By Kevin P. Keating

For three consecutive nights someone with a fondness for fire and poetic spectacle has been burning the mailboxes on Île Saint-Ignace, one of the celebrated wine islands of the Great Lakes, and now, on the first Friday in September, twelve hours before the official start of the annual Barge Party, a dark tendril of smoke comes creeping across a cloudless summer sky, curling curiously around the old lighthouse, probing its copper weathervane, its obsolete lantern room and its great, pale gray blocks of fossiliferous limestone excavated a century ago from the abandoned quarry at the center, at the very heart of the island. In secret the perpetrator plants the seeds of discord, cultivates a diseased garden of strife, an unbalanced botanist who does his best work at that extraordinary moment just before sundown when tourists gather at the water’s edge to admire the fleeting bloom of soft colors above the blue burst of lake. He works quickly, too, using materials close at hand, easily obtainable, inconspicuous—a box of matches with long wooden sticks, a rag soaked in alcohol and stuffed into a wine bottle filled with motor oil and gasoline. Poor man’s grenade, weapon of protest, of resistance, of insurrection. With a skillful strike of a match behind a cupped palm, he ignites the homemade wick, and then with a smirk, a stealthy smile, a sideways sneer of sinister achievement, he disappears down a shady lane, some say on foot, others say on a bicycle, its chain well-oiled for a silent getaway, the tires inflated to the recommended pressure for maximum escape velocity.

Since no one has witnessed these criminal activities, and since no one can say for certain whether the guilty party is male or female, much less know what the culprit is thinking, it is perhaps imprudent to use masculine pronouns, but most of the islanders insist the villain is a sociopathic teenage boy from the mainland, a canal rat, an undereducated punk with a terrible green glance brimming with class envy and testosterone-driven rage. Michael Bettelheim has seen his neighbors stomping out smoldering bundles of bills and the evening edition of The Observer, has heard them cursing in the streets, making ugly and unsubstantiated claims, leveling accusations, promising to deliver swift justice. In town and on the ferry, they offer him passively hostile frowns and, having worked their suspicions into convictions, turn their backs on him in what seems to be a ritual display of baronial anger. Cruel caricaturists, unapologetic snobs, they refuse to consider the possibility that one of their own prim and priggish children might be responsible for these crimes. The residents are beginning to panic and have planned an around-the-clock neighborhood watch. Vigilantism, reprisals, strategic counterattacks are no longer beyond the realm of possibility.

On these pressing matters Michael says nothing and concludes nothing. He has successfully purged his mind of all toxic ideas, all neurotic nonsense, but now, while making the thirty-minute crossing aboard the General Zaroff from Île Saint-Ignace to the mainland city of Jolliet Harbour, he is forced to reconsider the precise meaning of the smoke. Its literal meaning is becoming increasingly clear to him, but its trajectory, its final destination, its ultimate outcome remains uncertain. Rather than dissolve in the prevailing winds and assume an ethereal and indeterminate form, the smoke, as it rises above the warty hackberry trees that crowd the island’s leeward side, only darkens as it inches closer to the mainland. It starts to look, at least from Michael’s vantage point, like a deep and brutal scar, as if the invisible incisors of some ravening, celestial beast has ripped through the protective layers of the earth’s atmosphere. Eternal night gushes from the angry wound. Can it be a minatory symbol, a promise of divine retribution, a hint that the time fast approaches when Michael, for his moral cowardice, for his inability to take meaningful action, will fall prey to some cosmic injury? The stakes have proven too high, too imponderable for rational calculation.

He runs a hand along the hood of the army green jeep and tries to assure himself that life is good and the world is on its proper course. Heavily rusted and rough to the touch, the jeep, one of several in his uncle’s fleet of classic cars, is long overdue for a meticulous restoration. Michael strikes a match against the back of his boot and lights a cigarette, the last of his secret vices. He walks to the ferry’s stern and rests his elbows on the railing to take advantage of the unrestricted view from horizon to horizon. As he watches the gulls bank steeply in the sky, he feels a vibration in his back pocket. Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of his sobriety, and all day long his phone has been buzzing with messages from well-wishers, old friends, former bandmates, fellow dipsomaniacs on the mend, not to mention his degenerate cousin Horace to whom he hasn’t spoken since last year’s Barge Party. But what baffles Michael most is the amount of time it has taken for his mother to call. Burdened by a sense of filial duty, he closes his eyes and prepares himself for the usual tense conversation.

He spins the cigarette butt into the churning wake and through a ring of smoke says, “Hello, Mom.”

For a moment he hears only her raspy breathing, and with each passing second his mother’s menace seems to multiply. In her moody, churlish silence he detects a dangerous combination of self-interest and political paranoia.

“Do you see the smoke, Michael? Can you smell it?”

Her voice has a frightening, melodious pitch, as if she just finished screaming at some quaking subordinate, the head gardener maybe, a housekeeper, or possibly her own reflection in the endless dark depths of a cracked mirror.

Michael fights the temptation to roll his eyes, a childish habit and one that his mother can invariably detect, even over the phone. She has a name for this power, Love’s Telepathy, and firmly believes she is in touch with invisible forces. She claims to possess a talent for reading signs and wonders, the out-of-season flowering of a tree, the unexpected infestation of water snakes on the pebble-strewn shore, the arrangement of Tarot cards on an oval table in a candlelit room, the macabre procession of gibbering ghosts in bad dreams, a crazy coil of black smoke unspooling above the lake. She feels no need to sift through the contradictory evidence or to keep an open mind about matters of guilt or innocence. For her even hard facts tend to be superfluous, and she can usually get her man, as it were, simply by concentrating on the crime in question and entering into the desperate and dangerous labyrinth of pure speculation.

“So nice of you to check in, Mom. How are you?”

But he knows, before she utters another word, that she has been drinking. Instead of her usual glass of Riesling or Pinot Noir, she has developed a habit of plundering the family cellars for bottles of ice wine. An epicurean pleasure, as she describes it, but in recent days her drinking has spread beyond the cocktail hours and the post-dinner nightcaps into high-noon lunchtime sloshes. Michael can picture the scene quite clearly in his mind, Ciara Campbell Bettelheim sitting alone at a corner table in the winery’s tasting room, pouring the syrupy liquid into a crystal cordial glass that she carries in her crocodile handbag. With all the solemnity of a private ritual, she taps her manicured nails against the sparkling flute, her fingertips stained with the blood of the grape, and admires the wine’s full body and lush color, the same decadent shade of amber as those well-bred island girls, perfect athletes, walking advertisements for the booming tourist industry, who frolic on the beach, kicking over sandcastles and playing volleyball. The Bettelheim Family Cellars produce some of the finest Cabernet Franc grapes in the region, so say the connoisseurs in their fancy culinary magazines, and Michael, in the days before his widely publicized downfall, was once the happy beneficiary of this modest bit of fame.

“Arson,” says his mother, “is such an egregiously cowardly act. What do you make of it?”

He pretends to consider the question and runs a hand through his hair, neatly cut, edged and parted in a razor slash. His new corporate look. “I really don’t know…”

“Well, I know, Michael. I know you’re not out of the woods. Not officially. Smooth sailing, that’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what we all want for you right now. A few more hours and you’re a free man. Until then you don’t need any more trouble in your life.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Mom. Nothing that concerns my interests, anyway. Or yours.”

“You sound awfully sure of yourself. Has the word ‘saboteur’ ever crossed your mind? You do understand why I’m obligated to ask, why I’m compelled to ask? The police want to implement a curfew. They have direct orders from the chief to keep an eye on tourists, guests, aliens. Everyone on the island is a person of interest, residents and strangers alike. No one is above suspicion.”

Unable to suppress a sardonic smile, Michael says, “That should be our family motto—nemo est extra suspicionis.”

“Yes, darling, our family has learned so much from the Romans.”

Kevin P. Keating is a graduate of The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

By Kevin P. Keating

A visitor entering the south entrance to the Cleveland Museum of Art will pass through a massive neoclassical, Georgian marble, Beaux-Arts rotunda that opens to several enormous galleries. By continuing to walk straight ahead, resisting the temptation to turn into the Amor Court with its hunting spears, chain mail and battered helmets that once belonged to rampaging wreckers of mead halls and Viking villages, the visitor will encounter five paintings of grand scale. Noted for their rich color harmonies and flowing brushwork, these monumental paintings depict the classical Greek muses of eloquence, history, astronomy, and epic poetry. Set in hand-carved frames of gesso and gold, Apollo and the Muses (figure 1) are considered the masterworks of 18th century French artist Charles Meynier. Though sometimes overlooked by visitors in a rush to see the famous prints and paintings of celebrity artists like Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, the gallery showcasing Meynier’s Muses has become a kind of secular temple for creative types seeking guidance and inspiration.

During my weekly visits to the museum, I’ve noticed how students from the Cleveland Institute of Art, sitting crossed-legged on the floor and feverishly doodling with charcoal pencils in the pages of their sketchbooks, often gaze at the larger-than-life Muses as if hoping one of them will sing to them. The gallery remains eerily still, and with the notable exception of Calliope, the Muses look down upon these aspiring painters and part-time baristas with expressions that seem curiously indifferent, maybe even a little contemptuous.

With their Romantic and wildly theatrical grandeur, the five paintings that comprise Apollo and the Muses have always struck me as a bit contrived, perhaps a tad corny; nevertheless, I pause here like all unworthy acolytes who dare set foot within this holy of holies and pay homage to these gaudily gowned ladies, always noting how Calliope (far right), the muse of epic poetry, gazes over her shoulder at a bust of Homer as if the revered poet is singing to her rather than the other way around. Of course the daughters of Zeus are said to be irritatingly fickle and choose to bestow their favors only on a lucky few.

Well, what can you do? Not everyone is capable of composing complex and endlessly engaging narratives like The Odyssey. At least we, from our privileged vantage point in this age of science and reason, can take some comfort in knowing that the Muses are nothing more than a silly superstition, a bit of confused thinking on the part of the ancients who believed they heard voices in their heads. Today, any artist claiming to hear disembodied voices is likely to seek medical treatment and, in the unlikely event he has health insurance, subject himself to a battery of tests. Doctors, using electroencephalographs and positron emission tomography to detect large-scale fluctuations in the artist’s neurophysiology, will regretfully explain that the Muses are in fact an insidious manifestation of a mental crackup that could prove potentially harmful both to the delusional patient and the general public.

Now, rather than attribute works of genius to the quasi-mystical voices of the Muses, we must accept the grim diagnosis of modern medicine. This new cultural paradigm, with its battalions of materialistic killjoys in white lab coats intent on reducing inspiration to mere neural eructations, really takes the fun out things. But perhaps there are other ways to account for the mysterious source of an artist’s inspiration.

In a distant corner, initially hidden from view as you enter the gallery, there hangs a different kind of masterwork, one that never fails to unsettle me (figure 2). The low viewpoint and large scale suggest that this painting once hung high on the wall of an important religious institution. In the painting an austere holy man wearing a ceremonial miter, a flowing white cassock and an elaborate ferraiolo is seated before the viewer. With feather quill in hand, he appears to be writing in a golden book of thick vellum pages. Behind him we see nothing but empty space, an abyss of complete and total darkness. Aside from his anachronistic clothing, there is no indication of time or place. There are no billowing clouds, radiant beams of divine light, or choirs of rosy-cheeked cherubs crooning “Hallelujah!” from the heavens. And yet, from out this strange emptiness, a voice seems to be calling to the troubled figure.

Unlike Calliope, who looks over her shoulder with an expression of deep admiration at a bust of Homer, this man stares into the ineffable blackness with an expression of awe that borders on pure metaphysical and existential dread. The image is significant because the artist, by the time he began working on this painting in 1796, had completely lost his hearing after an extended illness. It was also during this period in his long and productive creative life that he completed and published a suite of eighty allegorical etchings called Los Caprichos, including the iconic The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (figure 3). In stark contrast to his early Romantic paintings, the Caprichos introduce us to a world of witches, ghosts, and fantastic creatures that invade the mind, particularly during dreams, drunkenness and drug-induced visions (or perhaps a combination of all three).

The man in the painting is Saint Ambrose and the artist is Francisco José de Goya. In the late 1700s, after the expulsion of its Jesuit priests, Spain underwent a radical religious transformation, and many artists turned back to early Church history for inspiration. Saint Ambrose, probably commissioned by a new organization attempting to fill the gap once occupied by the Society of Jesus, belongs to a series of paintings depicting Muses of a very different sort—the four doctors of the Roman Catholic Church. Aurelius Ambrosius (CE 340 – 397) was bishop of Milan in the fourth century and teacher (though “guru” might be a more accurate word) of Saint Augustine. Like his more famous pupil, Ambrose possessed a formidable intellect and was revered for his diplomatic skills. He is known for having resolved important theological conflicts within the early Church and for working effectively with advocates of Roman paganism, but Goya seems less interested in depicting the saint as an early medieval bureaucrat and more as a Gnostic who, for perhaps the first time in his life, is apprehending a reality so deep and so utterly baffling that he is having trouble finding the words to describe it in his fancy codex.

When attempting to convey a sense of the infinite, the unfathomable, the absolute, human language often proves inadequate. The experience is one that transcends all worldly categories of human thought. In fact, it is the complete absence of limiting and often contradictory linguistic imagery that brings on the experience in the first place. But human beings, irrepressible chatterboxes that we are, need simile and metaphor if we wish to communicate anything of value.

Over the millennia serious thinkers have made valiant attempts at describing Ambrose and his disquieting encounter with the unknown. Theologians, for instance, will sometimes use the word “apophatic” when describing a supreme mystical experience. For pious devotees of psychotropics like ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms, the nearest parallel might be the “entheogenic” or, to put it more bluntly, hallucinogenic or psychedelic experience. In the more esoteric philosophies of the East, the experience is sometimes described as shunyata, a Sanskrit word that designates a state of mind based on the renunciation of what one believes to be real. In the West, channeling the more cumbersome language of scientism, the experience is described as a supremely immanent action that, paradoxically, annihilates all action. European alchemists believed this mystical encounter with darkness signified an eclipse of the ego due to an incursion of the unconscious.

Goya’s depiction of Saint Ambrose seems to echo all these concepts. Having gained access to the unconscious, Ambrose ceases to be a high-ranking spokesperson for a particular dogma. He isn’t the avatar of a pernicious ideology, and he isn’t espousing any kind of religious doctrine. He isn’t a political propagandist or heresy hunter trying to root out all those who dare to deviate from the rigid orthodoxy of his Church. He doesn’t have some important point to make, and he isn’t trying to win an argument. The allure of the material world no longer matters to him. Titles, prestige, fame, fortune—all of these things seem trivial in comparison to the annihilating maw of unconscious forces. Ambrose, perhaps for the first time in his life, bears witness to the formlessness of the Beginning, a state of mind where the light of reason has yet to shine.

A product of the Enlightenment, Goya was a vocal critic of superstition and could have easily painted Ambrose in a conventional romantic style, making use of a regal setting as in his Charles IV of Spain and His Family (figure 4). But like so many artists before and after him, Goya knew that in order to give the viewer a sense of the truly mystical nature of Ambrose’s experience, he would need to jettison convention while at the same time retaining familiar religious imagery. The religious, it would seem, is the best tool we mere mortals have for approximating a direct encounter with that which transcends all categories of human thought.

According to art historian Robert Hughes, Goya was no high-minded theoretician or grotesquely overeducated hyper-intellectual. But he was the product of a long Catholic tradition. Born into a working-class family and raised in a modest brick cottage in an Aragon village, Goya was probably provided with an education described as “adequate but not enlightening.” His father specialized in religious and decorative craftwork, overseeing the ornamentation during the rebuilding of the Basilica of Our Lady of Pillar. In 18th century Spain, during Goya’s formative years as an artist, there existed, as there still does today, a powerful strain of mysticism that flirted with the dangerous heresy of the free spirit (libertas spiritus). Looking at Saint Ambrose hanging in the Cleveland Museum of Art, one can’t help but wonder if this freedom included liberation from the very concept of God itself.

Today it might fashionable to reduce this masterwork to nothing more than a distorted vision of the oppressive patriarchal power structure of the Church. But I firmly believe Goya is attempting to express something that exceeds convenient and wearisome post-modernist categories. The abyss resists categorization because it lacks boundaries. It is unitary in nature and thus becomes a symbol of endless potential and unlimited creativity. And yet for some people, especially those who are strident about their ideological worldview, this interpretation can be frightening beyond belief, both literally and figuratively speaking.

Any artist who is honest about the source of inspiration must contend with the power of the void, the abyss, the darkness, the thing that obeys no authority, the thing (which is no thing) that devours and destroys predictable patterns of behavior and pathological systems of thought. This is not to say the abyss is without its dangers. The adverse effects of this self-dissolution and terrifying emptiness include neuroticism, depression, suicidal impulses, insomnia, nightmares, anxiety, psychosis, dysphoria, even alien abductions. And can you think of a single artist who hasn’t experienced at least some (or in the unusual case of Philip K. Dick all) of these symptoms?

Skeptical students in my creative writing classes invariably ask where I get my ideas, and for many years my response has always been the same. Shrugging my shoulders in resignation, I offer them a sheepish smile and mumble without any real conviction, “I just listen to the voices in my head.” But now, having given this question careful thought, I believe the correct answer is, “Ideas, the best ideas, arise spontaneously—from out of nowhere.” Oh, sure, I can pat myself on the back and take credit for these rare flashes of creative insight, but this would be dishonest. The insights are not mine. I am not in control of the creative process, if indeed it is a process. It would be more accurate to describe it as a feeling, a wholly unpredictable and overwhelmingly convincing sensation of harmoniousness. And I also know these fleeting moments of inspiration float on the surface of a treacherous reality, Goya’s blacker than black canvas, a thing infused with irrationality and incoherence.

Maybe Oliver Munday, the graphic artist who designed the cover of my second novel, knew a lot more about the nature of the void than I did (figure 5). When I first saw his minimalist design, I thought it much too grim, too unrelentingly bleak, but Mr. Munday knew that, trapped beneath those haphazardly hammered planks of wood, a very frightened man, his mouth agape, his eyes searching desperately for a thin sliver of light, presses his ear against a crack and listens to an ungodly voice calling to him from the outer dark. It’s a voice I sometimes hear, too, although I should be grateful not to hear it very often.

Kevin P. Keating is a graduate of The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. Visit his blog at: kevinpkeating.blogspot.com.

In the Secret Parts of Fortune (Excerpt of a Novel)

By Kevin P. Keating

Voices from the Void: A Brief Meditation on Saint Ambrose and the Muses