a masterpiece take shape.

A team of carvers created a nine foot tall sand castle in front of the NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, with an octopus, a shark, a school of three dimensional fish, and dry waves crashing around its base.

Every day, I brought my sons to see the progress. They were fascinated, invested, in love. It doesn’t hurt that one of the kind men from the master sculpting team, Sandy Feat, gave my sons a few of his sand tools – a passing along of the wand. I am continually amazed by the kindness of strangers.

Every time we visited, a crowd of visitors gathered to watch Sandy Feat work. Invariably, I heard parents tell their children, “you could do that.” Could they?

My boys tried. They took their sand tools to the beach and made shapes slightly more defined that they had before. It was serious, tongue-sticking out work. They made cuts, holes, lines; they had a good time, but they did not make a nine foot tall magical sea castle.

Why not?

Partly it was the sand – mortar sand works better than beach sand, because it has angular grains (a bit of clay content helps, too), but that wasn’t the main problem. They didn’t have the patience, time, skills, experience, or vision for the giant amazing castle. All they had was creativity and desire.

I just finished The Violin Conspiracy, about a boy whose musical talent is unrecognized until a scout hears him play, and he is swept into fame. He’s a master violinist, with a heirloom Stradivarius, the musical equivalent of super-sculpt sand. Though he practices often, it’s a certain raw talent that makes the boy shine. Oh, what I wouldn’t give.

I always hoped I would be musically gifted. I wanted to sing like Linda Rondstadt, Aretha Franklin, my dad. But my voice isn’t a Stradivarius, it’s more like a school-issued plastic recorder, played by a third grader. Like my writing, my voice is not perfect.

But I’ve been reading work by Chat GPT lately, and perfect is not everything – given the choice between flawed human work and a flawless robot performance, I’d choose the human. I want to hear a real voice.

Like Colm Wilkerson in the 10th Anniversary of Les Miserables, which I’m listening to yet again (try him at about thirty minutes in or at 1:42-45). Wilkerson delivers Jean Valjean with nuance and depth no robot could. It’s the break in his voice at the end of his most stunning solos, the tremble of emotion, the way he mouths the words like he loves them. He’s a virtuoso, but he’s tangibly human.

I’m currently reading The Artist’s Way with other Carteret Writers members, about how to unleash your inner creativity. The Artist’s Way claims we are all artists, we are all creators. We just have to find our right brush and let the art out – it may not be perfect, but it will be unique and worthwhile.

It reminds me of a quote by Henry Van Dyke, “Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” My boys can’t make a grand sea castle (yet), but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t make their little lop-sided sand fish. Those fish are beautiful, too.

I’m trying writing as my instrument. I like playing with the words on the page, hearing their tone, adding vibrato and tremolo, rising paragraphs to fever pitches then sinking to the lowest notes in my range. Even if I never create a masterpiece, there is joy in the art itself, a songbird singing for the sake of its sound.

Cover the sidewalks with chalk, sing loudly off-key, stack stones by the river, bang on the drum, make sandcastles, and tell your story – the way no one else can – and never mind how the canvas looks at the end. The masterpiece is in how much of yourself (and something more than yourself) you put into your work. And don’t forget to pass a few tools to the next generation.

– by Jessi Waugh