Bob and Renaldo were having coffee across from the Pantheon.
"So what have you learned about Cesare?" asked Renaldo.
"Many things. His father was a priest."
"Ah," exclaimed Renaldo, "so his very birth is a paradox! He should be an interesting discovery."
"A lapsed priest, obviously. He's a lawyer, Cesare, dabbled in politics. He collects many things."
"Many what?"
"Art, for instance," Bob explained. "He himself is a painter. Quite accomplished, in my opinion, with some local success."
"Have you ever painted, Bob?"
"No."
"I paint."
"I've never seen your work."
"Exactly. It's not worth showing. Do you realize the tremendous difficulty of painting?"
"Some of it is talent," answered Bob. "The rest is skill. It can be learned, like anything else."
"You don't understand. The difficulty is momentous. It... inspires! Every painting of mine is a failure, but the act of failing is in every case a consummate joy."
"What a positive attitude."
"Hogwash. It's a joy because the failure puts a spotlight on success, which in this case is beauty. The art of painting, and the moment of painting, is all about getting the paint off of your brush. You collect the paint on your brush and then be some stroke of genius you apply it to the canvas."
"Of course."
"You are painting a plant. You apply the green paint. You must do it just so to create a line for your stem. Otherwise you have an irregular fade, controlled by the pitted texture of the canvas and not the movement of your hand. You must know how much paint to put on your brush, how much pressure to apply, how quickly to move the brush."
"Yes," agreed Bob, "it's a matter of technique."
"I know none of these things," laughed Renaldo gleefully. "For me, each stroke is a surprise. Each time I think how effective this stroke might have been somewhere else. But I could never reproduce it -- the shape, the mix of colors scooped from my frenzied pallet. Each stroke allows me to imagine my hand as the hand of a master. From my failures I construct the masterpiece that might have been."
"But don't you learn from your mistakes?"
"No. The joy of failing at something so noble! If I were to succeed, it would be such a small personal victory. I would have a pretty picture. So what?"
"Sophistry," said Bob. "Your so-called 'pretty pictures' are all that the masters ever produced. We don't have their moments. We only have their paintings."
"Photography is timing. But so is painting. Except that the ecstatic moment stretches from a fraction of a second to hours, or days."
"We have more work to do, Renaldo."
"You always succeed, don't you?"
"I make a point of it." As Bob spoke, Renaldo's gaze found the Pantheon, whose magnificent dome Michelangelo "made a point" of not exceeding when he designed St. Peter's cathedral. Michelangelo understood. Bob was beginning to understand as well, though at the moment this understanding was merely the memory of the smell of Sarah's hair on a particular night, and the weight of her pen in his pocket.