Words and Pictures Page #8

heard that before,

but maybe after time goes

by and you see your father

always sober, never drunk,

maybe you'll begin to believe me.

And even though I'm awful,

please don't let me

be dead to you, Tony.

I love you.

And I want to know her.

Good-bye!

And that has nothing

to do with God!

Oh, sh*t.

Emily!

Emily?

Hi.

I thought it was the maniac.

Come.

Oh, wow.

I love this.

Oh, it's so damaged.

I gave up trying to fix it.

No, I can see what you wanted.

It's really good.

It was the best I've done since

my body stopped cooperating.

Sit down.

I've been trying so hard to

paint what I see, Emily,

and now I'm learning to

see what I can paint.

Something that excites me.

Take it. If you like

it, you can have it.

I can't look at it anymore.

Thank you. Um...

I want you to see what

I'm painting now.

I miss your input.

Your not being satisfied.

Bring your work over.

I'd be glad to be

dissatisfied with it.

- Would you?

- Mm.

Would you teach me here?

Hmm?

I mean, on weekends

or after school?

It's not just me, though.

Cole Patterson, he would

like lessons, too,

or maybe some of the others.

Class is just not the same anymore.

Nobody's pushing.

They just go, "That's good, Emily."

You are good.

You're good enough to

please a lot of people,

most people.

Well...

to hell with them.

Yeah.

So here we go.

New words!

Yeah!

Never before seen.

Friedman.

Textulating... making

love via texting.

Cole.

Uh...

slumba...

a Latin dance in an

impoverished neighborhood.

Say that again.

A Latin dance in an

impoverished neighborhood.

Isabella.

Um, emblend.

To hold somebody close.

Aw, Isabella!

Mr. Marc?

Mr. Marc, this is cool and all,

but we really want to

talk about your war.

Yeah, um,

how can you have a battle

without Miss Delsanto?

She'll be here.

She's not coming.

She won't be here until next year.

That's not acceptable.

She has to.

She has to.

Hey!

Hey.

Hi.

Oh, hello again.

I will just go check

and then tell you when

they're ready, okay?

Okay, that's good.

You want to sit down?

Can't sit in that one yet.

I, uh... I thought

your leg was better.

Yes.

I can even kick you in the

balls if you try to help me.

You want something? A drink or...

No, thanks.

- Irrepressibility.

- Oh, for God's sake.

Incorrigibility.

They're both sevens.

Masturbationalistic.

Play with yourself.

Tell me.

Up to the part where I

got disgustingly drunk,

it was good, right?

I don't remember.

I'm sober 36 days.

Oh!

Well, then you'll probably want

to celebrate with a 12-pack.

Yes, it was good.

Yes.

That's why I'm so goddamn angry,

because of what you're capable

of and what you throw away,

what you destroy.

I don't give a damn

about this stupid war.

You'll do the Mr. Marc show,

and the students will vote,

and you'll win and be happy,

and then you can leave me alone.

I'm only here for Emily.

It's great to see you, Delsanto.

Ladies, gentlemen, welcome

to Words Versus Pictures.

Yeah!

Representing Pictures are

the Arts Honors students,

whose works you see surrounding us.

- Whoo!

- Yeah!

Hold on.

And their teacher, the

artist, Miss Dina Delsanto.

It's her art we see on the screens.

Stanhope?

So which has more impact,

more value, more worth?

The word or the picture?

Come on, pictures!

And words! Guys, come on!

Oh, just clap.

Yeah!

"A picture is worth a

thousand words." Anonymous.

"There is no frigate like a

book to take us lands away."

Emily Dickinson.

"A picture shows me at a glance

"what it takes dozens of

pages of a book to expound."

Ivan Turgenev.

Shakespeare's portrait appeared

on his First Folio of plays

with these words...

"Reader, look not at his

picture, but his book."

"What is the use of a book,

thought Alice, without pictures?"

Lewis Carroll.

"A picture is something that

requires as much knavery,

"trickery, and deceit as the

perpetration of a crime."

Edgar Degas.

For evidence.

Speaking first, representing

pictures, Miss Delsanto.

It was Mr. Marc's idea

that I repair it.

I hope you don't mind.

It's great.

It's even better.

Why art?

If our senses and consciousness

were entirely in tune with nature,

if we could communicate and

understand each other,

then there wouldn't

be any need for art.

In fact, we would all be artists,

because we would all be as one.

I have nothing else to say,

except this?

I started it, and

Emily finished it.

And this.

And, of course, all the student

paintings you can see here.

Thank you.

Representing words,

Mr. Jack Marcus.

Yeah!

Come on!

Wow, there's your pictures.

And here's my thousand words,

except it's not a thousand.

It's roughly 400, but

I think it's enough.

There's a problem, though.

If writers are called artists, too,

then as a fellow artist,

I'm not in the same

league as Miss Delsanto,

because Delsanto in her art

takes us from here

to somewhere else.

She takes what we

look at every day,

and she elevates it

out of the ordinary.

As when John Updike looked at

birds sitting randomly on a wire

and called them "punctuation

for an invisible sentence."

Or Jeanette Winterson describes

"tripping over slabs of

sunshine the size of towns."

And Joyce Cary speaks

of a cold morning with

"frost on the grass like

condensed moonlight."

And James Agee speaks of men

removing their stiff

collars in the evening

and their "newly bared necks

seeming tall and shy."

Each artist makes the

world his or her own,

and in doing so elevates it.

And in doing that elevates us,

gives us a larger view.

"Art is the most intense

mode of individualism

"the world has ever known."

Oscar Wilde.

Proust said that only through art

can we get outside of ourselves

and know another's

view of the universe.

And Agee and Updike and

Winterson and Delsanto,

they give us that view because

they give us themselves

through words, through pictures.

And all we can say is...

Because what we feel

is indescribable.

And the value of artists like that,

artists like Miss Delsanto,

is that through their

gifts, their agonies,

their energies, and their vision,

they make us feel

our best.

They make us want to be

our best.

And I thank her.

And I thank all of you for

allowing us this opportunity

to honor the artists and the arts,

not through a battle,

but through a... a coming together,

a mating

of words and pictures.

Emily, Cole, take it away.

Shakespeare said,

"Shall I compare thee

to a summers day?

"Thou art more lovely

and more temperate.

"Rough winds do shake the

darling buds of May."

I'll just go get the car, okay?

- And meet you back here in a minute.

- Okay.

You all right?

Mm.

The sun is awfully strong.

Afraid you'll melt?

Not a chance.

"I refuse to melt,"

said the icicle.

"Ha ha," said the sun and shined.

You know who wrote that?

Your son?

You ice cold b*tch.

You drunken, art-wrecking bastard.

I am a small poem

On a page with room for another

Share with me this white field

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