“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” – Walter Benjamin

For as much as I’ve found literature to be so life affirming and soul enriching, I’ve never really understood art. I know next to nothing about theory and most of what I learned in my college introductory course has been replaced by much more pertinent information – like Kurt Russel trivia or the subtle differences between overpriced IPAs. I’ve never been swept into an existential crisis while staring at a painting, it just does not speak to me in the ways it does to so many others. But Klee’s Angelus Novus struck a chord, or rather a combination of the image and Walter Benjamin’s explanation did.

In all honesty, I have no fucking idea how Benjamin got those words from that image. My description would have read something like, “The curly haired bird with droopy eyes and buck teeth flaps it’s wings(?) at something. It’s also wearing a skirt which I think it neat.” I’m glad Benjamin saw it his way though, because it made sense to me at a time when not a whole lot else did.

In the wake of a cocaine habit that more or less persisted for four years having been kicked, I was blown away by the reality that I hadn’t done much to further my life as someone who aspires to write for a living or as a functioning member of society. I imagine this is not a unique phenomenon for someone infatuated by powdered narcotics. While beating an addiction is undeniably a great thing, it feels a lot like a silver lining. Like climbing out of a deep hole and seeing everyone else already ascending a mountain that you haven’t even considered. I’d rather have never tried the drug, but there was my catastrophic chain of events – or as Benjamin might claim – progress.

We can’t beat time, and all of our choices contribute to the people we become. We can sympathize with the Angel of History when we look back on our own lives. When wishing we could change what has been etched in stone. The only control we have is the next step we take. And Fitzgerald can kiss my pale Irish ass, there are second acts in this life. The good and the bad and everything in between all hold the same weight as one another – to propel us through time. Sure we’d like to have more good than ill, but objectively speaking it doesn’t really matter to anyone but ourselves and those with a vested interest in us.

This has kind of gotten away from me and the more I write this the more I think I probably should hash out it’s meaning before getting it tattooed to my leg.

Anyways, this image of an angel imposed by Klee and sent to me by my sister – that I didn’t understand until reading Walter Benjamin’s description of – I found to be very affecting. So what I’m trying to say is I still don’t get art unless it’s spoon fed to me by those who do, and it has to resonate exactly with my present experience.

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