#635 Solomon’s Big Day- Toure
This is quite a fantastic story about childhood, imagination, and art. Parents day is coming up, and the children of the class are supposed to paint something to be exhibited for all the parents to see. Solomon wants to paint a masterpiece, something that will show his parents his creativity, and how he sees the world. He wants his voice to be art.
His father is a cynic, and an alcoholic. He sees the city as he sees himself: dirty, sad, and bitter.
“This city is a crucible of corruption filled with predators and prey and if you slow down for a moment, you’re somebody else’s lunch.”
“Solomon had his own eyes. He loved the city. The city to him was a party, and all-day every-day carnival, where people slept or stood on the street playing drums and horns, and doing dances, and telling jokes, and the big green daddy trees of Central Park stood watch over the baby trees, and cars seemed like animals.”
Before painting, Solomon looks at his big art history book and goes straight for his favorite painting for inspiration, Romare Bearden’s The Block. It’s a Harlem streetscape and mirrors his own positive proud feelings about his neighborhood.
In a string of dreams and hopeful moments, Solomon imagines his school painting is a big hit, something that makes him famous and sought after. He’s the next Basquiat. He imagines a world where he can paint his future and hide within his own art. If you feel like your art give you value, than it does. Simple as that!
This is a wonderful love letter to creativity. Once you feel that freedom, you never want to go back:
“But he wouldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to a place where people made him live in between the lines when he knew that there were places where you didn’t have to.”
Notable Passage: on the truth of art: “If you want to mirror reality, get a camera. If you want to make someone understand reality, then you have to lie a little. You have to distort things, to exaggerate in a way that reveals the way you see things.”
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