Originally Posted by: hunter60Interesting. Nice use of imagery. Yeah, it's a little dark and cynical but that's the voice the piece calls for I would think. I suspect that Tommis is a very angry, bitter young-man? An artist in search of a soul? A young man wrestling with the eternal question: "Is sex the only true art that man can master?" Sees the degeneration of mans attempts to paint those amazing feelings onto canvas or chiseling them into stone?

Perhaps a young man with a broken heart listening to the wild throes of someone else while sitting in a decaying chapel of mans mockery of all things beautiful?

Jolly, this reminds me of early Tom Wolfe (pre-Bonfire of the Vanities. Back when he was the master of modern day stream of consciousness writing. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or The Pumphouse Gang.... [The original master of this sort was James Joyce. Try and hack your way through Ullyses sometime. Geez. I've tried at least a dozen times and can't get past the first thirty pages before I want to pull my eyes out. If you've read it and enjoyed it, God bless you.])

I think it's a good piece. Keep going. I want to see where this goes.

Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written and I would die for James Joyce. However, try reading it along with a book of criticism on it, particularly Hart and Hayman's James Joyce's Ulysses, read a section of the criticism twice before the corresponding section of the Novel. Don't ever feel like you're using a crutch by trying this method. After all, Joyce had to publish two schemas so people could actually read it.

Now for your other questions:

I suspect that Tommis is a very angry, bitter young-man?

Thomas or Tommis is lonely and more likely jilted than bitter. However, he certainly does have his bitter and angry moments. Really I think of him more as a recluse at this point.

An artist in search of a soul?

Perhaps Thomas's first trip to the art museum was some noble sojourn. Sadly he keeps returning for this petty sexual fulfillment.

A young man wrestling with the eternal question: "Is sex the only true art that man can master?"

Sadly he's only getting off.

Sees the degeneration of mans attempts to paint those amazing feelings onto canvas or chiseling them into stone?

He would, but he is, after all, Thomas/Tommis (To miss) and doesn't realize what's playing out right before his eyes. The shaking painting and assless David hide both what's behind and underneath them, denying the existence of excrement or savage, empassioned, animalistic sex. Hiding behind walls. That's why the David statue is made of plaster, he's a sham, a mockery of solidity. This is really more about language than art, but the parallels had to be drawn somewhere.

Perhaps a young man with a broken heart listening to the wild throes of someone else while sitting in a decaying chapel of mans mockery of all things beautiful?

Man and language's assumption that beauty overpowers ugliness is really the mockery here. By denying the existence of the horror, man creates something lifeless and confined to preconceived notions (hence the frame and Procrustean bed). Remember, though, the ugly side is not some transcendence either, merely a reality pushed aside by aesthetic deceptions. I do think Thomas has a broken heart, though. At this point, however, his behavior is encoded by experience, and maybe some day I'll go write about it.