Complex Numbers

Liberating the Angel

PROMPT May 1st

Write about one (or more) of your creative idols. Who do you look up to? Whose work are you most inspired by? Why?

Michelangelo once said, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

Some people, like that famous Ninja Turtleartist, just have the talent. Almost anyone can learn the mechanics of art, but the essence of it is more... ineffable. Sometimes it seems like a superpower, or something supernatural is involved, but I believe in neither of those supers; I just think true artists have something that is missing or stunted in the rest of us.

So it is with this guy I know named Dave.

Dave is the brewmaster at a local brewpub. I can generally take or leave art; dance doesn't do anything for me; music can move me, but I can't say I fully understand it. What I do understand, though, is beer. It's art in liquid form; at its best, it's sublime and subtle, a whole that is far more than the sum of its parts.

As with other kinds of art, almost anyone can learn the mechanics of brewing. I've never bothered, myself; as I have no talent whatsoever in any other art form, it would just be a waste of my time to try when there's so much great beer out there made by people who do have talent.

But just as Michelangelo saw the angel when everyone else just saw a block of rock, Dave has the superpower of being able to take different basic ingredients of beer and just know what the final result will be like.

Which is not to say that everything he does deserves to adorn the Sistine Chapel, or whatever the beer equivalent of that is. He's made some... questionable... brews. I tried one just the other day, a beer brewed with hemp. Hemp is a botanical cousin of hops, so you'd think, well, maybe the two can be interchangeable? But you'd think wrong.

My first experience with hemp beer was at a brewpub I stopped by in West Virginia, not far from the Mothman statue   (which, incidentally, would probably make Michelangelo groan in his grave). As is my usual practice, I got a flight of samples of several of their beers, including the hemp one. Most of the beers were okay. The hemp beer tasted like the Mothman himself had pissed it out after a particularly busy night of scaring the shit out of the locals.

I looked around and saw all the hipsters gathered at the various tables (this was, of course, in the Before Time); they were pouring that foul swill into their beards and nodding like this was the Second Coming of Beer Jesus.

The one place in the world where I feel like I actually fit in is at brewpubs, but even then, sometimes that culture eludes me.

Anyway, so Dave made a hemp beer. After the Mothman pee incident, I was understandably reluctant to order an entire pint of the stuff; fortunately, you can usually get minuscule samples at brewpubs, just to check whether you like it or not. It's a Bad Idea to take advantage of this practice by requesting samples of everything on the menu; if you're going to do something like that, fucking shell out the few bucks for a flight. Don't be That Guy.

I sampled Dave's hemp beer and... well, it wasn't terrible. Which, given my previous experience with that particular style, is high praise. I'd never buy a pint of it, though, and since there weren't too many other people around, I couldn't tell if the local hipsters had decided that the idea of putting the plant from which cannabis springs into beer was the Best Idea Ever. I hope not. This is actual Virginia, where we don't usually marry our siblings.

Point being that even the few styles of beer that I generally avoid can't help but be touched by Dave's magic. One of these days I might even work up the courage to try his non-alcoholic beer. Maybe. Probably not. But I'm sure it's a fine example of that useless style.

As for the other questions, well, one of the many, many joys of getting old is that, as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer people to look up to. You get to watch your heroes die off, one by one; and the ones that are left, you realize are just people after all; people with talent, maybe, but otherwise just as flawed as the rest of us. So I don't idolize people. I respect their work, if appropriate, but I don't worship celebrities.

I'd have to say that, when it comes to writing, nothing has inspired me more than the work of Leonard Cohen, which, as I've noted before, I encountered first in poems before I found out he was also a songsmith. But even there, I soon found that my writing tone was going to have to be far less depressing (I mean, whose isn't? Apart from Morrissey) and that I'm more drawn to humor than to existential angst.

But hey, sometimes existential angst can be funny.

I mean, I still have this image in my head of the Mothman pissing out some sort of beer analogue that made it into the Point Pleasant brewpubs. And that's comedy.