Empire of Light (12 page)

Tomorrow, at the Louvre, I’m gonna grab the tits of the Winged Victory of Samothrace statue and see where that gets me. That statue’s got a rockin’ rack.

10 

May God Damn Dan Brown

Painting 2: The Death of a Virgin

I’M STANDING IN FRONT 
of the entrance of the
Louvre
, arguably the world’s greatest repository of human creativity, and all I can think about is the goddamn
Da Vinci Code
.

Don’t get me wrong, when I finished the book, I was so hooked that I hit the streets and bought the prequel that very night,
Angels & Demons
. I ran home, turned off my cell and read it in a dark corner of my apartment. Picture a narcotics cop hiding his addiction by jabbing a needle full of smack between his toes, and you’ve pretty much nailed my mindset with Dan Brown books. So when the movie version of
Da Vinci Code
was released I knew I was going to drop mad dough on a ticket, but the producers sweetened the pot by hiring this boy from Brooklyn to photograph it.

Salvatore Totino.

Totino was the cinematographer on this insane music video by U2,
Staring At The Sun
. He used this camera rig that allowed light to literally dance in wizard’s wand-like streaks and glints. It burned, eclipsed and swallowed the band in fantastic abstract glows. You need to seriously check this shit out on YouTube.

The best
Da Vinci Code
scene is the very first one, which takes place in the Louvre’s Grand Gallery. There hangs the brilliant Caravaggio painting,
The Death of a Virgin.
The very painting I just flew thousands of miles to see.

Totino was seriously dialed-in while on this location, and I have to imagine that he was inspired because he had an original Caravaggio staring down at him while he lit. Totino dipped into his arsenal of fixtures and came up with a handful of massive 18K HMI lights that he pumped through the skylights to simulate moonlight pouring into the Grand Gallery.

And when Totino had to photograph the corpse of the character Jacques Saunière, which was splayed naked across the parquet floor, Totino inundated the corpse with an intense forensic light, an ethereal glow that also concealed Saunière’s wrinkled old dick beneath a loincloth of blinding light. Form and function.

All this is to say that as much as I dug the
Da Vinci
phenomenon, it pisses me off that this is what I’m thinking about right now. I didn’t come here to be one of those
tourists
running around Paris trying to walk in the footsteps of Tom Hanks.

The museum doors open, and I fly inside to purchase my ticket and hunt down
The Death of a Virgin.
I only have a few hours to sit with her, sketch her, take a snapshot and then catch the train to the airport. Yes. It kills me to come all the way to Paris and rush past the likes of Michelangelo as if he were trying to sell me insurance. Try as I might, in the end, I just can’t do it. I walk past the
Mona Lisa
. I make eye contact with the gorgeous face that has captivated humanity since the 16th century, and I’m sucked in. I enter the gallery, and it’s just her and me.

You want a good reason to visit Europe off-season? In June, this gallery is packed like a Lollapalooza mosh-pit. Throngs of fools jostling for position just to spend fifteen seconds with this lady’s smile. Not today. Sans the docent, this joint is empty. She smiles and nods my way, as if to say,
aren’t you fortunate to have the Mona Lisa all to yourself?

For some reason, this pisses me the hell off. I’m no
Da Vinci Code
pilgrim, you bitch. I return her smile with a black stare.

"Where’s Caravaggio?"

She directs me a few yards down the hall, and there I find
The Death of the Virgin
, a spectacularly gloomy painting.

I think about Andy back at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He was right. Where other painters would have depicted the Virgin's death as a glorious heavenly scene, with Mary ascending into heaven surrounded by angles, Caravaggio instead plunges the event into bleak despair.

Here, the Virgin Mary is a bloated and pale corpse, her dirty feet hanging over of the edge of the short bed. If it weren’t for the faint hint of a razor thin halo, suspended above Mary’s messy hair, you’d think the corpse was just some chick from around the block.

It’s a signature Caravaggio, containing everything I love about his paintings.

First, there’s that darkness again. This painting is so black that I catch myself inadvertently tilting my head in a silly attempt to use my
rod vision
.

Rods and cones are the two types of photoreceptors in the retinas of our eyes. The cones work better in bright light and are responsible for giving us the perception of color. However, the rods rock the darkness and live in the peripheral vision of your sight, like vampires. You unconsciously use your rod vision when you’re in the dark and you turn your head slightly to examine an object out of the corner of your eye, in hopes of cutting through the blackness to see just what the hell might be coming at you in the night.

The second Caravaggio signature: a limited pallet of colors. Sepia dominates the painting with only two other combating colors allowed to fight through the darkness. Red is the color of the dead Virgin’s dress. Green is the color worn by the mourners that immediately hover above her body. It’s so perfect.

I wish I could say the same for my sketch. I’m drawing the bodies okay, but their faces look like ass.

Screw it. I’ll draw the eyes, noses and mouths later at the hotel in Rome. However, the black faces kind of creep me out
.
I re-sketch one of the mourners as Gort the robot, the faceless silver robot from that 50s flick,
The Day the Earth Stood Still
.

I’m going to hell.

And with that, I’m over my Louvre moment. When you daydream of Red Scare era robots invading Baroque paintings, you’re done.

I have to admit that I’m a bit nervous as I gingerly pull the Brownie from my messenger bag, preparing to capture the magic of the Virgin.

I again think about Andy in Cleveland and how he reminded me of Saint Andrew in the painting. A chill goes down my spine as I imagine the Virgin Mary actually showing just for me. I quickly blow off the idea. Why the hell would she show up for some guy who just jerked off to a French Phone Sex commercial last night?

Devout servants of God have prayed for an appointment with the Virgin Mary and been stood-up. I laugh at myself for even contemplating the thought, even though at the same time I’m pulling my shades out of my messenger bag. The last time I pulled the trigger on this camera I was almost blinded like Saul.

Never figured out where that flash came from, but my guess is that a light blew somewhere in the gallery at the same time I hit the trigger.

Still, I put my aviators on just in case. I must look like an asshole, but whatever.

I take aim.

FLASH!

Shit! It flashed again! Good thing I did put on the specs! I can see and—

QUEECK! QUEECK! QUEECK! QUEECK! QUEECK! QUEECK! QUEECK!

What the hell is that stupid noise?

11 

The Loo at the Louvre

MY PRETENTIOUS RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICAL 
musings are interrupted by what sounds like a duck wandering around the Grand Gallery, happily quacking with each step. I look up, half-hoping to see the classic Bob Clampett styled Daffy Duck heading for me in its vintage black and white glory.

Nothing would surprise me these days.

But it’s not Daffy. It’s just this petite Asian girl in a soaking wet turtleneck sweater, tartan skirt and red Chuck Taylor sneakers. I assume a downpour ambushed her, as her damp rubber-soled shoes squeak across the parquet wood floor.

I love that she seems completely oblivious to the distraction she’s creating as she struts through the gallery wearing an ol’ school trucker’s style baseball cap adorned with the
Snapping Fingers
of the old Stax Records logo, fat drops of water hanging from the bill. It must be pouring like mad outside.

She glances at me as she walks by, but then stops cold as she shoots me a look of recognition.

“Hey you,” she says to me as she peers from under her dripping wet bangs.

“Do we know each other?”

Her eyes are rich chocolate brown, and her angelic porcelain face instantly takes me aback.

“Last night you ran away from me as if you spotted a bomb underneath my jacket. What was that all about?” she says in a sexy French accent.

“
You
!” I exclaim a bit too loudly, for a museum. “I went back to find you, but you were gone. I’m sorry I acted like such an ass.”

“No problem. It was your loss.”

“Really? Well, I’m glad I got a second chance.”

“Who says you have a second chance?”

“Well, I just mean, because we’re here now, right?”

“Sure I am. But this is today. Who knows what debauchery I would’ve been in the mood for on a chilly Paris night.”

What the hell? Is she really hitting on me this hard? I can only stare at her in silence as I contemplate what decadent events I missed out on because I was such a pussy last night.

“So how long are you in town, sailor?”

Sailor
? Who uses words like that anymore?

“This is it,” I respond miserably. “I’ve got maybe enough time to walk this wing of the museum and then head to the airport.”

“That’s a shame. I’d like to get to know you a bit more,” she says as she pretends to brush a speck off of my jacket. It’s an obvious flirt move, but then she shyly looks down at her feet. Maybe she’s not as confident as she’d like me to believe.

As she peers down, droplets of water from her wet bangs fall and splash onto her eyelashes. She blinks, inadvertently flicking minuscule beads of moisture into the air. They glint in the museum’s lighting like infinitesimal fireworks.

“Jeez. It must be really coming down out there.”

“It’s not raining,” she says. “Let’s just say I had a slight disagreement with a client.”

“And what? He dumped you in a fountain or something?” I ask jokingly.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Right in the water.”

Okay, there’s that wacky English again.

She reminds me of those prostitutes you see in Vietnam War flicks. You know, those girls who learn only enough American colloquialisms to seduce the grunts into a ten-dollar blow job. Hold up…

“Just what kind of work are you in?” I ask cautiously.

“The kind of work that approaches lonely American boys to see if they might not want to be so lonely anymore.”

Whoops! Looks like my camera screwed up and sent me the wrong Mary. It swapped out the Madonna for the Magdalene.

Stupid magic camera.

“You’re an escort?” I ask in a whisper so that the old couple checking out the
Virgin
painting won’t hear me.

“Escort?” she says indignantly. “You tourists are always trying to be so polite. It’s like when you people refer to a bathroom as the
l’eau
. It’s a toilet! You crap in it! What I like about Americans is that you’re real and vulgar. Don’t go spoiling it.”

Charming.

She’s that innocent high school girl that is seven hours, one hotel room, and a cheap box of wine deep into prom night. Suddenly, daddy’s little girl is buck naked, standing on the bed and demanding that you drink the pink sparkling wine cascading off her tits.

“You just don’t seem like a prostitute to me.”

“Really? And what do I seem to be to you?”

“Well, except for when you’re cursing like a sailor, you seem like the kind of girl I’d bring home for Thanksgiving.”

“Wow. Really?” she seems sincerely touched. “You have no idea how much you made my day,” she says peering down at her wet sneakers again.

“My name is Jason.”

“
Enchanté
, Annette.”

Annette?
Well, she’s neither the Magdalene nor the Virgin. So I guess this is just run of the mill small talk with a Parisian hooker in the Louvre.

I shake her hand, which is still clammy from her dunking.

“We really need to warm you up, huh?”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” she says with a mischievous glint in her eye.