Noah Verrier
Two Fires
I remember you playing Nat King Cole on the piano. “Unforgettable.” How could I forget? I sat in that giant bean bag chair in the basement of your parents' home, and you showed off your talent while I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Your mother made it. I was hungry. I wasn’t much of a singer, I knew how to sing that song just like good old Nat King Cole. That's why you were playing it. You wanted me to take the helm and steer this ship of friendship into the harbor. Well I wasn't interested in highlighting my talents while you were highlighting yours. Because in my opinion what you could do was something special, and what I could do was fourth rate at best. So there was no noise from my mouth except for my chewing. I listened. It was really a good sandwich. Smooth. Strawberry jam. White bread, lightly toasted. I think I learned to love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because of your mother. How did it happen that we spent all our time in your basement? How did it happen that we spent all our time in your house? Years later when we started doing music after I had taught myself the guitar, we always practiced in your kitchen. That’s when you taught me how to make iced tea. It seems such a simple thing, but I still make it the way you taught me all these years later. And you taught me what singing could be with the songs I would write for you. I remember we made a demo and everyone loved your voice. You did harmonies and doubled up the tracks and you made your own background voices. I wrote the songs and played the guitar like a carpenter. I hammered those songs out. But it was because of you that people fell in love. It was because of you that everyone wanted one of our little cassette tapes. We put a picture of your nephew on the front. We called the album "Lopez." We were so clever. We always found a way to laugh. Sometimes it felt like there was this ping pong match of laughter between us. And each one of us knew how to smash it for the win. Where did it come from this humor? Where did it come from this need for each other? There wasn't a lot in common. Your parents were married and mine weren't. Your mother was too strong for divorce. She held onto you and your sister and about ten thousand students whom she taught over the years who all thought of her as their mother, too. She never let you think that she was anything less to you, however. You were always her daughter. There's so much of her that you inherited. But then the other thing we have in common is maybe the biggest elephant to ever sleep in the corner of a basement. Your father and my father were each afflicted in the same way. They each had the same illness. They each had the same broken pieces in their brains. While your father’s bipolar disorder manifested in drugs and inappropriate behavior mixed with a brilliant talent for playing any instrument in the orchestra, my father's broken brain took longer to manifest but when it did he went off like a roman candle and I didn't see him for months. Maybe that explains the arguments. Maybe that explains the reason we were terrible at games. We had our own bipolar friendship. I remember being in your basement with some friends of ours and the whole thing turned into a nightmare. A mess. I'm embarrassed to describe the argument, but let's just say it stemmed from an innocent game of Scattergories. It lasted days. We didn't speak. I went my way and you went yours, and there was no music between us. And all the people who bought our music could listen and relisten to the songs that we made, but in those days there was never going to be any more ping pong. Even though we came together and reconciled, this pattern continued. I don't know how your lunacy infected you, and I don't know what I inherited from my father, but I know that the two of us could be like a bag of broken glass together. Every beautiful thing we made could wind up in the fireplace. Or wind up at the bottom of the filing cabinet where your mother used to store her lesson plans and curriculum guides. And now these years have passed fast, and your father and my father are dead. Your father took his life, and my father let nature do the trick but still they suffered. And so did we. It's like someone said the living room's on fire but let’s not call the fire department because they're just going to make a mess putting it out. Just try to avoid the flames and don't look into the heat. Your father was an inferno at times but he also was so passionate. My father was a quiet,deadly electric fire that ran inside the walls and destroyed from the inside out. I remember the night you called me to tell me about your dad and how he had done something so awful and so impossible to believe, but we were adults. My dad was already gone. You cried into the phone in a way that I had never heard before. It made me feel sorry that we had ever met. Because together we made music but we never made peace. There really was no peace ever promised to either one of us. And the ghosts of our dead might be arguing up in heaven, swearing never to speak to each other again. Dooming their children to a future that was better lived apart.
Art School
My grandmother has no taste. Her home looks like the place they store the unclaimed odds and ends that are found after an eviction. Or a fire. Everything she buys winds up in some odd location. Bananas sit out on the porch. Matches get placed in an old novelty coffee cup. Pasta gets stored in a showbox lined with a plastic bag. And candy is spread out all over the living room in every different kind of glass container you can imagine. There is nothing that makes sense. Everything is in something else, and that something else is absurd. She owns cute little candy dishes, but the peanut m&m’s wind up in a mason jar. There are trays where you can spread cookies or vegetables for a party. My grandmother will take the celery, chop it into pieces and put them on a collectable plate from Burger KIng. A large lid from an old tomato sauce jar that she cleans and fills with ranch dressing sits next to the veggies. Why? Trust me, people have tried to intervene. They have bought her plates and dishes and small cups. Those things wind up in the basement on the back shelf. Unopened. No. It's something else. Is it an affliction? Does it have something to do with hoarding? I've seen the TV show. I've seen the people on the TV show. My grandmother is the type of person who could be on that show, but I don't know if she really hoards because she's not afraid to throw things away. No. I don't think she hoards. I asked my grandfather once why she did what she did, and he shrugged his shoulders. However, as he turned his head away to look back at the newspaper, there was a light in the corner of his eye. For months I looked for that light again. I wanted to see that little tiny dot that popped up in his right eye because I thought that it might be the clue. And one day after he had his 10th Budweiser which was a part of a system that he had created for himself where he would drink all day without ever getting drunk, he sat back in the chair that he normally sits up in to watch sports and he asked me if I still liked to draw. I told him that I hadn't really done any artwork for a number of years but I did find myself doodling quite a bit. In fact what I didn't tell him was that I was working on a project but I wasn't ready to share that. I didn't know if I was going to go in that direction again. I tried my hand at so many different forms of art…acting and dancing and singing…but to go back to visual arts felt a little dangerous. I had been kicked out of art school when I was 14, and I felt like such a disappointment. I remember my father yelling at me because I had lost half the supplies that they gave us at the beginning of the year and my father had to pay for those supplies. So on top of getting kicked out of art school, my dad had to deal with paying $126. That was a little too much for him. But my grandfather never really seemed to care about that sad aspect of my life. He had always taken an interest in anything I did artistic. He never missed a play. He liked to listen to my music. He had played tenor sax simultaneously while he earned his living as a bus driver. And he always appreciated that I showed any talent in the arts. But on this Sunday night I saw that little dot in his eye. And for the first time I realized that his interest in my art was actually something quite sad for him. Yes he had been a jazz musician, and so he understood what it meant to express himself when the world seemed inexpressible. But he didn't ask me about my art for himself. No. You see, tonight my grandfather let a vital clue slip. He had booked a gig at a college in Baltimore. That's where he met my grandmother. This I knew. It was legend. I asked him which college, and he carelessly told me it was the College of Art. I asked him to repeat that but he just kept going with his story. The College of Art is not far from where I live now. It's a college of visual arts. Many of my old classmates went on to attend the school after high school. If my 19 year-old grandmother was at a party connected to this college, there was a chance that she was a student there. I let him dance me through the tale I'd heard before about the first time they had ever met, but I wanted to get back to the location. The setting of the story. I wanted to know why Grandma was at that party. He said it was because she was a student. I said a student at the College of Art? There was a pause. And that's when I saw the little dot of light in his eye again. That's when I understood. My grandmother wasn't crazy. Well she might have been crazy, but it wasn't psychosis that drove her to move everything from one container to another. She was an artist long ago. I imagine the blank pages now showing the rest of the story. It was like the heat of an oven that hits you when you first open the door. I looked around the living room and I could see it. It was everywhere. All of the colors. All of the shapes. Things that were in the shadows and things that weren't. The lights. There wasn't a single thing in this living room that wasn't an installation. There wasn't a single thing in this living room that wasn't a work of art. My grandfather took a long sip from his small glass, and he made that noise he always makes with his lips after he drinks. He took a longer look at me. He hummed “Fly Me to the Moon.” He said that was the song that he was playing when she first saw him at the party. That was the song where he was playing the lead. His saxophone crooned like Frank Sinatra. He didn't ask her but told her:
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me
Fill my heart with song
And let me sing forever more
And then he stopped humming and he actually sang the song. My grandmother had been busy in the kitchen. I thought she was cooking, but now I knew the truth. She was moving things from one container to another. She was matching colors and shapes and silhouettes. She was making art while he was making love to her again.
The Mountain
He imagined that there was a mountain and that no one had ever climbed it. It was hard to believe that nobody had ever climbed it, but this was a fact in his imagination at least. He decided. He would climb the imaginary mountain. He would buy the right shoes. He would buy the right pants. He would buy the right jacket and a backpack and a helmet and all the equipment one might need to climb a made-up mountain. He would get a good bottle where he could keep water. Maybe he would buy two. He probably would need more than one bottle of water if he was going to climb the mountain. And he would buy protein bars. Now he never ate protein bars, but he figured he would need protein while he was climbing this mountain. Protein is one of those things that he was sure you need when you're going to use your body to do something. Although he never heard of anybody eating protein bars in the middle of sex. You use your body during sex, he thought. It might seem like a crazy connection, but the truth was it was actually after sex one night that he first imagined the mountain. So when he thought about the mountain he would always wind up thinking about sex. The mountain would disappear. He would force himself to get off of sex and get back to the mountain whenever he was sitting at his counter eating his lunch. Vegetable beef soup. Half a bowl of salad. A little shot of tuna fish. It said right on the front of the tuna fish package that it had 15 g of protein. Now he was cooking! Now things started to make sense. He's getting his protein from this little package of tuna fish. Sex was a memory. The mountain was in front of him. Protein!. Now he could have looked information about protein, but he was using his phone to watch porn. He often watched porn during lunch. Dinner time there was a different ritual. He often got lost watching Tiktoks. Dinner was a better time for the mountain. And that was the difference between lunch and dinner. At breakfast he would listen to the radio. On his phone. Old radio. Shows from the past that you can listen to on YouTube. Shows from the '80s or the '90s. But today’s lunch was out of focus. The porn was proving boring. He hated to break his training. And he was thinking about sex. Now the two were together in his head. That wasn't the original intention, but that's always how it is with his brain. Everything gets distorted. Everything gets muddied. Everything becomes just a little less than it was supposed to be. It was a noble thought to climb a mountain. The mountain was a metaphor. The mountain was going to be diet and exercise and losing weight. And that's what he was going to tackle. That's what he was going to climb. He wasn't going to buy new shoes. Well he might buy new shoes because he was going to join a gym. He figured they had rules at those gyms. You had to have certain shoes, he thought. And he wanted a new pair of sneakers. And maybe a water bottle is a good idea. Everyone has a water bottle at the gym. But would he need two? Probably not. How often do you have to wash a water bottle? It's got water in it. He didn't know. Maybe he would buy two. And the protein bars? Well if he's having protein with his lunch everyday because he's eating tuna fish, why does he need to have a protein bar? But he can't take the tuna fish to the gym, can he? However, he could sit somewhere quiet in the corner of the gym and eat the protein bar. He was pretty sure this was something that people at the gym do. Although he's never really been to a gym, so he didn't know for sure. He was just imagining it. But he knew that people needed protein when they worked out. Creatine. That's something else. How does that factor in with protein? He didn't think they were related just because they sounded alike. They're not spelled alike so it's probably a coincidence. Maybe he would take creatine. What is creatine? Remember the Bash Brothers. Or was it Barry Bonds. One of the three of them was taking creatine. Maybe that's how they got so big. Did he want to get big at the gym? The original goal was to lose weight. He had a belly. He had a dad bod even though he wasn't a dad. Does it count? Does it count as a dad bod if you're not a dad? He read on a woman’s Instagram that she was interested in men with a “dad bod.” When he sent her an unsolicited message without any dick pic (he’s not a cretin), she didn't seem all that interested in talking to him. She could objectify a man for his dad bod, but she didn't want to talk to a stranger. The mountain. He wanted to think about the mountain some more but now the mountain was covered in sex. The mountain was imaginary and a metaphor but the sex was real. He wondered how much weight you could lose having sex. He was having trouble having sex. She stayed up later than he did. She didn’t want him. Even when they had sex, she didn’t move or make noise. Not much, at east. And when they were done, he thought about the mountain of sex. There must be different levels of dad bods. He wanted to find a different level than the bod He had. He was ordering healthy meals that came in single serving packages that he kept in his refrigerator. She was a chef. She ate at work. She got home too late to cook for him. The single serve meals were pretty good, though. It had only been a week, but he'd been sticking to it. Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday had all been mapped out. He knew the calories. He had an app. He recorded it all. Every bite that went into his mouth he would put into the app. And it would tell him how many calories he was eating. And that would give him an idea about how much he needed to exercise. He wasn't exercising yet. But that was a part of the plan. Remember the mountain! Even though the mountain now was covered in sex, he still was planning to exercise. Not through sex. Their sex was too quick. He measured his heart rate. It never changed. He was going to get on one of those machines at the gym on which you just walk or run on likely walk. Walking would probably be a better fit for him right now. Running hurt his head. It always felt like his brain was bouncing around. Isn't the brain in some kind of liquid inside your skull? Anyway he thought a lot about walking. Did he have to join a gym to walk? No. He could just walk around the neighborhood. But he felt like by being in a gym he would show a certain level of commitment. She made snarky comments about his level of commitment. He was committed to his routines. (She just wasn’t one of them.) Walking around the neighborhood would be like climbing a hill. In truth climbing a hill would probably have been a good idea. Good exercise, climbing hills. But it didn't fit. And if it didn't fit he knew he wouldn't do it. So here it was Saturday.. He had one more meal in the refrigerator that he would eat this Saturday night. She would be gone for the weekend, visiting her sister (or seeing her lover). He always waited till after 5:00 because to eat before that meant he would have a lot of hours to be hungry. And he didn't like being hungry. He knew what being hungry meant. The one time when the mountain seemed very very far away was in the middle of the night. Leftovers. He had decided he didn't want to have leftovers anymore. She was always filling the fridge with leftovers. He started throwing them away. He knew she was angry but she didn’t say a word. She just stayed out later and later. The single servings never produced a leftover. And he made sure now that the only thing he had easy to eat would be fruits or vegetables. No leftovers. There have been nights already that he regretted that decision. He even pulled one of her leftovers out of the trash. Cheesy pesto pasta. Still a little warm. The single serving plan had helped him lose 4 lbs. in two weeks. The mountain seemed smaller everyday. But it was Saturday. He decided to watch porn at dinner. That was violating the plan. He didn’t care. This was a change, but he knew he was good for it. After all, it was Saturday night. He wasn't at a bar. He wasn't at a club. He wasn't at the baseball game. He was home. Safe. Eyeballing the mountain. Thinking about sex. Everything was safe. But his brain shifted. He could feel it. The mountain shifted. The porn was filthy. And when he opened up the refrigerator for the 57th time, he eyeballed that little box of jambalaya that the healthy food company had sent him. He picked it up. It was so light. The porn was bigger than the mountain. Everything had fallen apart. The mountain which was once mighty and full of trees and sex and snow was now a pile of mashed potatoes. Buttered mashed potatoes. He grabbed his phone and found the app and ordered. Paul Chen. Lo Mein. Shrimp toast. Steamed dumplings. No. Fried. Fried dumplings and porn. Extra sauce. Extra sauce on everything that gets sauce. The mountain morphed from diet and exercise to a gorgeous pile of leftovers.
Medaling
I didn't ask for this! In fact I was fighting hard against it. I had sprayed the corners of my personal yard with anti-love repellent. And still you're here. You showed up anyway like some god-forsaken mosquito with a charming smile and the hairline of a teenager. I was not asking for love. I swear I wasn't. I was busy. I was happy. I was biking and doing yoga. Hot yoga! It's hard. I didn't miss it. I always went. I live so close to the studio that I walked it. Even in the rain. Even in the snow. I never missed a session. I am yoga. Hot yoga! And I eat well. I'm not a nut. I'm not afraid to have a Big Mac. And I love the salty shoestring fries. When I see them putting salt on the lot of them, I always ask for a little extra. What do they care? It's my Sunday afternoon treat. The McDonald's near my home isn't close enough for me to walk, but I walk it anyway. I figure the walk there and back will erase all of the grease and calories. Who gives a damn! I'm fit. I'm like a piece of steel. I could teach the class. Hot yoga! I could teach it with my eyes closed. Sometimes I do it with my eyes closed. I do it like it's second nature. I do it like blinking or breathing or eating Mickey D's. And that's why I indulge. That's why I'm not afraid to feed my monster. I’m invincible. As a kid we took our bikes and pedaled all the way to the McDonald’s on Joppa Road. I remember during the Olympics there were tickets on the Big Macs, the large fries, a giant soda. With each medal the US won, you could win free food. Coincidently, this was the year the Russians refused to compete. And so the US won. A lot! I'd have a pocket full of free nuggets tickets or fries or three large Cokes. There were times when we would bike up there with not a penny to our names, and yet we would feast. Everything was free. USA! USA! 1984. Los Angeles. If you're my age you'll remember it. You'll remember how much Micky D’s gave away. We would go home everyday watch the USA kill it. I was a young athlete. I had dreams of competing. The Olympics? Why not! Running. Sprinting in fact. I was fast. I was the fastest girl at my school. I had a huge head of curly hair. I was the envy of the other white girls at school. More than once I was complimented by being told I looked biracial. If by biracial you mean Polish and German then yes. But I'm as white as they come. Still it would swell my heart when someone might make that mistake even if it meant I would become the target of their racism. I took it. I'd rather look black than have the privileges of being white. I was the only white girl on the track team, but I was so fast that I raced right into their hearts. And we ate Big Macs for free that summer together. The whole team. We were training that summer. We were a family, and we were one hell of a team. We were good. We won effortlessly. Every member found a way to get to college because of track. One of us even went to the Olympics. As for me, I made it to college on a full track scholarship. I ran as a freshman, but chronic shin splints killed me and then saved me. In high school, I was obsessed with track. There were times when I was running that I thought for sure I had left the Earth. Crossing the finish line first was never a dream for me. It was just what I did. Giving it up in college was part fact and part fate. I became an architect major. I was blessed with the chance to transfer my obsession from the 100 to a drawing board. I wanted to build buildings. Places where people could live. Places where they could work. I raced out of my sneakers into a job that became the new dream. One they never got injured. I always expected to win the races, but I had no idea how I would do in an office building. And that turned out to be the best thing that could happen to me. I am standing on the platform with a thick medal hanging from my neck, feeling like a freaking champ as an accomplished architect. I wave to the crowd, and what do I see? You. The worst thing. You are a starting pistol. Back in the day that was the only thing that could startle me. And now you're shooting off your “good morning,” gently chasing me down from behind, and all I want to do is run. I never thought anyone could catch me. You’re barely breaking a sweat and you seem to have me by a foot and a half. I squeeze my mat hard under my arm. “Hungry?” You've got a large bags with the golden arches glowing from the front and the delicious discoloration of grease coating the bottom. Where I do yoga down by the water, there are places to sit and eat everywhere. I reluctantly agree to join you. I sit and I'm nervous. I'm so sweaty from the yoga. Hot yoga! But you are cool and smiling, and you place the items right in front of me. You mirrored my order maybe because that's your favorite or maybe because you're just being nice. Either way it made me smile. But I don't want you to be nice. I don’t want to smile. I want you to be gone. Dust. I don't eat Big Macs at this time of day. I don't eat Big Macs on Tuesdays. But there it is. Extra onions. You remembered. It's a trick. I mean I like the onions, but when you order it special they make it fresh. You got yours without pickles. Same trick. Different generation. But this is not good. Because you're too young. Because I'm your boss. Because you resemble Jackie Robinson in 54. You are a brown-eyed handsome man. You don't think I'm multiracial (but together we are.) Together we become quite a nice blend. You like my curls, and I like the way you jawbone inflates when you smile. And now you're looking seriously at me. These shoes are made for running, but I know I'm not going to run away from you. I’m all hot air. I'm just going to eat my Big Mac. I'm going to eat the whole thing. And I'll pretend that you had a ticket because for me everything I see is free. That's you and me. We're both free… but not for long.
Dry
I don't think there's anything quite like the first taste. It’s that moment when the first drops of the drink touch your tongue. You can chase that feeling all night long, but you'll never get it again. Not until after you're drunk and asleep and feeling worthless in the morning, making a promise not to do it again until of course you do it again. Because that first taste is divine. It doesn't take long. When you drink enough, the alcohol turns the ignition rather quickly. It has this way of being a celebrity moving swiftly through the crowd of a nightclub. That's the way it moves through me. Everything that I have done up to that moment in the day suddenly seems to be a whisper. My accomplishments for the day kind of drop their jaws and stares. And the gin glides through me. Now that feeling doesn't last very long. And that leads to the second important moment. Alteration. When the alcohol shifts me. It's like the signs of the fast food restaurant when they shift from breakfast to lunch. In a blink it’s all different. That's how I feel when the alcohol starts to do its trick. It's not fair to call it a trick. It's a reality. It's a phenomenon. It's like watching something in nature that looks unbelievable, but you know it has to be true. The rest is all compulsion. Nothing else will seem quite so pure. Now I keep pouring it down because my arm doesn't know what else to do. I keep stirring new drinks because there’s still gin left in the bottle. And I've got the time. There's a jar full of olives right in front of me. And so I drink. And then the things that I have carefully tied down like cargo on a ship that's headed into a storm suddenly start to come loose. Ropes that I thought were invincible now seem to be made out of chewing gum. And all of those thoughts and feelings and fears all slide around me. There is no crew. There's no one there to help. And I watch things crack open and spill out and make a mess. And then I have a telephone. A list of contacts. A list of ports where it now seems I could safely dock. Suddenly, it’s clear I can park myself and all my grief and the things that fill my history books. I want to tell them all. I want to press the dots and dashes into the keyboard and send my messages out to anyone who will listen. Mayday. Mayday. And I know I’m in a storm because my body is flooded. My heart is filled with the reckless rain of a typhoon. And the waves that once were friends that I tackled in the ocean when I was ten are now the memories of anyone whoever hurt me. And the black clouds of the many I have hurt. They rock me, these brutish memories. They toss me, and they don't care that I’m upside down. They're not interested in my breathing. And I can feel the blackness of the deep deep ocean down where the water is so cold and fresh. There are no bits of shell or pebbles down there. Everything down deep is clean. And as I sink through the heaviest part of the ocean, I feel just how far down it goes. And the grief that I tried so hard to manage throughout the sober part of my life suddenly sips quietly from the frosted glass in front of me and the pressure of the ocean collapses me until I’m gone.
Author: Derek Letsch
Artist: Noah Verrier
Artist Statement
What I enjoy most is working from life. Through the act of quietly observing, my aim is to accurately yet personally discern color and light. My subjects have included still life, portrait, and landscape. Not unlike the great painterly realists of the late 19th century, my work emerges through painting directly, while striving to retain gesture and emotion.
Bio
Noah Verrier is a former Art Professor and full time working Artist. Noah holds a BFA and MFA (highest attainable degree for a working Artist) specializing in oil painting. Verrier’s work has been exhibited around the world including in (Japan, Australia, Germany, India, Canada, the UK and France) and has been collected by thousands including celebrities such as William Tomicki the former Vice President of Sotheby’s and Tiffany. And Commissioned by Popeyes, Little Caesars, Quick Trip Gas Stations, (Chris Cantino) for Club CPG's POP collection. Noah has garnered numerous awards for his paintings including “One of the top 40 American Painters” by New American Paintings. Verrier’s work has been featured by many well known online and print publications including Bonappetit, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, International Artist's Magazine, Narcity, WGN Morning News and in Entree Magazine where Noah’s work was called “Masterful and painterly, reminiscent of still life greats like Chardin, Sargent and Manet”. Noah lives and works in Tallahassee, FL happily married with his wife four kids a cat and a dog.
“For me every painting is like a prayer to God, I can be still, look closely, and interpret the colors, shapes, and emotion before me”
-Verrier