—How could I possibly have been born here? How does one breathe? Marc Chagall

 

The artist claims to have been born dead. Does this mean when he finally breathed, he was bringing to life his original story or a new one that had just enough time to emerge? This is assuming we’re born with our own stories and just have to live them. Kind of like a Deist’s clock. Nothing like slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. Nothing like the greatest story ever told. The poet’s vision contains circles of hell or the mists of Avalon. The artist returns to his village in Belarus. It was so long ago but it’s like today. What he lacked as a child he will always lack. To one degree or another. But his past never happened until he painted it. A tear in the universe, the clockmaker made impotent. When I walk and suddenly see his blue windows at the Art Institute, I know there is God. And that He is close to him with his images of angels, his stories from the Bible. Then there are also versions of himself, the woman juggler, the circus in yellow. It is all there. We are all there.